by Kim Harrison
“Stay together?” Peri exclaimed. “You lied to me!”
She fought to get to Jack, but Frank had her, arms pinned to her sides, helpless. “How long? How long have you been doing this? Lying about our tasks, making me into . . . a corrupt agent? Was my name on that list? It was, wasn’t it. And it wasn’t me, it was you!”
Jack lifted the scarf from his middle and let the blood-soaked yarn hit the floor with a sodden plop. “You can’t tell me you don’t love the adrenaline,” he said, shifting his torn shirt to show the body armor dented and smeared with synthetic blood. “The excitement. The money.” He looked up at the last, giving her a shit-eating grin.
“I’m not a mercenary. I don’t kill for money.” Peri wiggled as Jack levered himself up gingerly to sit on the low stage. He must have known he might be shot tonight, even down to where to put the sack of fake blood. Damn it all to hell.
“If you’re not doing it for money, then you’re doing it for kicks.” Jack reached awkwardly to the straps, and the sound of Velcro ripped the air. His innocent blue eyes were full of knowing. “Admit you like it. The thrill, knowing that you might have to kill someone to survive. The sense of superiority you get from it. Otherwise it wouldn’t have taken you this long to figure things out.”
“Let me go,” Peri muttered, twisting in Frank’s grip as Sandy watched in amusement. “Let me go!” she demanded, throat raw. She was a soldier. She did not do this for kicks!
But she was caught. The doors were barred. Jack was unhurt, and they were going to shoot her to make her draft. And that man now over by the bar—Allen—was waiting to spin her back four months to where her ignorance lay. Not this time. Not again.
“I won’t forget this,” she vowed as Jack set his body armor on the stage and cautiously palpated his middle. “I don’t care if you take away a year. I’ll remember.”
Sandy looked at Allen as if for his opinion, and the man pinched the bridge of his narrow nose in thought. “She’s right,” he said, and Jack’s head snapped up, his fingers fumbling as he rebuttoned his bloody shirt. “There’s too much to fragment and not enough to form a memory from. Not after Jack’s been in there already, making holes.”
“Hey, I gave her a clean memory,” Jack said, and Peri’s heart thumped at the glimpse of his holster under his coat. “Do you know how hard it is to fragment an entire person? Make a realistic timeline from two?”
He can do that? she thought, her lips tasting a memory of chocolate, nothing more.
“Four months isn’t enough,” Allen said. “There are too many residuals, and the gaps will fester until she digs the truth out or MEPs trying. I have to take her all the way back.”
Peri went still in Frank’s grip, scared. “All the way? What is all the way?”
“Hey. Wait a moment.” Jack awkwardly got to his feet, hand to his bruised ribs. “I’ve got this. I know her mind. A year maybe, but no more. She trusts me.”
“Not anymore,” Peri snapped.
“I agree,” Sandy said. “Take her all the way back. It’s the only way to be sure she stays useful.” She beamed at Jack. “Just think. You get to fall in love with her again.”
“Aww, fuck,” he muttered, infuriating Peri.
“Let me go!” Peri demanded. She’d had enough, and when Sandy looked away, she acted. Heart pounding, she breathed fast, enriching her blood. Frank’s grip tightened as he guessed she was going to do something. It was exactly what Peri wanted.
Peri went loose in his grip. Frank leaned forward to keep their balance. His chin dropped, and Peri slammed her head back, teeth clenched; his nose crunched and he howled in pain.
Peri dropped again, breath held and core tight. Frank instinctively tightened his grip until she could lever him over her. Her breath came in fast as his weight arched over her then slammed into the floor to knock him breathless. She was already moving, barreling into Jack on the stage and grabbing his Glock from behind his coat.
“Get her!” Sandy screeched, but Frank was trying to breathe around the blood and broken cartilage. Jack didn’t move, his own weapon now pointed at his head, shaking in Peri’s hand.
Peri held Jack before her like a shield, his body armor useless on the stage. “How long have you been lying to me?” she demanded as Frank sat up and Sandy ran to him. “Tell me or I’m blowing a hole in your head right now!”
“Three years,” Jack said dully.
Three years? Their entire relationship? She could hardly think, she was so angry.
