Pulse

him.
     
    “I lied, but only a little.”
    They were not the comforting words Faith had been hoping for when she showed up in the empty parking lot of the old mall. She thought about turning around, leaving before this got complicated or dangerous. She stared at him from ten feet away, where she’d come up short and stood motionless on the cracked concrete sidewalk.
    “That’s a terrible opening line,” Faith said.
    Dylan smiled and took two cautious steps forward.
    “Relationships are about trust, so I thought I’d better come clean right up front.”
    Faith was not impressed with Dylan’s circular logic, but she did like the way he looked in his jeans and that leather jacket as he took two more steps toward her.
    “Let me guess,” Faith said. “You’re really a vampire. You’re a thousand years old, and you think it will gross me out. You’re right.”
    Dylan let the comment slide as he arrived next to her and reached out for her hand. Faith pulled back.
    “Oh no, you don’t. Not until I get some truth-telling out of you. What did you lie about?”
    “I have two things I want to show you, not one.”
    “Are either of them unpleasant?”
    “I don’t think so, but I’m wrong a lot.”
    “Not comforting.”
    Dylan smiled, and their eyes met for an instant, then he walked past her and kept going without turning back.
    “Hey, whoa—you can’t just leave me here.”
    “Come on then, I’ll show you the first thing. Won’t take long.”
    Faith wanted to follow, but she was afraid of where it might lead. What if she ended up in trouble again? Dylan had the appearance of someone even more mysterious and unpredictable than Wade Quinn.
    You sure know how to pick ’em, Faith thought.
    The electricity wasn’t on at the old mall, so none of the streetlamps were shining down as she followed Dylan warily. All the old buildings were dark and shadowy, and for a split second she thought she might have seen a figure move on the other side of one of the broken windows. She started taking two steps to each of Dylan’s one until she caught up.
    “Do you ever worry about Drifters?”
    Dylan didn’t respond the way she thought he would.
    “I’ve met a few Drifters. They’re misunderstood.”
    Yeah, two of them are my parents. I know all about misunderstanding, Faith wanted to say but didn’t. It was her secret, and she sure wasn’t going to share it with a mysterious guy she barely knew.
    “How are you at climbing?” Dylan asked. He was staring up at the back of the old Nordstrom, a notoriously tall building. Faith could barely see the outlines of a fire escape in the darkness.
    “I don’t climb on a first date. It’s a rule I have.”
    Dylan looked a little disappointed, then he started up a metal ladder, leaving Faith to decide if she should follow for the second time in as many minutes.
    “Both of the things I want to show you are on the roof,” Dylan said, quickly up on the first landing. He was staring down at her, and their eyes locked. “You sure you won’t check it out with me? It’s safe, I promise.”
    Faith wasn’t technically afraid of heights; she just hadn’t been in many high places. There hadn’t ever been much of a reason to get her feet off the ground.
    “Do you ever wonder what it would have been like to travel in an airplane?” Faith asked, staring up at Dylan as his dark hair fell forward over his face.
    “Yeah, would have been cool,” Dylan agreed. “I tell you what—you come up here with me, and I promise I’ll figure out a way to get you flying sometime in the near future.”
    “How are you going to keep a promise like that, Romeo?” Faith asked, putting her foot on the first rung of the ladder leading to the landing where Dylan stood.
    Dylan didn’t answer, choosing instead to continue his journey up to the second landing before Faith could change her mind. It was a series of switchback stairs made of metal grating the rest of the way up; and before Faith made it to the first landing, he was already three more landings up in the air. Dylan leaned over the railing and called down.
    “You’re slow.”
    “Sorry to disappoint you.”
    Faith was naturally competitive and genuinely curious. All her reticence went out the window as she took two steps at a time on her way to the top of the old Nordstrom building. She only made the mistake of looking down once, when she arrived at the fourth landing, and it took her breath away. After that she kept her focus