by S. L. Huang
“I don’t know, I only know what Checker himself has said about it, which isn’t much. Something from years ago, I think. And Arthur was working on it like a case, trying to pick up any trail to find where D.J. might be.”
“Why didn’t he ask me?” That stung. “Criminal contractors are my world, you know. Arthur needs to track down a bomber-for-hire, I should be his first goddamn call.”
He probably didn’t ask for the same reason he didn’t tell you about Diego or Tabitha or anything about this fucking case in the first place.
Arthur didn’t trust me.
But the bitterness threatening to flood me was eclipsed by everything suddenly slotting together, every piece of this that hadn’t registered at the time pointing to the same conclusion. Pilar was trying to sputter a response to me from the passenger seat, but I didn’t hear her. Arthur on D.J.’s trail before his sudden disappearance, Checker looking up bomb-sniffing dogs, and then the explosion at my office …
The one who makes the music, an echo of an Australian accent said. Playing the songs when you ask.
D.J.
This wasn’t just a contract. It was personal.
four
I STARTED to dial Checker. Pilar’s hand stopped me. “Please, can we just wait until we know for sure it’s the same person?” she said. “Arthur didn’t want him to know because—I mean, I don’t know, but you know Checker’s past was pretty rough, so I’m guessing something traumatic…”
“I’m sure it’s the same person,” I said, but I stopped dialing. I didn’t know what I’d say to Checker anyway.
You know Checker’s past was pretty rough, Pilar had said. But I hadn’t known.
Sure, I was aware the guy had a less-than-legal history that had involved gaining a surprising level of money-laundering expertise for someone as young as he was, but in all the nights he’d coerced me into coming over to drink and watch trashy science fiction shows, all the times I’d thought that, maybe, I was starting to have people around me I called friends … he’d never gone on about anything deeper than whether they should make another Terminator movie. Nothing about his past, or family, or … anything.
Just like Arthur.
Or it’s like Pilar said, and you weren’t listening, a traitorous thought suggested. I slammed it away and kept driving.
I expected to have to wing it when we got to Arthur’s office—I didn’t have any handy explosives-detection tech available to pick up, and there were limits to what math could tell me about the existence of bombs I couldn’t see. But when I pulled into the parking lot, two men were waiting for us: a tall Asian man in a trench coat, and a less-tall, olive-skinned man who was hugging his arms around himself despite the warm night. Rio and Simon.
We got out. Behind me, Pilar rebalanced her weight and put her hand in her purse.
I slipped slightly in front of her. The chill in the air felt like it dipped three degrees even though I could tell it was exactly the same temperature. Pilar was probably the genuinely nicest person I knew, and she’d never even touched a gun before she’d met me, but I still wasn’t sure she wouldn’t try to take down Rio someday for what he’d done to her.
Or maybe it was exactly because she was so genuinely nice that she was this willing to draw on Rio, when I knew for a fact that she’d never in her life fired on another human. After all, there were people who’d consider Rio’s murder to be a public service. I wondered if that lurked in Pilar’s mind every time she saw him—how many of his victims she’d save if she could only bring herself to pull the trigger. Sure, it wasn’t like the people Rio killed were angels, but he did kill an awful lot of them.
I’d told Pilar I’d try to keep him away from her. Whoops.
“Stay cool,” I said to her out of the corner of my mouth. Would she even have been carrying a weapon when I yanked her from the W?
“I will if he does,” she muttered back.
The fact that I still trusted and associated with Rio … was this why Arthur had never told me about his family? I was angry all over again.
It wasn’t like I was particularly glad to see them either, though. Especially not Simon, who thought he had the right to ransack my brain regularly just to keep me from dying.
“You’re stalking me now?” I called out to them as greeting. “Fuck you.”
“We did try to call—” started Simon.
Right. I’d burned my phone and hadn’t sent either of them an update.
“You failed to appear for your appointment,” said Rio, his expression unchanged.
