Noah smirked. “Yeah. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you think of crimes being committed in the heart of the city. The kind of city that only comes in one size, big, and one flavor, dangerous.”
“Thank you!” she interjected, cutting him off. “That’s enough Sam Spade for one afternoon.”
“My pleasure. Thank you for tuning in to my one-man radio show.”
“Don’t forget to thank me for tuning in to your planet, too.”
“Uh. I’m hurt. Just because I’m a shape-shifter from another time period doesn’t mean I’m strange or something.”
“Yes, it does. It definitely does.”
“Well, I hope that’s strange in a good way.”
She smiled at him, his handsome face caught in a shaft of soft light. “It is.”
He returned the smile and gestured toward the cabin. Her feet had turned to lead. “Are you sure he won’t be in there?” she asked, her voice tiny. They crept closer. It was a rental cabin. Dusty curtains hung in the windows, and a sign on the door listed rules for staying there: wash your own dishes, take sheets off the bed when you’re done.
Don’t eat the help, she thought grimly.
“Ready to do this?” He watched her expectantly. She hated this part of her gift, when people stared at her as if she were about to pull off some kind of miracle. Because it was a rental cabin, this was going to be harder than usual. Objects that had been touched by numerous people offered a hodgepodge of information, oftentimes making it difficult to separate one person’s thoughts from another’s.
Approaching the door, she once again took in the cabin’s small size. “If he does show up, there’s not much room to hide.”
“I don’t think he will.”
She studied the cabin reluctantly. “Well, let’s do this as quickly as possible.”
“Here goes,” Noah said, trying the doorknob unsuccessfully.
“Did you really think it would be unlocked?” she started, trailing off as Noah smashed the French door pane closest the knob.
“No,” he answered.
Reaching through the hole in the jagged glass, Noah unlocked the door from the inside. Madeline glanced around nervously.
“What is it?” Noah asked.
“I guess I thought the cops could sense a law being broken miles away and would come for us.”
He nodded. “I felt that way myself the first few times.”
She raised her eyebrows as he opened the front door. “The first few times you broke into houses?”
“The first few times I committed crimes.”
She swallowed as he paused in the doorway, waiting for her. “What kinds of crimes have you committed?”
He smiled. “Oh, nothing serious. You know, a little B and E, some minor theft of food and clothes over the years, that kind of thing.”
“Oh.” She wondered if he was leaving anything out. Centuries of pursuing a killer could warp any person’s mind. With an obsession carrying you from year to year, you could very well skew your ideas of where justice ended and madness began.
Noah stepped toward her. “What is it? You look like you’re about to run away.”
She looked into his concerned eyes and felt foolish. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just my overactive imagination.” Her gut told her Noah was safe. He was a good person, determined to stop this killer. A lot of people wouldn’t be so selfless. It was too easy to roll over and let bad things happen, to not think about others. Most people would have grieved over their lover and then moved on, too scared or too weak to pursue justice when the law failed to deliver. She studied Noah’s face, his old, wise eyes, slight growth of whiskers, sandy blond hair curling about his face.
She reached up and touched his cheek, feeling the warmth of his face on her palm. Slowly she stepped forward, closing the distance between them and pressed her lips to his, breathing in the delicious scent of him. He returned the kiss, wrapping a hand around her back, pulling her even closer. Her mouth longed to drink him deeply, and the tip of her tongue came out, lightly brushing his, an electric sensation passing through her. She pulled away, hunger in her eyes, and watched as he slowly opened his eyes, his mouth still parted and wanting.
They watched each other for a few moments, and then she said, “I guess we have work to do.”
He nodded.
Madeline touched the doorknob as she entered, expecting to get something. But so many people had touched it over the years, it only gave off static: a wash of feelings and emotions of hundreds of people who had rented the cabin in years gone by.
Beyond the front door lay the kitchen, a modest setup including an ancient propane stove that had probably cooked food when Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons first sang on the radio. Next to it stood a genuine icebox, the kind you actually had to put ice into to cool its contents. In the center of the room stood a Formica-topped table, scarred with decades of use, and two cheap aluminum chairs with plastic cushioned seats, cracked and spilling their polyester stuffing.
Madeline moved about the kitchen, touching the chairs, the table, the stove, the icebox. The last she opened, admitting a terrible reek into the room. Wrinkling her nose, she peered inside. Nothing. But decades of use had taken its toll. Too many people had left food in there to go bad, and the lingering stench was a mixture of rancid milk, overripe cheese, and a sharp garlicky smell that threatened to overtake the kitchen. She slammed the icebox door shut and backed away.
Noah, waiting quietly by the front door, asked, “Anything?”
Madeline shook her head. “Just a lot of white noise.”
He raised his eyebrows.
She moved toward him, away from the cloud of stench. “When a lot of people touch something over the years, like these appliances, all I get is white noise: a crazy mixture of the thoughts of everyone who has ever been here. I call it the Bus Seat Effect.”
“Bus seat?”
“Yeah. I first noticed it on a bus. My elementary school used these really old buses that had probably driven kids around since the 1950s. Our school district didn’t have a whole lot of money. Anyway, I noticed one day, bouncing along on my way to school, that I didn’t ever get any specific images when I touched a bus seat. I thought it was weird at the time. I mean, think of all the nervous and terrified kids who had used them for decades. I thought I’d get something-an image of a kid crying over a stolen lunch box, or a vision of a kid getting beaten up during recess by the local bully. But nothing. Eventually I realized that I got no images precisely because there were so many kids who had ridden in those seats before me. It was just too much information, a hiss and static of a thousand lives, each with their separate fears and terrors, struggles and triumphs.”
“The Bus Seat Effect. Got it. Want to try the other rooms?”
“Sure,” she said, feeling mildly sick, and not sure if it was due to nerves or the terrible stench.
Together they made their way through the sitting room, a tiny room sporting an ancient stuffed rocker and a magazine rack complete with wilting copies of Better Homes and Gardens dating back at least to the ’60s.
Madeline touched all the furniture, the magazines, the lamp. Nothing.
In the small bathroom, she touched the sink, bathtub, shower curtain, toilet. No images.
She moved into the last room, a small bedroom with a bed, dresser, and wooden writing desk with a lamp. Noah lingered in the doorway while she ran her fingers gingerly over the dresser’s smooth surface, then the writing desk and lamp. Finally she moved to the bed. It was unmade, recently slept in, the dark green comforter spilling over the bed and onto the floor. The sheets looked new or nearly new; they still had creases in them where they had been folded at the factory. A deep maroon, they weren’t the kind of cheap linens that rental places normally stocked. She reached down gently and brushed her hand over the soft cotton of the sheets. Immediately, powerful images swept over her.