“Sure, go ahead, but leave the gun here,” Peri heard Frank say to Sandy, napkins pressed to his face. The tiny woman smiled and handed him her pistol. Peri stiffened.
Howling, Sandy threw a side kick over Jack’s head. Her foot hit Peri square on, shoving her backward and dazing her. Sandy screamed again, poised to do some major damage. Instinct moved Peri and she dropped Jack’s Glock to catch Sandy’s foot, but Sandy jerked it free before Peri could break her ankle.
Sandy crouched to attack, fingers crooked to gouge and teeth clenched. The lump of Jack’s discarded body armor pinched under Peri as she got to a kneel. Her fingers twined in Sandy’s luscious black hair and she slammed her head into the stage. Sandy shrieked, elbowing Peri in the gut as Peri pounded her head again. She’d always wondered if she could take the little dragon down. Looked like Sandy had entertained the same question.
But when Sandy got a good hit in, Peri had to let go. Both women staggered upright. Peri struggled to breathe, hunched as she wiped the blood from her cheek. Frank had gotten up. So had Jack—creeping to the locked front door, the little pissant. Panting, Sandy touched her lip to find it bleeding. Seeing the hair-twined chopstick in Peri’s grip, Sandy’s eyes narrowed.
“Allen, will you just shoot her!” Frank shouted, and Sandy rushed Peri with a high-pitched howl. Peri swung, that stupid chopstick set to gouge. Sandy blocked her, dropping back to the bar and scrambling atop it.
“Not me,” Allen said as he tossed the rifle to Frank, the stock smacking his meaty hand with a solid sound. “She might remember, and I want out when this is done.”
“I don’t want her remembering me shooting her either,” Frank said.
Peri smiled grimly. Everything could be fragmented, but emotion lingered to fuel the intuition and there’d be mistrust, even if she couldn’t place why.
“You spoiled, entitled little girl!” Sandy shouted from atop the bar. “I’m sick of you drafters complaining. You have someone waiting on you hand and foot, treating you like a god, and all you do is bitch about it when you lose a little memory. Life isn’t fair. Love is not real. I’m doing you a fucking favor! Love?” Sandy shrieked. “There is no such thing as love!”
Teeth clenched, Peri slipped her six-inch blade from her boot with her other hand and threw it at Sandy. It wouldn’t hurt her much, but all Peri wanted was for her to shut up.
“No!” Frank cried as Sandy gasped, twisting to avoid the knife. She fell behind the bar and into the mirror, shattering it. Bottles rained down when the shelves collapsed.
“Jack, no!” Allen shouted, and Peri staggered when a gun popped. Something slammed into her, and recognizing the sound of Jack’s Glock, Peri looked at the blood seeping from her chest, then to him standing beside the door. The muzzle was smoking.
Peri staggered. The chopstick in her hand clattered to the floor, and she clutched the table. Shock took her down. She hit the floor hip first, then collapsed. Twin pains, one in her skull, the other in her chest, throbbed in agony as she stared at the black ceiling. Her fingers were warm and wet, and she coughed, scared when it came out bloody. Not again.
“Jump,” Jack said wearily as he stood over her and holstered his weapon. “Go on and draft. I like you better when you’re stupid.”
“What are you doing? You’re her anchor!” Allen exclaimed, and suddenly he was there, shoving a wad of those stupid napkins onto her chest. Jack must have nicked her lung. She had time, but only until it filled with blood. The longest she�
�d ever drafted was forty-three seconds. If she staved it off longer than that, it wouldn’t matter.
“I can’t fragment the trauma of you shooting her,” Allen protested. “It was going to be hard enough with Sandy or Frank doing it!”
Oh God. She was going to jump. She’d give anything to be able to draft a day, an hour. “I won’t,” Peri said, teeth clenched against the pain. “I’ll die first.” She coughed again, the ragged sound filling her with fear that she was tearing her lungs to shreds.
“If she dies, Bill is going to be pissed.” Hunched and wiping the blood from him, Frank went to Sandy, her loud swearing behind the bar saying she was okay. Peri hated them. She hated them all.
Allen, though, was holding her, his eyes soft, and even that small compassion from a stranger almost brought her to tears. His eyes are so pretty, she thought, deciding that his long nose suited him where it would look wrong on anyone else, and his thin hands were blessedly warm. She wouldn’t draft, not even to save her life. Bill would just have to deal with it.