Shit. Until that very moment, the fact that I’d been supposed to see Simon tonight had completely dropped out of my head.
“Yeah,” I said. “Something came up.”
“Cas,” said Rio. “You realize the importance of this.”
Simon shuffled his feet on the gravel of the parking lot and ran a hand through his hair. “Cassand—” He cut himself off with a cough. Simon still had trouble getting his head around the fact that I didn’t like being called by my full name. For a psychic, he could be pretty dumb. “Cas, if we don’t address things regularly…”
If I didn’t let Simon and his telepathic skills worm into my brain on a weekly-or-so basis, I would go mad from the errant memories of the dead woman who used to own my body. Yes, yes, he’d explained it enough times for me never to want to hear it again.
But I didn’t have time right now to spend two hours engaging in his deranged version of psychotherapy. “I’ll come see you when I’m done with this job.”
“You’re always on the job, Cas,” said Simon.
“Are you under an imminent deadline?” asked Rio.
This was an excellent example of why Rio was about fifty times smarter than Simon. I focused on him instead. “Arthur’s missing. Help me or get out of my way.”
Rio might not understand friendship, but he had a theoretical knowledge of it. I imagined the if-A-then-B flowchart he must use whenever he was confronted with such an inscrutable emotion. I was pretty sure his flowchart told him it was a good thing I had friends, and that if one had a friend and the friend was in trouble, this must logically take top priority.
Though if his flowcharts told him something different, I didn’t give a shit. I was perfectly willing to bulldoze through Rio and Simon both if they didn’t acquiesce in the next ten seconds.
“I am at your service,” said Rio. Good. That was good. Rio had a lot more explosives expertise than I did.
“Cas, you know I’ll help,” put in Simon, spreading his hands earnestly—even though I knew no such thing, and he and his telepathic skills had to be aware of that, the prick. He winced. “I meant, of course I’ll help. Where do we start?”
Simon was not someone I ever spent time with voluntarily, but I wasn’t stupid enough to turn him down. The problem was, he wasn’t ever willing to use his powers unless … wait.
Something itched at my brain.
I rubbed my forehead, but it was gone.
“Rio,” I said instead, “we’re up against someone who likes explosives, and we need to go through Arthur’s office. Can you—”
“It would be my pleasure. Remain here,” Rio said, and swept toward the outside stairs to Arthur’s second-floor office. Yet another reason I liked Rio.
I pointed at Simon. “As for you, stay by your phone. The minute we have someone you could help with, I want you there.”
I started to turn away, ushering Pilar with me.
“Wait,” Simon said.
“I told you, now is not the time to—”
“No. Cas. There’s something you wanted to tell me. I saw it a minute ago, but then it left your mind. I think it’s important.”
“Ego, much?” I said.
“Cas.”
I wasn’t sure if it was Simon’s abilities or my own brain that filled in his tone, but it did occur to me that when a telepath who claimed he was on my side was trying to tell me I wanted something, I should probably consider it. Next to me, P
ilar’s expression had creased into worry, mirroring my thoughts.
Goddamn psychics.
“I don’t remember wanting to tell you anything,” I said to Simon, but a lot less aggressively.
He shook his head, as if he were hearing a fly buzzing but he wasn’t sure from where. “There’s something wrong. May I?”
I gave him a look that made the skin around his eyes tighten, but I also jerked my head to invite him closer. He stepped up to me and gazed down into my face. “Give me your eyes, Cas. Run back your day for me.”
“Right before this, I picked up Pilar,” I said, making eye contact and trying not to sneer the words. “I’ve been on the phone with Checker in between trying to figure out what to do ever since my office blew up. And right before that was when—”
“Stop. You skipped something.”
“I skipped a lot of things.”
“Start again with when your office … God, you’re all right physically, right?”
“I’m fine.” I didn’t bother to moderate my tone. “My office blew up, I jacked a car and went to pick up Pilar, and we came here. Talked to Checker in between.”
