And then Archer.
And then Archer.
And then Archer.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“You’re going back to your life, Archer.” Leah spoke with a firmness he was sure she didn’t feel. “And I’m going back to mine.”
He spoke without thinking, and wasn’t sorry. “You don’t have a life and you are my life.”
“Stop it,” she said absently, looking for a cab.
“You stop it, I’ll drive you home, obviously.”
“No. And where the hell are the cabs? I can’t be the only newly released detainee in the history of Chicago to leave a police station and require a ride.”
“You’re not listening. I’ll give you a ride and you’re my life.” Nope, still not sorry.
“You sound like a Hallmark movie. Is it intentional?”
He was now a tiny bit sorry, and pulled up short at that—she’d been tugging him by the elbow out of the police station and onto the sidewalk, and they were both blinking at each other in the sudden sunshine. “You’re not breaking up with me—”
She made an impatient gesture, the kind busy restaurant patrons make when they’re asked if they want dessert and they don’t; they’re in a rush for the bill. “We’ve been over this. Several seconds ago, remember? I cannot break up with someone I’m not dating. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a funeral to plan.” She looked like she wasn’t at all sure how to feel about that. “Run along.”
He scowled at her. “I’m older than you, for Christ’s sakes, don’t dismiss me like a kid off to naptime.” Anger deepened his voice, but his crossed arms probably showed his stress. Oh God she’s doing it she’s freaked she can’t see me and freaked my dad’s in prison and freaked because her mom was murdered and oh God I can’t let her do this I won’t let her do this.
“Older. Hmm.” Leah’s eyes were tipped up in thought. “I always seem to forget. And then I remember, and it goes on the list.”
“List?”
“The list I’ve been compiling of all the reasons you would be an incompatible intercourse partner.”
“If you’re gonna call me your ‘intercourse partner,’ we should definitely break up,” he said at once, then slapped his forehead. “Argh, see? The worst has happened. I’ve gone and said something I can’t take back.”
“Stop hiding behind humor to cover your anxiety.”
“I’ll hide behind whatever I want to cover my anxiety,” he snapped back.
Leah blinked, but went on. He was pretty sure she would go on if he had a heart attack on the spot. “Speaking of the worst, you need to vanish from my life now.”
He nodded like she’d said something he agreed with. She hadn’t, but this—this he could work with, at least. “I don’t blame you for being upset, but I swear to you, I was going to tell you about my dad. Nellie knew and it didn’t bother her, and so much has happened this week I never had a chance to bring it up.”
“I made a list in jail, all the excuses not to think about what these last weeks have meant, and realized making a list of reasons why you put off something unpleasant is proof of cowardice. And it’s not about your father. Or Nellie wouldn’t have given a shit.”
“Of course it is!” he snapped. Then, “What?”
“Of course my mother knew your family’s history; she would have checked it out. Remember, in her mind she was a huge celebrity and that’s what a huge celebrity would do. So she knew, she just did not give a shit, which is what I’m ninety-five percent sure I’ll be chiseling onto her tombstone. Ugh.”
She slapped a hand over her eyes and wouldn’t look at him. “I’ve been trying to suppress the memory but I just realized I’ll eventually have to go to the playing of her will. Her video will, because of course she would never refuse the opportunity to perform. If she’s wearing the birthday outfit with all the feathers, I will somehow reanimate her corpse and then kill her all over again.” She took her hand away and speared him with her shark’s eyes. Cold. Nobody home behind them. “You were perfect for her. You aren’t perfect for me.”
“You’re wrong.” He stood quietly on the sidewalk, ignoring the stares as people streamed by. “You’re not dumping me because of my murdered uncle, are you? And you don’t think I killed your mom.” No. Stupid to even consider that for a moment. Who would know better than the maddening creature before him that you weren’t what your parent was? It hadn’t given a shit, and Leah didn’t, either.
That was worse. That made it all so much worse.
“We have nothing in common.”
“We both think you can be kind of bitchy,” he suggested.
“Very well, we have one thing in common. That, and our continual need for oxygen to survive. And you’re far too stubborn.”
“Oh my God, the pot has spoken! You don’t fool me at all, Leah Nazir. It’s the life-blind thing, isn’t it? You thought you could handle it and you can’t, so you’re pitching me over the side.”
“That’s not it,” she said at once, so he recognized the lie.
“So you’re not just chilly and distanced, you’re a bigot, too.”
“I am not, in other lives I’ve been African-American, Korean, Chinese—I can’t afford to be a bigot, I’m in glass houses all day long.”
“You are, but not for the reason you think.” He was starting to get very angry and put his hands behind his back so he wouldn’t be tempted to choke her. “You hide there. You like it there. You’re always a nobody, whether you’re slicing off Anne Boleyn’s head or watching the revolution burn through a royal family.”
“Irrelevant.”
“Ha! You’re fine watching history instead of making it. You’re fine with everything. Look, Leah, there’s nothing wrong with keeping your head down, which in your case resulted at least once in keeping your head. If more people followed that example, you’d have less clients.”
“Fewer.”
“What?”