“Peri, draft,” Allen said, and she blinked, wondering why his beautiful brown eyes were scrunched up as if he were the one in pain. “You can’t do anything when you’re dead.”
“What, and have all this go away?” she rasped. “Eat shit and die.”
Frustration pinched his brow. “If you draft, I’ll let you shoot Jack.”
Peri’s eyes flicked past Allen to Jack as the man popped up from behind the bar where he’d been helping Sandy. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “She can’t rewrite a draft. I’d be dead!”
“You’ll give me the rifle?” she wheezed, clenched in pain.
Frank came out from behind the bar. “Ah, Allen?”
Nervous and looking small, Jack backed to the door. “I’m not dying for her.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have shot her,” Allen griped, and he turned Peri’s face to look at him, his thin finger callused and rough. “How about it?”
“You’ll wipe me down to nothing,” she groaned. “Use me.”
He nodded. “Someone will. You’ll never remember Jack, but I’ll give you the chance to shoot him before you forget.”
Revenge wasn’t a good weight in the balance of actions, but right now . . . she didn’t give a shit.
“You guys figure this out. I’m leaving,” Jack said, and Frank cocked his rifle. It wouldn’t matter, though. If Peri drafted, he’d be right back in here and he knew it.
The pressure to jump was building, and Peri looked at Jack, white-faced with anger. Her fingers felt that awful slick stickiness of blood on the varnished floor. The feel of blood was in her mouth. Pain crushed her as Allen knelt beside her, a wad of napkins pressed to her chest. She squinted at the ceiling, wondering if she could see the ghost of herself up there. Everything was important, and she sealed it all away, trying to make a knot of memory as she panted in agony. She would remember this . . . but she’d need a trigger. Blood, varnish, slick fingers, the hardness of the floor, the pain of loss radiating through her, betrayal, Sandy’s hair twisted in her fingers. Allen was going to take the last three years from her, but killing Jack would be worth it.
“Deal,” she said, and then . . . she jumped, and the world flashed silver sparkles that dissolved into blue.
Hunched and hurting, Peri stood on the stage and wiped the blood from her cheek. Sandy rose up between her and the bar, panting as she touched her lip to find she’d bitten it. The woman’s hands clenched into tiny fists.
Peri reoriented herself, knowing that in thirty seconds she was going to be dumber than a stone. She was drafting. Jack had betrayed her. Bill was lining his pockets with Opti’s agents’ efforts. Her own psychologists were working for him. So was Allen, but he’d promised to give her a rifle so she could shoot Jack’s head clean off.
She turned to Allen, watching her from behind his thick glasses and from under black curls. Frank’s rifle was in his hand. It had one shell in it. It had to be enough.
“You spoiled, entitled little girl!” Sandy shouted, still before the bar but her words unchanged from the first draft, telling Peri she wasn’t a drafter or anchor. “I’m sick of you drafters complaining. You have someone waiting on you hand and foot, treating you like a god, and all you do is bitch about it when you lose a little memory. Life isn’t fair. Love is not real. I’m doing you a fucking favor!”
“You got that right.” Peri held out a hand to Allen, her fingers and toes tingling. What if he’d lied to her, too? Why was she so trusting?
But Allen threw it. The rifle hit her palm with a solid thud. Confidence flowed, and Peri turned, cocking it with a sure motion.
“We’re in a draft!” Frank shouted, and Sandy went ashen-faced. “Twenty seconds and she’s done! Sandy, get down!”
Plenty of time to take care of business, Peri mused, filing Frank’s anchor status away. He had to be an anchor, otherwise he would’ve been as oblivious to what was going on as Sandy was.
Jack was backing to the door, his bloody hands outstretched. “Babe, let me explain.”
“There are no words,” Peri said, and with an unhealthy satisfaction, pulled the rifle up.
He ran for the door.
She didn’t have a problem shooting him in the back, seeing as he’d been working behind hers for three years.
Peri sighed through the recoil as she pulled the trigger. Jack hit the door, arms splayed as he fell flat against it. He slipped down in a tangle of legs and arms, knocking the floor sweeper upside down, where it beeped for assistance. Sandy’s hands muffled her scream. The shells were spent, and Peri watched Jack twitch and go still.
