“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Where’s Victor?”
“He went out.”
Mitch swore under his breath. “He’s crazy. The area is crawling with cops after that stunt.”
“Which stunt?” asked Sydney, shuffling the papers in the folder. “Killing the cop or answering Eli’s phone call?”
Mitch smiled grimly. “Both.”
Sydney looked down at the face of a dead woman in her lap. “He can’t mean it,” she said quietly. “About meeting Eli at midnight. He doesn’t mean it, right?”
“Victor means what he says,” said Mitch. “But he wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t have a plan.”
Mitch pushed off the counter, and vanished down the hall, and a moment later Sydney heard the bathroom door shut, and the shower snap on. She went back to reading the profiles, telling herself it was only because there was nothing good on television. The truth was, she didn’t want to think about what would happen at midnight, or worse, what would happen after. She hated the what-ifs that crawled into her head the moment she lost focus. What if Eli won, what if Victor lost, what if Serena … she didn’t even know what to think about her sister, what to hope for, what to fear. There were these traitorous parts of her that still wanted to feel Serena’s arms around her, but she knew that now she had to run away from—not toward—her sister.
Sydney forced her eyes over the profiles in the folder, tried to focus on the EOs’ lives and deaths—tried not to picture Victor’s photo in among them, a black x across his calm, clear face—and guessed at what their powers were, even though she knew they could be anything. Victor had explained that it depended on the person, on their wants and wills and last thoughts.
The last profile was her own. She’d reprinted it after Victor took the first copy, and now her eyes wandered over the photo of her face. Unlike the other candid shots that filled the folder, hers was staged: head up, shoulders back, eyes leveled directly at the camera. It was a yearbook photo from last year, taken a week or so before the accident, and Sydney had loved it dearly because the camera had somehow, magically, caught her the moment before she smiled, and the proud upturn of her chin and faint crease in the corner of her mouth made her look just like Serena.
The only difference between this copy of the photo and the original was that this one had no x drawn through it. Eli knew by now that she was here, alive, and she hoped he felt sick when he’d heard about Barry’s body walking back into the bank, when he’d put the pieces together and realized that it was her doing, that a few shots fired into the woods didn’t equal a dead girl. Maybe it should have upset her, to see her own profile in the dead EO folder, and it had at first, but the shock had worn off, and the profile’s existence in the digital trash bin, the fact that they’d underestimated her, assumed she was dead, and most of all the fact that she wasn’t, made her smile.
“What’s got you grinning?”
Sydney looked up to find Mitch freshly showered and dressed, a towel draped around his neck. She didn’t realize how much time had passed. That happened to her more than she liked to admit. She’d blink, and the sun would be in a different position, or the show on TV would be over, or someone would be finishing a conversation she’d never heard them start.
“I hope Victor hurts him,” she said cheerfully. “A lot.”
“Jesus. Three days and you’re already taking after him.” Mitch sagged into a chair, ran his hand over his shaved head. “Look, Sydney, there’s something you need to understand about Victor—”
“He’s not a bad man,” she said.
“There are no good men in this game,” said Mitch.
But Sydney didn’t care about good. She wasn’t sure she believed in it. “I’m not afraid of Victor.”
“I know.” He sounded sad when he said it.
XVIII
FIVE YEARS AGO
WRIGHTON PENITENTIARY
THE third time Mitchell Turner went to jail, his curse followed him.
No matter where he went, or what he did (or didn’t do), people kept dying. He lost two cellmates at the hands of others, one cellmate at the man’s own hands, and a friend, who collapsed in the yard during the exercise period. So when the slim, polished form of Victor Vale appeared at the door of his cell one afternoon, pale in the dark gray prison uniforms, he figured the man was a goner. He was probably in for laundering, maybe a Ponzi scheme. Something heavy enough to make the right people angry and land him in max security, but light enough that he looked thoroughly out of place there. Mitch should have written him off but, still troubled by the death of his last cellmate, he became determined to keep Victor alive.
He assumed he would have his work cut out for him.
