Quick Fix

by Linda Grimes

  He screwed up his face, no doubt trying to squeeze a straight thought out of his head. “She can sit behind Steve, I guess. He’s the drummer, and he loves animals—”

  Molly objected to that with a high-pitched vocal.

  “Sorry, little fur-cousin. No offense,” Brian said, patting Molly on the head. She stuck her tongue out at him.

  Geez. Molly onstage with us? Not a great idea by a long shot, but since locking her in the pot closet wasn’t an option, it would have to do.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll have a talk with Molly before we go on, and make sure she knows she has to stay hidden while we perform. Now, where’s Suze’s wardrobe?”

  His pupils suddenly got even bigger. “It’s hanging on the back of the door. But I sort of couldn’t go with your first choice—Suze sent it out to the cleaners with a bunch of her other stuff.” He backed away. “Look, I have to go check the … uh, amplifiers … and, um, tell Steve you brought your pet—sorry, Moll! How else can I explain you? See ya in a few.”

  What had he done? I squeezed into the closet and peeked behind the door, cautiously, halfway expecting live snakes coming out of a hat. Medusa was a look, right?

  No snakes, but nearly as bad. Resigned, I put it on while Molly stood guard. I was going to kill Brian.

  *

  The house was full when I went on for the first set. Must be a lot more conical-bra Madonna fans in the greater New York City area than I’d imagined. Or maybe Lady Gaga fans. Magaga fans? Whatever.

  Yeah, Brian had brought that costume for me, the rat bastard. But I got him back for it—when Molly and I joined him for sound check, I gave him a great big hug. His eyes bulged, and his yelp was gratifying. Bet he’d have bruises on his chest for a week.

  Suze’s biggest fan was the house manager, who’d appeared like magic while we were making adjustments to the mics and amps. (And by “we” I mean Bri and the rest of the band. I stood where I was told and spoke a few words into the microphone when asked. Something really creative, like “testing, one, two.” But I’d said it in rock-star voice.)

  Joey Puccinello looked like he’d graduated high school last year. If he shaved at all, it was maybe once a week. He was skinny and on the short side—seriously, I’d been afraid to stand too close to him for fear of putting his eyes out with my armor-encased boobs. The good thing was, he was so entranced by Suze’s charms he hadn’t even noticed Molly peeking out from behind the bass drum.

  The bad thing was, he kept hinting I should ditch Brian after the show and spend a little time with him. As if. I’d just smiled, and made no promises.

  Molly was still safely stowed behind the drum set. Since the drummer was as “relaxed” as my brother, he was cool with the arrangement. Even offered to let her stomp on the bass drum pedal a few times before the place filled up, which Molly enjoyed way too much. I sensed a basement drum set in Auntie Mo’s future.

  Brian was at the mic, having introduced the rest of the band before I came on. I’ll say one thing for Suze—the crowd loved her. Or her costume, at least. The applause was nice, but the catcalls made it doubtful the patrons were expecting much from her, music-wise. Just as well, all things considered.

  I strutted across the stage (if you can call a raised platform set up at the far end of the bar a stage), employing Suze’s killer curves to the best of my ability without falling off my stiletto-heel boots, grabbed the microphone from Brian, and said, in Suze’s sultriest voice, “Let’s get this party started!”

  There was a pop! followed by a thump, and then the room went quiet.

  Okay, I know I’m not the most musically talented person in the world, but I hadn’t even started to sing yet. Surely this couldn’t be my fault.

  I peered out into the house, squinting. The guy at the soundboard stared, big-eyed and open-mouthed, at the man next to him, who was folding a knife closed and putting it back in his pocket. What the…? Mark. And he’d just severed the cable connecting the band’s equipment to the board.

  He crossed the room and stepped onto the platform, sparing me a steely-eyed glance before he turned to the audience. “Sorry, folks. We appear to be having technical difficulties with the band tonight.”

  Raucous boos emanated from the audience, interspersed with some language I sincerely hoped Molly couldn’t understand.

