“You’ve got the entire Buffy series on disk?” he said, and Peri flushed, embarrassed to admit she didn’t remember watching them. The feeling that she loved the people on the covers was undeniable, though.
“Oh, cool. Let’s watch a few tonight,” Taf said, looking at the dusty Blu-ray player under the obsolete gen-one glass monitor beside the TV. “It works, doesn’t it?”
“Sure, right after we sneak into Peri’s apartment, outwit the government-funded bad guys, and save the world,” Silas grumped as he fiddled with the biker’s cap on her Goth American Girl doll. “Maybe we can stop to pick up popcorn on the way.”
“You don’t have to be so snide about it,” Peri muttered, suddenly not liking that she’d brought them here. Her comic book apartment had been a refuge from her mother’s demands since she was eighteen, filled with the things she loved and wanted never to forget. It had always felt like a tree clubhouse to her, and Silas was poking about like it was a junk shop.
“Sorry,” he said, expression blank as he turned to go into the open kitchen.
Brow furrowed, she straightened the commemorative coffee table book of Princess Diana’s royal wedding. The sucking sound of the freezer opening turned her around, and her lips parted when he took out a box of Thin Mints.
“God bless it, will you get out of my stuff!” she exclaimed, and Silas spun, eyes wide.
Taf made a long “Oooo, you’re in trouble . . . ,” laughing when Howard shushed her.
“You’ve got like six boxes in there,” Silas said indignantly, and Howard gave Taf a nudge to be quiet when she opened her mouth again.
“Fine, go ahead.” Peri stomped back to the kitchen table. “But put them on a plate so we can all eat them.”
“Sure, Peri,” he said reasonably, but she was still peeved. Her unfinished scarf was stretched out over the table, and she studied the irregular bands of red, orange, and gold, trying to figure out what she’d been trying to do so she could finish it off. Knitting was supposed to be relaxing, but not with Silas bumping about in her kitchen.
“Ah, why do you have comic books in your wine fridge?” he asked.
Jaw tight, she ignored him. “Be careful with those,” she said when he reached for a blue glass plate, and his motions became exaggerated as he shook the frozen Girl Scout cookies onto it and set it down precisely between them. “They’re antique,” she added, not knowing for sure.
“You know what? I need another circuit to finish this,” Howard said suddenly as he stood and stretched. “You want to come with me before they close, Taf?”
“What, now?” Taf appreciatively eyed Howard’s stretched body. “This is just getting good. What are we making, anyway?”
“Bug detector,” he said as he collapsed in on himself. “A-a-a-and . . . it works,” he added as he picked it up and waved it over Taf and a light on it glowed.
“I am not bugged,” the woman said indignantly, but Silas, who had sat down across from Peri at the kitchen table with his paper newspaper, had taken an interest, too.
“She’s clean,” Howard said as Taf smacked his thigh and eased up to sit on the couch. “It lights up at any outgoing ping, like from a cell phone.”
“I know I’m clean. Gawwd!” Taf drawled as Howard beamed over three squares of plastic he had been working on.
“A quick tweak to the GPS on my phone, and we’ll have traceable bugs,” he added as he set it clattering on the table. “If we can get one of these on Allen, we’d know when he comes within half a mile. Or we can drop them like bread crumbs to find our way back somewhere or to each other if we get separated.”
Fingers smoothing the yarn, Peri said, “If this vet thing doesn’t work out, you could always open an Electronics Hut.”
Howard chuckled as he put his coat on. “Sure. Taf, you can make coffee, right? I could use you and your dozen almost-minors for security. You’re amazing with a rifle.”
“Thank you, Howard. You say the sweetest things!” Taf purred, bounding up to give him a little peck on the cheek.
Silas sighed, rattling his paper as Howard blushed, his dark skin taking on a pinkish hue.
“Speaking of shooting people, I need to pick up some more shells.” Taf reached for her coat. “Do we have time to stop?”
“Sure, I don’t see why not.”
“Ah . . . you aren’t carrying a gun tonight,” Peri started when Taf picked up her purse.
