“What I am,” Dean echoed, gazing past him into the building. “What the fuck does that mean?”
Kevin shook his head. “You must take the jade and go. Get out of here. Now, before he finds you. You can’t let him find you.”
“I don’t understand,” Miri said, as Dean grabbed her elbow and hauled her up off the ground. “Why would you do that? Why change your mind and help us?”
He said nothing, pressing his lips together into a hard line. Dean began dragging her away, but she fought him, crying out, “Why Owen? Why me?”
“Because we had to,” Kevin blurted, suddenly pitiful and small, nothing but a helpless old man. “Because she said it would be the end if we didn’t.”
“Who said that? Your boss is a woman?”
“She is no ordinary woman,” Kevin said, with a conviction and a fervor that were just as astounding as every other twist and turn of his personality.
“She’s letting you die,” Dean said. “Whoever your unordinary woman is, she’s let all her people burn to death at the hand of that thing in there. You want to follow that? All for what? A … a book? A book and flesh?”
A book and flesh? Miri turned, incredulous, but Dean still looked at Kevin, who stared at him with such profound horror that she knew whatever he had just spoken was the absolute truth.
“You know,” he whispered, and it was suddenly difficult for her to remember him as the troublemaker she had loved to hate. His face now belonged to a stranger, a monster, someone weak and pathetic. All those things, rolling in his eyes.
“No,” Dean said. “But you could tell me.”
Kevin reached with shaking hands into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He tossed them to Miri and gestured at the squat, dingy dark blue van parked nearby. Miri ran to the driver’s side and opened the door. Dean did not follow.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand to Kevin. “You don’t want to stay here. Not with that thing.”
“No,” Kevin murmured, and then, “There is another piece of jade. You must find it.”
“I don’t have to find anything,” Dean said, inching close. Miri heard a terrible screeching sound from inside the building. Elsewhere, sirens. Students running from the darkness.
Kevin scrambled to his feet. “You have no choice but to find it now. You’ve been marked. Your life is no longer your own.”
Miri caught movement on the periphery of her vision. She looked down the long corridor into the fire, into smoke, and saw a body coming toward them. Indistinct, but utterly inhuman.
“Dean,” Miri snapped. “Dean, we need to go!”
“What does that mean?” he said to Kevin, ignoring her. “Yo, what does that mean?”
“It means you are a monster,” Kevin said, and he turned and ran into the inferno.
Chapter Six
Miri stared, horrified, unable to summon the strength to chase after Kevin. She had no time to cry out before his body disappeared behind the smoke, and for a moment, as she stared after him, she imagined another set of eyes in the fire, eyes behind the veil, with a gaze like the sun. Miri felt something sharp inside her head, a prick, a great heat against her skin.
And then Dean was there, shoving her into the van, and Miri heard a roar, like an animal, and he raced around the front of the van as she jammed the key into the ignition, yelling, “Go! Go! Go!” as the engine put-putted into a weak rumble.
He jumped into the passenger seat and Miri went. Tires squealed. Rubber burned. Dean twisted in his seat, hanging out the window.
“What do you see?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he replied, but his voice was flat, hard, and she tried to look through the side mirror at the chaos they were leaving behind. It was too late, and there were too many curves in the road.
“What the hell just happened back there?” Miri asked, though it took her a moment before her throat worked. Her voice sounded weak, broken.
“Fire, brimstone, hell on earth.” Dean flashed her a humorless smile. “You want an entire list?”
“Dean.” Miri took a hard turn; he hit his head on the ceiling as he slid back into his seat. He grimaced, rubbing his forehead.
“You remember what I said about that picture of you? That I found it during an investigation?”
“Yes.” She had been wondering about that use of the word and its implications.
“There have been a series of murders over the past week. That’s what I was referring to back in the lab. People set on fire.”
“Fire,” she echoed. “I think I’ve heard about it on the news. Grisly news. People burning to death made a great headline.”
“Yeah. And I’ll give you one guess who the culprit is.”
“You’re kidding.” Miri glanced at him; the look he gave her was deadly serious and she said, “Dean, that thing back there was not human.”
“Not human.” He grimaced. “You got no idea, sweetheart. But that’s the easy part, the part that isn’t hard to explain. Where it gets complicated are the people that thing murdered. What they knew, what they were involved in. They all had a connection.”
“The jade,” she said.
“You,” he said softly. “Just you. The last victim I found had that picture, your location. An assignment with your name on it.”
“But you linked it to Kevin.”
“A guess, but only because I found something else at the crime scene. An energy trail from someone who was walking through this university. I saw the exterior of that archaeology building, Miri. I just didn’t know what it mean until I got there and saw it with my own two eyes.”
“You think you picked up the edge of Owen’s kidnapping?”
“Maybe. That victim also had a manifest. Most of the people on it are dead, but I bet if I looked, there would be a Kevin Liao on the list.”
“Hunted,” she said. “They were also being hunted because of the jade.”
“Or something else they know that’s related to it.”
Miri swayed forward in her seat, knuckles white around the wheel. She wanted to set her teeth in the plastic and gnaw on it like some oversized chew toy.
