by Stacey Jay
No matter what his reasons.
“If Stephanie or the baby die, I won’t keep quiet anymore. I’ll tell everyone—the police, the FBI, Fairy Containment and Control, doctors, scientists. I’ll tell them everything, and I’ll keep talking until someone believes me.”
His hands fall from my face. “That would be suicide.”
“I don’t care. This is too much.” I pray Tucker will realize that I’m right. “These are two innocent lives.”
“That woman is FBI. I’m sure she’s nowhere close to innocent.” There’s something personal behind his words. Tucker definitely isn’t a member of the FBI fan club, but I don’t have time to figure out why.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “The baby hasn’t even been born. It’s as innocent as—”
“So is it even a baby yet?”
“What?”
“It’s still within the time limit for a legal abortion. Some people would say it’s not even technically alive.”
His words leave a sour taste in my mouth, but not as sour as if I thought he believed them. “It’s alive to Stephanie. It was the first day she found out she was pregnant. This should be her and Hitch’s choice,” I say. “I need you to make this right.”
He sighs, frustrated, but weakening. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The Big Man’s the only one with the antidote.”
“So there is an antidote?”
“There is,” Tucker says. “I promise he’ll be good to his word. If the doctor takes care of the lab, the Big Man will take care of his wife and baby.”
I wish his promise made me feel better, but it doesn’t. “Why Hitch? Why does he have to do this? Why doesn’t the Big Man blow up the cave himself?”
“He doesn’t know where it is anymore. They’ve changed up the locations.”
So what Hitch heard about the lab being mobile must be true, otherwise Tucker would have said “location” not “locations.” Still, that leaves the question: “Why not have you or one of the other invisible minions find it and get the job done?”
“I’m nobody’s minion.”
“You know what I mean.”
“We need a fed,” Tucker says after a moment. “The Big Man wants the lab shut down permanently and those people out of his territory. The doctor is supposed to download a few files before he rigs the place to blow. Once he turns those over to his superiors, there’s no way the people behind this will be able to bring the project back to life.”
“Because they’re FBI, too?”
Tucker’s eyes dip as he nods. “They’ll know how close they are to exposure and back off, and the Big Man will be able to move on with his own plans.”
“Which are . . . ?” I know I’m pressing my luck, and I’m not surprised when Tucker answers my question with a question.
“Who told you the way out here, Red? I need a name. If someone in our organization is trying to get you killed, I need to know about it.”
“It’s not someone in your organization.”
“You can’t know that,” Tucker says. “The Big Man has other people in town, people you’d never think are part of this. People you might think you can trust.”
“Interesting.” I refuse to start imagining who else among my friends and acquaintances might not be what they seem. “But I know it wasn’t one of the Big Man’s people.”
“You can’t—”
“It wasn’t a person.” I take advantage of his stunned silence to spill the entire story—starting with the dreams, through the attack yesterday, and finishing with the fairy in my bathroom pooping on my soap. I tell him about the Gentry and Grandpa Slake’s threats and I’ve just gotten around to my deal with the fairy and his helpful directions out to the Big Man’s compound when Tucker starts cussing a blue streak.
“I know, right?” I say. “He’s a motherfucker.”
“Motherfucker,” Tucker repeats.
“But you don’t sound surprised.” I shift into the shade of his shadow, direct sunlight too much to take without my glasses on even if my head is feeling better. “Why didn’t you tell me fairies can speak English? I thought I was losing my mind.”
“They can’t speak English.”
“Beg to differ.”
“Take a listen to yourself next time you think you’re speaking English to one of those critters,” he says. “Think you’ll find it pretty interesting.”
“Interesting how?”
“You’re speaking their language; they’re not speaking yours.”
“What?” Could he be right? When I came out of the bathroom after my bargaining session with the fairy, Hitch had asked if I was feeling okay. He’d said he heard me coughing a lot. I dismissed his concern—thinking Bernadette must be getting a cold—but fairy noises are pretty guttural. At least they sounded that way to me before . . .