“I’d have fewer clients.”
“Forget it!” He stuck a finger under her nose and shook it. “I refuse to find the Grammar Police thing sexy right this minute but might later! As I was saying! You’re so used to being on the sidelines in past lives, you can barely participate in your current one. I might not agree being life-blind is blind, but you refuse to see that always being on the outside isn’t healthy, either. And the thought of admitting you need someone, it’s fucking paralyzing, isn’t it?”
“Don’t try to make this a commitment phobia,” she said sharply. “If anything I’m phobophobic.”
“You don’t like having your picture taken? I’m not trying to be funny!” he yelped, holding out his hands to placate her. “I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
“Also part of the problem,” she muttered. “It’s fear of having a phobia.”
“Well, that’s just great. Of course you do. Or of course you are—do not fucking correct my grammar on that one. You’re the planet’s best Insighter—”
“Actually, Moira McKinnen in Edinburgh is probably the planet’s best.”
“Please shut up, sweetie. You spend your time helping people see their past fears, screwups, and deaths.”
“I’m aware of my own job description, Archer.” But he saw it at once; her sharp tone was hiding her unease. He was getting to her and he thought he knew what button he was pushing.
Are we really thrashing this out on a public sidewalk with dozens of witnesses streaming by on either side of us?
Yep.
“You help clients you view only as medical charts see themselves make the same lethal mistakes over the centuries, and then you help them fix it. Sure, it’s a noble calling and all, but sometimes, no question, it gets old. Jaded comes with the territory. As does phobophobia, sometimes. But it doesn’t have to define you!”
“Archer,” she said, her voice
low and sorrowful, “it does define me. It isn’t just a job. I’m also possibly a thanataphobe.” He must have looked helpfully blank, because she elaborated. “Fear of death.”
He threw his hands in the air. “Well, yeah! This goes back to what I was talking about! If I’d been murdered a dozen times, I’d be afraid of death, too.”
“But I shouldn’t be.” Her tone—he actually wished she would go back to shouting. She just sounded so young and lost—like a girl who’d lost a mom she loved, as opposed to losing It. “I know I’ll come back again. Except—” She cut her gaze and looked away from him. “What if I don’t? One of these lives might be my last and I’ll never know why. I’ll never get another chance to fix things. Or worse—what if I come back like—like—”
He took a breath. Let it out slowly. “Like me?”
She said nothing.
“That,” he said, “could be a blessing. You guys are so busy feeling sorry for people like me, it hasn’t occurred to any of you that a person who has the experience of one measly lifetime can be emotionally and psychologically stronger than someone busily screwing up life number xix. Don’t you get it? We can be like that because we have to be. We can’t hit rewind a hundred times until we figure out our—I dunno”—he groped for something that sounded scientific—“our autophobia is because we’ve died a dozen times in a dozen car crashes.” When she said nothing, he went on. “Fear of cars? Right?”
“Fear of being alone,” she said slowly and why wouldn’t she look at him? He thought he knew.
“That’s one thing you never have to be afraid of.” He reached out, wanting to cup her cheek in his hand, wanting to feel her smooth warm flesh, wanting her to tip her face into his hand and rub like a shark-eyed cat. He wanted to feel the muscles in her cheek flex as she smiled up at him. “Not ever, Leah.”
None of those things happened; she took a calculated step backward and he only cupped air. “That is inappropriate, as we are no longer seeing each other.”
Each word was like a needle in his chest, long and sharp and hot going in. He dropped his hands, took a calming breath. Tried to take a calming breath. “Leah, I love you, but my God: your knowledge of past lives hasn’t made you smarter or braver or stronger. It’s paralyzed you. Please, please let me help you.”
Oh, shit. What did I say?
Her eyes widened.
Oh, shit! She heard me say the words!
If they got much wider, if any more color fell out of her face, she’d do a face-plant on the sidewalk.
Ohshitohshitohshit.
He braced himself to catch her but wasn’t sure he could move fast enough—
“I don’t love you and what’s more, I never could. I tolerated you because, much like a Vulcan, every now and then I need to mate. You’re not worth the time nor the trouble. Get out of my life. The next time I see you, I’ll call the police. After I plant a balisong in your voice box.”
—and it was just as well he couldn’t have gotten there in time, because he might have let her smack into the sidewalk, purely for spite.
She turned and walked away.
He let her.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Had to be done. It absolutely had to be done.
Oh, God, forgive me, the look. The look in his eyes.
“I had to do it,” Leah tearfully told the cabbie. She was a matronly woman in her forties, blond and brown-eyed and fair-skinned and running to plump, she and a million others like her in the Midwest. She wasn’t at all alarmed by the crying once she made sure Leah wasn’t physically hurt, or needed a hospital or the police.
“Don’t take me back to the police,” she begged, “I just got out of there. I had to get him clear of me. Of my life. My mess. Everything. I had to get him away. But oh, you should have seen. How he looked, oh, God. God.”
She burst into fresh tears, accepting the box of tissues and instantly going through half of them. “Please put the price for these on the meter,” she ordered between sobs.
