by Richard Hein
“So, let’s have it out. What are you? What happened to me when…” My words dwindled. When I murdered the love of my life. Nope. Still couldn’t say those words.
I don’t know, Lauren said.
I snorted. “Like hell. You sure as shit aren’t her. I don’t care if you know every cute pet name she ever used. You admitted you know what’s in my brain. I'll go talk to Lockyer and find out about this super-exorcism he worked up from Simon’s notes. I'll scour you clean like so much mildew from a funky bathtub, so how about you stop beating around the bush and clue me in?”
I. Don’t. Know. The words snarled into my mind. I could feel them, like emotions made palpable. Anger — I was familiar enough with that one to know that flavor right off. Worry.
Despair.
I hesitated. It didn’t feel like the creature calling itself Lauren was lying. I mean, I knew whatever it was, it made from lies and deceit with a smattering of asshole mixed into the batter.
I shook myself. It sounded as confused as I was, but I had to remember that nothing from beyond the universe was on the level.
Nothing.
Especially for manipulating me by pretending to be a woman I’d once loved.
“I don’t know what you are,” I said in a low, harsh voice. My fingers curled around the back of the couch. “All I know is that I will dance a happy jig the day I’m free of you. Are we clear on that? This time tomorrow, you’re toast. If you believe in a higher power, I’d make peace. This is my head, damn it, and I’m taking it back.”
God damn it, Twinkles, will you listen once in awhile? I’m… well, I’m not entirely me, but I’m me, okay?
“Checks out,” I said. “The really real Lauren was just as incoherent half the time too. Well, I’m convinced. I won’t have Lockyer wipe you like a floppy disk with a magnet.”
Lauren seethed, a boiling rage that pressed hard against the insides of my head. I had a sudden urge to pop out my eyes to relieve the pressure. I hissed and slumped forward, squeezing at my head, hoping in vain I could keep it from detonating all over Kate’s beige walls.
Fucking… stupid… egotistical… ass-butt! My left hand curled into a fist so tightly my nails tore at the soft flesh of my palm, shuddering like it was about to rip free. I don’t even…
The pressure stopped, a sudden cessation that by comparison felt like bliss. I groaned and sagged, slapping one hand at the counter-top to hold myself up.
Fine. Lauren paused, all the pressure and anger and emotion radiating off it suddenly withdrawing back. The whiplash of it left me reeling. If you can’t be rational, I will have to be. Do you still have any of my stuff? Anything at all?
It took a few seconds before I could disgorge the words. God, my heart ached from the galloping speed it raced at. I licked my lips, tried to speak, failed, and sucked in a shuddering breath. Distantly I could hear Kate humming.
“Not really,” I said. The words squeaked out, dry and dusty and parched as a desert. “Donated most of it. Burned the rest.”
Well, aren’t you a sentimental bitch. You’re lying, though. I can see it here, plain as the ass on your face.
I went cold. I tried to picture slapping up a partition between parts of my mind, complete with floating ship-destroying mines and a couple dozen Claymore explosives wreathed around it, trying to keep Lauren out.
The thing in my head laughed.
My journal. It’s in one of the boxes you brought to Sanctuary. Did you ever read it?
I tried to shake the pain out of my left arm. I couldn’t reach out and strangle Lauren, and it seemed counter-productive to strangle the vessel it lived in.
“Can’t you tell?” I spat through clenched teeth.
A pause. I can’t. I don’t know everything in this stupid brain of yours. Personal and emotional things are… walled off.
“Well, no, I never read it. The thought of touching any of that again after Lauren — the real Lauren — died was a tick too painful.”
Because alcohol is so much better, Samuel. I could feel the amusement in the thought. Right then I almost rummaged around Kate’s cupboards to look for anything I could dull Lauren’s words with. I hadn’t had a drop in six months, and at that moment the need was physical, like holding my breath for a minute and feeling the ache to breathe once more or die.
You still have it. Read it.
“Why?”
