Sleight

by Tom Twitchel

Narrowing one eye, she glared at me. “I can’t fly in that,” she waved a hand at the snowstorm. “In case that isn’t obvious.” She completely ignored my witty inference about her being a witch.

  “Well, that line of discussion probably won’t move things in a positive direction,” said Mr. Goodturn, giving me a reproving glance. “Let’s repair to the upstairs. Shall we?” He walked around the counter and took a step toward the back hallway.

  “Is there someone waiting to ambush us?” asked Talia.

  “You sure don’t have any problems calling out other people when you have a history of running away,” I snapped.

  Frowning at me she nudged Sawyer. He made a face and shook his head. “Look Benny, we were walking a thin line. When she refused to come with us and her brawny boyfriend was interfering I just felt like the timing wasn’t right.”

  “You both left your sister behind. Remind me to never count on either of you.”

  Talia’s cheeks flushed and she gritted her teeth. “My twist is limited. I wasn’t going to be any use to Brin if I ended up hurt or dead. It’s what Sawyer said. She’s hung up on that Oso dude.”

  Patting the air with his short-fingered hands, Mr. Goodturn cleared his throat. “Alright, alright. That’s enough. There is no ambush awaiting you. Your sister is sleeping, unharmed. Let’s continue this conversation in a more comfortable setting.”

  I nodded, while Talia fumed. I had no confidence in her trustworthiness and couldn’t read her worth a darn, so she could be butt hurt for all I cared. And I didn’t. Looking shamefaced, Sawyer just shrugged.

  As we made the journey up in the rickety elevator I wondered how smart it was to let Talia see the inner sanctum. A nagging worry started to scratch at my subconscious.

  Sawyer had seen the inside of Mr. Goodturn’s suite of rooms before, but Talia had a hard time maintaining her aloof façade when we walked into the apartment. Mr. G led us to the library, where a roaring fire was burning. The three of us peeled off our outer layers and hung them over chairs and the back of a couch. Talia unslung her complicated pack, unbuckling the nylon harness that had held it snug to her back. Her silver tattoos peeked out from under her collar and sleeves.

  “Would anyone like something to drink?” asked Mr. Goodturn. We all shook our heads. “Then let me take Sawyer to his sister.” He motioned for Sawyer to follow him.

  “Mr. Goodturn, we have a favor to ask,” said Sawyer.

  “Yes?” Mr. Goodturn said, stopping for a moment.

  Sawyer looked down at his feet. “Would you be willing to help her forget her connection to the Shades?” he asked.

  “My boy that has already been done. We couldn’t risk her reconnecting with them.”

  “Can you get her to forget the Mexican too?” asked Talia.

  Mr. Goodturn rubbed his cheek. “Ah, an oversight on my part perhaps. Yes, I can help in that regard.”

  Talia moved to follow them.

  “No, my dear. I have a few things to discuss in private with Sawyer.”

  “She’s my twin!” Talia snapped.

  Mr. Goodturn nodded. “Yes, of course. Nonetheless I need to speak with Sawyer alone. Thank you.”

  Giving his sister a shake of the head, Sawyer followed Mr. Goodturn out of the library.

  That left the two of us standing alone. I took a seat on the couch closest to the fireplace, and stretched my feet toward the hearth. Talia moved around the room, taking in the details.

  “Sizing things up for another quick getaway?” I asked. Okay, I needed to lay off, but it was just waiting to be said. That’s what I told myself.

  Pausing, she gave me a hard look. “Are you done?”

  “Mostly. I guess.”

  She walked over to a chair near the couch I was sitting on, and took a seat. “Good because I’ve had enough. You don’t know me and I don’t know you.”

  I ran a hand through my hair. “Okay let’s call a truce. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Not if it’s along the same line as all the static you’ve been giving me,” she said, frowning.

  Short truce. I wondered how she had any friends with all those layers of attitude, but I had been pretty snarky. “No. I wanted to understand the whole three siblings with abilities. And how your being in Seattle connects with Sawyer. I didn’t know he had sisters.”

