Two Truths and a Liar

XXVII • If I told you

Jenna

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"I've seen you before,"

The small, unnoticeable figure lost inside the deep maze of dresses and suits with a piercing gaze and a slumped demeanor despite not carrying himself with too bad posture, wasn't hiding in the shop any longer. He had met me, a face looking at a face in a sea of others. Something in his expression changed, a sort of click, like a new mystery coming to light. He had. given a word to the woman beside him involved in chatter, who gave him a distracted nod, and wound his way out to meet me. We stood in the crowds like two rocks at sea. They parted for us.

"Probably." I didn't offer to shake hands.  "My name's Jenna,"

"Harley,"

He glanced sideways at the chaos around, tucking his hands into the pockets of the pale grey sweatshirt he wore limply over his thin frame, and back to me. 

"Why are you here?"

Absentmindedly, my fingers wound their way around the rosary around my neck. I wasn't sure exactly how to bring things up, seeing as I would have to start at a beginning that would take much longer to explain and much more effort to prove than I had willing to give. But I was desperate. Desperation can work wonders on a person.

"It's complicated," 

He tilted his head to the side, only slightly.

"How complicated?"

"Enough to need a cup of coffee and somewhere quieter. Do you have a moment?"

"Uh…" 

We looked back at the women still talking in the cramped closet-sized store, and he shrugged. "I'll ask."

I waited.

By the time he came back out, the crowds had quelled a bit. He peered at me under heavily lidded eyes, sunken with lack of sleep. Hair unbrushed, stains peppering his jeans. What a mess. I couldn't help but notice the bitter look in his eyes, like steeped tea growing stronger as time passed. It was age old, running deeper than any first impressions might show, full of suppression, maybe even pain. Secrets held behind the locked gates of his cold expression and short answers that only told you half the story. 

But didn't everyone have something to hide?

"Do you know Leon Halloway?"

We were seated at a round cafe table, stuffed inside the cramped interior of a mall Stardollar, a piping paper cup of steaming espresso resting at my fingertips. He had something iced-- I hadn't asked what it was. But it was an unnatural color.

"Barely," He took a sip. "Why do you want to know?"

"You were the last person I saw with him,"

Suspicious. That was the only way to describe the way he squinted at me, eyebrow raised. 

"What are you, some kind of investigator?"

I laughed. Or at least attempted to laugh.

"You could say that,"

"Hm,"

"Look," I sighed, pressing the lid to my lips and feeling a scorching liquid lap at my taste buds, leaving behind a numb shock. "I have reason to believe that Halloway is…. different."

"Different?"

There's no rule book on how to explain a truth beyond most people's scope of reality. No one tells you exactly how you're supposed to make someone believe what they don't believe, understand what they don't understand. One strange concept might seem "ordinary" while another so absurd it's shut down immediately. We kept to ourselves, us venatores, trusting our books and our ancestors and never trying to make a human understand. We didn't ask them for help. How could they help, anyway? They don't know what we know.

"I can tell you, but you won't believe me."

He looked me dead in the eyes and said

"Try me."

I smiled, setting my coffee aside and leaning forward.

"Harley, do you believe in vampires?"

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A.N. I don't know, do you?
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