Sleight

by Tom Twitchel

  And because I was so torn with guilt and grief I did.

  I looked up and into her eyes.

  SEVENTY-FIVE: INEVITABILITY

  WHEN I CAME to, I was lying on the floor, Mr. Goodturn stood over me, wringing his hands. Constance was kneeling next to me, her hand on my chest. She stood up, her hands pulling nervously at her dress.

  “Where’s Justine?” I asked, sitting up.

  Constance looked at me, but didn’t even have to say a word. I knew that Justine had taken off. She’d knacked me and gotten away.

  “You were taking too long. We got worried.” Her eyes and nose were red. It looked like she’d been crying. “Too late.”

  “Benjamin, we need to—,” said Mr. Goodturn.

  “What? What do you think we need to do?” I said, fighting through the last wisps of mental fog. “Kenwoode’s jacked her up and made her just like Sonja! We need to go after her.” I got on my feet, feeling dizzy.

  “Benjamin, you’re upset,” he said, raising his hands and patting the air.

  “You’re damn right I’m upset. We were just talking about this. Predictors you called it. Well did you predict this?”

  The garage lights reflected off his glasses, and made it hard for me to see his eyes. “We don’t have time to engage in this argument.”

  He was right. “She doesn’t have a car,” I said. “How long have I been out?”

  “Hard to say,” said Constance. “But I don’t think for very long.”

  “She won’t have gone far, I think,” said Mr. Goodturn. “Let’s get in the car. Constance are you coming?”

  Nodding and reaching out to touch my shoulder, Constance said, “Yes, absolutely.” I waved off her concern, moving away from her

  We scrambled into Mr. Goodturn’s old sedan. Constance took shotgun and I climbed in the back. Mr. Goodturn backed out of the garage, swung the wheel in his small hands and pulled into the alley, heading to the street.

  “Oh, my God!” exclaimed Constance.

  “What? What?” I blurted from the back seat.

  Mr. Goodturn slammed on the brakes and laid his hand on the horn. I lurched forward, the seatbelt gouging into my shoulder. I stretched my neck, straining to see what they were looking at.

  Justine hadn’t gone far at all. She was across the street, on her knees. She was bent over someone.

  Releasing the seatbelt I stumbled out of the car. Behind me, I heard Mr. Goodturn and Constance get out. Snow was falling, swirling in traffic, pin-wheeling in the street lights. What was she doing?

  “Justine?” I called to her, standing on the sidewalk as cars swished through the snowy street between us.

  That’s when I saw Kenwoode running up behind her.

  “Justine!” I yelled, as Mr. Goodturn and Constance ran up beside me.

  Justine reared back on her heels, and staggered to her feet, swaying. Kenwoode was closing the distance between them, a streetlight illuminating his monstrous face.

  Justine turned slowly in our direction. And as she did, I could see who it was on the sidewalk at her feet.

  “No!” I screamed. I took a step into the street and was pulled back with a hard yank. A bus roared by, rushing through the spot I had almost been standing in. “WHAT DID YOU DO?” I cried at Justine.

  Cocking her head to one side Justine stared blindly in the direction of my voice.

  “WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?!”

  She walked off the curb, following the sound of my voice, oblivious to everything around her.

  The first car swerved, narrowly missing her, horn blaring as it fishtailed down the street.

  It was the second one that took her. In a heartbeat I saw it coming, reached out trying to push her back out of harm’s way. But I was too late.

  Kenwoode wasn’t. At the moment just before the impact, he leapt in between her and the oncoming car, wrapping his arms around her, shielding her. They flew twenty or thirty feet and slid another fifteen on the icy road. Horns blew and tires squealed as cars crashed into each other.

  Tearing my sleeve out of Mr. Goodturn’s grasp, I ran across the street, falling to my knees when I reached Breno’s side.

  SEVENTY-SIX: LOSS

  “SHE SAID SHE believed that she was doing something. That she didn’t want to be a bystander anymore,” I mumbled.

