Charley Davidson, Tome 9.1 : Prologue

Prologue

Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.

—T-Shirt

I pressed my fingers to my head, marveling at the agony therein, wondering why it felt like my brain had just exploded. I was on my back. I wondered about that, too. I didn’t remember being on my back. I didn’t remember being much of anything, my head hurt so bad. Pain rocketed through it in nauseating waves as I tried to figure out where I kept pain medication.

Then another sensation hit me. A biting cold like I’d never felt before, and I realized I couldn’t remember where I was. Wondering if I’d sleepwalked, I tried to open my eyes. They wouldn’t budge at first, but they were being pelted with ice-cold water, and I needed to find out why.

It took a minute, but I finally managed pry them open enough to constitute two slits. Rain fell in huge, sleet-filled drops, stinging my face when they landed. I raised my arms to shield my eyes and saw a huge Rottweiler standing over me. Alarm rushed through me lightning quick, but he simply whimpered and leaned down to lick my face. His tongue was just as cold as the rain. Poor guy.

A yellow light floated above me. A security light. Pebbles bored into my back and scraped my elbows as I struggled to a sitting position. I petted the Rottweiler, assured him—her—I was okay. She finally let up and stepped back to give me some space. Still groggy, I looked to my left, then to my right. A dark alley stretched out in either direction. I focused on a faded sign that hung on a door directly in front of me. It read The Firelight Grill. To the left of that, a historical marker on the building itself read THE FIREHOUSE, est. 1755, Sleepy Hollow, NY.

Okay. That answered that.

With legs made of lead, I took a crack at standing. It took a while, but once I gained my footing, I stumbled toward the door. Even though it was a back door, I turned the knob and went inside, holding it open for the dog. That would garner a code violation and probably a swift kick out of there. If they didn’t call the cops on me first.

I stepped inside a dark hallway—a warm dark hallway—and inched forward. My hair hung in thick brown clumps over my shoulders and down my back. I had to push it out of my face repeatedly, my fingers stiff. Throbbing. Blue. I could only imagine what the rest of me looked like. I glanced down at my clothes, way too thin for the weather. I must have lost my jacket, but I couldn’t remember where. My boots were waterlogged and made squishy noises as I walked.

A small room filled with supplies sat on the right, and a door with an office sign on my left. Ahead of me was a kitchen. I forced my frozen feet forward, taking one careful step at a time. The café itself was dark, but one man was busy in the brightly lit kitchen, cleaning up for the night. A large man with a head of thick black hair slicked back, he wore a cook’s apron as he emptied smaller garbage containers into one large one. He stilled when he spotted me. Reached for a weapon. Raised a spatula.

“What are you doing in here?” he barked, using a naturally baritone voice to his advantage.

I raised my hands. The blue ones that shook uncontrollably.

Another voice came from behind me. A female one. She must have come out of the office. “What’s going on?” she asked, her tone sharp.

I turned to her. In her early forties, she was large, but she had bright red hair straight out of a box and a pretty round face that had probably seen a tad too much partying in its day. Her heavily lined brows slid together.

“I just need help,” I said, showing my palms to her as well.

The dog whimpered, but they didn’t seem to give a lick about her.

“You can’t be back here.”

“I know. I’m sorry, I was just— I mean, I was wondering—”

“Spit it out, girl, before you turn into a chunk of ice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that shade of blue on anyone before.”

“Right,” I said through chattering teeth. “I was just wondering . . . if . . . if you know who I am.”

“Why?” she asked, jamming her hands on her hips. “You somebody special?”

“No. I mean, I was wondering if you know my name.”

The man chuckled. “Don’t you?”

I turned to him, hugging myself. “No,” I said, my whole body quaking. “I— I don’t have a clue.”

The woman stepped back and gave me a once-over. Then a twice-over, her skepticism evident in every line on her face.

“Okay, well, I’ll have to call the cops,” she said at last.

I gave a reluctant nod. I didn’t want to bother anyone, to make a big deal, but I didn’t know what else to do. If I could just remember my name, everything would be okay. But I couldn’t seem to snap out of it. Everything was surreal. Dreamlike. Unfamiliar.

I shivered as she took out her cell phone, and the man couldn’t take it any longer. He grabbed a tablecloth off a shelf and wrapped it around my quivering shoulders. Then he brought me a cup of coffee, and I fell in love. Just a little. I also discovered my true purpose in life: Drink coffee.

