Critical Point

by S. L. Huang

  A laugh wanted to strangle me. Rio had seen me kill so many people—Rio had helped me kill so many people. But I read the mind of one morally ambiguous psychic, and he decided my methods had turned an ethical shade he could not abide. I wanted to race after him, to tear into him as a hypocrite, but I wasn’t even sure if he was one. The world had turned upside down.

  I couldn’t even tell if he was angry with me or just gracefully bowing out. Who knew, I might walk into my next session with Simon and find Rio waiting for me there, just like always, his presence a comforting monitor so Simon didn’t do anything to me unasked.

  Assuming Simon lived.

  I’d lost Rio, I’d lost Simon, and we’d lost Oscar and all the evidence at the ranch. I still had a friend out there who needed me … or at least the shape of one. Plus, a bomber to find and possible psychics out to get us, nine people to protect, and with Arthur down, only one person with even basic capability in helping me defend them.

  I briefly considered waking everyone and telling them to pack. But how securely would I need to plan to take us off the grid? It wouldn’t be as simple as just giving them a cash apartment anymore, would it? Not if Rio was right about Pithica. Plus, Rio had put a healthy dose of security on this house—at this point, without Rio’s help, transit might be more dangerous than staying put. What if Dawna had people watching, waiting for us to try to leave?

  Or—maybe worse—what if Coach had stalked me here somehow, and was outside right now, skulking in the shadows? Usually I picked up people on my tail, but somewhere between the fatigue and mental fog, I’d failed to make him when he’d followed me the day before.

  Rio had left the handheld for the security system on the foyer table. I picked it up and checked. Everything was humming along smoothly, and I was so exhausted that the thought of trying to move nine people en masse right now sheered into me with the impossibility of a glacier.

  “Cas? Is that you?” Pilar poked her head in from Arthur’s room, and her face changed as she took in my appearance. “Oh my God! What happened?”

  “We failed.” I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stand more upright. “Does Diego have a first aid kit?”

  “He does. I can get it.” She glanced down at the bandaging wrapping her own palms as she came out and shut Arthur’s door quietly behind her. “I heard, um, what Rio just said. Is he—gone?”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t want to talk about it. “Is everything okay here?”

  “No problems. It’s been quiet. Not everyone’s awake yet; I was on Arthur duty.” She paused, then started to say something twice before plunging on with it. “Just so you know—I would have gone with you. I know Arthur’s out of danger now, but your other friend still needs you. I would have said yes.”

  A transitive property of friendship. Pilar was too kindhearted for her own good.

  If I’d asked … would she be dead? Or would the extra gun mean we would have been able to stave off disaster?

  “Was there any sign of him?” she asked softly.

  “No.” Unless he had been the person in the truck. I’d never gotten a clear look. “Checker and Simon both thought this was a bad idea.”

  Pilar squished her shoulders in something like a shrug. “So was going into the mission without Simon’s help, but it meant we got Arthur back and to a hospital fast enough that he’s okay. You’re the sort of person who … when the iron’s hot, you always just go and jump on it, you know? But most of the time it works, so who am I to say we’ll get burned? Besides, we’re all going cross-eyed waiting for the other shoe to drop. I get why you pushed it.”

  She was the only one, then.

  “I don’t think I made us safer.” The confession slipped out, resonating in the early hour and Rio’s absence.

  She looked like she wanted to say something comforting, but she couldn’t deny the truth of it. And with my failure at the ranch, what else did we have to try? The ranch gave us another real estate listing, and Checker could start hacking through the Internet jungle to try to make another opening for us … but aside from the file that had baited us to the mission, D.J. had thus far been a ghost.

  And Rio had been the one looking into the Pithica angle. Rio and Simon.