“You skipped it again. After your office—what happened right before and after the, um, the bomb? Was it a bomb?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d just gone outside, and I was trying to call my client—”
Shit.
My would-be client.
“That’s it,” Simon said, unnecessarily.
I tried to hold on to the guy’s image. It felt slippery, the face blurred, as if I were trying to recall someone from a decade ago.
What the fuck.
“I locked him up,” I said. Jesus, he was lucky I’d run into Simon, or he would have died of thirst there. “What the hell did he do to me? And why? Is he one of you lot?” But his powers seemed much weaker—I’d never have been able to imprison Simon so easily, not if he chose to use his mental mojo on me. Nor Dawna Polk, the leader of Pithica—the memory of how easily and thoroughly she’d been able to rewrite my perceptions still gave me nightmares.
“I don’t know,” Simon said. “I haven’t been connected to Pithica in … a long time. This seems different, but I can’t place how. And Pithica—they were always refining new technologies. I don’t know.”
Making new types of psychics. Holy hell.
“We had a deal,” I croaked.
Rio had brokered it, to save all our lives: Pithica wouldn’t kill us, and we would stop our efforts to destroy them. It wasn’t one I would have said yes to, given the choice, but they’d enforced my agreement with a mental block that made it impossible for me to work against them.
I’d insisted Simon remove the actual block months ago. But still—I’d hesitated. I’d told myself that Pithica hadn’t only threatened my life and mental sanctity, but Arthur’s and Checker’s, and without a plan, putting a toe in their direction would immediately equal us all being snuffed from the face of the Earth. They were too powerful.
Maybe that was logic. Or maybe it was fear.
Find Arthur, I commanded myself. Finding Arthur is the first step, no matter what. If we had to regroup after that to take on people who could literally rewrite our thoughts …
“I’ll try to figure out more,” Simon said. “The man you can’t remember—focus on his face. That will help.”
I did, and as soon as Simon told me to, I found it easier. The details of my client’s features started to clear. Asian, I thought. And Australian—for some reason, now that I’d remembered him, I didn’t have the least bit of trouble with his voice. Only his appearance.
“Who the fuck is this guy?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Simon said again.
“He blew up my office.” It was coming back to me now, in hazy half mirages. Had he been working with D.J.? “He tried to kill me, and then I forgot him. After locking him up.”
You don’t see me, the man had said. He’d meant it literally.
But I also remembered him being … out of it, not quite making sense … like he’d been manipulated himself. Or was that just my malfunctioning neurons making it seem so?
“Cas,” Simon said. “I reiterate my offer to help.”
Oh, Christ. I hated needing Simon’s help.
“Yeah. Okay,” I said. I gave him the address. “Go get me some fucking answers. Are you going to be able to tell him to stay put, by the way? And not to blow you up?”
He knew by tell I meant force. He hesitated.
“Seriously? This guy might be working for Pithica! You can’t tell me you have moral qualms about using your goddamned psychic powers against another psychic—”
“I don’t think he is one,” Simon said. “Not in the same sense that we are. It’s something different. And if he isn’t—you know I can’t do that sort of thing. No matter what.”
Can’t or won’t? Simon and his mewling ethics. “I’ll send Rio with you,” I said. “There’s even the off chance he won’t be affected by whatever this is.” Rio was immune to Simon’s brand of telepathy, but even if this was something different, well, I had been able to interact with the guy for some small period of time. Rio would be able to handle keeping him in place. And he’d make sure our prisoner didn’t try to kill Simon. Not that people did attack Simon, usually—even if he didn’t make a concerted effort to keep himself safe, telepaths’ thoughts had a lot of unconscious bleed.
Yet another thing I hated about them.
“Go update Rio,” I said. “Tell him he’s with you after he clears us here, and that this might be Pithica, but we’re not sure yet.”