“But how’s that possible?” I ask. “How could I speak fairy without—”
“You moved a truck around with your mind yesterday, and you’re asking me how something magical is possible?”
Right. One point for Tucker.
“Grace could do it, too,” he says. “Talk to the fairies, understand what they were saying.”
Grace. I forget sometimes that Tucker knew her, cared about her. The sorrow in his voice when he says her name sounds real at least. But how can he have feelings for one little girl and then turn around and let the Big Man put a baby’s life in danger?
Whatever the Big Man has on him must be some serious shit. It makes me wonder who he loves, and what the Big Man has threatened to do to them if Tucker doesn’t perform up to expectations.
“Grace and I, we’re the only ones?” Tucker’s eyes get fuzzy around the edges and threaten to disappear. “Don’t fade out on me.” I reach out, tangling my fingers in the invisible fabric of his shirt. As soon as I touch it, a wad of white appears in my fist, a development so surprising that I pull my hand away and stumble back a step.
“Shit. So if I touch you, I—”
“My clothes,” Tucker corrects. “You can touch me all you like and I’ll stay out of sight, but clothes are different. That’s why I patrol naked if I’m worried about brushing up against someone on the street.”
Naked Tucker. Roaming the streets. Normally that would be a distracting thought, but not today. Now it only makes me wonder . . . “How can you make your clothes disappear? They’re not part of you or infected by fairy magic. So why—”
“Are you going to stand here being nosy all day?” he asks. “Or are you going to help that man find the cave? I’m sure the Big Man would appreciate you facilitating—”
“Fuck the Big Man. I need answers, Tucker,” I say. “I’m not going to keep playing nice if I’m not kept in some part of the loop.”
He grunts, and I sense I’ve nearly pushed him too far.
“At least tell me what’s so different about me and Grace.” I soften my tone, and add an eyelash bat or two into the mix. “Why can we talk to them?” He doesn’t say a word, but his eyes are slowly joined by a hint of nose and chin. “Please, Tucker. I need something. I can’t do this if—”
“It might be a girl thing.” Tucker breaks under pressure more easily than I assumed he would. “You and Grace—You are the only female in our happy family.”
“You’re kidding me,” I say, genuinely surprised. “Why? There have to be other women who were bitten, right? I mean—”
“I’m going to tell you some things,” Tucker says, in a loaded way that makes me doubt the wisdom of pursuing more answers. “These are things you need to know, but if you ever open that pretty mouth of yours, you’ll get me killed. And not only me. There are innocent people on both sides, Red. Can I trust you to keep mine safe?”
I nod.
“You tell no one. Not your boyfriend, not Mr. FBI, not—”
“I promise,” I say, meaning it. “I get that the Big Man has something on someone you love. I won’t put them in danger. I swear.”
/> Tucker’s eyes close and stay closed as he starts his story. “Big Man used to work at the lab. When he left to start his own facility, he didn’t go alone. Two other scientists came with him. Women. They were all part of the team working on the medication to help immune people bitten by the Slake.”
“So where are they now?”
“I’ll get to it, Red.” His eyes open, and are joined by a smiling mouth. I’m glad to see he looks amused by my impatience. The super intense Tucker was freaking me out. “They knew the fairies around here had special venom that caused some pretty kick-ass side effects in people usually immune to fairy bite.”
“Magic.”
“Yeah, magic. But also crazy. Slake venom is tough on the nervous system, even for immune people. In the early tests, the negative side effects were too intense. The infected didn’t last long.”
“They died?”
“Or were killed. I don’t know for sure,” Tucker says. “Wasn’t around back then.”
He wasn’t around . . . I want to ask him when he joined the Big Man—and why and how—but bite my lip. Tucker’s history isn’t as vital to my existence as the history he’s telling me right now.
