“Okay. So Storm Blue guys are not cops. Where do they hang out?”
“A bunch of places.” Tears flowed again. “If they hurt Michael, I’ll die. I’ll just die.”
“No, you won’t. Stop sniveling and start thinking! I’ll need all the information you can give me.”
Okay, it was mean of me, but it worked. She stopped.
Out of all the people in the kitchen, only Ari had noticed us leave. He strode into the living room just as I was straightening out the last note.
“What’s happened?” he said.
Sophie sobbed and crammed the knuckles of one hand into her mouth.
“Utter disaster,” I said. “Look, could you go get some more food? For the Chaos critter, I mean, and then join us upstairs in Mike’s room. I want to send a note back to José, and I’ll need some paper and stuff. I’ll tell you privately what’s going on. Tell Aunt Eileen and the assembled guys that I’m going to try running some scans.”
Sophie and I went upstairs by the front staircase, and in a couple of minutes Ari and a plate of leftovers joined us in Michael’s junk shop of a bedroom—a desk cluttered with schoolwork and dirty snack plates, clothes all over the floor, baseball posters and rock posters plastered on the walls, an unmade bed. Sophie perched on the edge of the bed while I took the desk chair. Ari paced back and forth, kicking clothes out of his way while I filled him in.
“Our two wandering jerks used the BGs’ camp as their headquarters,” I finished up. “It looks like they never made it to Dad’s world level.”
Ari muttered something foul in Hebrew. “Just as well,” he said in English. “We’ll have an easier time getting them away from a gang than we would from legitimate police.”
“You’ll try to get them back?” Sophie said.
“Did you think we wouldn’t?” Ari said. “Don’t be stupid!”
This statement brought another gush of tears. I waited until she sniffed them back.
“If I can possibly get there, I’ll go.” My stomach churned and twisted. “And so will Ari.”
He nodded his agreement and patted Sophie on the shoulder, a quick touch such as you’d give to a dog—or a wolf, I suppose. Under the clutter on Michael’s desk I found a spiral-backed notebook and a couple of pens. I tore out some sheets, then gave the notebook and one pen to Sophie.
“Write down everything you can think of,” I said. “Where this gang hangs out, who’s in it, how they make their money, anything!”
I put the plate of food on the floor in the hopes of attracting Or-Something, then wrote some questions for José. I’d just rolled the sheet of paper up in a slice of roast beef when Or-Something appeared. It horked up another note, then set to chowing down. Ari put his hands on his hips and stared at the plate, where he must have been seeing food gradually disappear into thin air. I opened the note and read it aloud.
“The Storm Blooze want the Axeman to make cheef,” José had written. “They gotta have munny for guns and shit. They musta takin Shawn to keep Mike unner controll. You cant keep a whirld walker prisoner real eezy.”
“This is very true,” I said. “I supposed the thinking is that if they threaten Sean, Mike’ll have to follow orders. At least, I hope he will.”
“Of course!” Sophie looked up in brimming indignation. “Mike would never let them hurt him. He’d never do anything dishonorable.”
I decided against mentioning all the dishonorable things my baby brother had done lately. “What does make cheef mean?” I said instead.
“Get to be Chief of Police,” Sophie said. “That means they gotta get rid of the Chief in power now, the Hafner guy I told you about. And that means they need lots of money to buy guns and stuff on the black market.”
“I see,” Ari said. “Politics by other means.”
“The real problem,” I said, “is finding another world-walker. We can’t rescue Mike and Sean unless we can get there.”
“True.” Ari stopped pacing. “Which means we need to go home. I’ll send Spare14 another e-mail.”
“Why? He won’t be able to pick it up if he’s on Interchange.”
“He might be able to access the TWIXT system from there.”
“TWIXT has its own system? Separate from Interpol, I mean?”
Ari winced. “I must be worried. I shouldn’t have let that slip.”
“Nola?” Sophie said. “Should we tell Eileen all this?”