Simon opened his mouth, probably to say something about Rio having told us to stay down here because of possible bombs, but then he took in my face and started across the parking lot.
“This could get real bad, couldn’t it?” Pilar said softly. “I’ve heard you guys talk about the Pithica telepaths and how they—they can just make you believe anything, can’t they? And you think it’s your own thoughts?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Can Simon help us against that, do you think?”
Who knew. I should probably ask him, just to plan contingencies, but getting a straight commitment out of the man without being condescended to was like trying to force a chaotic system to behave, and just the thought of trying to coordinate a defensive plan with him made my mouth sour.
I leaned against Pilar’s car to wait. Someone cackled in the back of my head, but I told myself it was psychosomatic.
“Hey, are you going to be okay?” Pilar asked, as if she were the mind reader now. “If you skip the mental therapy thing with Simon, I mean.”
“Yes,” I snapped. “It’s not an exact science.” The words were ones Simon himself oft-repeated, and I felt dirty being the one saying them now. But it was true: I wasn’t going to start collapsing if I missed a session.
I might start hearing voices again after missing several sessions, but who knew how long that would take.
Rio had finished his sweep of the perimeter and had gone inside Arthur’s office now, the heavy metal door wedged ajar. I was certain Pilar hadn’t given him the keys—if she even still had them—but a locked door was little more than a nuisance to Rio. Simon hovered on the upstairs landing, talking to him through the crack.
It was coming on dark. A breeze had started up, but the summer air was still hot and dry where it blew against our skin.
“You know, I almost stayed,” said Pilar, very suddenly.
“What?” I glanced at her. She was staring abstractly up after Simon, as if she hadn’t spoken. “What are you talking about?”
“I almost stayed on,” she said. “With Arthur and Checker. I’d been wanting to start my own business forever, and I’d never meant to be an admin all my life, but I almost stayed.”
“Okay. So?”
“I had signed up for tactical training.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I was all signed up, and the business was going to pa
y for it and all—I mean, Arthur wasn’t too happy about it, seeing as he got all torn up about ever putting me in danger in the first place, but he did want me to be safer if I could, and he couldn’t exactly promise me I’d always be safe working for him. I think he even wanted me to quit, sometimes, but he sort of forced himself to let me make the decision.”
“He wanted to fire you to keep you safe?” I said.
“It’s not completely absurd. Not with what we’ve been through. He didn’t want me hurt.”
I thought of the justification Simon had given for what he’d done to me, that he’d had to because he couldn’t stand the thought of me dying, and something inside me curdled blackly. I couldn’t agree.
“Anyway,” Pilar continued. “I was about to go to boot camp, and I realized—if I didn’t leave now, I would never leave.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Now, does all this have a point, or is it just small talk? Because you know how I hate—”
“I do. I have a point.” She chewed her lip for a moment. “Here’s the thing. Most of Arthur’s cases aren’t that bad. It’s always when he’s working with you that stuff gets dangerous. Like the brain entrainment thing earlier this year. Or even the first case with Pithica, he’s told me—”
“Arthur was on that case way before I ever heard of Pithica. This is blatant sampling error!”
“There are a lot more times, Cas, you know there have been a lot more times—Arthur helps you out whenever you ask, and things just kind of escalate when you’re around, you know? You do tend to think violence is the best answer.”
“Sometimes it is,” I said hotly.
“Cas, sweetie, I’m not trying to put you down. You’ve saved all our lives more than once. I’m just saying, I know it doesn’t seem fair to you, but I get where Arthur’s coming from in wanting to keep his family out of it. Maybe cut him some slack.”
“Not a chance.”
“It’s not even him,” she pleaded. “It’s his kids. Cut him some slack.”
That was exactly why I wasn’t going to be cutting any slack at all—once we found him alive and well.
Shit.
The door to Arthur’s office opened, and Rio came out, raising a hand to wave us up. “Talk later,” I said to Pilar, and we hurried up the metal steps to the landing.