From fourteen on, that picture would be replaced by him lying in the small, cramped hall of the house. He filled it, actually, from wall to wall, the fat slob and his beer gut. Not that beer was what came out of it when I hit him with the first shotgun blast. Instead, handfuls of fat that looked like masses of yellow grapes. Loops of intestine like you’d see out of fresh roadkill, only bigger and more. It hadn’t stopped him, though. He’d kept staggering toward me until I’d pumped the shotgun a second time and put another load in his head. He’d been close enough to me then that they had to bury him without a face. There was no covering up that crater with a dab of mortician putty.
And the smell. I’d never forgotten the smell of cordite, blood, and leaking guts.
The bedroom where he kept the shotgun didn’t have a window. I had to climb over his body to get to the phone to call the police. I tried not to step in … him. But he was everywhere. Covering the entire floor and some of the walls. There was no way around it. I left a sneaker trail of blood and other things as I ran to the kitchen and the phone. Footprints of what used to be Boyd. Sometimes now, sixteen years later, when I put on my shoes, I checked the soles for Boyd—
“Jackson? Did you hear me?”
“No guns,” I answered, resolute.
“Damn it, it could save your life.” He ran a frustrated hand over his short hair, still neat and in place despite the explosion and the wreck. Not like Charlie’s hair. That boy could have walked out of a barber, and in two seconds people would think he’d been in a windstorm.
“It could,” I admitted.
“Then take one.”
“No guns,” I repeated, and for a moment, I thought he was going to smash his fist into the wall as he rolled up his fingers tightly.
“Taking one could save your life. Not taking one could cost you your life. That bastard out there could kill you. You could die, you asshole.”
Die because Hector had pulled me into this and now was dealing with the consequences, guilt being the biggest one right now.
“I could.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Yeah, I could die, and I will before I touch a gun again. Sorry, Allgood. That’s just the way it is. Next time you go after a psychic, you should check out their phobias first. Get me a baseball bat, and I’ll beat the son of a bitch’s head flat enough that you could serve it up as a pancake. But no guns.”
Hector swung his balled-up fist, but not at the wall. He swung it at me. I slithered to one side, did a leg sweep, and dumped him on his ass. I meant it. I’d been taught to take care of myself. Cane Lake for dangerous teens, a little Krav Maga at the Jewish Community Center for dangerous adults. Hector had to know some Krav Maga moves himself from Army training, but at the moment, he was feeling too pissed, too guilty, and too out of control to see them coming from a psychic he assumed sat on his butt all day telling people where Great-aunt Edna Mae’s lost will was.
“A sock stuffed with your mess hall’s mashed potatoes?” I suggested helpfully. “One hit with that, and I guarantee brain damage.”
He lay flat, unmoving, and closed his eyes. I let him gather the edges of his control and glue them back together in silence. Hector had had a difficult couple of months. His brother died, a brother he’d loved; I still felt from reading his keys how much Charlie had loved his younger brother. The hero worship he’d seen in Hector’s eyes when they were kids and the respect and affection when they were adults. Then had come the massacres, forcing Hector—who Charlie had known down to his bones was one of the most honest and honorable men around—to resort to something as dirty as blackmail. Now that blackmail was looking more and more likely to get its victim, me, killed. And Hector would hold himself as responsible as if he’d flipped the switch on the detonator with his own hand.
All in all, I figured Hector deserved some stress relief. If that meant letting him throw a punch, what the hell? I’d let him. It didn’t mean I’d take it, but he could swing all he wanted.
Finally, he opened his eyes and shifted them to where I leaned against the fungus-colored wall, arms folded, getting some rest of my own. It was barely past noon, and it had already been a long day. “Sorry,” he said, the traditional Hector Allgood calm back in his voice.
“Yeah, that was pretty sorry. There are five-year-old girls at the Jewish Center who would’ve broken your elbow and your knee, and then crushed your larynx with that kind of swing.” Dark eyebrows knit ominously, and I let him off the hook. “Fine. You’re forgiven. You were only trying to break my nose out of concern for my life. I get it. It’s a little fucked up, but I get it.” I held out a gloved hand.
