“Then your powers kicked in,” I say. I reach for her bottle. She hands it over, curious. When I don’t wipe the top off before I take a swig, I can feel a little happiness in her. I’m so conflicted I don’t know what to do with that.
“Yeah, and with the powers I became pretty. I was pretty and sexy and smart. I could do whatever I wanted.” I think it’s smiling.
“Then why do you treat Prentis that way?” Tamara has a tear in her eye. Only one. I think she’s just about cried out.
“Because she’s not smart!” the thing hisses, demanding its bottle back. “And she’s ugly. I tried to give her new clothes—she says she doesn’t want them because they’re stolen. I tried to give her men, women, whatever she wanted. She said she only wanted us to be good friends—together again. She’s limited. Same with Rajesh. I don’t care that you killed him. He was strong, but nothing else. No smarts. No one is as smart as me. Not even you two. Just lucky is all.”
“Not lucky, yeah?” Tamara says. “Loved. Had someone who had my back in the name of my mom, yeah? That’s all you ever wanted, ennit? It’s not my power, not my skill. Wanted my life, you did. That’s why you took my parents out. Didn’t want me to have anyone else, just like you.”
If it’s crying, then it’s the most unattractive crying sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Alia sighs big and deep, like she has three lungs instead of two. Shit, maybe she does. I don’t want to know. Snot pours from her nose and mouth. Green gunk from her eyes. I’m caught between wanting to heal her and being repulsed by the idea of touching that skin.
“It’s not fair.” Alia whines. “Why couldn’t I have a family? When . . . when I reached out for others, like Nordeen, that was all I wanted . . . family. But no one responded. I knew you were a setup from the beginning, healer. I knew that. But I had to take the chance, didn’t I? Had to know if someone actually reached back to me. Why didn’t anyone reach back to me? Is it because I’m ugly? Do they know I’m ugly in Africa?”
I walk over to the other side of the booth and sit next to her. I take another swig from the bottle. I offer it to Tamara, after making sure none of fluids on it contain anything contagious. She takes a swig as well. Then I speak. “No one knows what you look like. Nobody responded because you were too powerful to be a good servant and too smart to be a mere ally. All of this was just a matter of time.”
“So no one could have ever loved me?” It’s so pathetic I feel my rage slipping. Same can’t be said for Tamara.
“Someone did love you. She loved you and gave you everything she had. She gave you everything you ever wanted. And in return you felt disgust for her compassion. You called it weakness. You tried to break her, and all she did was give you opportunity after opportunity to do something right. For someone so smart, you are an idiot.” Tamara stands from the booth. Alia’s as smart as she claims. She senses what’s coming next.
“I have money!” Alia says, grabbing Tamara’s arm. “Accounts. I played the American stock market. Japanese, too. I have money. Plus the revenue from the parties. Let’s take it and go somewhere. I’ll get better, I promise. No more killings.”
“Shh.” Tamara’s got her agitated face on. She holds the thing’s hands on her arms. “The dumbest thing about you is that you didn’t realize how close all the things you ever wanted were to you. Taggert, heal her.” I lay my hands on her while Tamara holds her tight. It’s a chore. It’s deficient RNA strands and chromosomal damage. Alia is a true mutation. Most people like us have physiologies that mimic normal human types easily. Alia’s got organs I can’t even identify. Her blood doesn’t match anything I’ve ever seen. It’s so oxygenated I doubt she really needed to breathe. In some ways she’s a highly adapted creature. It’s only the external features that are warped. She wasn’t designed for life on this planet. Maybe that’s why her power allowed her to shape her surroundings so completely. I do the work asked of me and add one caveat of my own. I destroy the pickle-sized organ in her brain that rested where her amygdala should’ve been. That was how she was able to create the images.
For those sleeping outside it would have been her physical transformation that was most striking. I give her height, strengthening her leg muscles and replacing the reverse buckling growths at the midpoint of her legs with proper knees. I perform ten thousand dollars’ worth of dental work in about a minute, reforming her palette, dropping out her excess teeth and forcing some of them to retreat back into the gums. Then I have to stop the gums from bleeding and oozing whatever that black liquid is. I drop all the webbing between her fingers, toes, forearms and pits, and smooth the hide-like patches of skin at the top of her head and the back of her neck with thin delicate skin. I reduce her cranium gently and reshape it to make it look more . . . human. I utilize the excess mass of her extra organs to metabolize the cellulite, bone, nerves, and other stray biological material that rested in her chest cavity. She is by no means perfect when I’m done, but I have a newfound respect for what it takes for a liminal person to look human. When I’m done, I’m all but spent. Alia gets up, stretches her legs for the first time, and understands what balance is. Tamara moves close to me. Props me up. I’m sweating.
“You okay, Taggert?”
“Fine. You okay?”
“Will be in a second.”
Alia spins like a ten-year-old girl with a dress on. She jumps. She touches the fully formed teeth in her mouth, her lip. She smoothes back her ratty red mane. She giggles and tries out her voice, saying her own name over and over again. She’s four years younger than Tamara, but she’s acting like a three-year-old. She stands in front of a mirror looking at her legs. I wonder if she sees Tamara walk up behind her. I’m passive in this one.
