Pulse

Chapter 8

Lucie 

Saturday morning came and I was dreading it. I was dreading the decision I'd made; I was dreading the drizzly weather; I was dreading everything. With both my parents still asleep, I wanted to crawl back in my bed and forget all about this, but I couldn't, because the doorbell had already rung.

I had my purse slung over my shoulder, and was wearing a sweater underneath a pair of shortalls. I had not even tried with my hair; it was in a likely lopsided bun at the crown of my head. Yet, when I opened the door and Cian and Vinny looked at me, they didn't look in the least bit disgusted. In fact, Cian looked a bit flushed.

Cian, noticing the slight rain, drew the hood of his denim jacket up. He looked like something out of a fashion magazine: graphic t-shirt underneath a holed denim jacket, black pants and chucks. His hair, dampened by the small sprinkles of precipitation, hung in his eyes, which were the color of the bay on a moist morning like today. An ornate jeweled cross hung around his neck. "Ready?" he asked.

I craned my neck to see beyond him and Vinny. "Where's your car?"

He cracked a smile, and again I noticed the scar splitting his lip; it tickled curiosity in the back of my brain. Cian was strange to me. He was scarred, that much was evident, but somehow he was alluring at the same time.

I refused to say he was hot.

He just wasn't ugly.

"We came without one."

I arched an eyebrow. "Did you, like, fly, or something?"

To my surprise, Cian nodded. At the look on my face, he said, "What? I have wings for a reason. And, you know, Vinny just kind of appeared, if you know what I mean."

I glanced towards the dead boy. He smiled at me. As I brushed past them both, my car keys in my hand, I pointed at Vinny. "You still creep me out. Don't ever think you're not creeping me out."

"Fair enough," muttered Vinny, following after me. I unlocked my Subaru and slid in the driver's seat, sticking the key in the engine as Cian sat beside me and Vinny went in the back. Switching the radio on, I sighed, unable to comprehend why precisely I was doing this. For closure? To get away from the sleepiness of my house nowadays? For Dempsey?

"Lucille."

I froze, glancing sharply at Cian. In his hands was my wallet, driver's license in plain view. He studied it, squinting at my less than ideal picture and at the print beside it. Startled, I snatched it from him, and he looked up at me with a coy smile. "What?" he said gruffly.

"Don't call me Lucille," I said, revving the engine, and backing out of the driveway. I didn't look at him. "Just don't."

"Why not?"

"Because I said so," I remarked, leering at him. I turned the radio on, tuning it to a station I could at least tolerate. It was still relatively early, and the sun was low in the sky, casting pale light around the bay area. Street lights glided past us in red, yellow, and green blurs. Vinny was silent in the backseat. "It's enough that I'm actually in this car with both of you right now. Don't make me regret this more than I already do."

Cian flicked his hood back from his face, rolling the window up. "What are you so afraid of?"

I glanced sideways at him, but he wasn't looking at me. He was leaned against the old SUV's window, his cheek in his palm, face turned away from me. There was a cowlick of brown-gold hair at the crown of his head, and for some reason it irked me. My tone sounded both cautious and reticent: "What do you mean by that?"