Jack is dead, she thought, and the sudden shock of that hit her.
She did nothing when Frank wrestled the rifle from her, numb as Sandy ran from behind the bar to kneel over Jack. “Call an ambulance!” she cried, but no one moved.
“You let her kill her anchor,” Frank said as he spun the rifle to the floor. There was blood on his hand gripping her, and Peri wondered whose it was. Hers? Jack’s?
Allen looked at his watch, his expression grim. “I just saved Bill’s best drafter. She needed closure or she’d never forget.”
“In about five seconds, she’s going to need an anchor,” the large man said. “She knows I’m not hers.”
“Not my problem,” Allen said, and Peri blearily looked up, still in shock. “I don’t know how to rebuild memories, only destroy them.”
Peri’s heart thudded as Sandy rose from Jack’s broken body, her face pale.
“It’s not mine, either,” Frank said as he shoved Peri at Allen. “You think you can hold her while I get Jack out of sight?”
She fell into Allen, the sudden motion reviving her. She took a heaving breath, but it exploded from her in pain when Allen twisted her arm behind her, threatening to dislocate it.
“Sandy, some help here?” Frank said brusquely as Allen tightened his grip, and she gasped, seeing stars. “I don’t want to have to explain him when Peri finishes the weave.”
“Don’t do this,” Peri demanded, hating her inability, and then adrenaline flashed through her as time began to mesh. Suddenly, forgetting was too high a price to pay, and she panicked, fighting Allen and sending them both down.
“Get your ass over here and help me!” Frank shouted, and Sandy screamed something in a singsong language, bitter and angry.
“Let me go!” Peri exclaimed, but it was too late, and she seized as time snapped and her head exploded in a red wash.
“Her scarf! Get her bloody scarf,” Frank exclaimed.
“No!” Peri raged as Allen slipped into her mind, the way opened by the meshing of the timelines. Images sped past her, curling up in flame, destroyed: the button from the security guard, New Year’s under the stars, throwing flowers from the bridge in Paris in the rain, a total eclipse of the sun seen from a cruiser in the Bahamas, their toes rising out of a tub of bubbles, their first kiss, a shy smile and introduction as she was given a new anchor. She was going to
miss Jennifer, but Jack seemed nice.
Pulse hammering, Peri looked up, confused when the man kneeling beside her staggered to a stand, a hand to his chest as he panted. Heart attack, she thought, and she felt her own chest, not knowing why.
Suspecting that she’d drafted, she lurched to her feet, reaching for the table when suddenly everything hurt. New hurt layered over old. She was at Overdraft, but not the one she remembered. It was closed, with chairs on the tables. Sandy was behind the bar, pale and unmoving as she stared at her with wide eyes, her beautiful hair mussed. Frank was with her, dropping a red towel into the sink and turning the water on full. The smell of spent gunpowder was obvious.
Sandy—always-in-control Sandy—was quietly panicking, muttering in a singsong until Frank told her to shut up. His back was to Peri, and he watched her through the mirror. But it was the mirror with its shelves of bottles that Peri stared at. They looked wrong in their orderly smoothness, and she couldn’t say why.
“Where’s Jennifer?” Peri whispered, glancing at the unfamiliar man. Her hand went to her throat. It was sore, and she was sweating. Confused, she looked at her wrist, red where someone had twisted the skin. Her shoulder felt as if it had been wrenched.
“Call 911,” Frank muttered, and the man beside her jerked his head up. Peri’s eyes widened. Frank was covered in blood!
“We’re all okay,” the man beside Peri said firmly, a ribbon of sweat inching down his neck, and Sandy looked at her feet, her lips parting.
“B-but . . . ,” Peri stammered.
“I said we’re all okay,” the man said again. “Frank doesn’t need an ambulance. It’s just a bloody nose, for God’s sake.”
Frank turned off the water, motions small as he edged out from behind the bar. Shaky, Peri sat against the edge of the table and tried to figure out what had happened. At least she knew where she was and who she was with. Her eyes slid to the Opti stiff now sitting on the raised fireplace hearth, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, his curly black hair hiding his eyes. Mostly, anyway.