“No,” I said. “Don’t tell Al, either. They’re both worried enough. If we can find a way to go after the guys, I’ll tell them then. I—” I stopped, because I felt an ASTA stab my guts like a hot knife. “Danger!” I whispered. “Ari—”
Ari drew the Beretta and crossed to the window in two long strides. With his free hand he pulled back the curtain and looked out.
“God help us,” he said. “It’s your mother.”
Sophie shrieked. Or-Something whimpered and disappeared. My ASTA faded away.
“That’s all we need!” I said.
“To make it a perfect day, yes,” Ari said. “I don’t want you upset any more than you are already.”
“Well, look, we can wait till she goes into the kitchen and then sneak out the front door. Sophie, if Or-Something comes back with more notes, copy them out, then try sending it and the original notes to me. I don’t know if it’ll remember where I live, so you’d better copy them first.”
“Okay, but I bet it remembers. We fed it there. That’s what seems to count.” Sophie glanced down at the notebook in her lap. “I’ll send you all the stuff I can remember, too.”
We heard the front door open and Deirdre calling out, “Where is everyone?” I began an SM:P and followed her mentally as she walked down the hall to the kitchen.
“Let’s go,” I whispered to Ari. “Hang in there, Sophie! I’ll call you later.”
Ari and I crept out of Mike’s bedroom to the head of the front stairs. “These creak,” Ari whispered. “She’ll hear.”
“Just wait.”
Sure enough, in about forty-five seconds the argument started in the kitchen. Uncle Jim bellowed at my mother, Mom bellowed right back. I could hear Father Keith yelling for peace, and Aunt Eileen trying to sound rational. Ari and I trotted down the creaking stairs without anyone noticing.
“We’ve got about three minutes before Mom leaves in a huff,” I said. “Grab your jacket, and let’s run!”
Our cowardice got us safely out. As we hurried down the outside stairs to the street, I realized that Mom had probably seen our gray Saturn parked near the house. As long as she didn’t see us, I was fine with that.
When we got home, Ari took his laptop directly into the kitchen. I had just hung up my jacket and purse in the closet when he joined me in the bedroom.
“Very good news,” he said. “E-mail from Spare14 was waiting for me. He’s on his way back. I’ve been given a temporary clearance as a TWIXT officer under his direct supervision. This should prove helpful.”
“Yeah.” My hands shook out of hope, not fear. “Very.”
“Let me do a little looking around. While I have the clearance, I also want to find your father’s records.” He hesitated. “If that’s acceptable.”
“Of course,” I said. “In fact, please do.”
“And I believe there’s a file on SanFran. Let’s hope it gives me more data on the gang situation.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I need to know, at least to start with.”
“Nola, it’s classified information.”
I batted my eyelashes at him.
“Don’t start that!”
“Start what?”
Ari growled, a sincere rumble of gathering rage.
“Spoilsport!” I took the wad of paper out of my jeans pocket. “Here are the original notes José sent. Make sure I haven’t missed anything, and maybe Spare14 will want to see them, too.”
Ari grabbed them and stalked off to rejoin his laptop. I tried to concentrate on running scans, but as I’d feared, I cou
ld pick up no trace of either Michael or Sean. If I’d known the chant and color associated with Interchange, I would have risked that procedure, but I had neither piece of information.
Spare14 called not long after, much earlier than I ever could have hoped. Once he’d received Ari’s e-mails he had hurried back to our world, where he’d found my phone message waiting.
“Very bad news about Michael,” Spare14 said. “TWIXT will step in. The unit was founded to handle just this sort of case.”
“Wonderful.” For a moment I had trouble speaking. “Thank you.”
“But beyond that, I could have sworn I saw two of your brothers on Interchange, not just the one. The family resemblance is striking.”
“You did, most likely,” I said. “They were both there, hunting for gates. Sean’s the name of the other brother. The Stormers have him, too.”