  Mr. Goodturn was sitting on the upholstered bench next to me. “It isn’t your fault Benjamin.

  “Benjamin, she’ll recover. Her physical wounds are not as serious as Preston’s,” said Constance.

  There was no arguing with that. It really came down to my anger over what Kenwoode had done and the fact that he wouldn’t have even been in town if Mr. G hadn’t asked me to call him.

  There were a number of times when I could have prevented Justine from meeting him. I had made those choices. I had decided to trust him even though my knack sense had failed to crack his telepathic screen. So that was a thing.

  As angry as I was at Kenwoode’s twisted use of Justine, it was Breno that I was really upset about. Justine had attacked him right on our street. I leaned my head back against the hospital wall and looked up at the acoustical ceiling tiles. Distractedly I tried to create patterns in the random holes that dotted the tile over my head.

  “What are they going to do for Breno?” I asked. “She’s killed him, ruined him.”

  “We don’t know that yet,” said Mr. Goodturn. “We may have interrupted her in time.”

  I found it very hard to believe that we could be that lucky. Especially when it seemed like the only luck we’d been having was from the other side of the scale.

  The aftermath of the accident had been a chaotic blur. Police cars, ambulances, a firetruck and eventually news vans had all converged on the scene. We’d been able to avoid getting tangled up in the questioning conducted by the police because there were plenty of other witnesses. The EMT’s had assumed that Breno had been hit as well, and we didn’t argue the point. How could we? Mr. Goodturn was Breno’s legal guardian, and had insisted on travelling with him to the hospital. Constance and I had followed in Mr. Goodturn’s car.

  Kenwoode had been taken to another facility but he hadn’t been in good shape. He’d received the full impact of the collision. It had been surreal to watch the reactions to his monstrous appearance. A part of my mind wondered how they were going to process that, particularly when he reverted back to his human form. How many tabloid headlines had started with someone witnessing a supernatural event?

  Justine had been transported to Swedish Hospital along with Breno. Her parents had shown up and that had been a mess in every way imaginable. At one point hospital security had been forced to remove Mr. Winters. He’d been ready to come after me. The fact that Mrs. Winters had been winding him up hadn’t helped. The cops had separated us and they had been seated in another part of the waiting area where we couldn’t see each other.

  An hour slid by and a couple of doctors approached Constance. Her medical background had given her instant cred with the staff and she’d been getting frequent updates. They told her that Breno was in a medically induced coma, and that Justine was in serious but stable condition. Neither could receive visitors.

  Shadowed by his hat brim, Mr. Goodturn’s eyes look dark. “Benjamin, I am so sorry that Preston hurt your friend. It is inexcusable and I carry some blame for that. But please believe me when I say that I had no idea that his obsession and pain would drive him to do such a thing.”

  I nodded, and held my tongue.

  Frowning, he went on, “A long time ago I told you that people change. Not always in the ways we would hope. I made an error in assuming that Preston had become the man he was meant to be. I can only surmise that his pain is what caused this. These circumstances are my burden. Please don’t take them on yourself.”

  It was a theory. It was his theory. Constance looked at both of us, her eyes red-rimmed and watery. Her medical experience hadn’t stopped her from caring. She nodded at me.

  I
disagreed with Mr. Goodturn. His words had been intended to spare my feelings, to let me off the hook, but instead I experienced an epiphany. It immediately put into a focus a struggle I had been dealing with for over a year.

  Mr. Goodturn was human, a very old and knowledgeable human, but he wasn’t infallible. I could trust him and count on him for good advice. But my decisions and choices were my own. Like his leaving my free will intact when he had placed strong suggestions in my mind, I had to use my own moral compass to guide my decisions. He never did anything overtly to hurt me or anyone I cared about. Kenwoode coming into town to help him recover, and to track down the master Shade, was all he had intended when he had asked me to call him.