The rich aroma washed over me and the warmth that trickled over my tongue stilled my quaking limbs.

“They’ll be here in a jiff,” the woman said. “I’m Dixie.”

She pulled a chair over from a corner and sat down, while the man leaned against a prep table. “And this is Thiago.”

I smiled from behind the cup, grateful beyond measure that they didn’t throw me out onto my left butt cheek, an action they had every right to employ.

While we waited for the cops to show, I tried to answer their questions, but the truth was I didn’t have any answers. They simply didn’t exist. I really didn’t know my name or where I came from or how I ended up in their alley.

The more we talked, the more their concern grew. For me. They were concerned for me, and I wanted to cry. I was so…lost.

A knock sounded at the front door of the café, and Dixie went to let the responding officer inside.

“She’s a hot mess,” Dixie said, leading him into the kitchen.

The officer didn’t say anything. He stopped just past the threshold of the swinging kitchen door and took me in. I cleared my throat and tried to smooth down locks of my thawing hair.

“Officer Ian Jeffries,” he said at last, walking farther inside.

He was young. Blond. Eager. I was grateful for that, too. At first.

“Can you tell me what you remember?” he asked, his tone gentle. His touch even more so when he kneeled down and shined a light into my eyes. I knew he was checking to see if I was high. That was his job and as far as he knew, I was a drug-addicted nut job.

Hell, maybe I was.

The light made the throbbing in my head return in full force, but the moment he lowered it, the pain ebbed once again.

“I remember waking up in the alley behind Dixie’s café. That’s it.”

“Do you have any identification on you? A wallet? A phone?”

I patted my pockets. “I don’t think so.”

He was still kneeling in front of me when he put a hand on my knee. It was an innocent enough gesture if we’d known each other longer than thirty seconds, but we hadn’t, and the touch made me shrink away from him.

If he noticed, he didn’t show it. He glanced at my left hand, the one that had a death grip on the tablecloth around my shoulders. “You’re obviously married. Or at least engaged.”

My gaze followed his to a huge diamond on my ring finger. I hadn’t noticed it before. How could I miss something so important? “I— I guess I am.”

“Is that who you’re running from?”

I blinked at him in surprise. “I’m not running. I— I don’t think I’m running.” I fought to get a grip on anything from my past. There was simply nothing to grab. A soft breath shuddered through me. “Maybe I am running. I just don’t know.”

He reached up and tucked a damp strand of hair behind my ear, and an alarm went off in my head. He was being nice. Caring. I sat there like a frozen, drowned rat, and he was showing sympathy. But the touch was too familiar and severely unprofessional. It set me on edge. Even further than I was before.

My shoulder rose as though a shield and I tucked my chin behind it. “Officer—”

“Call me Ian,” he said.

“Ian, I wish I could tell you more.”

He patted my knee. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”

He turned and spoke quietly into the mic at his shoulder, spouting numbers I didn’t understand and calling for an ambulance. It was about that time that I realized the dog at my feet was still ice cold. Then I realized they didn’t give her a second glance. She sat beside me the entire time, her chin on my thigh. Even when Officer Jeffries kneeled in front of me, he didn’t acknowledge her. His hand was inches from her mouth.

“What’s up, girl?” I whispered and scrubbed her head with my fingertips.

She whimpered and nestled closer.

I rubbed under her chin and looked into her eyes. I blinked. Looked again. I could almost see the pattern of the tile floor through her eyes. Through her entire body. I stilled. There was no almost about it. I could see the patter of the floor through her.

She was— She was transparent.

I stiffened and turned back to the officer, thankful that he wasn’t transparent. But there was a soft glow around him. A murky, muddy aura. Dixie had one, too, but hers was brighter. Softer. Thiago’s was bright as well.

When I looked back at the dog, she barked and scrambled under a booth to leap through the wall on the other side, and the earth tilted around me. She— She wasn’t real. I scrambled back out of the chair to put some distance between me and the glowing beings around me. Was any of this real? Was I dreaming?

Officer Jeffries lurched forward and tried to grab me. I jerked out of his grip before realizing he wasn’t trying to keep me from leaving. He was trying to keep me from face-planting. The tile floor rocketed toward me and all I could think was wake up.