  “The next two rounds are on me,” Mark shouted to the room as he took me by my elbow and started pulling me off the stage. The boos morphed into cheers. I jerked my arm away from him, refusing to be led away like some misbehaving child.

  My boobs chose that moment to go off like the Fourth of July, shooting sparks in all directions. Molly jumped out from behind the drums, climbed onto my back, and started waving one arm around while she held on to my head with the other hand.

  The cheers amplified exponentially.

  Mark’s mouth set itself into an even harder line. “Brian, Ciel—in the back. Now.”

  *

  “You could have warned me I was set to go all Lady Gaga on the audience,” I said to Brian after I’d changed out of my costume. I’d refused to speak to either him or Mark until I’d rid myself of the conical bra. It was a fire hazard.

  Mark had flashed some ID and convinced the manager to let us use his office. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was a hell of a lot better than the pot closet.

  “I didn’t know they were loaded,” Brian said, bouncing Molly on his hip like a toddler. “Honest. Suze must’ve reset them when I wasn’t around.”

  “Yeah, well, you be sure to thank her for me, okay?”

  “Hey, don’t be mad, sis—it was so cool! Man, we’ve never had a reaction like that before—damn! We got a standing ovation before we even started the show!”

  Molly clapped her hands obligingly in illustration. She’d snuck in a few bows as we’d walked off the stage, enjoying herself immensely. God help Auntie Mo if she’d been bitten by the rock-star bug. Scratch that. God help Brian—and me—if Auntie Mo ever found out how it happened.

  “Did you stop to think people might have been standing up to run away from the wild animal and the woman shooting fire out of her tits?” I said, a tad disgruntled by the whole situation.

  “Never mind that,” Mark said, obviously impatient. “Ciel, I’m not even going to ask what possessed you to bring Molly tonight. I presume you have a good reason—”

  “A really good one,” I said. “Probably way better than your reason for interrupting the show. Want to hear it?”

  “Two women have been shot, and you leave me a message that Susan Hatcher may be involved. You honestly think I’m going to let you set yourself up as a target?”

  I glanced at my brother, whose usual happy and open face clouded over at the mention of Suze’s name.

  “Um,” I said to Mark, “maybe we should talk about this privately.”

  “If it’s about Suze, I want to know,” Brian said, his puppy-dog eyes for once showing determination. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Fuck. I took a deep breath and spilled everything, starting with how I went to her workplace and saw her meet up with Zoo Lady (I detoured briefly to fill them in on Zoo Lady and her goons chasing Billy, Molly, and me as we were leaving D.C.), how I followed Suze to Sternberg Park, where she’d met up with my erstwhile client. I skipped the part about Zoo Lady telling Suze where to hold Brian when questioning him. Couldn’t think of a delicate way to put that.

  The longer I talked, the colder Brian looked. I felt like I was telling a six-year-old there was no such thing as Santa Claus, and oh, by the way, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy aren’t real, either. Some truths you just don’t want to share.

  When I brought up Monica’s relation to my client, even Mark blanched. The idea of someone connected so closely to the adaptor community being a part of whatever this mess was didn’t sit well with him at all.

  “So Suze killed Monica. Is that what you’re saying?” Brian said, his normally loose-framed body rigid.

  “I got that imp
ression, yes,” I said. “Either that, or she knows who did. She seemed certain Monica is dead, is all I can say for sure.”

  “I’d rather not see that aura on you anymore, if you don’t mind,” Brian said, stiff-jawed. Because naturally I was still wearing Suze. I’d arrived as her, and adaptor caution dictated I leave as her. It was the most secure way to handle a job. Even here in the office, there was the possibility the squirrelly house manager might walk in on us.

  Screw caution. I dropped the aura gladly. The Suze-size street clothes I was wearing were suddenly too large, but if that’s what Brian wanted, it was okay by me. Mark—Mr. Discretion when it came to adapting in public—didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t say anything.

  Brian was so different from the guy he’d been just minutes before that it was scary. His face was harder, his voice harsher. More like Thomas’s when Thomas was in serious shark mode. My happy-go-lucky brother was gone, and I wanted to throttle that bitch for doing this to him.