  All of the other issues had snowballed because of my assumption that anything that Mr. G was involved in was automatically correct and safe. The dumb thing was I’d already known that wasn’t true but I’d disregarded it.

  Worrying about whether I could trust him wasn’t a problem anymore. But it was replaced by another: I had to accept the consequences of my decisions. All of them.

  Justine being corrupted felt like my fault, and she’d hurt Breno.

  Kenwoode though, his being near death was all on him. I didn’t own any of that. And I wasn’t feeling any grief there.

  So, while some burdens fell away, I dealt with the crushing weight of what had happened to two of my friends.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN: NEW FRIEND

  MR. GOODTURN DROPPED me off before he drove around to his garage behind the shop. The snow was starting to pile up in drifts. Super rare in Seattle, but I was too messed up to appreciate it. I had my head down so I didn’t see Danton until I was almost at the front door. Several curse words came to mind. One might have slipped out and off my lips.

  “What?” asked Danton as he stepped away from the entrance where he’d been huddled against the cold.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled.

  “Can we talk?” he asked.

  That brought me up short. Asking my permission to have a conversation had never been his opening line. His shoulders were bowed and the cigarette dangling from his mouth had an ash on it that was over an inch long. There were several butts laying on the crusty surface of the snow around the doorway.

  He looked beaten.

  “Sorry, I guess I should be thanking you for handling all the crap we left you with,” I said, knacking the door open. He walked over the threshold without commenting on my supernatural ability.

  We walked in and stomped our feet on the entry throw rug, knocking the snow off our shoes. I threw back my hood and looked at him again, and reached out with my sensing knack. Sadness. Fear. Confusion. He was hurting. As numb as I felt I couldn’t bring myself to blow him off.

  “Do you want to come up? I asked.

  He nodded, and then looked around for somewhere to get rid of his cigarette.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You can put it out in my place.” Whoops. Almost let another secret out. My mother’s and my place moron.

  We climbed the stairs together, not talking, which was fine by me. I knacked my door open, closed it behind us, and followed him to my kitchen table, our usual spot for a chat. He looked around and then headed for the easy chair and flopped into it. Then he swore, got up and went to the kitchen where he took his cigarette and ran the end under the faucet before throwing it away. He heaved a big sigh and tromped back to the chair.

  There was something seriously wrong and it was just enough to snap me out of my self-involved funk.

  “What going on?” I asked.

  Still wearing his coat he wiped a hand over his face and looked toward the kitchen. “Does your mom keep any liquor in the house?”

  Now I was really worried. Asking me for booze? “No. We don’t have any alcohol in the house. My dad was an alcoholic.”

  He made a face. “Oh, right. Forgot.”

  “Danton, what’s going on? Did you hear about the accident? Is there some news?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “Accident?” He held up a hand. “No wait. I don’t want to know. I’ve got other stuff I need to understand first. I need some clarity here because my whole life has just gone into the toilet.”

  At a loss for words I just shrugged. He didn’t know I’d witnessed the accident.

  “I’ve been kicked off the force,” he said.

  I stared at him, not sure I’d heard him right.

  “You got fired?”

  Offering me a rueful smile he said, “Thanks. It sounds so much better when you say it that way.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah. On suspension, but there’s no coming back from it.”

  I took a seat on the couch. “What happened?” A queasy feeling started bubbling in my gut. Was this one more person who had been sucked into the crap storm that had engulfed my life?

  “The condo. I called it in. Gave details that were pretty much on the level, but there were too many holes, too many unexplained issues. Plus I really had no business being there in the first place.”

  “Why? You didn’t do anything wrong. We saved people,” I said. Another helpful bromide from my mother tried to get my attention. Something about no good deed going unpunished. I squashed it.

  Danton sank back into the worn recliner. “Sure. But someone went out a window, two people in the room exhibited the same pathology as others from the Zombie Deaths, and I discharged my Taser.”