I’ll back either play Tamara makes. To pity Alia means to live a life taking care of her, watching her, managing her. She’s an abused animal that needs lots of clean living and distance, a life far from anyone she could hurt. She’s also a predator who is a master manipulator at age ten. I understand why Nordeen sent me against our kind so often now. Without some kind of containment, our kind can split the skies, or at the very least split the souls of humanity. Alia is living proof. Tamara knows all this, I can still feel our latent telepathic connection. I sense her giddiness at making Alia happy combine with a rage that’s burned so hard for three days that it almost has a name of its own, a face. I can see Tamara’s power, the thing inside of her, and it is angry. I can still hear the smile in Alia’s voice.
“Does this mean we can be friends now?” Tamara is surprisingly quick with a sword. Alia never felt it coming.
Chapter Sixteen
It’s almost a full day before our psychic connection fades to the point where we have to speak again. Neither one of us tries to reestablish it, both happy to have some alone time in our own craniums. When we do speak, it’s in a cab headed toward a townhouse in Crystal Palace.
“He can find you even in Bromley.” We both know who she’s talking about.
“I know,” I say, taking in the landscape.
“So why not go find him? Let me plead your case.”
“Girl, there’s nothing you can say he hasn’t already heard. You show up in front of him, and all the hard work I’ve done to keep you a secret goes out the window. What good is that then, huh?”
“Not like you to be scared of a man,” she snipes coldly.
“Not sure he is one, love.”
After a minute Tamara throws herself under my arm.
“It’s not like you could stop me if I was committed.” Truer words were never spoken. She’s powerful. More than powerful now she’s learning how to be subtle. She grabbed all the finance codes from Alia’s head before she decapitated her. Now she’s got the cash. Alia was right—neither one of us are as smart she was. In two years she turned five thousand quid into two point three million euros. I told Tamara it would keep her well fit. She said it’d keep us just as secure. But money wasn’t the issue. And strangely enough, neither was Nordeen.
&nb
sp; “My name is Tamara Bridgecombe,” she says in her old accent. The accent of her prep school, where she belongs. It’s three days after what people are calling the “most bizarre Bender party” ever. Police are still trying to make sense of the decapitated little girl that no one seemed to know in a pub in Soho. Fingerprints, dental records, photos are all coming up blank on the girl. The mass nap is being attributed to a gas leak. No one has any theories about the massive screens all failing at the same time.
The townhouse we’re staying in is from my pre-Nordeen days, as is the owner. He was happy to hear my voice, and happy for the next five mortage payments I give him to rent his little slice of heaven.
“I know your name,” I say, closing the house laptop. Tamara looks over from the couch she’s been recuperating on. She found a white knit sweater, stretched long and wide enough to fit two of her in a closet. She hasn’t taken it off since we settled in. It suits her, and reminds me she’s a child.
I haven’t asked her about killing Alia. Haven’t asked her about her parents. Haven’t asked her about much, really. But every night she sleeps in my bed, and I sit watch for her. Halfway through she’ll start sobbing, low and consistent. Occasionally a word or two will slip in. “Mommy.” “Daddy.” “I’m sorry.” She’s usually up early, five at the latest. She reads a lot. Takes walks. Thinks.
“What I mean is, my father is Darren Bridgecombe.” I nod. I’ve never been a father to anyone. I wouldn’t know how. “But I know that you loved my mother. And I know that she loved you. And when I was all alone, you stood by me. And I know that your blood is in me. So what does that make you to me?”
“Friend. Confidant. Someone that will never do anything intentionally or unintentionally to hurt you.”
“Not good enough,” she says, getting on her knees on the couch so she can look at me properly across the room.
“What are you talking about?”
“So you’ll never do anything intentionally or unintentionally to hurt me. What about protect me? Alia had me dead to rights, yeah? If it wasn’t for you, I’d be dead. You said it yourself—she was a novice. What if one your biggies come? Someone with skill and power? Where am I then? Someone’s cup of tea is what I am. Somebody’s buttered toast to snack on.”
“You’re getting smarter with your power every day—”
“Sell it to someone else, Taggert. You and I both know I need more training if I’m not going to end up a bigger fish’s meal.”
“I’m not taking you over to him.”
“Good. Tag, you’ve got to have sex with a stranger in order to talk to him. I do not want to meet such a man. I want you to stay here, with me.”
“I stay, he comes, we both die.”
“You sure on that, mate? ’Cause from what you told me, Alia said—”
“Not the most reliable of sources,” I point out.
“Not on her own, but didn’t your little sex conduit said something similar about him? Shit, even the man himself told you things he didn’t quite understand were going on here in London. Plus, by your own account, Nord—”
“Don’t say his name.” I’ve been like this since all of Alia’s visions. He’s been a plague to me. All the paternal feeling I’ve had for him has disappeared, leaving just a big ball of confusion where my chest should be.
“OK. But even you said he hasn’t left Morocco in years. What do you think would get him over here?”
