by AJ Larrieu
Well, I hadn’t expected this to go smoothly.
“At least she’s not yelling,” Shane said, mindspeaking on a tight line, his voice clear but quiet in my head.
“That might’ve been easier.”
Shane leaned on his knees, trying to get into Janine’s line of sight. “We can help you,” he said. When she didn’t respond, he added, “What do you need?” He would’ve asked even if we didn’t need her help.
I expected her to ask for money. I couldn’t imagine she didn’t need it. She tapped her cigarette again, and instead of turning to Shane, she leveled her gaze on me. Her answer took me by surprise, but I should’ve been expecting it. “I want to see my boy.”
“Ryan?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Who else would I mean? Robert’s dead and buried, isn’t he? Unless you killed Ryan, too?”
“Ryan is alive.” I’d gone through a lot to make that happen. After everything he’d done, it would’ve been easier—safer, simpler—to kill him. Someone else might’ve done it. But Janine was a friend. And I wasn’t a killer. “I can take you to him.”
She nodded slowly, puffing on her cigarette. “I’ll help you, then. But I’m not doing anything until I see my boy.”
* * *
“Well, that could’ve gone better.” Shane opened the passenger door for me and I got in.
“No kidding.”
“You think she’ll go for it?” He didn’t mean Janine.
“One way to find out.” I took out my phone and dialed Susannah.
I didn’t know her last name. She was programmed into my phone as Susannah Biloxi. She was the winged guardian of the city, and the only creature within two hundred miles strong enough to handle a converter like Ryan. As far as I knew, his powers would never return, but we couldn’t risk having him in a normal prison if they did, so Susannah was holding him. For a price.
The phone rang a dozen times before it went to voice mail. I got an automated message announcing that the person I dialed was not available. It was hard to tell if the number was wrong, or Susannah just hadn’t bothered to personalize her greeting. I was betting on the latter.
“Nothing,” I said. I called the grill Susannah owned and got a perky employee who assured me she’d pass along my message. I wasn’t reassured. “We should just go. Just get in the car and start driving.” Diana could be anywhere. She could be dead. We couldn’t afford delays.
“And when we show up unannounced—what then?”
I started to protest, but he was right. The last time I’d shown up in Susannah’s city without calling first, she hadn’t exactly been pleased. I stared at my phone and willed it to ring.
“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Shane said, and I glared at him.
“Just take me to the B&B. At least I can be useful while I wait.”
Shane drove me to the Quarter and pulled over alongside his uncle Lionel’s B&B. Since I hadn’t found a job at any of the New Orleans engineering firms yet, I was helping Lionel keep the place up, cleaning rooms and washing dishes. The work wasn’t glamorous, but it was surprisingly satisfying. Besides, it was hard not to love the B&B, a classic old French Quarter home, brick and stucco painted orange-red, wrought iron balconies and window boxes. Now, in the height of summer, they were overflowing with white jasmine and violet-blue lobelia.
“You going to the shop?” I asked Shane. Charlie was a good boss—he never minded when Shane needed time off—but he still paid by the hour. I wasn’t exactly raking in the money, either. If we wanted to make the mortgage, we had to work.
Shane nodded. “I can get a little work done on this import someone brought in last week. Fender bender.”
“Should I tell him?” I looked toward the B&B. Shane knew what I meant.
Lionel and Janine had been close. They’d known each other most of their lives, and before everything that had happened, they’d been the core of the New Orleans shadowmind community. Lionel had been the last to believe Ryan was guilty, and if he truly knew how far Janine had fallen, he would be heartbroken.
Shane shook his head, and concern for his uncle washed through him. “He doesn’t need to know.”
“That’s what I think too.”
“All right.” He leaned in and gave me a swift kiss on the lips and a lingering mental squeeze at my waist. “Let me know what Susannah says.”
“If she ever calls back,” I said, and got out of the car.
I walked into the house through the formal foyer. It was almost lunchtime, and the guests’ dining room was empty. It looked as though I’d just missed breakfast.
I went through to the kitchen and found Lionel and his partner Bruce both at the sink, washing dishes. They hadn’t noticed me yet. I stood in the doorway, governing my thoughts and shoving the memory of the morning deep in my head. Bruce was a normal, but Lionel was a converter, and he’d practically raised me. There was no way to keep him from noticing that something was bothering me, but I could at least keep him from finding out what.
Bruce said something to Lionel, but I couldn’t make it out. Lionel made a mock-outraged noise and hit him with a damp dishtowel, and Bruce laughed and pulled him close and kissed him. Decades together and they still acted like a couple of kids flirting on a first date. I cleared my throat.
“Cassie!” Lionel blushed deep red over his dark brown skin. “Didn’t see you there, sugar.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I figured.” I walked into the room and stood on tiptoe to give Bruce a peck on the cheek. He chuckled, looking like a redheaded Cajun Santa Claus.
“Hey there, chère. We were worried about you.”
I usually got in much earlier to help serve breakfast. I kept my thoughts locked down. “Just had something to take care of. I’ll go get started on the rooms?”
“Sure, sugar. Most of the guests are out.”
