Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson #9)(70)

“Just how many times have you climbed up here without getting caught?” I asked.

“All of them but one,” he said.

“You came here to get out from under Bran’s eye so you could kill yourself,” I said.

He didn’t say anything, which was a “yes” in my book.

I thought of the kind of courage it would take to climb all the way up here to kill yourself, decide not to, and climb all the way down nearly every day for the better part of the month. And the question that occurred to me then wasn’t “why?” but “why not?”

“What stopped you?” I asked his back.

He raised his head and looked up, gesturing to the night sky with one hand, waving with what I considered to be reckless abandon. “Look at that. Do you see the lights? And the sky? Beautiful. Up here? It feels like the huge tightness in my spine that contains all those things I’ve forgotten loosens up a little.” He tapped his forehead. “I can feel those things, curled up inside me, waiting like the sword of Damocles. And I think, maybe I should wait and see if I can find myself. Then I’ll have a better idea of what I have to lose.”

I made sure my grip was tight, then I looked—out, not down. And he was right. It was beautiful.

And the wind decided right then to blow hard enough to send a buzz through the rail I was holding on to. I felt the vibrations of it under my fingers and had to reassure myself that this crane had been sitting here for at least a couple of years and hadn’t fallen down yet. It was certainly designed to hold up more than the three or four hundred pounds that Sherwood and I represented between us. Surely.

And still, the metal vibrated.

“I see your point,” I said tightly. “But I think your hiding place has been found out. You think maybe we could talk with our feet on the ground? Fair warning, if I fall and break every bone in my body, Adam will never forgive you.”


He laughed again. “Okay,” he said. “Do you need any help getting down?”

About halfway to the ground, I stopped to rest. He was below me. When I’d told him I’d get down the same way I got up, he’d scrambled around me to get underneath where he could catch me if I fell. He hadn’t said it, but he hadn’t had to.

After a minute, I said, “You know what makes me crabby? I didn’t need to go up there, did I? If we’d waited for you, you’d have come down just like you always have.”

“Yes,” said Sherwood. Then he said, his voice a little dreamy, “Probably. But maybe I’d have come down another way.”

He started down again then, moving slower than he had to so that I didn’t hurry.

“You missed your chance,” I told him. “I think your days of climbing up here unseen are over.”

“Yes,” he said. “But there’s always the suspension bridge.”

“If I have to climb up the suspension bridge,” I told him. “I really will push you off.”

He must not have understood I was serious because he laughed again.

—

So neither of us got arrested for trespassing, though it was, I understand, a near thing. I got Sherwood into Adam’s SUV. The Vanagon’s radiator had developed a leak and I hadn’t found it yet, so Adam had taken a Hauptman Security SUV and left me his. I had to think a bit to get the lights on and the SUV in gear, but I remembered not to swerve to avoid the ghost of the guard who stepped into the road in front of us. But I couldn’t help but mutter, “Sorry, Sorry,” under my breath when the bumper went through him.

Sherwood looked at me and raised a brow in query.

“Ghosts,” I said. “I see dead people.”

“Do you?” he said.

I nodded.

“Sucks to be you,” he said.

“Beats climbing 560 feet up a crane trying to talk down an idiot who couldn’t avoid being seen.”

“True,” he said thoughtfully. “But doesn’t take away from my earlier observation that it sucks to be you.”

I had to drive back to the interstate and over the Blue Bridge to get home. It added fifteen or twenty minutes to the trip. Having the Cable Bridge down was going to get old really fast.

My phone rang through the stereo system, an unfamiliar number. It wasn’t my car, and my purse with my phone in it was tucked under my seat. And then Sherwood helpfully hit the ANSWER button on the stereo’s touch screen—I think he thought I was having trouble reaching it. Any number not in my contacts list I usually let leave a voice mail. It saved me from the guilt of hanging up on someone trying to sell me auto warranties on cars I didn’t own.

“Mercy,” I said.

“Stay away—”

“Pastor?” I said. “Pastor White. Is that you?”

He cried out, and the connection was reset.

I turned on my turn signal, hit the gas, and headed to church. Maybe they were at Pastor White’s house, but I didn’t know where he lived. The best I could do was the church.

“What’s up?” asked Sherwood.

“That’s my pastor,” I told him. Pastor White was new; our last pastor had left to take over his father’s church in California. Pastor White wasn’t quite as engaging or accepting, but his faith was real. “Somebody wants me to go to church,” I said.