“Do you need me to drive?” Dean asked.
“I’ll be fine,” she lied. “But I need you to tell me more. Like how you’re involved in this mess, what you’ve been doing with your life for the past twenty years that could possibly have you investigating murders committed by monsters.”
“I work for a detective agency,” he said.
“Detective agency.” She laughed, and knew it sounded bitter. “Are you kidding me?”
“You sound so cheated.”
“Considering everything that’s happened, I expected something more flamboyant.”
“No. It’s boring. Just a bunch of paper pushers. With guns.”
“Guns,” she muttered. “What I’ve seen today is way more hard-core than midnight surveillances and photos of men cheating on their wives. Are you sure you’re not part of the government? Some secret agent, covert operation thing?”
“Please. Do I look like a secret agent?”
“Secret agents aren’t supposed to look secret. That’s the whole point. Besides, what kind of detective agency gets involved in shit like this?”
“The very cool kind. I could be my own action figure.”
“I hope you can bounce back like an action figure, because one more joke like that and I’m kicking you out of this van and running you over with the tires.”
“So much anger. Whatever happened to living life with a smile?” And he began humming a Jimmy Durante tune.
Miri shook her head. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? You’re doing the same thing. Still trying to make me laugh.”
“It’s not only for you,” he said. “I was also just called a monster, don’t forget. And somehow, I don’t think Kevin meant that as a metaphor.”
“Kevin is crazy,” Miri said. “But you got him in the end with that mention of a book and … and flesh.”
/> “It’s part of another vision I had at the victim’s home tonight. I heard someone giving instructions, talking about how some book couldn’t be allowed in the flesh, or some crap like that. I can’t remember exactly. Just that it was weird.”
“And connected with the jade, and apparently that mark on your chest, which was ever so popular with everyone in that lab.”
“About that—” he said slowly.
“Yes,” she interrupted. “I saw the glow. And no, I’m not going to ask.”
“Thank God. Because I have no idea what it means.”
“And the only person who does ran back into that burning building.”
“Bummer,” Dean said. “I was almost beginning to like the bastard.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly, thinking of Ku-Ku, as well. Trying to imagine her dead. Despite everything, it hurt. She had liked that girl. Or at least, the mask she had worn.
“So you’re a detective,” she said. “You’re a detective who travels to Taiwan to hunt someone who is distinctly nonhuman, and who is flagrantly setting people on fire. I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about this on the news.”
“I hope to God you never hear about that murderer in the media. You can’t imagine what would happen if someone like that went public.”
“Murder is already public, Dean. You can’t get much more public than burning people to death. And hello? What he just did at the university? There are bound to be witnesses. Security cameras, at the very least.”
“I know,” he said grimly. “It’s bad for all of us.”
“Us?” she echoed.
Dean hesitated. “I really do work for a detective agency, Miri. It’s just that my employer hires a bunch of … diverse people. Diverse like me.”
“Oh,” she said; and suddenly it all made sense. Not in any detailed way, but pieces fell on top of other pieces, which fell into place: Dean’s acceptance of everything weird that had happened, his ease and confidence in using his gift, his navigation of the bizarre and illegal.
“You found others,” she said.
“They found me,” he replied. “No one really knows about the agency, of course. It’s all secret and we do regular detective work—finding kidnap victims, solving murders. The title is just a cover so we can use our gifts to help people. You know, without being called freaks or being watched.”
“Or studied,” she said.
“Or studied,” he repeated softly. “So yeah, that’s why I was sent to Taiwan. We knew that the killer was also … like us, and it was up to me to bring him under control. So he doesn’t ruin it for everyone else.”
“And by doing so, look at what you got caught up in.”
“It brought me back to you. I can’t complain.”
He said it like he meant every word, and Miri looked at him, really stared, until he pointed at the road and grabbed the wheel. The van swerved, and Miri swore silently, wrestling back control before she veered into oncoming traffic. Dean let go, but only just; his fingers trailed over her hand and lingered on her wrist.
“You okay with this?” he asked.
“Fine,” she snapped, heart hammering. “Just jittery, that’s all.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant this, us, me. The way you looked … it was like you didn’t believe a word I said.”
“Would it bother you if I didn’t?”
“Yeah. I’m not your enemy, Miri.”
“Good,” she replied. “What a pleasure to hear.”
Dean’s fingers slipped away from her wrist. “I don’t get it. One minute you act like we’re friends again, and the next … Jesus. I feel like I should be in handcuffs or something.”
“And what? You want me to feel sorry for making you feel bad?”
“Of course not. I just don’t understand why you’d think I’d try and pull something on you. Hell, if I wanted to hurt you I would have done it already.”
That, she believed. Miri steadied her grip on the wheel, trying to find the words, wanting so desperately for him to understand. Nothing came to her except an overwhelming feeling of helplessness.
Miri rolled down the window. The van’s air conditioner could not keep up with the heat, and the humid breeze was better than anything stale and stuffy. Sweat rolled down her back and face. She felt sticky and greasy and smelly. Fear, running off her body. She savored the rush of air against her hot face. Tears wet her eyes.