“You have another world-walker in your family?”
I considered telling Spare14 that Sean had gone along as protection only. The danger threatening them both prodded me toward truth.
“No, Michael took him along to help search,” I said. “Sean is a finder.”
“I see.” Spare14’s voice brightened. “How very interesting!”
“Neither of them should have gone there.”
“Quite true, sadly. Now, I’ve received authorization to allow you and Ari to join me in the search.”
The thought of going to Interchange, of spending time there—I took a deep breath to chase away the terror.
“I’m up for that,” I said. “Totally.”
For a moment all I heard was a puzzled silence.
“I mean,” I went on, “I’ll be glad to assist.”
“Splendid! I need to requisition another world-walker. I shall get back to you as soon as I can.”
My hands were shaking so badly that it took me three clumsy tries to hang up the landline receiver. I began pacing up and down the living room floor while I struggled to focus my mind. Why did I find Interchange so frightening? Yeah, the place screamed danger, but something had to lie beyond the normal reaction any sane person would have had to it.
I was afraid that I was going to die on Interchange. I felt an ache in my chest where the bullet would enter. The question became: overactive imagination or premonition?
Someone walked into the room behind me. I turned around, expecting Ari, only to see myself, or a version of myself, wearing tight jeans and a black top. She looked like the image I saw in the mirror, except her hair was short and spiked with wax. She wore black eyeliner applied way too heavily and bright red lipstick. The deep V-neck of her sleeveless top revealed a tramp stamp tat on her left breast: a skull with a rose in its teeth like Carmen.
“Look, bitch,” she said, “I already died there, sed non omnis moriar.”
She vanished. An IOI? Maybe. Something weirder? Likely. “But I’ll not wholly die” meant that whatever she was, she’d read the Roman poet, Horace. I was still trying to puzzle out this new apparition when Ari brought me the final catastrophe of the day. He sat down next to me on the couch and took a page of handwritten notes out of his shirt pocket.
“I found the file for a person who must be your father,” Ari said. “He was born in the province of Hibernia on Terra Five, in—” He hesitated briefly. “That would be in 1955 according to the calendar that we use here. Convicted in 1997 of transporting himself for purposes of illegal immigration across world lines, along with two members of a banned political group of Hibernian rebels. One of the rebels was wanted for the murder of two Britannic soldiers, but she was never apprehended.”
I looked away and considered this surprise. “She” was never apprehended? Maybe Dad had never fired those shots, then, that had killed two men. He might merely have witnessed a sight that fear and anger had burned into his memory. If so, to psychics like me and Aunt Eileen, the experience would read as his own.
“Something rather upsetting turned up, too,” Ari said. “When I searched for Flann O’Grady, I found nothing.”
“I’ve often wondered if that was his real name, yeah.”
“The closest match I found was this fellow, Flannery Michael O’Brien. The file notes that he was married on Terra Four—that’s here—with seven children. It gives their names: Daniel, Maureen, Sean, and so on, all of you in the correct order. So I’m assuming this is the right man.”
I heard an ache in his voice. I slewed around on the cushion and stared at him. He gave me a sad little smile.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “You can’t mean the novelist.”
“No, no, he lived much too early.” Ari looked down at his notes. “Here’s the hard part. I hate to say this, but Flann had a twin sister named Deirdre, and older sisters named Eileen and Rose, and brothers Keith, Harry, and one more older sibling who died in infancy.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What was his father’s name?”
“Daniel. His mother’s name was Nora.”
I winced.
“Those are your grandparents’ names, aren’t they?” Ari said.
“Yeah.” For a moment more I tried to hide behind confusion. “What are you getting at?”
“Can’t you see it?”
The truth pushed forward and slapped me across the face. It rested on more than the identical names. I found it hard to speak at first. Ari waited, watching me.
