The Coming | The House of Voices #2

Fourteen - Nice

Nice

October:

I woke up not knowing where I was.

Parish – who was still asleep – and I were huddled up together in a dark corner of the tool shed we’d retreated to last night as we tried to escape Brent and Javier; and we were both soaked. My t-shirt had been saved thanks to Parish’s thick jacket, but my jeans were wet and clinging to my skin. Parish was more or less the same. We’d been running around in the rain for half an hour, so I wasn’t really surprised over the fact that we were drenched. What did surprise me, however, was that we weren’t alone.

Just a few feet away from where we’d been sleeping, sitting on an empty work bench, Parish and I were being watched by the most beautiful, most exotic girl I’d ever seen. I jolted upright, alarmed at her presence.

How long had she been there? How long had she been watching us sleep? Not breaking eye contact, I reached out and patted Parish’s cheek, waking him.

“What, what, wha—” He clipped his grumbles short when he saw her. “Shit.”

Parish’s hushed swear made the girl smile, sly amusement washed over her face and touched her cat-like eyes. “You know,” she said, her melodic and slightly raspy voice coated in good-humor. “You could have just knocked at the front door. We’d have put you up in the guest room or something. This is the worst place in the world to try and get a good night’s sleep. Trust me, I know.”

“Erm,” Parish glanced at me, unsure how to reply. I shrugged, as uncertain as he was. Did this girl not recognize us? Hadn’t she been watching the news? “We’re sorry. We didn’t know we could just do that.”

Another wave of good-humor flashed in her eyes. Against her glowing, deep olive skin, they looked impossibly bright – the brightest green eyes I’d ever seen on a human being. She was tall, Darren’s height, - about 5’8, I think – with long, glossy black hair that she’d pulled into a high ponytail. And she looked young, twenty years old, at the most. If she’d been Caucasian, she and Bethany could have passed for sisters. From her high cheekbones and sculpted jaw, I assumed she was Native American.

She wasn’t traditionally beautiful. But she had a perfect balance of sharp features and soft features that made her look breathtaking. On anyone else, it would have looked odd. Bethany would never have been able to pull off those large eyes with that full mouth.

“And now you do,” she said, tilting her head slightly. She tossed her head in the direction of the open shed door, “come on. I’ll make you guys some breakfast while you clean up.”

She waited for us to follow. When Parish and I stood up, but made no attempts to move, she frowned – somehow managing to still look gorgeous while doing so. “Look,” Parish started, moving to stand in front of me. “We appreciate the offer and everything, but we really should get moving. Places to be, you know? Besides, we don’t know you.”

I expected her to look insulted or even hurt, but she just nodded understandingly and said, “You don’t want to blindly trust someone who just caught you hiding out in her tool shed, I get that. But I mean it when I say that I just want to help.” Parish opened his mouth to argue but she sped on, “I won’t force you to stay, but maybe at least let me give you guys something to eat? You look famished.”

Right on cue, our stomachs growled in unison. We hadn’t had anything to eat since those sandwiches and from the deli. That was somewhere last evening. It was almost afternoon now.

But despite our hunger, Parish and I glanced at each other again in uncertainty. I wanted to believe the girl; the sincere look in her eyes told me that she really did want to help. But what would she do once she found out who we were? Or who Parish was, in any case? As if reading my thoughts she said, “Look, if I was going to call the cops on you, I’d have done it while you were sleeping.”