“Excuse me, boys and girls?” Silas said, paper flat against the table. Suddenly Peri felt like they were the parents of two hooligans eager for a night of chaos and gunpowder.
“We’ll bring back pizza,” Howard said as he pushed Taf to the door.
“I’m sick of pizza,” Taf complained. “I want Cantonese.”
“Fine. Whatever,” he said. “Let’s get out of here before they think of a reason for us not to go.” And then the door shut and Taf’s voice filled the stairway as they creaked downstairs.
Peri glanced at Silas, pretty sure Howard and Taf hadn’t left for circuits and shells. They hadn’t even set up an alternate meeting place in case of trouble. She wasn’t used to working with more than one person, and she was making mistakes. “I don’t like them out on their own,” she said, to fill the new silence.
“Me either.” Silas shook his paper again. He’d taken time to shave and shower in the tiny bathroom while she and Taf had been shopping, and his thick short hair was sticking straight up, an unruly, charming mess without product. Peri couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like on her fingertips. Silk, maybe.
Sensation plinked through her, and, disconcerted, she put her attention firmly on her yarn. “This isn’t going to be easy,” she muttered. “Opti is already at my apartment. I’m going to have to fight my way in, or out, or both. We should have left them in Kentucky.”
“But you don’t mind me coming,” he said flatly from behind his paper.
“Actually, I do, but I need an anchor,” she said. “I’ll keep you alive. Promise.”
“Maybe I don’t want that assurance.”
Peri squinted at the paper between them. “It comes with the job. Deal with it.” She was starting to figure this out. Someone he’d loved had died to save him. Not my business, she thought as she laid the scarf out and tried to find a pattern in the stripes, but a growing ire at Silas was percolating through her. “I need you, Silas, but you’re not a piece of firmware.”
“I know that.”
That paper was starting to tick her off. “Silas,” she said softly. “Quit with the girly ‘if you cared, you’d figure it out’ crap. Tell me what’s bothering you, or leave the baggage on the curb.”
His big hands gripped the paper, making it crackle as he lowered it. His strong jaw was tight and his shoulders were so stiff they pulled at his shirt. His lips twitched as a thought flitted through him, and something in her fluttered, a memory, almost. “Your pattern is off,” he said.
“Silas!” she shouted, and there was a long “Oooooo” from the store below, followed by laughter.
Still holding the paper, Silas leaned across the table. “Listen to me, Peri Reed,” he said as he took a frozen cookie. “My bad mood is none of your business. Besides, your pattern is off. Why don’t you fix it? It’s not me that’s bothering you, it’s your asinine, anal need for perfection.” He snapped through the cookie and leaned back, eyes holding his anger.
“It is not,” she said, hiding her irritation behind a sip of hot chocolate. But then she looked at the yarn in her lap. “Damn it, Silas. Now it’s going to bug me forever.”
He lifted the paper back up between them. “So fix it. We’ve got time, princess.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, glumly brushing the pattern. She hadn’t even known the autumn-shaded scarf existed until this morning, and it rankled her that he knew the error bugged her. Not only bugged her, but enough that, yes, she’d fix it. Sighing, she pulled the yarn off the needle. “I’m going to fix it. I was just making sure I hadn’t c
oded something into the pattern first. The last time I unraveled a project I didn’t remember starting, I destroyed a list of names.”
Silas jerked, the soft rattle of the paper making a shiver cross over her. He slowly lowered the paper, and Peri took in his white face, not knowing what she’d said. “I’m going to fix it?” she prompted, and Silas’s chair creaked as he leaned forward.
“Do you remember them?” he said, brow creased.
Warning flags snapped in the wind of her imagination at his intensity. “The names? No,” she lied, not knowing why except that knowledge was power, and he was agitated. “Why?”
Silas sputtered, pushing back to gesture at nothing. “Allen asked me about a list of corrupt Opti agents that Jack got hold of in Charlotte. He’s desperate for it. It was the only thing Opti pressed me for, wanting to know if you knew of it. Which I think is stupid because they were the ones who scrubbed you.”
Harry and Gina are corrupt? Cold, she recalled the nine rows of knits and purls she’d pulled out in the airport. How many of her other friends had been on it? Well, not friends exactly, but they were all she had.