A hand touched the back of her head, stayed there with a different kind of warmth; dry and comforting.
“Hard night,” Dean murmured.
“We’ve had other hard nights,” she whispered. “But this is worse.”
“Yeah.” He hesitated, then pulled something from his pocket. The statue of Glen Campbell. He held it in his hand and closed his eyes. Miri’s gaze moved from the road to his face; she caught the slow change in his expression, the frown, a growing crease in his forehead. Dread hit her low, in the gut.
“Dean,” she whispered, but he said nothing and pressed his head into his hands, pushing the statue against his skin with his eyes squeezed shut. He rocked in his seat. Miri hit the brakes and pulled the van to the side of the road, deep within the mouth of a long residential alley lined with bicycles and large potted trees; an old man sat on a concrete stoop some distance away, smoking a cigarette. Miri looked down at her hands, knuckles white around the wheel. The engine ticked and rumbled. The air inside the van was almost too hot to breathe.
“Keep moving,” he muttered. “We need to keep driving.”
“What the hell is wrong?”
“Nothing,” he snapped. “Owen’s alive. I just can’t track him anymore. I can’t fix his location.”
Miri briefly closed her eyes. “This night is just getting worse and worse. I’m not going to live to see morning, am I?”
“Don’t talk like that. I don’t want to hear it from you, Miri. Please.”
“Okay,” she said, peering into his stricken face. “Okay, Dean.”
He settled back in his seat and returned the statue to his pocket. “I don’t know why this is happening. It’s like there’s a block in my head. I couldn’t track the killer, I couldn’t track you, and now Owen’s been cut off. It’s like … it’s like someone’s manipulating the energy, making it self-contained.” He looked at her, and she felt the shift in his gaze, knew he was studying a whole other part of her body that she could only imagine.
“You’re self-contained,” he whispered. “You have no trail, Miri.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that everyone leaves a trail. You remember that much, right? It’s how I track people. It’s how I would have tracked you.” He pulled the locket out from beneath his shirt, and bounced it in hand. She still remembered giving it to him; hooking the chain around his neck on a whim.
“I looked for you,” he said slowly. “I did. I thought, maybe, I could still be with you somehow. Like, if you were a ghost. I thought I could follow you. I used the necklace. I used it every damned day. I did everything I could. I just … never saw anything.”
Miri gripped the wheel until her hands hurt and said, “You’re telling me that for the past twenty years I had no trail for you to follow.”
“I look at you now and it’s obvious you’re alive, but you travel like a ghost. I saw the same thing with the … the creature back at the university. It’s why I had such a hard time finding him in the first place. Tonight, earlier, I got a lucky break. But if I wanted to track him? If I wanted to track you? I don’t think I could.”
“How does that happen to a person?” Miri asked him. “Why would … my body be doing that?”
“I don’t know, bao bei. But it must have started that night you were shot, because I never had any trouble finding you before.”
Miri closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe. “And Owen?”
“I don’t know. If I had to guess, I would say that someone is running interference, though how that’s possible …”
�
�Are there people capable of doing that?”
Dean shrugged, still gripping the statue. “I’ve seen some crazy shit over the past year, not including tonight. I’d say just about anything is possible. Hell, seeing you again qualifies as a goddamn miracle.”
“Amen,” she muttered, and Dean cracked a smile that faded fast. He rubbed Glen Campbell’s brass head.
“Still nothing. I’m so sorry, Miri. I think I know what Owen means to you, if he really is like Ni-Ni.”
“He is,” she whispered, feeling a terrible pain inside her chest. “I was eighteen and miserable when I went to college. Still not over you, and Ni-Ni had been gone a year. The only thing I had was my fantasy of being some Indiana Jones archaeologist. Because hey, the past is done, dry, dead. It can’t hurt you, right? You don’t experience all the grit and suffering of the living. Just the facts, all those puzzle pieces. And Owen … I guess he must have seen something in me. Maybe hunger. I don’t know. Only, he and his wife took me in. Made sure I had something stable to lean on.”
“Your parents?”
“Same as always. Owen was a better daddy. You’d like him.”
“Then I plan on meeting him. Soon.”
“Always the optimist.”
“Because you have to smile though your heart is aching,” he sang softly. “Smile though it’s breaking, with those clouds in the sky.”
And she managed a smile, and said, “I’m glad you’re here.”
“What a relief,” he said. “You’re so cruel to me, I was beginning to wonder.”
“Cruel?” she said, trying not to laugh. She shoved him and he grabbed her hand, cradling it, kissing it.
Her breath caught, and over the thudding over her heart, she heard him say, “I’m here, Miri. I’m not leaving you. You’re not doing this alone.”
Her eyes felt hot. She looked at Dean’s hand on her own, savoring the warmth of his skin, the miracle of simply being touched by this man and friend who she thought she had lost.
And she said, quietly, “Did you miss me? All these years?”
“That’s a dumb question.”
“And you really thought I was dead?”
The Red Heart of Jade Page 12