I raced up the stairs before he could figure out I had shields up and checked my phone. Nothing.
I blared music on my headphones to distract myself while I waited. I made up the bed and scrubbed the bathroom in the Wisteria Room, then moved on to the Rose Room on the third floor. The couple staying in it had used all of the complimentary toiletries. Again. I replaced them and checked my phone to make sure I hadn’t somehow missed Susannah’s call while I’d been making up the bed. Still nothing.
I moved on to the Blue Room, which looked like it had been ground zero of a frat party. Beer cans, stray Mardi Gras beads, a bra. I knew for a fact no women had checked in. It was a nice bra. I hoped the owner got it back eventually. I sighed and headed for the bathroom, and of course, Susannah finally called back while I was in the middle of scrubbing the toilet.
“What is it?” She didn’t even wait for me to say hello.
“I need to visit your prison.”
“That wasn’t part of our agreement.”
I’d been afraid of this. “You never said I couldn’t visit. I need to make sure he’s all right.”
“I assure you he is in satisfactory condition.”
“I need to see him.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Fine.” I held in my breath of relief so she wouldn’t hear it. “When?”
“As soon as possible. This afternoon.”
She mumbled something that was probably unpleasant, but we settled on a time. I hadn’t discussed it with Janine, but from what I’d seen that morning, I was betting her schedule was open.
Chapter Three
We drove up to The Sand Angel Grill in Biloxi, Mississippi three hours later. A line of people waiting to order wrapped around the low building, just like every other time I’d been here, and the smell of frying bacon mixed with salty scent of the ocean just a few yards away. A row of beach towels, painfully bright in the midday sun, hung like flags from the eaves. We were the only people not w
earing swimsuits and coverups.
Janine looked at the line and looked back at me again. “You said he was in jail.”
“We’re meeting our escort.” I stood on tiptoe and looked again for Susannah. It had been over twelve hours since Diana had sped off down the road, and anything could have happened to her. I kept thinking of the bruise on her cheek and the fear I’d heard in her voice.
Janine looked doubtfully at the crowd of cheerful locals. I wasn’t sure how she’d take it if I told her this was the plain-sight lair of the winged guardian in charge of Biloxi, who might or might not be entirely stable.
New Orleans hadn’t had a guardian in living memory. Lionel told stories about them, but they were all passed-down tales from other places. Maybe the city had never had her own protector.
“She knows we’re here, right?” Shane’s voice in my head. He didn’t bother to conceal an edge of annoyance.
“Maybe she got held up.”
He gave the mental equivalent of a humph and folded his arms. The line moved up, and the freckled, redheaded cashier at the counter, a telepath, greeted the next customer in line while looking right at me. “Go around back. I’ll tell her you’re here.” His mental voice was as clear as if he’d spoken an inch from my ear. Pure telepaths were like that—laserlike mental focus.
I nodded, and Shane said, “I heard.”
We walked past the line of diners and around the side of the wooden building. There was a Dumpster with a smattering of graffiti and, disturbingly, what looked like a paring knife embedded in the side, right in the center of the dot of an i.
“This had better not be some wild goose chase,” Janine said, staring at the knife.
Before I could respond, Susannah walked out of the back door, and all three of us went instinctually still.
Her wings weren’t visible at the moment. I didn’t know how it worked, but she was able to make them appear and disappear at will. She was wearing cutoff jean shorts and a too-big white T-shirt that said Ocean Grove Casino & Spa. At first glance, she looked like a college kid on spring break, but her slender frame was corded with muscle and her graceful movements were born of prizefighter reflexes. Even the way she stood telegraphed threat.
“Who is that?”
I knew who she meant. Janine glanced at me uncertainly. It was the kindest expression she’d turned my way yet. I decided lengthy explanations probably weren’t necessary. “His mother.”
“No.”
Janine looked at me. “You promised.”
“She just wants to visit him, that’s all.”
“This was not part of our agreement.”
“You never said he couldn’t have visitors.” I was learning how to play her game. Better late than never.
She turned her gaze on me with the slightest narrowing of her eyes. “True.” She glanced back to Janine, looking her up and down. “You won’t like what you see.”
“You agreed not to harm him,” I said.
Susannah inclined her head. “I did. But he never agreed not to harm himself.”
Janine looked between us, back and forth. “What do you mean? Cass, what does she mean?”
“It’s okay. I’m sure he’s fine.” I took her arm and gave Susannah a quelling look.
She flared her nostrils and tightened her lips. “Meet me on the street. Try to keep up.” She turned and walked back into the restaurant.
* * *
I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Susannah tear down the road on a motorcycle. Once or twice, I almost thought I caught sight of her wings trailing behind her in the wind.
Shane drove, keeping pace with her through heavy summer traffic—high school graduates on their first parent-free vacations, tourists, families on day trips. We left the beachfront behind and turned inland, leaving the high-rise hotels for more modest bungalows and then the part of the city the tourists never saw, neighborhoods and grocery stores and gas stations without a gaudy, shell-encrusted advertisement in sight. Susannah turned into the cracked concrete drive of a strip mall that had seen better days.