“You,” I say sharply. I get up and cross the room to sit next to her. The sun is rising slowly. As streaks of light come through the French doors, the birdbath in the enclosed garden outside comes to life. “At fourteen, you’ve survived more than most of our kind ever will. Most of us live like your mom did. I loved her, but she was ashamed and embarrassed by her powers. That’s most of us. Some of us, like Alia, like my brother, go mad with the power and usually end up breaking themselves or someone else beyond repair. But you, you’re street-smart and getting more skilled every day. You are a jewel. Do you get that? If anyone is out there collecting people like us then you’re the top on their list. If my boss finds out about you—”
“Then you’d fight him, right?” She still has the shocked eyes, the thousand-yard stare of a little body that’s seen too much. “If he ever came for me, now or in fifty years, you’d stand by my side, right?”
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”
“So why wait? Stand with me now. You say he knows about everything anyway. Sooner or later he’ll come for me, if I’m the treasure you claim I am. So why go back? To delay the inevitable? Why not take the time to teach me so that maybe, just maybe, I can stand up to him on my own?”
“It’s not that simple!”
“But it is. You’ve been a slave to that razor around your neck for too long, Taggert. You shouldn’t fear saying his name—he should fear saying yours. Before you didn’t have anything to fight for. Now you do. You aren’t my dad, but you are my father. Fight for me. Stay for me.”
I am quiet that whole day, and tell her I’m going out that night. She gives me a look, then decides it’s OK to trust me. Still not used to being trusted. I get on the tube and pick up a paper. Official ruling from Scotland Yard came in. Tamara’s listed as a runaway. Given that her passport was missing from her room, it’s assumed she’s gone abroad. They’re already painting her as a spoiled brat who had the best of everything and wouldn’t even come home for her parents’ funeral. Leave it to the dailies to get it all wrong.
In the oddities section there’s a report of an Indian restaurant using a rancid ghee that was so toxic it caused all the patrons to vomit and led to a fatal allergic reaction in the son of the owners. The Indian couple that owns the restaurant says they are moving back to Bangalore.
I get off the train but stay on the platform until it’s relatively empty. I give everyone a bright flash in their eyes with my power and then jump on the tracks. I follow the path Tamara blazed for me what seems like ages ago. Halfway there and I can feel a familiar heartbeat. She doesn’t have the raw strength to move cement blocks, so Prentis had the rats burrow a nice-sized hole for her. It is her old apartment after all. She’s got a right to be here.
When I go in I find more animals than I thought possible huddled behind, around, and under her. The rats, cats, and dogs are all remarkably quiet. The pigeons and smaller birds can’t seem to help their squawking. None of them attack. All of them are quaking in fear of the big bad man. Me.
“I’m trying to send them away!” she begs. “I am. Please don’t kill them. I’ll do whatever you want. Please, just don’t kill them.” Then she snaps. “You kill them, you better kill me first. I’ll send them all, every dog, cat, insect. I’ll send them all after you.” My first assessment of her was right. She’s not a soldier. Trained troops don’t announce winning strategies. Nordeen is right to want her. A day in his care, and she would be unbeatable.
I take a seat on the bed, unbutton the deep red peacoat my friend with the townhouse left for me. I take her in for a second. All of her. Then I speak.
“Why won’t they leave?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“They . . . they know what you did to the others. They know what you want to do to me.”
I nod my head in agreement and think before I speak. “About the others, the dogs and rats when we first met. I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were your friends.” One of the dogs, a pearl-eyed border collie who was silently baring his teeth, stops snarling but keeps his tail rigged in the air.
“You can leave,” Prentis offers. I’m a little confused. “I mean, if you leave, I’ll leave. I’ll go to a new county maybe? Like France? Is that OK? Someplace else. I won’t tell about Rajesh or Alia. I swear, I can—”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” The dog bares his teeth again, and the whole mass of animals trembles, pulling in even closer. I realize what an implicit threat I’ve made. “I won’t hurt you.”
It takes Prentis a long time to ask the question we both hav
e. “Why?”
“Me and you, little girl. We’re a lot alike. No family. No friends. Not a lot of people knowing what we can really do. Those that do know want to use us, as if we were wrenches or hammers or something, you know? Me and you, we don’t really know any better way. We’ve been used our whole lives. I don’t want to speak for you, but sometimes I really believe that if I don’t have someone telling me what to do, telling me what they want and need, then I wouldn’t know what to do with my time.”
“Animals.” She says it just a little larger than a whisper. “The animals, what they do with their time is simple. Find food, sleep, poop, play. That’s it. That’s the day-to-day. I like that world. People are different.”
“Are we though, Prentis? Are we that different? Because to be honest, all I want is to take a good rest when I’m tired, let go of bad things that build up in me, and enjoy myself. That’s all I want. I just never thought that was possible.”
“I didn’t mean to bring Tamara into all this trouble.”
“I know. She knows. You were trapped.” She nods a little. A small dog, a black puppy with way too much baby fur, leaves her side and comes to mine. He sniffs a lot. I don’t pet him. “You do that?”
“No. I mean, kind of. It’s not like on the telly with the superheroes, you know? Where they, like, have all this control and the animals do what they say. These are my friends. If I’ve got questions, they want to know the answers. Someone’s attacking me, they want to protect me.”
The Liminal People Page 18