Deja Who (Insighter #1)(43)

Today was different;

(hooray! “different”! what a wonderful word!)

today she could dress as she liked, so she indulged herself with a pair of rose-colored capris, a cream-colored tank top trimmed at the neck with lace, and a cardigan a few shades darker than her pants. As her phone started chiming, she found her tan oxfords and slipped one on, then glanced down at her phone, which, judging from all the pings and chimes, was about to self-destruct.

What the hell is this? Four voicemails? Nellie just doesn’t know when to quit.

But none of the voicemails were from her mother.

“Ms. Nazir, this is Detective Preston from the CPD. Please call us back immediately.”

Archer.

Oh, fuck. Archer!

The other voicemails were from the police as well, though she didn’t hear the entirety of the second one, since for some reason the phone was falling away from her, turning over and over before it finally—how was it falling in slow motion?—hit the tile and she heard a faint “crack.”

Or would have, if she hadn’t clawed for her keys and sprinted out the front door. The phone might be tumbling in slo-mo but she was in overdrive, and it still didn’t seem fast enough.





TWENTY-NINE


She stood on the brakes hard enough to bang her head on the roof, and when the car had more or less stopped, she wrestled free of the seat belt and escaped its confines. She ran up the sidewalk to Archer’s front door, barely registering the ting-ting-ting of the car as it chimed its warning that she’d left the keys in the ignition and the door open. And almost on top of a fire hydrant.

She hammered on the front door with her fists and, when that didn’t bring an immediate response, started kicking the bottom of the wooden door. It hurt, but she didn’t care. She imagined the neighbors would be concerned by the noise, and didn’t care. They might call the police; she didn’t. The police only called you after the unthinkable happened. She had a flash from her past, something about

(“But they cannot! The king is above the law. The king is the law.”)

things going bad just when it seemed the good times were back, and shook it off.

“Archer! Open up! Archer, be in there and be unmangled and safe and open up!” Part of her brain realized she was sobbing his name and her fists were going numb and her foot hurt but the rest of her brain didn’t care, was focused on her worst thoughts being false, being untrue, because Archer was fine, he was fine last night and he would be fine now and all she had to do was keep knocking and he would eventually—

“Jeez, Leah?” The door had opened and he was blinking at her in surprise. “What’s wrong?”

She fell into his arms, clutching at him and trying to tell him the CPD had played a terrible prank but she would forgive them because he was fine, he was completely fine and on second thought she would Insight the shit out of all of them beginning with Detective Preston, if he so much as jostled a shoplifter during an arrest she would delve into his past lives and tell everyone he used to be Pol Pot.

“Ohhhh you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay oh thank God you’re okay.” She was telling all that to Archer’s neck, as once she’d thrown her arms around him she simply refused to let go. He had staggered, but submitted.

“What’s wrong? Ouch, that tickles—what’s—yeek!”

“Wait.” She stopped talking to his throat and stepped back, looking up at him. His hands went to the small of her back, pressing, and it was absurd, really, how comforting that was. “You’re okay.”

“Yeah. Well, I went to bed with a chronic case of blue balls, which you’ve just made worse, but yeah, in general, I’m pretty okay.” His blue and green eyes gleamed with good humor. “Where’s your other shoe?”

“My what?” She looked down. One tan oxford, neatly tied, was on her left foot. Her right foot was bare. “I just—I don’t recall. I must have . . .” Must have darted, streaked, out of her apartment in her rush to get to Archer. “The police.” It was hard to think. Relief, she was just now discovering, was as potent a drug as anything illegal. She was alternately giddily light-headed and crushed under the weight of stress. “They called. They said—they said I had to call them back right away and they left lots of messages and they never leave the bad news on a recording I thought something happened so I left and here I am.”

“And you thought . . . ah, Leah.” He snaked a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her forward for a quick kiss. “You thought I was hurt? Dead?”

She didn’t answer, just nodded. Her relief was a palpable force, an enormous thing.

Oh I am in so much trouble with this boy who I keep forgetting is older than I am. I want to tumble him into bed and divest him of his clothes and find out what he likes, all the things he likes. And then I want to do it again, and again, for fifty years.

“And you just . . . you quit putting on your shoes and hopped in your car—which you’ve parked in the middle of the street, by the way, but it’s all right, I’m not judging—and came over?”

“Oh my God. I never even—I didn’t stop to think. I just assumed . . . you’re right, I’m a fool.”

“Whoa!” He held his hands up and then—much better—put them back around her and gave her a slight squeeze. “I didn’t use that particular F word, so simmer. I’d never use that particular F word in reference to you.” He squeezed her again, which was lovely. She was amazed at how quickly he was calming her down. “And now this is the part where I pretend I’m not wildly flattered by your panic. Because I absolutely, totally am. Instead, I’ll play it cool. Like the way I’m playing it now: coooooool.”