  Maybe that was still the right track. Teplova and Oscar and Coach, and a history we didn’t have all the parts to yet, and how they’d intersected with the explosives expert who had so viciously warped all their lives. I might have answers too, somewhere inside me—

  Mocking laughter reverberated against the insides of my skull. If I dug into my own memories, I’d take myself off the gameboard right when I was trying to stand in front of nine people who mattered to me. But if I didn’t …

  Wait. Besides Rio and Simon, there was one other person who’d dug a frightening amount into Halberd and Pithica. Who’d discovered enough of what they were to be scared, and had given air cover to one of their supernatural graduates. And who hadn’t shared nearly enough of what she knew.

  Some wriggling discomfort wrapped itself in Tabitha’s voice—Something’s not right about her. I told myself it was only the looming prospect of confronting my own history.

  “Come on, let’s get you that first aid kit,” Pilar’s voice cut in gently.

  “Good,” I said. “And then we need to get Willow Grace back in here.”

  “Oh.” Pilar blinked at me. “Cas, she’s already here.”

  twenty-nine

  “SHE IS?” Something sat strangely with me about that, unsettling and undefined. “Did Rio call her back in?”

  “No, though he wasn’t happy about us letting her go home,” Pilar answered. “Said something about ‘insufficient vigilance’ or something. But no, she contacted us. When Checker told her we were still working the case, she offered to come back and help.”

  Willow Grace did have her own reasons for continuing to investigate. D.J. had murdered her friend, after all. Maybe she had known Coach too … it would be worth asking her about …

  I let Pilar lead me into the living room and sit me down. I registered hushed voices in the kitchen and the clink of people getting a quiet breakfast—most of the household seemed to be up despite the early hour. I supposed that made sense, considering we’d all come back exhausted in the middle of the afternoon yesterday. The only person in the living room was Juwon, who was curled up on the other couch, absorbed in a tome of a book that was bigger than his head, and was so engrossed he didn’t even look up when we came in.

  Pilar disappeared into the kitchen briefly. The voices picked up for a tick before she returned with a first aid kit and some towels, followed by Checker with a laptop.

  “Oh, geez, Cas,” Checker said, his eyes sweeping up and down my various injuries. “I take it, uh, things didn’t go well.”

  “Oscar’s dead. Simon’s in the hospital.” I hoped. Assuming he’d made it there. “You’ve kept working here?”

  “Yeah. Nothing to write home about. The police didn’t find any other explosives at the station, other than the bomb you set. The ranch is owned by a shell corporation, but I’m trying to track it back. And an arson report just hit the wires for that address, but I’m guessing it’s less ‘fire’ and more ‘incendiary device.’”

  Exactly as predicted. Rio wouldn’t have made it in time anyway, then. I tried to feel mollified by that and failed. “How about any connection to Halberd or Pithica? Where’s Willow Grace?”

  “She said she needed to go take a call,” Checker said. “It was just a minute ago. She should be back in soon. Don’t worry, I told her to stay close to the house.”

  I left off digging through the first aid kit to glance at the security screen. Sure enough, Willow’s statuesque figure paced against the back wall of the house, her phone to her ear. Good. In a second I’d get her back in here and nail her down on everything she knew.

  “We haven’t, uh, really been driving hard on looking into the Pithica thing,” Checker went on. “I didn’t know if we wanted to … antagonize them. Un
less we’re sure. Because of the deal you’ve got.”

  Christ, I didn’t know either. If they weren’t involved and they caught wind of us preparing to move against them … I had no doubt Dawna was still watching. The instant they had any excuse, they’d move to crush us. And with Rio gone …

  But Willow could give us information without tipping them off. We’d see what she had and go from there.

  “I’ve also been researching the place you found Arthur,” Checker continued, while I worked on wrapping my ankle. “As far as I can make out, neither D.J. nor Teplova has any connection to the people who own or administer it. I’d say the weird file that led us there was just a list of out-of-the-way places deserted enough for them to make use of, but the rest of it didn’t fit—it’s all random places like office buildings and parking garages.”

  “Dummy addresses,” I muttered.

  “Yeah. I don’t know … Rio mentioned about how you and he thought it was, um, not on the level.”

  “It was too easy.” I thought back. “That file just appeared. While we were looking.”