  Stretching her legs out as I had, she shrugged. “Foster sisters. Yeah, me and Brin have been two peas in a pod from the start. We figured out early on that we had the same twist and because we’re twins no one wanted to break us up. Sawyer lived in the same home with us for a lot of years when we were little, but hasn’t been as close to us since we all went different ways. He and I don’t see eye-to-eye. I kind of have that issue with a lot of people.”

  I risked a smile.

  She saw it and shook her head. “Yeah, so when she got hooked up with the Shades here I called him. He was all I had. He agreed to come, and then he was able to get in with Preston, which was big. I don’t really hang with either group though, Shades or Naturals. It’s not my jam.”

  “Have you been in Seattle long?” I asked.

  “Since I was little,” she said.

  “You have family here then?”

  “Sort of. Foster families. Sawyer does too, but he got split from us way back.”

  “Split?”

  She swore under her breath. “You don’t mind getting personal do you?”

  Shrugging, I said, “You don’t have to answer. I was just curious.”

  “Anyway, we were on our fourth or fifth family and when that family broomed us Sawyer got shipped off to Portland.”

  How would he have felt? I thought about leaving Billy behind and how crappy I felt about that..

  “That’s rough. So you and Brin were raised by the same family?”

  “More or less. We got sent to another family and I tried to stop being hard to deal with. Basically two families. One for three years, the other for two. Long enough that when we decided to leave, we were eighteen, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.”

  “Do you ever see them? The last families you were with?” I asked.

  “Not if we can help it. They both had a slew of kids funneling in and out. It was like a business. Decent but never like all warm and fuzzy. When we left they probably replaced us with two more.”

  “Wow. That’s...” I was grasping for something to say.

  She finished my sentence with one word.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Water long gone under that tired-ass bridge. If your mentor can get Brin’s head unscrewed, it’ll all be back to good.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Mr. Goodturn definitely will help.”

  She squinted at me. “How does that work exactly?”

  “All of her memories about her Shade connections have been erased. When he wipes her feelings about Oso she won’t remember him at all.” I felt a little queasy about sharing that with her. I’d been struggling with how I felt about it.

  “Uh huh. Well that would be one of the few times that someone with a twist did something that helped me out. Forgetting the gangster is no loss.”

  “Oso,” I corrected her. She snorted, obviously not interested in knowing anything about him. “So how did Brin meet him? How long ago?” I asked, curious as to how that had happened.

  Looking up at the ceiling she threw her arms over the back of the chair. “Three, four months ago? Maybe longer. We were doing some roof work, and Brin got busted up. One of her wings collapsed. A friend of a friend knew about a clinic that did work on the cheap and no awkward questions. She met him there.”

  Alarms started ringing in my head and a freight train of acid dumped a load in my stomach. I remembered Griff saying that most of the people in the meeting had already met.

  “Clinic. Where was that?”

  “Puyallup. Not too far from Tacoma.”

  SIXTY-SEVEN: LOSING YOURSELF

  “WHAT?” TALIA ASKED, noticing my reaction.
/>
  Still unwilling to trust her I decided to cover my shock with a question. “Oh, I keep forgetting to ask about your...um...your...uh...” I finished lamely, recalling that asking about others’ knacks was considered bad form.

  She nudged her backpack with the toe of her shoe. “You wouldn’t be working your way around to asking how I fly now would you?”

  “Now that you mention it.”

  She put her foot back in front of the fire. “Nah, it’s all good. I really don’t care. You know, again, ‘cause I’m not part of the community. I can levitate. Sort of like telekinesis, but I can only influence the space around me, not other objects.”

  “Your size must help too.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, I had this harness built by a guy that I did some base jumping with. I have a webbed flight suit too, but I need to jump off something with a lot of height for that, so I mostly use this. Bitch to carry around though.”

  “But flying...man what most people wouldn’t give to be able to do that,” I said.

  “Yeah, not really flying. More like gliding, although with the wing harness I can climb if I flex it right. Just can’t handle heavy winds when I do it.”