“The Big Man’s team developed a protein they thought would protect the nervous system,” he continues. “It was supposed to keep people from going crazy while allowing the infected immune to enjoy the magical side effects of Slake bite. But after they left the lab they had a hard time getting their hands on human test subjects. So all three of them—the two women and the Big Man—decided to infect themselves.”
“Wow. That’s . . . extreme.”
He shrugs. “They were immune. Guess they felt they were close enough to an answer to risk it.”
“So what happened?” I ask, sensing where this is going.
“The official story is that, in the long term, the cure didn’t work for the women, and the Big Man honored his promise to his partners and shot them when they started to lose their minds.”
“But you don’t think that’s the true story.”
“I did,” he says. “Until Grace. She could talk to them like the Big Man said the other women could. She could also control the bastards, make them fly around in circles or bring her baby alligators from the swamp—whatever she wanted.”
“What did the Big Man say about that?”
His lips curve in a hard grin. “He said her power was a new development, and Grace was just an exceptional kid. All of us have different strengths and levels of ability, so that made sense to most people. And the few old-timers who’ve been with the Big Man since back when his partners were alive never said anything different.”
“But you smelled a rat.”
“I started to wonder if maybe his partners didn’t have the same powers Grace did. If maybe the Big Man killed them so he’d keep on being the one in charge.”
I think on that for a moment. If the Big Man’s partners were able to control fairies, that wouldn’t make them any more of a personal liability—they could have killed him in his sleep with a regular old gun if they’d wanted him out of the picture. But that kind of power would pack a punch when it came to impressing the troops. I think for a minute about whom I’d follow—the Big Man, or a lady scientist with the power to communicate with the fairies and the mojo to bend them to her will.
She’d have the ultimate bioweapon, a tool to terrorize 95 percent of the population. If I were the sort to voluntarily join a terrorist group, I know which leader I’d pick. The Big Man must have figured most of his troops would feel the same.
Which means . . .
“I’m guessing I shouldn’t tell anyone else about the latest development in my personal magical journey.”
“I wouldn’t. Unless you’ve got a death wish I don’t know about.”
I sigh. Just when I thought I was less alone, I’ve become more isolated than ever. “Then what am I supposed to do about the Slake? The old fart said he’d start killing people I care about if I don’t leave town by tomorrow night. He can get through the gates. And he’ll do it; I know he will. He already tried to kill me today. If I don’t come back dead from this trip, I—”
“Kill him,” Tucker says, like the no-nonsense assassin he is. “Make sure you’re alone and use what you can do. Take care of it.”
“I can’t,” I say. “My head isn’t right. I woke up this morning and I couldn’t even move my cat out of the neighbor’s garden. The fairy doesn’t realize it yet, but he will.”
“You need another injection. I’ll bring you one. Five o’clock. Your place.”
“But I still have a bunch at home.” I blink as innocently as I can manage and flip my glasses back down on my face, the better to conceal my lying eyes.
“Yeah, about that . . .” Tucker sighs. “You’re going to want to throw those away.”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing but salt water in those shots,” he says. “I figured I’d see how reliable you were before I gave you a real stockpile.”
“You’re a shifty character.” But there’s no real heat in my tone. How can I be angry when he’s saved me from further shot angst? Now I won’t have to worry about explaining the lost injections to Tucker, or pushing Hitch to tell me where he hid the needles.
I turn and cast a glance back at the Land Rover. Even from this far away, it’s obvious Hitch is getting twitchy. He’ll be out of the truck before too long. Tucker and I have to finish up, even if I do have a hundred more questions and no idea what to do with Hitch now that our directions turned out to be so much fairy poo.
“What should I do? How can I find the cave?”
“I’d head back out to visit those boys working the Gramercy port,” Tucker says. “I bet they know more about where the medical supplies are going than they’re letting on.”
“Yeah?”