“I’m afraid I can see it,” I said eventually. “Genetically, he must be my mother’s brother.” I caught my breath with a gasp. “Her brother. Oh, my God.” I turned half-away, turned back. “No wonder my family has the wild talents we do, huh? Inbreeding.” I glanced at Ari. “No wonder you thought he was my uncle.”
“Yes, the pictures in the family album were the first clue,” Ari said. “It’s fairly obvious if you look at them with an open mind. Now, the Deirdre on Terra Five died when she was six years old. It’s not as if your father was raised with a doppelgänger of your mother.”
“Still, he must have recognized her. Dad, that is, he had to know who this Deirdre was. Is. Oh, God, I’m getting so confused!”
“It’s quite confusing. I’m assuming he missed his twin sister badly. They were only fraternals, of course, but still, she was his other half, suddenly gone.”
“Her death must have hit him hard, yeah, if he was old enough to realize what had happened.”
“At six? Yes, certainly old enough to know what death means, especially living where he did. The Britannics there have a great deal to answer for.”
I refused to be distracted by politics, tempting though being distracted was. “His file won’t tell you if he knew,” I said. “But I remember stuff, odd stuff, words and hints that we could never say in front of Father Keith or Aunt Eileen.” Memories crept back into my mind like whipped dogs. “He would never celebrate his birthday, for one. Birthdays were only for kids, he told us.”
“If he had told you, it would have been the same as your mother’s. Someone in the family might have wondered.”
“Exactly. Ah, crap! A whole ’nother layer of secrets we had to keep. I bet he knew.” I started shaking, first my hands, then my whole body, but this time, fear had nothing to do with it. I had to force out the words. “I just bet he did.”
“The real question is, does your mother know?”
“I can’t say for sure, but what do you bet this is why she’s so damn determined to pretend we’re all normal?” I laughed, one harsh bark. “And her such a good Catholic lady.”
The bitterness in my voice seemed to poison the air in the room. Ari stared at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got reasons for being so mad, but let’s not go into those now.”
“Yes, let’s,” Ari said. “I can understand that you’d be angry, but let’s look at this calmly.”
“Calmly? How can I be calm about it?”
“Stop and think!” Ari plowed grimly on. “Their genetic relationship really doesn’t make a tremendous difference. Your parents were never raised as brot
her and sister. Your Deirdre never even had a twin brother. They come from different worlds, different cultures, different countries, even. I don’t suppose any legal system would consider—”
“It’s got nothing to do with anyone’s lousy laws.” I found myself craving the claws and fangs of the leopard women. “It’s what I know. That I know! My mother and my father—sister and brother. I don’t care how they were raised. They knew, and they married anyway. All of us, my family—we’re not legitimate, are we? Bastards, all of us, in the eyes of the damn Church! And my family, they mean the world to me, and how can I tell them?”
“Nola.” Ari laid a heavy hand on my arm. “Calm.”
“Oh, shut up!” I jerked my arm away. “You’re not the one who’s going to have to live with this rotten secret.”
“Of course I am.”
“It’s not the same for you.” I stood up. “This is personal. Let it lie.”
The room seemed to have grown very large and distant. I took my cell phone from my pocket and started to edge around the coffee table. “Excuse me,” I said. “I have to call my mother.”
Ari got up fast and grabbed me from behind.
“No,” he said. “You need to calm down first. You’ll say things you’ll regret.”
“I don’t care. Let me go.”
He released his hold just long enough to grab me again, this time with leverage, and yank me around to face him. Since I was still holding the cell phone, I had to struggle one-handed. Even with rage boiling in my blood, even with Qi pouring out of me, Ari proved stronger. He threw his left arm around my waist, hauled me in, and caught my wrist with his right hand. He pressed nerve against bone with his thumb and forefinger. I yelped. My traitorous hand dropped the cell phone. He let me twist away. I turned to face him.
“You son of a bitch,” I snarled. “You used the Vulcan nerve pinch!”
“Ah, that’s better.” Ari grinned at me. “You’re yourself again.”