  “Still, Pretty cool,” I said, meaning it.

  “Yeah, Brin can do it too. I had my buddy build her a harness. She’s also got some serious Parkour skills that she uses with her twist. We were practicing, mixing in some gliding when her wing collapsed and then...the Mexican dude swept her off her feet.” She made a face.

  I shrugged. My relationship with Oso was complicated.

  “So all your skills, you’re a boss. Except for, you know, being a jerk,” she said.

  “Just good old fashioned telekinesis,” I joked. I didn’t see any reason to talk about my other knacks.

  “Handy too I’ll bet.” Her eyes narrowed. “It was you that screwed up my wings on the roof the other night wasn’t it?” An edge had crept back into her voice and I felt the tenuous rapport we’d been building start to slip away.

  “Yeah, sorry,” I said carefully.

  Pulling her legs back from the fire she shrugged. “We do what we do. I guess I should count myself lucky that I took off before your dwarf gave me the washing of brains too.”

  I felt my face flush at her referring to Mr. G that way and fought down the urge to say something rude. I opted for looking into the fire instead.

  “Ah, glad to see the two of you being civil,” said Mr. Goodturn as he, Sawyer and Brin walked into the library.

  Sawyer looked tired but more relaxed. Brin was doing the jaw drop that we all did the first time we saw Mr. G’s suite. Then she saw Talia and ran over to her. Talia stood up and they embraced.

  “What’s up boo?” Talia asked.

  Brin ducked her head, glanced at Sawyer and shrugged, her palms tilted up. “You’re going to have to tell me. All I remember is falling and getting hurt. I’m glad you were able to help me get right.”

  “Well let’s go. We can get something to eat and catch up back home,” said Talia, as she shrugged into her coat and picked up her backpack.

  “A minute if you would,” said Mr. Goodturn. “Sawyer would you mind waiting in the kitchen with Brin while I have a word with your other sister?”

  Sawyer nodded, giving me a wary glance as he led Brin out of the library. Watching them leave I worried at the disturbing connections among us. I was certain that Brin’s clinic was the same place Justine had been taken. Brin’s meeting Oso there meant that he had been a patient there too. That was a lot of coincidences. Then again, based on how my own past had been manipulated, maybe not so coincidental.

  “What do you want old man?” Talia sneered.

  So much for building bridges.

  Standing in front of her Mr. Goodturn offered a rueful smile. It only took a second but I saw the change come over Talia. Her hands trembled slightly at her side and her eyes bugged out.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, but I already knew.

  “Benjamin, despite this young lady’s less than violent nature, we cannot afford to have her leave and remember what she’s seen. She may be harmless but if she were to be held captive by the Shade network it would prove dangerous for all of us. She simply knows more than we can afford.”

  My gut churned. “Isn’t there another way?”

  “No, Benjamin. We must take precautions. What’s happening here, in Seattle, has happened before no matter what Preston might have told you. My experience is broader and deeper than his.”

  Much deeper, I thought.

  “Benjamin, I know you struggle with the ethics and consequences of some of my choices. But there will come a time when you will be forced to choose as well. Tonight, with regard to this young woman, there really isn’t any choice at all.”

  He reached up to her cheek, his tiny hand, fingers splayed, looked child-like against her skin.

  An involuntary shudder ran through me. The fire popped and crackled, and the smell of burning wood filled my nostrils. Talia’s eyes turned glassy and her mouth went slack as Mr. Goodturn unwound her memories.

  She hadn’t harmed us. All she’d wanted was to save her sister. Now we were taking away a little of who she was.

  Just to protect us from a possibility. A potential threat.

  All I did was watch, and I felt a little more of me slip away too.

  SIXTY-EIGHT: CANDID CAMERA

  IT TOOK SOME time for Mr. Goodturn to do his thing. Thinking about Sawyer agreeing to lead Brin away made me wonder. Did he know what was happening? And had Mr. Goodturn played around in his head too? Seemed likely. It made me feel as though I couldn’t rely on my own memories. Another of my mother’s homespun quotes hummed in the background: ‘deal with the devil’.

