Fade To Midnight. Shannon McKenna

books she’d just signed were there. She shook her head at his questioning glance. “Somewhere else.”

      They walked out and strolled silently down the block together until they found another coffee shop, this one almost deserted. He held open the door for her, bought them both a cup of coffee at the counter, waited while she doctored hers with various sugary and creamy contaminants, and followed her to a table in the far corner.

      He took off his sunglasses, rubbing his eyes. “Sorry about wearing these indoors,” he said. “I know it looks affected, but I had a head injury recently, and the daylight’s too bright for my eyes.”

      “Oh. I’m sorry. Please, put them on if you need them,” she urged.

      “No, it’s OK in here. Not too bright. I’ve been waiting a long time. I want to see your real colors,” was his cryptic reply. She gave him a puzzled look, and he clarified. “I don’t want to look at you tinted green.”

      “OK.” Her gaze flicked away. It had been more manageable when he wore the glasses. It was like looking at the sun. His gorgeousness was burning a hole in her retinas. Those eyes. So shockingly bright.

      “So,” she began, trying to sound brisk. “What’s this all about?”

      “I was hoping you could tell me,” he said.

      That left her feeling uncomfortably on the spot. “Tell you what?”

      He pulled the Fade Shadowseeker books she had signed for him out of the bookstore shopping bag, and spread them out on the table so all four covers showed. “You seem to know all about me.”

      Unease deepened. She stared at him. “Those books are fiction,” she said. “Completely and absolutely creations of my imagination.”

      “Yeah?” He opened the third book, Midnight’s Oracle, and flipped partway through. “See this? Where Fade goes over the waterfall?”

      She leaned, looked. “Sure. I drew it. What of it?”

      “That happened to me, four months ago,” he said.

      She blinked helplessly, starting and abandoning a dozen different responses to that preposterous statement. Finally, she flipped the book open to the copyright page, and pointed. “Repeat after me,” she said. “All resemblance to real persons or events is purely coincidental.”

      “It’s true,” he said quietly. “A matter of public record. It happened on June 24th. Read about it in the online archives of the Oregonian.”

      She wonderered where this game was leading. Maybe into a trap she should be smarter in avoiding. “I wrote that book before that date,” she informed him. “A year before. You could have read my book first.”

      His lip twitched. “You think I staged it? You ever look out over the top of Twin Tails Falls? I broke my arm, my thigh. I wouldn’t have done that voluntarily. For any sum of money.”

      “Oh, and I imagine you saved a teenage girl from drowning right before you fell, right?” she challenged.

      He shrugged. “Actually, it was a teenage boy, in my case. I jumped in to help him out. Ask the kid if he pulled that stunt to live out the story in your graphic novel. Might be good for a laugh.”

      She shook her head. “Coincidence,” she repeated.

      “I would buy one coincidence, or two, or eight, or fifteen,” he said. “But not hundreds of them.”

      Suspicion grew inside her, and with it, disappointment so intense, it made her throat burn. “I see where this is going,” she said. “For the record, I’ll tell you right now that I know absolutely nothing about your stupid little life, nor do I want to. Everything I have written or drawn is my own pure, spontaneous invention. So if you plan on suing me—”

      “Edie, no.”

      “That’s Ms. Parrish to you, mister, and if you want to sue for plagiarism, or whatever it is you’re contemplating, go ahead and try. It happens a lot. It’s one of the shittier things about being the daughter of an extremely wealthy man, and you’d be surprised how many shitty things there are about that. After the third time, my dad bought me insurance. I’ll give you the numbers of our team of lawyers, if you’d like to save yourself some time.” She got to her feet. “As for me, I don’t have time for this insulting bullshit. I don’t appreciate being accused of—”

      “Stop!” He grabbed her wrist, and tugged. “I’m not suing you! I would never attack you! That’s the last thing in the world I would ever do. Please. Sit. Please, Edie.”

      His voice had a subtle commanding quality that unknit her tension. Her knees gave way, dumping her onto the chair. She yanked her hand away and put both hands in her lap, twisting her fingers til they were bloodless. “So, if that’s not it, what do you want from me?”

      “I want to tell you a story,” he said quietly.

      She waited for more, baffled. “A story that you want me to tell in one of my novels? I don’t use other people’s ideas. I don’t need to, because I’ve got plenty of ideas of my own, and besides—”

      “No. I’m talking about my own personal story. Because I think, in some way or another, you already know it.”

      “You don’t get it,” she said, helplessly. “I know nothing about you! I didn’t even know your name until you told me! Why are you being so cryptic? Tell me what you want! Stop hinting! Stop playing mind games!”

      “I would if I could. But I’m at a disadvantage, because I don’t know exactly what I’m asking you for.”

      She wondered uneasily if the guy had mental problems. Gorgeous and charismatic though he might be, he was making no flipping sense at all. “Excuse me?”

      He let out a controlled breath, eyes fixed on his untouched coffee.

      “I was found, eighteen years ago,” he said quietly. “I’d been beaten, tortured. I had some inexplicable brain injury. I wasn’t capable of speaking, or even writing, for years. I pushed a broom in a diner, mopped floors, washed dishes. I have no memory of who I was before.”

      She stared at him, speechless and openmouthed. It was her backstory setup for Book One of the Fade Shadowseeker series.

      Not possible, that this man’s life had followed the same…oh, please. No way. He had to be lying. Had to. Her mind reeled, fought it.

      “But I do have dreams,” he went on. “Vivid dreams. I’ve always thought that maybe these dreams were of the life I had before. And one of those dreams is of you, Edie.” He reached out, and gently touched the back of her hand. The glancing contact made her shiver.

      “Have you seen me before?” he asked. “I think you have. I saw it in your eyes, the moment you saw me. I see it from your books.”

      She nodded, like a puppet. She couldn’t lie to him, nor could she think of any coherent reason for doing so. “A long time ago.”

      His fingers fastened around her hand. “Tell me.”

      So she told him what she had to tell; the incident on her eleventh birthday. The bleeding burned man, pleading with Daddy in his Flaxon office eighteen years ago. The security guards that came running. The guard the burned man had thrown through the window. Watching him be dragged away, to an unknown fate.

      That was all. It seemed so little, in the face of his hunger for knowledge, but he didn’t look disappointed. His eyes were alight with cautious excitement. “Flaxon,” he said. “Interesting.”

      “I had no idea what you were talking about, but it sounded terrible,” she finished. “Murder, torture. I had nightmares for years.”

      “Not my name?” he asked. “You never heard it?”

      She shook her head. “I was eleven,” she said. “I never heard it said, if anyone knew it. My parents refused to talk about