Victor didn’t speak to Mitch for three days. Mitch, admittedly, didn’t speak to Victor, either. There was something about the man, something Mitch couldn’t place, but he didn’t like it, in a primal, visceral way, and he found himself leaning vaguely away from Victor when the latter came near. The other inmates did it, too, on the rare occasions that first week when Victor ventured out among them. But even though it made Mitch uncomfortable, he followed the man, flanked him, constantly searching for an attacker, a threat. As far as Mitch could tell, his curse seemed firmly grounded in his proximity to people. When he was near them, they got hurt. But he couldn’t seem to figure out how close was too close, how near he needed to be to doom a life, and he thought that maybe, if for once his proximity could save a person instead of somehow marking them … maybe then, he could break the curse.
Victor didn’t ask him why he stayed so close, but he didn’t tell him not to, either.
Mitch knew the attack would come. It always did. A way for the old to test the new. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad, a few punches, a bit of roughing up. But other times, when men had a taste for blood or a bone to pick or even if they were just having a shitty day, it could get out of hand.
He followed Victor to the commons, to the yard, to the lunchroom. Mitch would sit on one side of the table, Victor on the other, picking at his lunch, while Mitch spent the entire time scanning the room. Victor never looked up from his plate. He didn’t look at his plate, either, not exactly. His eyes had an unfocused intensity, as if he were somewhere else, unconcerned with the cage around him or the monsters inside.
Like a predator, Mitch realized one day. He’d seen enough nature specials on the common room set to know that prey had eyes on the sides of their head, were constantly on guard, but predators’ eyes were forward-facing, close together, unafraid. Despite the fact that Victor was half the size of most inmates, and didn’t look like he’d ever been in a fight, let alone won one, everything about him said predator.
And for the first time, Mitch wondered if Victor was really the one who needed protecting.
XIX
FOUR AND A HALF HOURS UNTIL MIDNIGHT
THE SUBURBS OF MERIT
ZACHARY Flinch lived alone.
That much Serena could tell before she ever set eyes on him. The front yard was a tangle of weeds, the car on the gravel strip of a driveway had two spares, the screen door was torn, and a coil of rope tied to a half-dead tree had been chewed through by whatever was once tied there. Whatever his power, if he even was an EO, it wasn’t making him any money. Serena frowned, reconstructing his profile from memory. The entire page of data had been innocuous, except for the inversion—the Rebirth Principle, Eli had called it, a re-creation of self. It wasn’t necessarily positive, or even voluntary, but always marked, and Flinch ticked off that box with a bold red check. In the wake of his trauma, everything about his life had changed. Not subtle changes, either, but full flips. He went from being married with three kids to being divorced, unemployed, and under a restraining order. His survival—or revival, rather—should have been cause for celebration, for joy. Instead, everything and everyone had fled. That, or he had pushed them away. He’d been to a slew of psychiatrists, and been prescribed antipsychotics, but judging by the state of his
yard, he wasn’t in a good place.
Serena knocked, wondering what would scare a man enough to throw his life away after he’d beaten death itself to keep it.
No one answered the door. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and when she exhaled it made small puffs of steam in the dusk. She knocked again, and could hear the sound of the television within. Eli sighed and pressed his back against the peeling paint of the siding by the door.
“Hello,” she called. “Mr. Flinch? Could you come to the door?”
Sure enough, she could make out the shifting of feet, and a few moments later Zach Flinch appeared in the doorway wearing an old polo and a pair of jeans. Both were a size too big, making it look like he’d withered since putting them on. Over his shoulder she could see the coffee table littered with empty cans, the takeout boxes stacked on the floor beside it.
“Who are you?” he asked, dark rings beneath his eyes. There was a gruff tremor in his voice.
Serena clutched his dossier to her chest. “A friend. I just have a few questions.”
Flinch grunted, but didn’t shut the door in her face. She held his gaze so he wouldn’t see Eli standing a couple feet to his right, still wearing his black hero’s mask.