  But I was beginning to suspect I wouldn’t get the chance, not if Brian found her first.

  “Brian—” I started. His eyes stopped me. For a guy who’d never been able to wrap his mind around violence, he looked like he was ready to rip into red meat with his bare teeth. The puppy had been replaced by a Rottweiler.

  “Mark,” he said, “take Ciel and Molly back to the lab. I’ll meet you there later. You can go out the back way—no one will see you.”

  Mark’s eyes matched my brother’s for hardness. The look wasn’t nearly as jarring on him. “As long as you don’t do anything stupid.”

  “She’s using me, Mark. She played me for a fool.”

  “Doesn’t matter now. I need her if I’m going to figure out what the hell is going on. Maybe you better let me take care of her.”

  “No. I’ll get her and bring her to you. One way or another.” Brian turned to leave, not even saying good-bye to me or Molly.

  “Hey, Bri,” Mark said to his back.

  Brian paused, then responded without taking his eyes off the exit in front of him. “What?”

  “Save me something to question.”

  Brian’s only answer was to leave, slamming the door behind him.

  “Mark, what are you thinking? You can’t let him go after her—that’s Brian, for gosh sakes! He doesn’t do confrontation.”

  “Relax, Howdy. He won’t find her, and he needs to blow off steam. Let him.”

  “How can you know that?” I said.

  “Call it a hunch.”

  “You’re going to risk letting my brother mix it up with a possible killer because of a hunch?”

  He gathered up Molly and herded me toward the door. “My hunches tend to be reliable.”

  *

  “So,” I said to Mark once we were in his car (a Volvo this time) and Molly was safely buckled into the built-in booster seat in back, fast asleep. “There’s something else I should probably tell you before we get to the lab.”

  He gave me a sidelong glance. “Do I really want to know?”

  “James is invisible.”

  His double take was strangely satisfying. It wasn’t easy to surprise Mark. “Explain,” he ordered as he pulled into traffic. He appeared to be weighing the likelihood of this kind of additional complication against the possibility that I’d just gone crazy.

  I sighed. “It’s true. He was testing some new antidote for Molly on himself before giving it to Molly—something that was supposed to make an adaptor drop a secondary aura—and I guess he took too much. Or else, since he can only project his own aura, that’s the one he dropped. So now he’s projecting no aura at all—he’s invisible.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Geez, Mark, I saw him—or rather, didn’t see him—with my own eyes. Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Permanent?”

  “He doesn’t think so, but who knows?”

  Mark drove in silence for a while, digesting the latest bit of weirdness. When I couldn’t take listening to my own thoughts any longer, I asked, “Have you heard from Billy? I left him a message, too, but…”

  His mouth tightened the slightest bit. When he spoke, his voice was carefully neutral. “I haven’t heard from Billy. I was hoping you had.”

  “Not a word,” I said, trying to sound casual, which wasn’t easy, considering how worried I was. “Maybe he’s with Thomas,” I suggested, not especially hopeful.

  “Tom hasn’t heard from him, either. He never showed up to discuss his defense strategy, which, as you might imagine, isn’t sitting well with your oldest brother.”

  Oh, I could imagine all right. “I thought Tom went to see Laura.”

  “He’s with her now. Said to tell Billy—if I can find him—that if he misses his court date, he’d better just retire his primary aura for good, because he was through with him.”

  “Thomas wouldn’t do that. Hell, I’ll fill in for Billy in court if he can’t be there,” I said.

  That only made Mark’s mouth go even tighter. “And possibly wind up being hauled to jail yourself? That won’t be happening.”

  I thought about pointing out he had no say in what I would or wouldn’t be doing, but decided against it. Why get all heated about it now when it might not even be necessary?

  Mark parked in the same garage as he had before, the same space, in fact. If he was thinking about the kiss, though, it didn’t show. My heart thumped harder as I hurried out of the car and busied myself unbuckling the sleeping Molly’s seat belt.