“They do their share of snooping. Last month the skinny one got close to the compound. The team on guard had to shoot him with a tranquilizer and dump him a couple miles away. Guy didn’t wake up for hours.”
“He could have died,” I say, telling myself I should feel bad for Lance—it has to be Lance he’s talking about. I can’t imagine his partner being skinnier than the man I met yesterday. “Or been bitten by Slake.”
“He could have. But he didn’t, and he wasn’t,” Tucker says. “The Slake don’t bite the immune often. Once they figured out what was happening with the protein, they’ve kept their teeth to themselves. You and Grace are the only two I know who were bitten. The rest of us got infected with a needle.”
Grandpa Slake. He probably put the kibosh on biting the immune. He’s smart enough to sort out cause and effect. Hm . . .
I wave to Hitch, then hold up a finger, indicating I’ll be one more minute. “If the Big Man and the people at the lab and a bunch of crooked FBI know that Slake venom is special and does things to the immune, how come everyone else doesn’t know? How has this stayed a secret?”
“Who says it’s a secret?” Tucker’s eyes fade, followed by the hint of nose and lips, until it feels like I’m alone when he says, “I’d think twice about peeing in a cup if I were you.”
“You would?” My stomach drops.
“Sometimes the injections show up in a urine sample. People with a positive test like that tend to disappear.”
I don’t even bother asking him how he knows about my new FCC-mandated drug tests. Tucker apparently knows everything, and I—despite the dirt he’s shared—feel like I know less than I did before. But I get what he’s hinting at. Someone in Fairy Containment and Control knows about the Slake and the Big Man’s protein and the magic and all the rest of it. Maybe a lot of someones.
And those someones think I’m a person of interest.
And if they find out I’ve been injected with the protein, I might become one of the people who disappear.
Peeing in an iron suit—while keeping all the necessary parts covered and safe from fairy bite—is an involved bit of business, a fact I’m
grateful for when we stop for Hitch to take a trip into the swamp about a mile from the bridge leading to the docks. While Hitch finds a tree, I pace around the Land Rover, doing my best to pull myself together.
Hitch hasn’t given me a second to think.
The questions started the moment I settled back in the driver’s seat, and didn’t let up until I turned the Johnny Cash XM station on at top volume. Hitch has a deep, unnatural love of Johnny Cash, and I think by that point he finally realized I’d said all I was going to say. There are some things I have to keep from him.
Which makes me wonder what he’s still keeping from me . . .
The FBI and the FCC work together in many ways. The FBI is, in fact, often given the job of policing FCC officials. The one time I saw an FCC operative hauled off to jail, it was an FBI agent who did the hauling. Which means there’s a chance—no matter how small—that Hitch knows more than he’s letting on about the injections he found in my kitchen. Maybe knocking my bike over wasn’t an accident, but a way to justify his snooping. Maybe he’s not only working for the Big Man; maybe he’s here on Uncle Sam’s behalf as well.
The thought makes my head feel like it’s about to explode.
“No,” I whisper.
I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it, not until the day he slaps a pair of cuffs on me and reads me my rights. I’m having trust issues with almost everyone right now, but I believe that Hitch genuinely cares about me. That “I love you” this morning was coming from a real place, and what happened in the junkyard isn’t the kind of emotion anyone can fake.
Emotions, emotions, emotions.
Mine are in knots. It’s ten o’clock. Only two hours before Cane meets his mystery caller. Depending on how things play out, I may not have time to spy on my lover at the old Gramercy dock. Even if there is time, I’ll have to bring Hitch along—there’s no way he’d sit patiently in the car a second time—and I know that’s a bad call.
Hitch says he thinks Cane is a nice guy, but Hitch was also the driving force behind the ethics investigation of the Donaldsonville Police Department. He thought Cane and Abe were crooked cops once. It wouldn’t take much convincing to bring him back around to that way of thinking. And if he witnessed Cane committing a crime he’d have no choice but to take action. He could potentially even take Cane into federal custody.