Because it proves I’m me. You don’t know what it says, but I do, Twinkles. I want you to read, God, it would have probably been March or April the year we met. Right after our first assignment together.
My skin flashed silvery cold. “What does it say?”
A pause that seemed to last for hours. I could feel the seconds clawing by, finding myself hoping and fearing and hating myself for both feelings at once. I couldn’t trust it. Trusting an Entity got people killed. It ruined lives. It consumed them. I couldn’t listen. I wished I could take back the words in the interminable silence that stretched.
I don’t remember exactly, Lauren said. It was something along the lines about talking to Seneschal Francis about never, ever being paired up with you again, but that maybe instead of teaming up to stomp evil we could team up to harvest the souls of some street truck tacos.
The corners of my lips tugged up before I could stop myself. I could almost hear Lauren saying that.
I mean, besides the fact that a disembodied consciousness in my mind was saying that exact thing in her voice.
I rubbed at my face. “Sure,” I said, battering down the tumult of emotions at the thought. Could I prove it was Lauren? “Fine. Whatever. I’ll check it out.”
“Check what out?” Kate asked as she stepped back into the living room.
“Uh, some stuff when we get back to Sanctuary,” I said, trying to sound casual and failing like a teenager that’s been caught sneaking back into the house. I tapped two fingers against the side of my head. “You know. Just talking with my roommate.”
Kate’s lips pursed in thought. She’d changed from her disguise as a detective, instead replaced by her usual jeans and a tight-fitting shirt. Also gone were the days of Kate in a dress. Since she’d joined up as the newest member of the Scooby Gang, she’d gone native. Short hair, short nails, and utilitarian clothes. A woman with a job to do. I could admire that. With Daniel giving me so much static, someone needed to be on point these days, and Kate had a mind for the job.
Plus she looked good in jeans.
“As if you weren’t crazy enough before you talked to yourself, Samuel. It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.”
“You and me both,” I agreed, hopping up. “Lockyer’s out, so we might as well head to base and see if Daniel’s fresh meat is any good.”
Kate shrugged, crossed the room and retrieved her keys. “Works for me.”
“Hey, think I could drive?”
“So long as I am on this plane of existence,” Kate said, eyes sparkling, “you will never drive my car. I’ve seen the remains of your last two, Samuel.”
Chapter 17
“Okay, Daniel,” I said as Kate and I pushed into Sanctuary’s main hall. “Where’s the fire?”
Only half the lights illuminated the wide office in an attempt to be frugal with the precious electrons flowing from out nearly-empty generator. Since we’d last been here, Daniel had been at work it seemed. Usually a dozen folding benches lined the area nearest the door, making it look suspiciously like a high school lunch room. All save one had been folded up and wheeled to the far wall, leaving a stark, haunting expanse of openness that drew attention to our diminished ranks.
For six months the rows of cubicles beyond had sat as they had when Sanctuary fell, full of books and papers that would never again see the touch of their owner’s hands. Now each cubicle lay empty, a simple desk and chair and nothing more.
“Wow,” Kate said. I couldn’t muster the words. A struggle of emotions twisted at my chest. A feeling of anger that he would undertake an effort to remove the traces
of the people that had lived — and died — in this alien world. Sadness it had come to this, that the OFC’s time may have passed.
Daniel glanced up from the mop he held. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscled forearms bunching beneath dark skin. Absent was his ever-present vest, though I noted he opted to retain the tie. Tired eyes fell onto us, full of ache and anger. Without a word he glanced away and continued mopping.
I shared a look with Kate. She shrugged. I shrugged back. We stood for a minute in silence, watching as he continued sweeping the mop back and forth across a textured tile floor. The quiet yawned on, broken only by the splashing of Daniel sloshing the mop back into the bucket, wringing it, and slapping it to the floor once more.
He bore a lot of tension in his shoulders, evident from the way his grip looked close to snapping the wood clean in two. His strokes were long, aggressive.