  My heart sank. It was more collateral damage from the Natural Shade problem. “What are you going to do?” I asked. My voice hitched when I said it, my thoughts hung up on what Danton was going through and what had happened to Justine and Breno.

  “There’s not much I can do. I sit tight, collect my pay, and wait for the IAD review.”

  “I’m really sorry Danton,” I managed to get out.

  He frowned at that, and then seemed to tune in to my emotional struggle. “I’m a big boy. Nobody made me make the choices I went with. What’s up with you? You’re not your usual smart-alecky self.”

  Should I tell him? Would it help? Or would the emotional meltdown I’d been trying to avoid overwhelm me? I really didn’t want to go to puddles in front of him. But I wanted to talk to somebody, and it’d helped the last time I’d confided in him. Plus he’d been the one who had essentially spearheaded our fight with Kenwoode that had led to the disaster with Justine. He had a right to know.

  “Kenwoode...do you want to hear this?” I asked, remembering that he’d waved off my first comment about the accident.

  “Yes, but there’s something else I needed to ask you first. The reason I came here,” he said. I watched him shift uncomfortably in his damp coat and raised my eyebrows.

  Clasping his hands in front of him he scooted to the edge of the chair. “Goodturn. I know he’s not your grandpa. No big deal. Considering all the other whacked crap you’re into it doesn’t have much weight. But him. I need to know. Kenwoode turned out to be part of the problem. What about Goodturn? Can I trust him?”

  Wow. That was a very tricky question to answer. I did trust him, but it had taken some time to understand what that really meant. Even though I knew that he had manipulated my past, and hid things from me when it served a purpose he thought important I had decided to trust him. I’d also realized that I had accountability for my own choices. Then there was the biggest factor to consider: he had a lifespan that made him very different than any other person. Ethics were not human-normal when incorporated into a life that spanned centuries.

  “I trust him,” I said. “But I don’t know if you should. That’s up to you.”

  His hand snaked into his jacket, hunting for cigarettes. “What does that mean? You either trust him or you don’t.”

  Keeping my nerves under control was becoming difficult. I could feel my throat tightening. In my mind I saw Breno lying on the sidewalk, Justine and Kenwoode being tossed through the air like rag dolls. “I...do, but so many people...people are getting hurt...the whole memory thing...I’m just afraid to say that the
re isn’t any potential for bad stuff. You know?”

  “Benny. Do you trust him?”

  “Yes, but—”

  He held up a hand, interrupting me. “That’s all I wanted to know.” He sighed. He closed his eyes, and then opened them, staring at me. “What was it about an accident? What’s bothering you?”

  I started to say something, stopped and felt myself flush. “I...we came back here and...”

  “And?” he asked, squinting at me.

  “It went bad. I screwed up. Justine caught me off guard. She took off, but we saw her outside. Kenwoode followed us. She used her knack on...she hurt Breno. Then they got hit by a car. There was a huge pile up—”

  Running a hand over his face he sighed. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. Where was this?”

  “Right here.” It had been hours, and between the snow and the tow trucks, there was nothing outside to indicate that there’d been a major accident. “It’s totally messed up Danton. Justine and Breno are over at Swedish Hospital. Kenwoode’s over at Harborview. He’s critical.” My voice caught and I felt my eyes burning, threatening to brim over.

  “Jesus, Benny. You’re dealing with this and you just let me sit here and whine about losing my job?” He poked around in his coat again. When he removed an empty pack of cigarettes he frowned and crushed it. “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “You want me to hang here for a while? Or do you want some time alone?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what I want. I’m having trouble getting my head wrapped around it.”

  “You’re probably putting this on your own shoulders. Don’t. I’ve been there. People make their own choices, and even if you did or said something that you think might have been the first domino it doesn’t work like that. Life doesn’t work that way. All we can do is try to control what we have power over. The other stuff is a matter of what other people can and should do.” Here he was, having just been fired, and he was trying to fix me. I nodded, afraid to speak and lose it in front of him.