“Bill thinks the original chip is still alive,” Silas said, pulling her attention back. “Do you know where Jack might have hidden it? If we can find it, then all this ends. It ends, Peri.”
Her eyes flicked up at the determination in his voice. Why are you only telling me this now? she thought as mistrust flashed through her. “Jack doesn’t retain sensitive information,” she lied. She’d obviously not only seen the list, but knitted the information into a scarf. “How will a list of corrupt agents bring Bill down? Is he on it?” she asked, remembering the last phrase, Bill is corrupt.
“I doubt it, but he’s already submitted a fake list of corrupt Opti agents to protect his own stable, and if the real list gets out, he’s done.” Silas’s hands clenched, the man clearly anxious. “You must know where Jack hides things. Right?”
Head down, she pulled out a row of stitches. Not anymore, she didn’t.
“Sorry,” Silas apologized. “It’s just that I’ve been working on this for five years, and we’re so close. Jack wouldn’t have had time to stash it anywhere but your apartment.”
Peri nodded, the yarn making a kinked mass of red in her lap as she pulled off more. Her Mantis had a safe, but Opti knew and would have looked. Putting the information in an off-site data storage unit was out. They were too easy to find and hack into. That’s why she’d knitted the information into her scarf. The knitted list was gone, but if Bill was looking for the original, it probably still existed. And though her hiding things wasn’t a good idea, she did have a few cubbies she could check. They were going there for her talisman anyway.
“Please,” Silas said, startling her when he reached across the cookies and took her hand, stopping her from pulling off more yarn. “Help me find that list, and I’ll help you get your memory back. Whatever you want.”
“Just the fragment from Charlotte,” she said, uneasy. “I don’t want to know anything more about Jack than that.”
“Okay. Good.” His hand slipped from hers, and Silas stood, hesitating as if not knowing what to do with himself. His eyes went from the door to the window. He took out his phone, clearly wanting to text Howard or Taf.
Frowning, Peri pulled the last of the red off the scarf, the kinked yarn in her lap looking like the insides of an exotic insect. She reached for a cookie, the scent of the chocolate suddenly turning her stomach. In a wave of vertigo, the red yarn at her middle became a blood-soaked wad. Jack’s face, pale from pain and blood loss, flashed across her mind.
A thump from the bathroom jerked her head up, and she froze when a suntanned, manicured hand pushed open the door. Her pulse hammered, and she stared past Silas.
Jack?
She dropped the cookie to the floor, heart pounding as Jack smiled at her from around the bathroom door, his blond hair tousled and his stubble thick the way she liked it. His tie was loosened and his white dress shirt was a brilliant bloodred at his middle, but his eyes all but danced. “Don’t ask about things you’re not going to like the answers to, Peri. Questions are bad for your asthma.”
She blinked, hand clenched on the bare needle. She didn’t even remember picking it up, but there it was, set to gouge as she stared at the bathroom. The door was closed. No one was there. Silas was looking at her over his phone as if she had lobsters coming out of her ears. Clearly he hadn’t seen Jack. She was hallucinating.
Oh God, I’m going to MEP. She’d forgotten something so traumatic that her mind was fighting to recover it. If she couldn’t get a clean defrag, the hallucinations would get worse until she couldn’t tell reality from fantasy. She’d go insane by way of daydreams. How long? How long until I can’t function?
Silas retrieved the cookie, setting it down with an accusing snap. “Thirty-second rule.”
“Thank you.” Hands shaking, she smoothed the yarn, not seeing it. She was hallucinating the man she’d killed. She was losing it. Big-time.
Making an appraising “mmmm,” Silas settled across from her, his hands laced over his middle as if waiting for something. “So how’s it going?”
His voice held too much guile to be referring to her knitting. Great. I think he knows. “Fine.” Peri pulled out another row, her fear growing as the two colors tangled. “I’m trying to decide how to access my apartment,” she adlibbed. “Unless I moved it, I have a key downstairs in case I get locked out.” Don’t look at the bathroom. There’s nothing there. Crap, I’m sweating. “What’s the weather supposed to be tomorrow?”