My feet carried me over to the row of cupboards across the left-hand wall, to the farthest right one. I fetched out my lock-picks, jimmied the cupboard open, and pulled down cleaning supplies. My hand went to lock the cupboard again out of habit, and feeling hollow in my chest I left it as it was and closed it.
I cleaned. The counter tops. Dusted above the wall-mounted cabinets. The now-lone table we ate and talked and planned at. The chairs and desks in the empty cubicles. I let myself get lost in the mindless minutia of the work, forgetting — just for a moment — the pain, both physical and emotional of the last few days, forgetting the worries of Lauren and of Sanctuary and of Norman Lockyer. In silent agreement Kate worked on the old windows that peered out into an ever-dark alien sky.
We worked in silence. When we all stopped at once by some unheard signal, we glanced around at our handiwork. It might not have been cathartic, and I didn’t feel like it had accomplished much in the grand scheme, I could say it felt good to have done something so mundane together.
“Thank you,” Daniel said as he wheeled the mop and bucket back to the closet near the long row of offices. The windows on those almost sparkled in the diminished light, frosted glass and dark-stained wood looking like a newspaper straight out of the thirties.
I eased to one bench on the folding table. My arm ached, but I’d almost grown used to that over the hours since it had happened. Kate joined me, sitting to my right, and Daniel took up a position opposite us. The young Seneschal unrolled his sleeves and folded his hand on the table, back straight and eyes determined. He looked like a man ready for an interview.
Who is interviewing who? I thought.
“It’s time we moved forward,” Daniel said, meeting my gaze. “Six months we have waited, and six months we have fallen behind with the workload. Now you’re doing work for those Entities, and dragging Kate with you. I am the only one handling things at the moment, Samuel. This is untenable.” His voice was level and calm, even when mentioning the Twins.
I rubbed at my face. “Daniel. We’ve had this talk more times than I care to count.”
“Thirteen,” Kate said. “That I know of.”
“Do you know what happens if we flood our ranks with newbies before we get all our crap organized?” I said. “Mass hysteria. Normally they stay an intern for a couple of years—”
“Or five,” Daniel muttered.
“We have three active members,” I said, “one of which is still a newbie herself. Then we have to have one of us training the others, reducing our fighting capacity by a third while that’s being done.”
“All the more reason to start now,” Daniel said. “We’ll still run into that issue if it’s now or, uh, God help us, a year from now.”
“And I’ll pay them how?” I asked. “Which, I might add, is exactly why I’m doing that work for the Twins. Which is about to pay off, thank you very much, as soon as I can get over there.”
Daniel opened his mouth, but I bowled over him.
“There’s a thousand little things I’ve been trying to figure out,” I said, never glancing away, hitting him with the full weight of my gaze. “And, despite what you might think, I have been trying to get all our ducks in a row. I pore over Christina’s ledgers every night, hoping to find the secret of how we brought money in. How we paid for food and cheap coffee. Fuel for the generator.” I waved toward the alternating rows of dark lights. “We had a network of people across the world that would dial in and let us know when a stupid doomsday cult was trying to summon some sort of squishy squid god. We had some ties to the police who could help handle the fallout when Jane Q Public spotted a demonic, flesh-eating moose from another dimension. How? I have no freaking clue, and Christina apparently didn’t write this crap down, Daniel.”
I pressed my palms to the table and rose a little, just to get some angle on him. “If we bring others into this mess we won’t be able to dig ourselves out. If there’s one thing I learned in my three years of manning a desk in the corporate world it is that not sticking to a plan you outline at the beginning of the project means it spirals out of control and eats people, Daniel. Just straight up devours them. Adding more people to a shit pile just makes it a bigger shit pile.”
“To play devil’s advocate,” Kate said, “because I somewhat agree with you, but there’s a big difference between bringing in a hundred people and a smaller, more manageable, number.”
Daniel nodded. I scowled.
“See Exhibit A,” I said, dropping back to the bench. “I’ll just pay them with high fives and sarcastic comments?”