The parking lot was nearly empty. Susannah managed to take up two spots with her bike, and Shane parked carefully three spots down.
“What is this place?” Janine asked. I couldn’t answer her.
Susannah was already walking to a detached brick building sitting in the center of the lot, as close to the road as it could get. It looked as though it might’ve been a restaurant once—its neon sign was still there, but it was burned out and weathered. Underneath were the words Your Neighborhood Bar & Grill! The windows were covered with plywood and there was a chain securing the door.
The three of us stayed back as Susannah pulled a key ring from her pocket and unlocked the padlock. She turned to Janine. “Never come back here. Do you understand?”
Janine nodded, too quickly, too much, her breath coming fast and her heart pounding. A mix of nerves and misplaced joy and righteous anger came off of her like spilled perfume. Susannah opened the door and led us inside.
Any hint at the building’s former life vanished once we got inside. She must have totally gutted it and rebuilt it from the foundation up. The front door opened into what could only be called a sheet metal cage. It was like being inside a safe, nothing but gleaming silver metal on all sides. The four of us barely fit, and I almost imagined I felt invisible wings brushing my side. Susannah closed the entry door and spent a moment unlocking a second door, this one made of what looked like solid steel. It opened with a hydraulic sigh.
The next room looked like a command center from an eighties spy movie, with its bay of black-and-white video surveillance feeds and panel of lighted buttons. A man—medium build, wavy dark hair, brown skin—sat in a rolling chair in front of the monitors, drinking coffee out of a ceramic mug and reading a paperback novel. He stood up when Susannah walked in.
“David,” she said, nodding.
He sat back down, staring at us. I was too intimidated to sneak into Susannah’s head, but I didn’t have qualms about eavesdropping on this guy. His thoughts were too loud to ignore, anyway.
—never brings people—who the hell—guess she knows what she’s doing—still—need to take off early next Friday—probably shouldn’t ask her now—looks pretty pissed—
Well, that wasn’t much I didn’t already know.
Susannah didn’t speak but led us forward, shoving aside rolling desk chairs as though they’d gotten in her way on purpose. I glanced at the screens and saw images of the empty parking lot, the porch, the back of the building. And then the cells.
Some of them were empty. At least three of them contained people, all of them men. I didn’t see Ryan, and Susannah moved too fast for me to stop and look properly. She opened a metal door at the other end of the surveillance room with yet another key, and we stepped into the hallway.
It was full of cells. Metal doors closed off each one, with tiny, six-inch windows the only way to see in. The plexiglass was several inches thick and shot through with chicken wire. I peered through one and saw a man slumped on a thin cot, eyes open, staring at us. I thought he was dead until he blinked.
“You just keep them in here? Locked up?” Shane’s voice was calm, but I knew him well enough to hear the edge in it.
Susannah kept walking. “What do you think this is? A social club? I use it for short-term rehabilitation. The ones who can’t be saved, I kill.” She said it so matter-of-factly, it made my skin go cold. “It’s not a hotel.”
“It doesn’t have to be a torture facility, either,” Shane said.
Susannah stopped in the middle of the hall and rounded on him. Every muscle in my body tensed, but she only narrowed her eyes and considered him.
“You don’t deserve an explanation, but I will give you one anyway.” She walked forward until she was right in
front of him. Shane didn’t budge, but Janine took several steps back. “You can’t know what it means to carry a city on your shoulders. There are more than just lives in the balance. I do what is best for my city. If that means remorseless killers fail to get their daily exercise before I execute them, I cannot say I’m particularly bothered by it.”
A muscle in Shane’s jaw tensed, but he didn’t back away. His mind was a swirl of wrong and inhuman and we could do better.
Susannah didn’t wait for any of us to respond. For the best, since I didn’t know what I would’ve said. She turned to the thick door in front of us and rapped on the steel. Inside, someone stirred. The sound of metal on metal set my teeth on edge. Susannah unlocked the door and swung it open.
Ryan was handcuffed to a bare cot. He was wearing a stained white shirt and pale blue pants with frayed hems, and his hair was shorn to his skull. When he saw me, he laughed, and it was a terrible sound, insanity and sorrow.
“Please,” he said, and his voice broke. He held up his hands in supplication, as far as his restraints would allow. “Just finish it.”
I barely had time to close my jaw before Janine pushed past me into the room.
“Ryan, baby...” She knelt in front of him. It took him a moment to see her, and even when he focused on her, he didn’t seem to recognize her, as though her presence was as unremarkable as the presence of any of us. “What have they done to you?” Janine asked, but Ryan didn’t answer.
He was thin—dangerously so—and there were scars on his wrists. A pink, ropy slash ran along the side of his neck. Janine had her hands on either side of his face, but Ryan wasn’t looking at her. I turned to Susannah, eyes blazing, but she shook her head.
“He tried to kill himself. Three times.” She spoke in a low voice. “The last time he attempted to hang himself with the bed sheets.” I looked at the cot. Bare. Susannah went on. “He’s been refusing food for weeks, but we manage to get an IV into him every few days.”
Shane closed his eyes, and I shared his complicated feelings. After everything Ryan had done, it was hard to pity him and yet impossible not to.