Silas set his phone to vibrate and put it on the table. “How bad are the hallucinations?”
She lifted her chin, refusing to look at the bathroom. “Hallucination, not hallucinations. There is no plural.”
“I thought so.” A thick hand scrubbed his clean-shaven face. “We have a problem.”
“We?” Her heart thudded. “I’m fine.”
His gaze held pity when he looked up. “They’re going to get worse.”
Hating her flush, she met his gaze unblinkingly. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Peri, I can help. Let me try to render something.”
Worried, she looked at the yarn in her lap as if the answer lay tangled there. “No,” she whispered. The last time he’d been in her head, she’d remembered Jack.
“I won’t lead you anywhere you don’t want to go,” he said as he leaned across the table, eyes showing his shared worry. “I know you don’t want to remember what happened, but if you don’t let your mind work through this, it will . . . impair your ability.”
Peri had a feeling he’d been going to say it would drive her crazy, because if she didn’t find a way to deal with it, it would. “No,” she said firmly, then, “Yes. No.” Her eyes closed.
“What if you have a vision tonight of something that’s not there and make a mistake?” he asked. “At least let me help you untangle any memory knots that might be snarling.”
Memory knots. Shit. He was right, but she was scared, and she stiffened when he stood and moved to stand behind her. “Memory knots are dangerous,” she said, jumping when his big hands landed lightly on her shoulders.
Silas chuckled, leaning to put his face inches from hers. “Only if you ignore them. Now, tell me this isn’t better,” he said as he pressed his thumbs into the tension.
Oh, God. That feels good. “Better,” she whispered, her eyes closing as her head dropped forward over the spilled yarn. “I don’t want to remember Jack.”
“That’s fine,” he said as the strength in his hands eased, and she cracked an eye.
“You’re so full of psychiatric bull.”
He laughed, the sound relaxing her more than his fingers. His pressure on her was familiar, soothing, and utterly professional. Her body remembered this and was clicking over to what it needed to do, taking her mind with it whether she wanted it to or not. “Please don’t make me remember,” she whispered, a wisp of fear co
loring her thoughts.
“I won’t. I promise. Just relax.”
She sighed as he found every knot of stress and eased it away. Peri tensed when Jack’s pale face flashed into her upper thoughts, then exhaled when she felt Silas dip into her mind and set it aside. He didn’t fragment it, he set it aside. Impressed, she relaxed more deeply, trusting him. Silas was probably the best in his generation. Why he’d left Opti was a mystery.
“Find your safe spot,” he whispered, and she drowsed, remembering him doing this before. “You can sleep there.” Sleep would be a blessing, and knowing that her “safe spot” would be free of Jack, of Opti, of everything, she turned her thoughts to her grandparents’ farm, feeling herself fall asleep high in her tree, the wind smelling of bees and sun in her hair. . . .
Until she realized it was winter and the leaves were gone. She reached for a dead branch; her fingers were stained with blood. Frightened, she looked down to see Jack lying below her in the yellow fields, the long, sparse grass waving to touch his face creased in pain. A scarf she had knitted was wadded up and pressed to his abdomen, red and soaked with blood. Dagazes decorated it. Panic stirred.
“I’m sorry,” Jack whispered in her dream, blood at the corner of his lips. “I don’t want you to remember me like this.”
Suddenly she realized the branch she was holding was really a rifle. Tears spotted it. She was crying. Had she shot him?
“I love you, Peri,” Jack said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger.”
“Jack!” she shouted, horrified, as she dropped from the tree. Her feet landed on the scuffed wood of a dance floor, not the loamy lumps of earth. The air stank of gunpowder, and her ears were ringing. Blood covered her hands as she reached for Jack, but his eyes were empty. He was dead—dead on the floor of Overdraft.
Peri snorted awake, jerking violently. Her yarn was in a pile on the table, and beyond it was Silas working with his phone, the empty cookie plate beside him. He met her gaze, clearly startled. “Did I draft?”
“No, you fell asleep sitting at the table.” He looked at his phone. “Fifteen minutes ago.”