We all three lapsed into silence.
“I will not let it end like this,” Daniel said, voice quiet. “I understand what you’re saying, Samuel, I truly do. Yet we have to do something. What if you never find out how Christina handled things? What if, heaven forbid, everything that came before is lost to you? When will you attempt to pick up the pieces then?”
I didn’t have a good response to that, a worry that had gnawed at me late into the nights of late. It seemed like a clear idea. Find out how it had been done before and continue doing so. I didn’t want to admit that maybe all that knowledge was lost, and I’d have to do something, rather than perpetuate the old methods. It would mean I’d have to think, to adapt, to innovate—
Something I wasn’t sure I could do.
“How about this,” I mused. “Let’s try this delegation crap. Daniel, why don’t you dig through Christina’s records. You spent more time in the stacks than just about anyone I know, so maybe you’ll have better luck than I’ve had. Find out where our money is at the bare minimum. Someone owes me a car.”
Daniel frowned and hesitated.
“Come on,” I said, holding back a whisper of anger. It trembled in me, aching to lash out. I squashed it. “I’m compromising here. Giving you more responsibility and enacting a plan to get to where we can hire. Meet me half-way, man.”
He stared. “It’s a questionable plan, Samuel. You’re not advancing toward a solution, you’re just having me go over ground you’ve already covered to placate me.”
Shrewd. I shrugged. “I’m sure you think I’m incompetent and just missed it. So even though it feels like treading water, you’re happy to do it so you can be sure I’m not screwing up. Am I right?”
Silence. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
“I want you to do something,” Daniel said. “Anything.”
I rubbed at my eyes. “Daniel, let me give you some advice. Grow up.”
Daniel recoiled.
“I don’t mean you’re being childish,” I said, holding up a stalling hand. “Though you are a bit. You can either sit around and complain about how difficult it is to do things, or you can get off your ass and make the changes. Be proactive.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Hi,” Kate said, holding up a hand, “devil’s advocate again. You’re both being twits.”
“He still needs an active plan,” Daniel said with a glower. “If you don’t—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said as I rose. “You’ll keep nagging me. I get it. It isn’t like I
don’t want to get this going again. I don’t want to unclog a hellish toilet mess later for a temporary bump now.”
Kate grimaced. “Our leader, ladies and gentlemen. Such eloquence.”
I grinned. “How about something more like ‘a house must be in order to kick evil ass’?”
“Better.”
“No!” Daniel snarled, slamming his palm down onto the table. It echoed in the mausoleum of the office. He pushed up, shoulders tense like high voltage wires had just been grounded through his body. He met my gaze with a look of anger I’d only seen on his face when we’d faced angels together half a year before.
“You don’t get to make light of this,” he said, voice humming with rage. A feeling and sound I knew well. “You don’t get to joke and push this off. It will not take me long to go through our records, and if I find nothing, you will need to decide. You’re the reason we’re in this mess.” His voice dropped low, a fire suddenly banked low and hot to coals. “You’re the reason they all died.”
“If you can’t respect me,” I said, “at least respect the position. As your boss, I’m telling you I will have a plan. That, I promise.”
Without another word I retreated down the long hall to the ornate staircase that led to the lower levels, the library and my inherited office, footfalls echoing into the silence I left in my wake.
Chapter 18
I threw open my office door, stormed in, and slammed it behind me. The frosted glass rattled. Ten, I thought, trying to grab a breath and feeling like something was crushing my lungs. Nine. Fucking eight.
Everything felt like it was spiraling around me, orbiting my problems, my failures. I sank down into my chair, elbows slapping against the old metal of the desk. I dropped my head into my palms and just tried to breathe.
A moment later the door whispered open. I didn’t bother to look up. I wanted to be left alone at the moment. Maybe forever. It was just too much effort to tell her to piss off right then.
“The hardest thing is to forgive yourself.”
My head tilted up a few inches and I glared. “You're pulling a Yoda routine on me now?”