  Whoa … wait a second. Was it my imagination, or did Molly-O suddenly seem a little more Molly and a little less “O”? I turned on the interior light to get a better look. She was definitely less furry. Her nose was back to normal, and her eyelashes were back, too. As I watched, her own mouth appeared, followed by her hair.

  “She’s changing back!” I whisper-yelled, afraid waking her might somehow stall the process.

  Mark was right behind me, leaning over me, pulling me out of the way. He didn’t make a sound as we watched Molly waver between auras, finally settling into her own. Hastily, I slipped off my lightweight jacket and covered her. If she woke up and found herself naked she’d be mortified.

  “God, I hope it sticks,” I said quietly.

  “You and me both, Howdy,” Mark said with one of his rare smiles. My breath caught in my throat. I was going to have to work harder at not melting every time he did that.

  Fortunately, he didn’t notice my reaction because he was already bending over to pick up Molly, careful to keep her well covered by the jacket. She sighed in her sleep, and reached up to put her arms around his neck, snuggling against his chest.

  I was not jealous.

  Gaaah. Okay, I was, but only a little. And it faded when I thought about Billy, whose chest was the one I really wanted to be snuggled up against. It was Billy I was missing. Billy I was so worried about I wanted to cry in frustration, or maybe hit something.

  “Come on, Howdy. Let’s get her in and show James the good news.”

  “If we can find him,” I said wryly.

  Chapter 21

  James didn’t open the door, not even after I started pounding on it.

  “He can’t have gone home,” I said. “He knew I’d be bringing Molly back here after the show. Wait a sec. I’ll call him.” But his cell went directly to voice mail.

  Mark shifted Molly to one arm and reached into his pocket for a set of keys. He used one, combined with a code he punched into the keypad, and pressed his thumb against a biometric pad for good measure. Nobody could accuse James of being lax on security. I wasn’t surprised Mark could get in—he’d been the one to set it up.

  “James!” I called out as soon as I was through the door. No answer. And the place felt … empty.

  Mark carried Molly to the alcove and laid her on the sofa while I walked the perimeter of the lab. Nothing.

  Molly’s voice drew me. “I’m back. I’m me again!” Her joy was infectious, and for a minute it stopped my other worries. />
  “Hey there, Molly. Good to see you again,” I said.

  She jumped up and ran to me, holding the jacket around her while she hopped up and down. “Look at me, look at me!”

  Yes, I hopped, too, hugging her close to me at the same time. “Oh, Molly. I’m so happy. Don’t you ever scare me like that again!”

  She giggled. “Hey, it wasn’t my idea. Where’s James? I want to show him—he worked so hard to fix me.”

  I met Mark’s eyes over Molly’s head. He shrugged and said, “He must’ve stepped out for a minute. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. In the meantime, why don’t you get dressed?”

  “I left you some clothes in the supply closet, Molls. You can change in there,” I said.

  Her eyes twinkled at me, so much like her brother my heart contracted. “You won’t lock me in, will you?”

  “So, you remember everything, do you?” I laughed. “No, you’re safe. I could never be that rotten to you.”

  She flashed me the Doyle forgive-me smile (even harder to resist than the Doyle eyes) and skipped away. After she was gone, I said to Mark quietly, “Look, if James is still invisible, he could be here somewhere. Asleep, or maybe even unconscious.” Or worse, I thought, but refused to say it out loud, as if voicing it would make it so.

  Mark nodded. “You start on the other side. Make sure you step on every floor tile not covered by something solid—we should be able to feel him if he’s here.”

  I swept a foot in front of me before each step, taking care not to step on anything I couldn’t see. Mark did the same.

  “Ciel, Mark—come quick!” Molly’s voice rang out from inside the closet.

  I was the nearest, so I got there first, but Mark was only a second behind, despite having to travel twice the distance. Molly was wearing her own shorts and T-shirt, and had one sandal on. She pointed the other toward the back corner, a look of horrified fascination on her face. “Is that…” she said.

  “James,” I finished, and ran to the corner. He was barely conscious, and kind of … translucent. His aura must have been reappearing, and it didn’t look like the process was agreeing with him. He’d been dressing himself when he’d passed out.