The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [44]
The shabby grey shape watched him also, marveling at how here....in this room, amidst this fanfare....there was gathered the most important influences of his life.
As far as people, for the most part.
And as far as the living, for the dead could not attend this reunion, particularly the young one whose blood still dried in gravel-caked splashes against the moonlight of the Crow Job alley.
Though the dead could not join the reunion, the reunion could always step outside and join the dead, any time.
And the shabby grey shape would be their escort for the evening.
10.
Andrew and Melony
If Melony had been more decided upon the extent of the disclosure of her identity to Andrew Erlandson, she would not have been so careless as to invite him to her table...and would not have left her press table card displaying her name and publication so openly obvious to wandering eyes.
Melony was subtly made aware...oh so subtly at first...of several things which disturbed her at the touch of the hand she now clasped, of the young man whose hand she held behind her as she led him through the dispersal of dancers for a self-arranged liaison at her night club table. She kept these things, these feelings, these thoughts, at bay for the fear of any or all of them getting the best of her, subduing her until she’d find herself sulking in the regret of a mismanaged and wasteful evening.
She’d taken advantage of the opportunity to watch and observe, a task which oddly reminded her of her husband and the security guard stories of his early college years. To observe Ralston Cooper, one of the most imperative objects of her interest, was impossible not to do. She was attentive to the table at which roosted Cooper’s agent, Cooper’s hokey, party-happy girlfriend, and specifically to the son of A.J. Erlandson, the son who managed not to disappear without a trace as did his father, as did initially his elusive twin brother also. The other imperative focus of the evening could not as readily be attended to, for the probability of this elusive other Erlandson’s presence, the presence of Andrew’s twin, was very much looking like a lost cause.
Even though, unlike A.J., who never to anyone’s knowledge ever reappeared, never yet at any rate, Andrew’s sordid and spectral twin had made dozens of profound special guest appearances over the years in the Erlandson saga. Reappearing, disappearing, reappearing, like the ink from the pen of a practical jokester who doesn’t quite want anyone to catch more than a hint of his message on paper.
Max and Mel had hoped for another appearance here, at the Crow Job Family Reunion, particularly since it was this twin who was most likely responsible for the death of Nigel in the adjoining alley outside.
After all, it was this twin who’d been behind Nigel’s disappearance and assumed death the first time around. The fabled Wraith-child.
Presumably. According to Max and Mel.
Melony’s husband was specific in covering a plan of action at the news of the discovery of little Nigel’s body; though he’d be truly disappointed at the absence of the twin or Melony’s failure to spot him, as Melony was as well. Max made clear that the assignment for Mel was to pay primary attention to Andrew and to go in for the informative kill on that angle. Max imposed upon his own self the task of going after the twin and as soon as his plane arrived from his short-lived Brazil excursion he would right away set to work on that end.
What disturbed Melony had little to do with any of this.
Or, said again, what disturbed Melony was that these feelings and thoughts had little to do with any of what she’d planned.
She knew she had to formally meet Andrew, to get to know him for as long as she needed him, somehow, and she had every intention of veiling her true identity and interest in him as efficiently and as coolly as the situation allowed.
And with plenty of room to back