A snort from the driver. “Not charging you for tissues, honey.”
“Thank you, that’s very nice. If you had a daughter you wouldn’t make her do cattle calls for tampon commercials unless she really wanted to, right?”
“A what for a what?”
“An audition where they call in dozens of actresses and see them all in the same one- or two- or three-day period.”
“Cattle call?” the cabbie (Brenda Morgan, per the ID helpfully posted on the plastic divider between them) said, lips thinning in distaste. “Is that what they call those? Awful. Well, hon, here it is. I have four daughters, two in med school, one in law school, and one is teaching history to seventh graders. None of them ever wanted to do a cattle call and never have.”
“You’re a good mom. Your daughters are so fortunate,” Leah said, more grateful than she could express. Although why she was grateful to a strange cab driver for not charging her for half a box of tissues she did not know. Was she so starved for positive maternal attention that she would latch onto any older woman who was nice to her?
No, of course not.
No, except for Cat.
Cat!
Oh holy hell. Leah clutched damp tissues in her fist and thought hard. Her killer wasn’t content to murder Leah and be done with it once the purpose of both their lives was fulfilled. Sometimes he was arrested and sometimes he lived to a ripe old age and sometimes he was killed while killing her, but one way or the other, they both ended up dead.
This time around he went for Leah’s mother first, doubtless assuming that their parent-child dynamic would dictate a bond. Next time, he could beat someone to death she did care about: Archer. Or Cat. Archer was safe, she hoped.
“Can you please go faster?” she begged. “Please please go faster. I’ll tip you one hundred percent.”
“You won’t,” the cabbie said with an envious air of serenity as she took the second-to-last turn to Leah’s apartment. “I’m not letting you do that when you’re obviously not yourself.”
“You have no way of knowing what ‘myself’ is; you don’t have a baseline,” Leah argued, annoyed out of her tears. “This could be daily behavior for me. I might often weep in cabs and tip one hundred percent. Two hundred percent!”
“Somehow I doubt it,” came the dry reply. After a pause, the older woman continued. “I’m not charging you for the ride, either.”
Leah sat up straight and bit off the words. “That. Is. Just. Ridiculous! How do you expect to make a living if you don’t charge?”
“My husband works, too.”
“But that doesn’t—”
“You helped my niece. Years ago.”
Blowing her nose, she looked up in mid-honk and caught the cabbie’s gaze in the mirror. “I did?”
“If you’re Leah Nazir, yeah. You were on TV a couple years ago, you helped the cops figure out who that Cereal Rapist scumbag was.”
She vaguely remembered the Cereal Serial Rapist. A local reporter, one more insensitive than the rest of the herd, hung the nickname on Marcus Farrady, who, after he raped his victims, hung around long enough to have a bowl of cereal (his first preference) or toast. Something breakfast-y, at any rate. He took the bowl and utensils he used with him. When the cops caught up with him, a full quarter of his unfinished basement was shelf after shelf of mismatched cereal bowls, small plates, bread knives, and spoons.
Leah had been called in to consult, and reasoned that he could have been the reincarnation of three deceased serial rapists (deceased number 1: electric chair, 1990; deceased number two: succumbed to cancer in prison, 1991; deceased number three: shot and killed by last victim, 1992). She backtracked birthdays to their dates of death and was able to come up with a list for the cops. It helped that the Cereal Serial Rapist actually looked and acted like a rapist: shifty eyes, blocky hands like bowling balls, murderous tempe
r, bull-like shoulders, crippling misogyny, juvenile record of peeping, adult record of assault. Leah found it refreshing; bad as their crimes were, it was always much more horrible when the monsters looked like they could be your next-door neighbor.
It also helped that he obsessively ate bowl after bowl of cereal while being interrogated. Obtaining a warrant was not difficult. And though he’d had ample time to ditch the evidence in his basement, Farrady hadn’t bothered. That behavior was not at all refreshing. She had ceased wondering why so many serial anythings wanted to be caught years ago.
“Yes,” she said, remembering, “just a couple of years ago. They stuck a microphone in my face and asked me why I hadn’t figured it out sooner, preventing the last two rapes.”
“Oh, dear.”
“I invited them to fuck the fuck off.”
“I sure hope so!”
“Sorry about the language.”
“It seems appropriate in that instance.”
“That was the part of the interview that didn’t make it past their editors.” Not to mention one of the last interviews she’d had to endure. She should have tried the “fuck the fuck off” method earlier. She should have tried it on . . .
No. She couldn’t think of Archer now.
The cabbie snorted. “No doubt. Anyway, that’s how I knew what you looked like. I never met you when you treated my niece for her chronophobia. Five years ago?”
Leah thought about lying, but couldn’t stomach the thought. “I . . . I apologize, I don’t—”
“It’s fine. I wouldn’t expect a doctor to remember every single patient she saw.”
“But chronophobia isn’t that common, you’d think I—”
“Stealing clocks?”
That socked the memory home. “My God, yes! I can’t believe I forgot.” Leah giggled in spite of herself. “Your niece, Maya. She was . . . well, kind of a treasure.”