  My life would be substantially worse without Mr. G in it. In fact, I probably would have died more than once. When he stepped back from Talia and released her, her response would have been comical if it hadn’t also been creepy as hell.

  “What do you want old man?” she asked, adjusting her grip on her backpack.

  “Nothing much my dear. Only to thank you for coming out on such a stormy evening. We’re just glad that your brother and sister are all right,” Mr. Goodturn said. I couldn’t guess at the intricate revisionist history he’d built in her mind to tie all the pieces together.

  “Whatever,” she said, and then she turned to me extending a hand. “Nice to meet you Benjamin.”

  “Nice to meet you too,” I said, swallowing uncomfortably. I grabbed my coat and slipped it on, trying to hide my reaction to her memory loss.

  We walked to the front door with them and I volunteered to see them out through the pawnshop while Mr. Goodturn stayed behind. None of us made an effort to talk so it was a quiet ride down to the shop. As I let them out through the shop’s front door, Sawyer turned to me.

  “Benny, I know I’ve done some stuff that might prevent us from being friends but I want you to know that I appreciate what you did for my sister.”

  Not knowing what Mr. Goodturn may or may not have done with his memories led me to keep my response short. “Family’s important. Don’t worry about it.”

  He gave me a rueful smile and flipped up the collar of his coat as he stepped out into the heavy snowfall. I watched them walk down the sidewalk. Talia put her arm around Brin and Sawyer walked slightly behind them. Every family has its issues I guess.

  Heading back upstairs wasn’t appealing and I decided to go home to my own bed. As soon as I walked inside the lobby the faint smell of lemon hit me. The floor was shiny and clean, except for the threshold where a dark rug had been put down for people to stomp their feet and knock off the snow. Breno protecting his floor. He’d also strung some multi-colored lights along the bannister. They twinkled in the late afternoon light. The woodwork gleamed and the amber light from the globe lights overhead reflected off of all the clean surfaces. All that, and the snow outside made it feel Christmassy, but the events of the last hour dampened the mood.

&n
bsp; I tromped up the stairs thinking over all the loose ends in the Shade network problem. It made my head hurt. I was tired of thinking about all of it. When it had just been spooky conversations with Mr. Goodturn about his life in Nazi Germany, or Kenwoode referring to shadowy work with Mr. Goodturn on the East Coast it had all been just stories, not close enough to home to get totally freaked out about.

  Now it was all literally in my own backyard. And it was snaking into every aspect of my life. Those were the happy thoughts swimming in my mind when I turned the corner on the landing just below my floor.

  “Wondered how long it would take you to get home,” said Danton, leaning against the handrail at the top of the stairs.

  “How did you get in?” I asked, walking the last flight up to where he waited.

  He winked at me. “Your buddy Breno was more than happy to accommodate my buzz in request. I didn’t want your ‘grandpa’ to know that I was contacting you.”

  Moving past him I walked to my door and knacked it open, he made a face as he followed me inside.

  “Even knowing you can do crap like that I can’t get used to it,” he said.

  Using my knack to swing the door shut, I knacked the deadbolt as well. Danton squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

  “What’s up?” I asked as we walked over to the kitchen. I slung my snow dusted jacket over a bar stool, Danton did the same with his overcoat, but left his jacket on. We took seats at the dinette table where he’d quasi-interrogated me, and I wondered where the conversation was headed.

  “I have some new information that doesn’t jive with what I’ve been told. That kind of thing doesn’t sit well with me,” he said.

  I wracked my brain trying to think back on what I’d told him, worried that I’d ticked him off.

  “Nothing you’ve said. It’s what Goodturn and Kenwoode have offered up,” he said, practically reading my mind. I wrote it off to his ‘cop-ness’.

  “What’s is it?” I asked, not really wanting to know. I was already feeling weird about all the things we had been doing.

  He leaned back in the chair and ran a hand through his hair that was damp from the melting snow. “That guy that got shot downtown? And the multi-car pile-up?”