He hesitated, then took it, and I helped heave him to his feet. “Why don’t you go? Leave? I told you the blackmail’s off. Someone’s trying to kill you. There’s no reason for you to stay and risk your life.”
“Would Charlie leave?” I asked. I wasn’t actually curious. I already knew the answer.
“No, but—” He clamped his mouth shut before the rest of the sentence could escape.
“But I’m not Charlie. I’m a selfish, money-hungry, antisocial asshole who doesn’t give a damn about anything or anyone but myself? Is that what you were going to say?” I wasn’t angry. It was mostly true … or it had been true.
“It was,” he admitted. “But that’s wrong. That’s not you. It takes a lot of digging to get to the real Jackson, but you’re not selfish, and you do give a damn. In this situation, more than you should. Still, you did get one thing right.” His lips quirked. “You are an asshole.”
“Born and bred.” I grinned as we began to walk on toward the armory.
“So,” he said after a pause, “are you going to tell me or not?”
“Tell you what?”
“You said if I managed to get us out of jail, you’d tell me what women really think about men. I’ve been thinking I might be able to use the help.” He didn’t squirm like a thirteen-year-old kid with a crush, at least not on the outside. But on the inside? I knew he did. Meleah had him hooked but good.
“Right. I did say that.” I shook my head dubiously. “Are you sure you want to know? I mean really, one-hundred-percent positive?”
This time, the punch connected, but it was a light one and aimed at my shoulder. I took the sting as a yes.
“All right. Your funeral. Women are smart, and they know men are dogs, which we are. But they also think that there are a few special exceptions out there who put love before sex straight out of the gate. They think when they meet one of these great guys, he’ll be so fascinated by their mind and personality, their hopes and interests, that it’ll be months before he even thinks of looking at their ass. They believe this guy will love them from the beginning—before sex ever enters the picture.”
“No.”
“Oh, and to this Prince Charming, cellulite is invisible.” I slapped him on the back.
“No. You’re lying. They have to know that’s only movies, TV shows, books—fantasy wish fulfillment. That’s ludicrous. You’re kidding me, Jackson, aren’t you?”
I could smell the desperation in the air. Like several of my clients, he was getting a truth he didn’t want.
I slapped him again, this time with more sympathy. “Welcome to my world. We’re an alien species compared with women, and they know it. But they want to believe you’re the good alien among all the other horny ones ravaging the world. Luckily, Meleah is one of the rare women who can handle the truth. So when she catches you checking out her ass in whatever hot dress she wears on your first date, she’ll just laugh, roll up the menu, and smack you on the muzzle with it. She’ll accept your doggy nature, you lucky bastard. And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about with Meleah. You know. She knows. Even Charlie knew and was about to send her flowers and sign your name to them right before he …” I stopped.
“Before he ran out of time,” Hector finished quietly.
Shit. Now I was the one who was sorry. I didn’t think I ever said I was sorry to anyone exce
pt Abby, who would pinch my ribs ferociously if I didn’t. Since the day of the pink shoe, I thought the universe and everyone in it owed me and owed me big. No one deserved a sorry from me. Instead, I gave Hector the best I could: an excuse. “I’m usually smoother as the All Seeing Eye. Maybe if I put the black back on.”
He halted by the armory and knocked on the wire mesh. As the metal rattled, he answered the unsaid sorry instead of my defense. “Don’t be. It’s something about Charlie I didn’t know, a piece of him I didn’t have. That’s a gift.” He cleared his throat, and his eyes lightened. “And you didn’t even charge me for it. Charlie was right. You make a good friend.”
I snorted. “I haven’t come close to totaling the bill for this entire fuckup yet. Just you wait.” Then the mesh slid up, and I could see an entire wall covered with guns. I immediately stepped back but almost as immediately spotted something I liked.
Liked a lot.
16
Thackery didn’t have an office. None of the scientists did. They had workstations and metal stools. No lumbar support in hell. Ergonomics didn’t rear its comfort-conscious head here, not for the peons. But as one of the head honchos, Thackery did have a desk and a real chair.