“Is your name Zachary Flinch?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Is it true you were involved in a mining accident last year? A tunnel collapse?”
He nodded.
She could feel Eli getting impatient, but she wasn’t done. She wanted to know.
“In the wake of your accident, did anything change? Did you change?”
Flinch’s eyes widened in surprise, but even as they did, he answered with a nod, his face caught between confusion and complacence. Serena smiled softly. “I see.”
“How did you find me? Who are you?”
“Like I said, I’m a friend.”
Flinch took a step forward, over the threshold. His shoes tangled in the stray greenish brown weeds that were trying to reclaim the porch. “I didn’t want to die alone,” he muttered. “That’s all. Down there in the dark, I didn’t want to die alone, but I didn’t want this. Can you make them stop?”
“Make what stop, Mr. Flinch?”
“Please make them go away. Dru couldn’t see them either till I showed her but they’re everywhere. I just didn’t want to die alone. But I can’t take it. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to hear them. Please make them stop.”
Serena held out her hand. “Why don’t you show me wha—”
The rest of the word was cut off by the gun as Eli swung it up to Zach Flinch’s temple and pulled the trigger. Blood streaked across the siding of the house, flecking Serena’s hair and dotting her face like freckles. Eli lowered the weapon and crossed himself.
“Why did you do that?” She spat, livid.
“He wanted to make them stop,” said Eli.
“But I wasn’t done—”
“I was merciful. He was sick. Besides, he confirmed he was an EO,” said Eli, already turning toward the car. “A demonstration was no longer necessary.”
“You have such a complex,” she snapped. “You always have to be in control.”
Eli gave a low, mocking laugh. “Says the siren.”
“I just wanted to help.”
“No,” he said. “You wanted to play.” He stormed away.
“Eli Ever, stop.”
His shoe caught in the gravel, and stuck. The gun was still in his hand. For the briefest moment, Serena’s temper got the best of her and she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from making him put the weapon to his own temple. The urge eased, and she stepped over Flinch’s body and descended the stairs, coming up behind Eli. She wrapped her arms around Eli’s waist and kissed the back of his neck.
“You know I don’t want this kind of control,” she whispered. “Now put the gun away.” Eli’s hand slid the weapon back into its holster. “You’re not going to kill me today.”
He turned to face her, wrapped his hands, now empty, around her back, and pulled her close, his lips brushing her ear.
“One of these days, Serena,” he whispered, “you’re going to forget to say that.”
She tensed in his grip, and knew that he could feel it, but when she answered, her voice was even, light.
“Not today.”
His hands fell away as he turned toward the car and held the door open for her.
“Are you coming with me?” he asked as they pulled out of the gravel drive. “To find Dominic?”
Serena chewed her lip, and shook her head. “No. Have your fun. I’m going back to the hotel to wash the blood out of my hair before it stains. Drop me off on your way.”
Eli nodded, the relief written across his face as he gunned the engine, leaving Flinch on the porch, one lifeless hand trailing in the weeds.
XX
FOUR HOURS UNTIL MIDNIGHT
DOWNTOWN MERIT
VICTOR made his way back toward the hotel, a bag of takeout beneath one arm. It had been a pretense, really, this errand, a chance to escape the confines of the hotel room, a chance to breathe and think and plan. He ambled down the sidewalk, careful to keep his pace casual, his expression calm. Since the meeting with Officer Dane, the call with Eli, and the midnight ultimatum, the number of cops on the streets of Merit had gone dramatically up. Not all in uniform, of course, but all alert. Mitch had carved out any photographic evidence from the system, from Lockland University profile pictures down to the mug shots that were logged at Wrighton. All the Merit cops would have to go on was a stick-figure drawing, Eli’s own memory (ten years out of date, since unlike him, Victor had aged), and descriptions from the penitentiary staff. Still, the police weren’t to be discounted. Mitch’s size made him terribly conspicuous, and Sydney stood out for being a child. Only Victor, arguably the most wanted of the group, had a defense mechanism. He smiled to himself as he strode within reach of a cop. The officer never looked up.