  “I figured maybe you’d done something to unlock more stuff,” Pilar said to Checker. “But we couldn’t ask you at the time.”

  “Huh?” Checker turned to her. “No, I didn’t do anything.”

  “Wait, you’re saying whoever planted it had to have done it in real time?” I said. “Not beforehand in some sort of long con?”

  “No, I mean yes, it would have to be—hang on, this is really important.” His fingers had started going on the laptop keys, and he spoke while engrossed in the screen. “This is a big deal. Tell me exactly what happened.”

  Pilar and I exchanged a glance. “We were looking at the directory,” I said. “The file wasn’t there, and then it was.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Rio and I both were.” The creepy feeling I’d missed something vital started to crawl over me. “How could that happen?”

  “There’s only one way. Someone put it there and backdated it. Someone who knew we were looking and had access.”

  I started to feel sick. “That’s a very short list.”

  “Oh, crap,” said Checker. “What if it’s one of us? We know what Pithica can do. What if one of us did it and didn’t even know?”

  “Simon,” I said. “We need Simon here…”

  But he was in a hospital somewhere. Thanks to me.

  “We can figure this out.” I glanced over at Juwon and kept my voice low—the last thing we needed was a panicked family. “Simon probably would have been able to tell if I’d been messed with. He’s seen me since then. And it can’t be you, unless the cops gave you access to a computer.”

  “Can’t be Arthur,” Checker picked up the thread. “Or Rio. That leaves…”

  “Me,” Pilar said, lowering her eyes.

  “Or Diego,” I pointed out. “Or any of the kids except Elisa. She wasn’t here either.”

  Six people whom we no longer knew we could trust.

  “Should I…” Pilar started hesitantly.

  Something caught at my mind. Something obvious. A number that was unequal. “We’re missing someone,” I cut her off. “We had nine people in the house at the time, and we’ve only counted eight of them.”

  Checker’s face knotted up as he thought back through as well. “Simon wasn’t here, right? And you just said Elisa wasn’t. And I wasn’t.”

  Pilar counted on her fingers. “Me, Diego, Tabitha, Juwon, Roy, and Matti. Plus you and Rio, Cas. That’s eight. Right?”

  I glanced around the long living/dining room as if it would spark my memory. Juwon was still across from us reading his book. I could hear the twins and Diego in the kitchen. We’d counted all of them. Who else?

  Then my gaze hit the security monitor next to me, and it was as if I were seeing double.

  “Willow Grace.” My mouth shaped the syllables, but they were barely audible.

  “Oh, right,” Checker said. “Well, it wouldn’t have been her…” He frowned.

  But Willow Grace could have been influenced by a telepath like anyone else, couldn’t she?

  Then why was it a grinding cognitive dissonance in my head to believe she might have been? If Pilar or Diego or Tabitha had been brainwashed by a psychic, that wouldn’t be their fault, I could accept that … hell, Pithica had told Arthur to point a gun at me before and he had.

  But Willow Grace was trustworthy. We’d checked her background. We knew—

  That doesn’t matter when it comes to psychics! You know it doesn’t matter!

  “Why do we…” I said slowly. It was a struggle to push sound into speech.

  Why do we trust her?

  The only person who didn’t was Rio, and I’d been writing his concerns off as the paranoia of someone who didn’t trust anyone.

  And Simon hadn’t met her.

  Willow Grace had lied to us from the beginning, and I’d let her off easy and with mild irritation, instead of nailing her to the wall and interrogating her. She’d delayed us in finding Arthur, and Checker and Pilar had been upset, but they should have taken her head off. Diego had easily convinced me to let her walk out and go home. Somehow, Tabitha had maintained some doubts—precocious, naïve Tabitha—and I’d brushed off her gut feeling too.

  Telepathy isn’t an exact science, Simon had reminded me over and over again.

  “She can’t be Pithica, right?” Checker asked, sounding freaked. He craned his neck around, as if he could see through the walls to where Willow Grace stood outside. “If she were, we wouldn’t—we wouldn’t know, would we?”

