Rachel Caine - Thin Air

“So,” she was saying, “What do you think? Hot Topic? And maybe some Abercrombie. Then lunch.”

“Girl, do you ever do anything but shop?” Joanne asked, but not as if she was really opposed to the idea. Cherise blew her a kiss.

“Well, I was thinking of dropping by the chess club, but you know how shallow those guys are…”

“Shut up.”

It was a bright, sunlit morning. The air was muggy and warm, with just a hint of salt air breeze. Joanne looked good: more tanned, more toned, wearing a pair of low-rise blue jeans and a teal blue sleeveless tee that rode up to reveal some firm abs.

Cherise, of course, looked even better. She was like orange sherbet, layered in pastels, all edible colors. She could have stepped out of a hair product commercial. The poster child for healthy and vibrant.

“Just for that, I’m adding Old Navy to the list,” Cherise said, and checked her purse. She frowned at a mirror and touched up her lipstick as they crossed a weedy picnic area behind the building they were exiting, toward a parking lot. “And I’m going to make you eat sushi, too.”

“Hey,” Joanne said. Her tone had changed, turned quiet and dark. “Cher. Heads up.”

Cherise looked up, alarmed, and focused on a man standing near the cars in the fenced-off parking area. I felt the surge of pure adrenaline go through her, sending her heart rate soaring. “Dammit. I really thought that restraining order thing would work.”

Joanne’s face had gone still and tense. She took her purse off her shoulder and handed it over to Cherise. “Stay here.”

“Don’t,” Cherise whispered, and grabbed her arm. “Let’s just go back in. We can call security-they’ve got his picture. They know to call the cops.”

“Yeah, that’s done a hell of a lot of good so far,” Joanne said. “This jerk isn’t going away. How many times does this make that he’s shown up here?”

Cherise sighed. I could feel the dread in her, honest and real. “Six.”

“And phone calls?”

“God, I lost count. And don’t even talk about the ugh-worthy letters.”

“Then this guy needs a stronger message,” Joanne said. “Look, trust me. You just go back inside, okay?”

“But-Jo, you can’t-”

Apparently, she certainly could. I watched myself walk purposefully toward the shifty-looking fellow standing near the red convertible. He was wearing an overcoat-a dead giveaway of weirdness in the current heat wave-and even from Cherise’s distance looked like he needed not just a shower but a full-scale disinfection. Wild-eyed, wilder-haired.

Scary.

Joanne stopped just a couple of feet away from him. Cherise couldn’t hear the conversation, because all of a sudden thunder rumbled overhead. Cherise looked up, startled, to see dark clouds moving in from the west-which, Cherise thought, was really strange, because she’d just been giggling about Marvin’s out-of-the-box weather prediction about storms when the coast seemed clear, and all of the other stations were talking sunny skies.

Joanne must have wondered, too; she looked up at the sky with a frown, and it distracted her for a second from the guy in the trench coat.

Who suddenly lashed out at her with a fist.

I had to admit-this former version of me clearly had fantastic reflexes. She leaned back, and his punch sailed cleanly past her chin. He snarled and reached in his pocket and pulled out…a knife.

“Call the cops!” Joanne yelled to Cherise, who dashed for the doorway. She dialed 911 on her cell while she ran, and yelled for help while it rang. Gaffers and techs came running from the studio-big strong guys, union guys. Tough guys. “Jo’s in trouble! Parking lot!”

They scrambled. Cherise blurted out the facts to the 911 operator and hurried back out to follow, terrified of what she’d find…

…only to find a ring of big, tough union guys standing around, and the stalker with the knife on the ground, flat on his face, with Joanne kneeling on his back. She had his left arm twisted up behind him, painfully far, and she looked calm and cool. A passing gust of wind swirled through the parking lot, stirring sand and trash, and blew her hair over her face. She shook it back, and Cherise saw that Joanne was grinning.

“No problem,” Joanne said. “One less stalker, Cher. That only leaves Brad Pitt, right?”

Cherise sucked in a shaky breath. “He has got to stop calling me,” she said, in a brave attempt to make it look like she hadn’t been terrified out of her mind that she’d find the other me dead on the ground. “His wife’s getting pissed.”

The stalker on the ground writhed and said some not very nice things. Joanne put her right hand on the back of his neck, and Cherise was almost sure she saw some kind of spark zap from her into her prisoner.

“Play nice,” Joanne said. “Or you’ll be waking up in a coma.”

Head electrician Sully, who was commonly acknowledged to be the hardest guy on the union team, clapped his hand over his heart. “I think I’m in love,” he said.

All the union guys whistled in agreement.

Cherise held in a crazy urge to giggle as Joanne winked at her.

“All in a day’s work for a weather girl,” she said, and the howl of sirens took over as the police arrived.

That, I realized, was the day Cherise had truly thought of me as not just a friend, but the friend. Her best friend.

And that feeling…that was love.

I lost the thread of the memory, falling into a blur of sound and color. A spiral of confusion. I felt a dull, leaden ache in my head, and wanted to get off the ride now. And never, ever get back on.

The next thing I caught was only a flash, a very brief one-I wasn’t even in it, it was Cherise in a shoe store with a polished-looking blond woman griping about her ex-husband.

And about her sister. From Cherise’s sense of disgust, she just never shut up about her sister.

And she was still talking about her. “I didn’t like her much, you know. When I was younger. Joanne was a total bitch.”

Oh. I was the sister. So this was-who, exactly?

Cherise put a pair of shoes back and turned to face the other woman, frowning. Before she could open her mouth to defend me-if she was going to, which I couldn’t actually be certain about-the blonde plunged ahead. “Joanne was always special ,” she said. “Mom treated her like a little queen. I was always the one who had to work harder, you know? So we weren’t close. Really, I wouldn’t have come looking for her help if I hadn’t been desperate.”

“No kidding, Sarah,” Cherise said. “I guess it’s nice that she’s let you stay in her house, eat her food, and use her credit cards.” She put some emphasis on the credit cards, and I looked over the blonde with new interest. New dye job and haircut. Fancy designer outfit. The shoes she was trying on must have been a minimum of three hundred, and they didn’t even look that cute on her.

Sarah didn’t seem to take the rebuke all that well. “Well, it’s just temporary. So, do you have sisters?”

“Brothers,” Cherise said. “Two.”

“Any of them rich?” Sarah was joking, only not really. Cherise gave her a flat stare. “Oh, come on, don’t be so judgmental. Marrying for money is a good career move. You’re a nice-looking girl. You should take advantage.”

“I do,” Cherise said, and shrugged. “I’m on television. That’s shallow enough for me.”

“That’s not what I mean. Surely you’ve met some rich, successful guys, especially in television.”

“Of course I have.” The feeling flooding through Cherise was annoyance, mixed in with a little toxic-feeling contempt. No, she didn’t like my sister. At all.