Hector, too—one that he and Charlie had shared and which had a bag of Milky Ways in the bottom drawer. Charlie loved them. He’d bought that bag at a Walmart a week before he died, along with shampoo, an ugly-as-hell knockoff Hawaiian shirt, a Stephen King book, a box of cereal—the small box. He’d wanted the bigger box, but they were out, and …
I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand, the slide of the leather glove breaking the train of thought. Charlie should’ve faded more by now. A death reading takes a few days to turn loose of me, but it’d been more than a week. There was a great deal more of Charlie left in my mind than there should be.
Maybe it was because he wasn’t gone, not completely.
Whatever the reason, it was giving me a headache, and I reached into my pocket for the Tylenol. I carried the bottle with me everywhere now. This place was not conducive to a pain-free existence. I popped two pills for the headache, glumly knowing it wouldn’t help any with facing Thackery’s winning personality.
“Have you been thinking, Thackery? About our mutual problem?” Hector asked flatly as we approached the man’s desk. He had his lab coat back on, but it didn’t do much to hide the new shoulder holster and gun beneath it. “Thinking as if your life depended on it, because it just may.”
Thackery’s glare was coldly emotionless. Everything about the man was cold. Sociopaths—I couldn’t understand how evolution had screwed up so badly to toss out this mutation once in a while. Even having one as a sister, I couldn’t understand it. Glory had always been careful not to touch me once we’d reconnected. At first, I thought it was because I’d let her down, hadn’t found her, hadn’t saved her from being put through who knew what. But after a total of two conversations with her, I’d known—anyone with a shred of conscience would’ve seen—there was a different reason. Glory didn’t touch, as Glory had nothing to give. She could only take. She wouldn’t hug a chair, would she? To her and Thackery, that’s what people were. Things. But she was my sister, and I’d put Band-Aids on her thin, bruised, mosquito-bitten legs from the time she could first walk. I couldn’t make myself forget that. And I couldn’t blame her for the mess I was in. She’d gotten me into it, but I was the one who refused to walk away. This wasn’t about her. This was about me. Glory might not be completely human, but I was.
Thackery opened his desk drawer. Hector’s shoulder shifted, and his hand moved inside his coat to rest on the grip of his gun.
“It’s not a weapon. It’s a list,” Thackery said stiffly. “Of everyone I believe to have the scientific and mental capacity to sabotage the transplanar with a method we can’t detect.”
“Be careful,” I warned dryly. “Better put on some gloves. The paper’s probably coated with poison. No, wait. He’s touching it with bare skin. You should be fine.”
Hector took it, and I scanned it along with him. Not that it did me any good. The only name out of the eight that I recognized on it was Sloane, who I remembered thinking looked like a dick when I met him. A dick and a protégé of Thackery’s. I’d looked into Sloane’s eyes as he stood behind Thackery like a faithful lackey and seen nothing but science, not a hint of a soul.
“No Fuji?”
“The man urinates himself during performance reviews. He lacks, to put it bluntly, the balls to even entertain the idea of jaywalking, much less killing.” Thackery was scornful. Lacking the ability to murder to improve your career path wasn’t a quality he admired.
“Too bad those ghost balls at the quarry didn’t last a little longer. Cyanotic blue is a good look for you,” I drawled. I flat-out gave up on not saying “ghosts.” They weren’t ghosts, yeah, but the phrase “reenacted episodes of ether-recorded violence” was straining my tongue. “Hector, point out the other seven geeks on the list, and I’ll give you a lesson in picking pockets. Thanks to reading Thackery, I won’t be able to read anyone else today, but I should be able to read them tomorrow.”
“That was an inexcusable breach of my privacy,” he accused.
“But letting Charlie die when you might’ve been able to save him, that’s nothing, is it? No big deal. I know what you are, Thackery. A mistake of nature. A walking, talking brain full of bad wiring. So guess what? I don’t give a shit about your privacy. Hell, I should be compensated for having to wade through the filth that’s in your mind.” Hector had his hand on my shoulder and was easing me back.