  I got what he meant. The simple fact that we had begun to doubt her—if she were Pithica, I didn’t think we’d have been able to start suspecting her on our own, even as difficult as it seemed to be. I’d never been able to figure out myself whether someone from Pithica was psychically influencing me, not without Rio’s help.

  Unless … what if there were levels of skill? What if she just wasn’t as strong? Something had sure as hell been influencing me—

  Just like with Oscar.

  “Hard-coding,” I whispered. Oscar was forgettable, and so I forgot him; Coach and the dogs were terrifying, and so I panicked; and Willow Grace was … I’d thought she was only beautiful. But she was more.

  I’d dismissed her allure as not having the mathematical capability to be mind-warping. It hadn’t even occurred to me that Teplova might have worked on her in a separate way, for another purpose. That one set of surgeries didn’t preclude another.

  Because I’d trusted Willow Grace before it could.

  She was perfectly positioned too. She graced everyone’s televisions, telling people to trust her, making them feel safe … becoming a goddess in their minds. Hell, Pilar and Checker and almost everyone else had already seen her on the screen before meeting her. They would have been doubly primed to believe everything good about her. I’d suspected her, a little—but I’d kept rationalizing that away until it was gone, so smoothly it had felt like the natural course of logic. Tabitha probably would have relented too, eventually, but she’d been alert enough to question and to bring it to me, and I’d—I’d dismissed her utterly.

  “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck,” said Checker softly.

  “Check what she’s been doing since she’s been here,” I said to him. “Which computer has she been using?”

  He nodded rapidly and moved over to the dining room table. Pilar and I followed.

  I took the security screen with me, clenched tightly in one fist, keeping half an eye on it. What should I do? Should I try to incapacitate her? What if … what if her face worked well enough that I couldn’t?

  “Go lock her out,” I said to Pilar.

  She slipped off to the hallway. A moment later the screen’s security settings confirmed that all doors and windows were secured.

  “Hey guys!” Matti poked his head in from the kitchen. “There are plans afoot in here for making waffles. Anyone want in?”

  Roy jostled up
beside him. “Don’t worry, we two dashing gentlemen shall not be the primary architects of said waffles, we know our culinary limits. We shall be kitchen minions only—”

  “We’re working,” I said. I’d grabbed a new phone out of the piles of equipment around the table and was dialing Rio.

  It rang out and disconnected.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  If I’d just discussed Rio’s concerns with him, instead of nodding and then ignoring—if I’d been more open with Simon, kept him up-to-the-minute on everything we were doing—

  If Willow Grace was working against us, if she had planted that file … the file had led us to Arthur. Why? False information? What Arthur had said about the planned bombings …

  A door slammed upstairs, making us all jump and look up. “Be that way, then!” Tabitha’s voice cried. “Dad almost died, and you still can’t get over your stupid grudge!”

  Someone tried to respond—Elisa, though I couldn’t make out the words. But a door opened and slammed again, and the conversation cut off.

  “Well, that was awkward,” Roy said. He and Matti were still hovering in the doorway to the kitchen. “Welcome to the Casa Rosales, where all the women are fierce, all the men are good-looking, and all the children have above-average felony records.”

  “Do you know what Dad did?” Juwon asked almost aggressively. He’d stood and come over, thumping his book down on the table.

  It took me a minute to realize he was talking to me. I’d barely been listening to the argument upstairs—something about Arthur. “What?”

  “When he stopped being a police officer. And when he left—” He bit down on the unsaid us. “No one is willing to tell us. We only know it’s bad.”

  I hadn’t even known that much. Checker’s bare-bones retelling had implied only that some big event had gone down, but not that Arthur had been at fault somehow.

  Either way, I didn’t have time for this. “I don’t know,” I said. “Try Checker later—”

  “He definitely knows,” said Juwon. “He won’t tell me either.” He glanced pointedly over at where Checker was head-down in a laptop, grabbed his book, and stalked sulkily out of the room.