Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(56)

A bird cries somewhere in the distance. A San Francisco–bound jetliner has begun its descent over the valley, and she’d rather stare at it for the remainder of the day than spend another awkward moment on this scraggly front lawn.

“So Marty says you didn’t have much time to see me. What, are you just passing through or something?” Luke finally asks.

“Something like that.”

“You got time for a beer?”

“I got time for a Diet Coke.”

“You always were big on Diet Coke.”

This feels like bait, and she’s not willing to take it. What’s he trying to do? Sell her on the idea that he was always sweet on her and his constant bullying was just his way of dealing with the fact that he liked her? Does anyone really believe that crap anymore? Even if it’s true, how’s she supposed to feel about it now? Grateful for the attention, no matter how negative it was? And if he was paying enough attention to her to know her favorite beverage, could he not see how much his constant insults hurt her?

Somewhere out there, she thinks, there must be a man who wasn’t raised to believe his every cough in a woman’s presence is somehow a gift to her.

If Marty hadn’t sent her here with a clear objective, she might be giving voice to these thoughts, but instead she’s chewing her bottom lip in an effort to keep her expression neutral.

“I don’t have any Diet Coke,” he says.

“OK.”

“I mean, I don’t drink it. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have run out and bought some.”

“I get it. We surprised you.”

“No, that’s fine. I mean, if you’re only in town for a short while, I’m glad you came by.”

“Let’s go inside, Luke.”

His cheeks are ablaze. The sight pleases her, for many reasons, some of them too complicated for her to sort through in this moment.

He gestures to the front door. She follows him into the house.





21

The inside of the house, like the yard, has a hollowed-out feeling that makes memories of those long-ago parties ring in her mind.

The place is mostly empty except for the den, which looks as if a bachelor pad apartment has been slid through the front door intact and then wedged into this one room. There’s a flat-screen TV resting on top of a chest of drawers that looks like it belongs in a dorm. The bookshelves on either side are too small. The hunter-green curtains don’t match the yellow walls, and she doesn’t see the color anywhere else in the house.

Across the entry hall, in the dining room, cardboard boxes are shoved neatly against one wall, three rows deep. There’s no real mess, but it’s clear most of Luke’s belongings are still inside and he just moves between them to retrieve his essentials. In one corner of the room there’s a mostly empty desk and a desktop computer; its wide-screen monitor pulses with a succession of high-definition images. Snowy mountains, sparkling lakes, the peaks of the Scottish Highlands.

When she turns and sees the new alarm panel on the wall behind her, she remembers her own back in Arizona, and the sting of betrayal threatens to distract her.

Luke’s surroundings don’t fit with either of the two scenarios she was on the lookout for: the eruptive mess of someone who’s hit a brick wall in life or the too immaculate, too orderly domicile of someone who hasn’t fully committed to their new home, maybe because they don’t plan to stay for very long.

What she sees is something in between the two: order and a lack of commitment and an awkward marriage of his grad school life and his new, uncertain one. But who is she to try to analyze this house and his stuff in this way? She’s not a detective, for Christ’s sake. This thought gives her a second or two of relief before she remembers that if she’s going to survive the mess she’s currently in, she better acquire the skills of a detective, and quick.

“You like Sprite?” he asks.

“Sure. As long as it’s diet.”

Luke nods and ducks into the kitchen. She doesn’t follow, but she’s got a good vantage point from where she’s standing. Almost nothing on the counters. No blender, no toaster. Just a coffee maker and a stack of mail. The butcher-block table’s too small, just like everything in the house is too small.

He didn’t plan to live here, she thinks. That’s all I can figure.

Luke returns with an open can of Sprite Zero and nothing for himself, which makes her feel awkward and like she shouldn’t take a sip. But he wasn’t out of her sight for more than a second, and would he really drug her with Marty outside? If he did, would she be as immune as she’d been to the vodka and wine she’d guzzled the night before? Or is that something that only happens after Dylan’s wonder drug has been triggered? There’s still a part of her that wants to refer to the drug as Zypraxon, but she’d like to know if the name, like much of what Dylan told her, is complete bullshit.

“So what brought this on?” she asks, gesturing to the room around her.

“I needed a place to live. It’s cheap, believe it or not. Silver Shore was renting it out for some of their foremen on the resort project, but when that fell through, they broke their lease, and Emily was desperate to fill the place. Her dad’s been gone awhile.”

“No, I mean, asking to see me like this.”