Once we were across the room and out of earshot, I said quietly, “He’s a killer, Hector. He didn’t use his own hands this time, but he has the taste now. He’s seen how easy it can be. Sooner or later, there’ll be another Charlie, and that time he’ll be personally responsible.”
“No, he won’t. I’ll make certain of that.” Hector didn’t say how he’d make certain, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t care. Thackery was a copperhead, poisonous as they came. There was one thing to do when it came to those.
My only thoughts were that I hoped that Hector didn’t get caught and that if he needed it, I had a brand-new shovel at my house.
• • •
I’d successfully obtained personal objects from six people on the list with none of them the wiser. I hadn’t been able to get to Sloane, who regarded me as the equivalent of a homeless vampire. Whenever I drifted close with a made-up question about the project, his face tightened as if he’d smelled an entire Dumpster full of garbage, and he hurried off as quickly as possible. He did his best not to make it appear that I was the issue, always implying there was an “urgent” matter for him to take care of, but I thought another word for this was “convenient.” Then there was a Dr. Kessler, who hadn’t shown up for work today. He’d called in sick. Also “convenient.” I wondered if he’d spent the night before stealing a refrigerated meat truck.
Fujiwara, on the other hand, kept trailing me around, apologizing in a guilt-laden tone for his actions at Job’s Quarry. I had no idea why. It wasn’t me he’d tried to drown. Finally, I told him the only apology I wanted was for his not finishing the job of sending Thackery’s sopping-wet ass on to the glory of God and to leave me alone already. He did, more morose than ever. I was glad he wasn’t on the list and I didn’t have to read him. I’d need to grab a phone book and dial the first six numbers of the suicide hotline first. That was one depressed, pathetic guy.
Once again, I was back in the cafeteria. It was beginning to feel like my vacation home. Hector, with all of my stolen trinkets stuffed into a plastic bag inside his lab coat, was eating lunch with Meleah. I’d practically had to boot his ass over to her. They could use some quality alone time, and Hector couldn’t see her ass under her lab coat, making it a good chance that he wouldn’t screw up this pseudo-date or get smacked on the nose with a plastic spoon.
“How you doing, sweetie? They treating you with more respect n
ow? Treating you like a person and not one of their little mechanical toys?” Eden placed her tray opposite mine and sat down. Today she had tiny sea horses dangling from her lobes. Each one had a rhinestone so minute that when it glittered, they winked at me.
“Hector’s come around. He’s not as bad as I thought.” I quickly added, “But don’t tell him I said that. He’s too used to being an alpha dog. Having something to hang over his head is good for keeping his ego in check.”
She gave a smile that was all dimples and a very slight overbite. On her, it worked. It gave her an elfin air, not that I believed in elves any more than I did in ghosts. “He’s a puppy dog. He has a big bark, but he’d much rather cuddle in your lap and get a good scratching behind his ear.”
I tried to picture Hector curled in anyone’s lap—except mine—his six-foot-plus tall body in a ball with his head tilted to reveal the soft spot behind the ear for a nice rub. A few of my brain cells imploded, and I buried that image in my mental box of things never to be remembered again, adding a few extra loops of subconscious chain around it. “I’ll take your word for it, Ms. …”
“Eden. I told you to call me Eden, and I meant it.” She reached over and pinched my sleeved arm precisely as Abby would’ve done. “Now I’m going to say grace before I eat. You don’t have to say it with me.”
“Good,” I drawled. “I wasn’t planning on it.” Praying to an empty sky was time wasted that I could use for shoveling food into my mouth.
She pinched me again. “Though you could at least stop eating for two seconds out of respect for my beliefs.”
“You could not pray to someone every bit as fake as Santa Claus out of respect for my beliefs, too, but I don’t see you doing that.” I took another bite, but I couldn’t help a small grin as I chewed. She was bubbly, feisty, smart, and protective. Teasing her made me nostalgic. If I lived through this, I’d have to tell Abby all about her long-lost twin.