Victor had discovered that pain was a spectacularly nuanced sensation. A large, sudden quantity could cripple, of course, but it had many more practical applications than torture. Victor found that, by inflicting a subtle amount of pain on those in a determined radius, he could induce a subconscious aversion to his presence. People didn’t register the pain, yet they leaned ever so slightly away. Their attention, too, seemed to bend around him, lending Victor a kind of invisibility. It served him in prison, and it served him now.
Victor made his way past the abandoned Falcon Price site and checked his watch again, marveling at the structure of revenge, the fact that years of waiting and planning and wanting would come down to hours—minutes, even—of execution. His pulse quickened with the thrill of it as he made his way back to the Esquire.
* * *
ELI dropped Serena off on the Esquire curb with the sole instruction to pay attention and let him know if she noticed anything unusual. Victor was going to send another message, it was only a matter of when, and as the clock ticked away the minutes until midnight, Eli knew that his level of control would depend almost entirely on how quickly he got the memo. The later it got, the less time he’d have to plan, prepare, and he was sure that was Victor’s intent, to keep him in the dark as long as possible.
Now he idled on the painted pavement of the drop-off square in front of the hotel, sliding the mask free and dropping it onto the passenger seat before reaching for Dominic Rusher’s profile. Rusher had only been in the city a few months, but he already had a history with the Merit Police, a list of misdemeanors consisting almost exclusively of drunk and disorderly conduct charges. The vast majority of the trouble had emanated not from Dominic’s shitty hole of an apartment in the south part of the city, but from a bar. One particular bar. The Three Crows. Eli knew the address. He pulled away from the hotel, just missing Victor and his bag of takeout.
* * *
TWO cops stood in the Esquire’s lobby, their full attention on a young blonde with her back to the hotel’s revolving front doors. Vict
or wandered in unnoticed and headed for the stairs. When he reached the hotel room he found Sydney reading on the couch, Dol lying beneath her feet, and Mitch drinking straight from a carton at the counter while tapping out code one-handed on his laptop.
“Have any trouble?” asked Victor, setting the food down.
“With the body? No.” Mitch set the carton aside. “But it was close with the cops. Jesus, Vale, they’re everywhere. I don’t exactly blend in as it is.”
“That’s what parking garage entrances are for. Besides, we just have to make it a few more hours,” said Victor.
“About that…,” started Mitch, but Victor was busy scribbling something on a scrap of paper. He slid it toward him.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s Dane’s ID and pass code. For the database. I need you to prepare a new flagged profile.”
“And who are we flagging?”
Victor smiled, and gestured to himself. Mitch groaned. “I take it this has to do with midnight.”
Victor nodded. “The Falcon Price high-rise. Ground floor.”
“That place is a cage. You’re going to get trapped.”
“I have a plan,” said Victor simply.
“Care to share?” Victor said nothing. Mitch grumbled. “I’m not using your photo. It took me ages to scrub it from the systems.”
Victor looked around the room. His gaze settled on the latest Vale self-help tome he’d been inking out. He took it up, flashed the spine at Mitch, where VALE was written in glossy caps. “This’ll do.”
Mitch continued muttering even as he took the book and got to work.
Victor turned his attention toward Sydney. He carried a tub of noodles to the couch, and sagged onto the leather cushions as he offered it to her. Sydney set aside the dead EO folder and accepted the food, fingers curling around the still-warm container. She didn’t eat. Neither did he. Victor stared past the windows and listened to the sounds of Mitch composing the post. His fingers itched to black out lines, but Mitch was using the book, so he closed his eyes and tried to find quiet, peace. He didn’t picture sprawling fields or blue skies or water drops. He pictured squeezing the trigger three times, blood blossoming on Eli’s chest in the same pattern it had on his, pictured carving lines into Eli’s skin, watching them fade so he could do it over again, over and over and over. Are you afraid yet? he would ask when the floor was slick with Eli’s blood. Are you afraid?