Her head tilted a little as she eyed me. The question was loud in her mind, but she thought it was rude to ask. She was right, but I answered anyway.
“I have my own money,” I said deliberately. “An account with my mother’s maiden name. It has money from her family that my father doesn’t know about. So yeah, I paid for the curtains.”
Her cheeks reddened. “I didn’t think that you stole…”
“Yeah, you did.”
Against my will, an image of my mother flashed in my mind. Aged long past her years, eyes half crazed, she was still beautiful. I had her hair. And her lips. I hadn’t seen her since I was a toddler, but that night she’d left her suite to ambush me in the eastern gardens. She took in my torn and bloody clothes, the quickly healing wounds, and spoke in a fast whisper. Her voice was scratchy, as if she hadn’t spoken for years. There was an account, she said, created in my name, using her grandmother’s maiden name. All her father’s family inheritance had been funneled into it. The account was unknown to my father—she swore she never once thought of it—and supposedly untraceable. Then she disappeared into the shrubbery.
Two days later, the newspapers announced her death.
A chill ran up my spine.
I walked Heather and Thirteen into the kitchen. “We found a building,” he said, “a Kelch private holding that we didn’t know existed until now. Chang found it among some sealed title work from the seventies. Another Network team scouted the building and they found something. Evidence that David Sasser had been held there.”
“David Sasser?” I had to think for a moment. “One of the missing Network members. The guy you thought might have been at Batalkis’s house.”
Thirteen nodded.
“We want you to come with us!” Heather exclaimed. “To check out the place like you did at Batalkis’s!” She glanced at Thirteen and stifled some of her enthusiasm. “Everybody else is still checking out other locations. I offered to accompany you and Thirteen to this new location.”
I looked back at Thirteen. Obviously he wasn’t as excited about this field trip as she was.
“Why do they think Sasser was there?” I asked.
Thirteen hesitated as Heather turned eager eyes to him. “There was blood,” he said finally. “And, er, fingerprints.”
He was holding something back. I peeked at his thoughts but his mental walls were rock solid.
“Well, let’s get going,” I said and threw back the rest of my whiskey. I slid on my shoes and followed Heather to the car. She took the backseat.
“You seem awfully excited about going to a crime scene,” I said to her.
She tried to hide her lingering grin and failed. “I know, and it’s just awful of me. I’ve never met David, and I’d probably be a lot different if we were going somewhere else, but I hardly ever get to go to the crime scenes. I do research for the Network more than anything else. But when I found out that he was going to have you come out and look at the site, I begged Thirteen to let me come this time.”
She looked a little sheepish. What do you know? I had a fan.
About twenty minutes later we turned onto a worn side street just south of downtown. Three buildings were crowded next to what remained of a gas station. The long exposed wall of the end building was decorated with colorful gang graffiti, and all three storefronts displayed handmade “For Rent” signs. Thirteen parked in front of the last building.
The windows were barred and the front door was chained shut so we walked to the alley next to the building. Thirteen had a key. I didn’t ask how—the man had access everywhere—and we let ourselves in.
The floor inside was littered with papers, trash, and leaves that had blown in from a broken window somewhere in the back. It was hot as a sauna and the heat only amplified the stench. Thirteen directed us down a hall, past empty offices on either side, until we reached an open area in the rear—a storage room most likely, given the shelving units on the far wall. In the center of the floor sat a plastic waiting room chair, spattered with stains of brown and red. Blood.
I took a step closer. Heather gasped and I stopped.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “What is that?”
She pointed to the chair and at first I didn’t see anything. But then I saw it, hanging from a string off the back of the chair. I inched forward to get a better look. Thirteen mirrored my movements, walking around the other side of the chair until we were both facing what appeared to be half of a hand—a thumb and two fingers—dangling from a long piece of stringy flesh off the back of the chair.
I looked up at Thirteen. “Fingerprints?”
He nodded.
“The blade must have caught on some of the flesh,” I said, “peeling off this long string of skin in the process. Then it got stuck in the crack of the chair here at the top, and whoever was playing butcher was too busy or too cocky to care and just left.”
Thirteen crouched down on his haunches to examine the fingers closer. I looked around the room for anything else that might have been left behind. Then I saw Heather. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her stomach, her face white and pasty as soap.
“Heather? You OK over there?”
She slowly shook her head back and forth.
“Heather?” I said again and turned to Thirteen.
He went to her and put a big arm around her shoulder. “Close your eyes if that helps,” he said softly. She did, then buried her face in Thirteen’s chest.
He looked back at me, his face still the same serious expression he had when he walked into the farmhouse. “What do you feel, Magnolia?”
Oh, yeah. I was supposed to be sensing the power here. Right.
I concentrated on the air in the room. The dank smell of mildew and sweat hung heavy in the room. Somewhere an animal had made a nest among the debris. The breeze from the broken window brought in scents of asphalt and garbage bins. But that was all.
“I don’t feel anything here,” I said finally. “Nothing. There’s none of the lingering power that was at Batalkis’s house.”
I slowly moved around the room, frustrated. I must have missed something. That was David Sasser’s hand hanging off that chair, and he had been taken by my family. So there had to be power in the air somewhere. But wherever I went, even back into the front waiting room, there was nothing.
I frowned at Thirteen and an image from his thoughts slammed into my mind. David Sasser, sitting at a small circular table, sharing drinks with him and Banks.
Oh my God. I knew him.
“He was at the Turtle,” I said. “The day of our first meeting. He wasn’t in the conference room with us, but he was there, sitting with a group of businessmen having lunch.”
Thirteen’s thoughts immediately shifted. Heather moaned, “Oh God, he was there?”
Thirteen turned his serious eyes on me again. “Are you sure you can’t sense anything?”
“There’s nothing,” I said again. “Either my family hasn’t been here, or they didn’t use any power.”
“Would they do that? Torture someone without using their powers?”
“No,” I said, searching the room again. The slice of hand hung like some morbid ornament off the chair. “Especially with the broken window. The guy, Sasser, would have screamed when they cut off his hand. They would have needed a camouflage to cover what they were doing. Even in this neighborhood. But there’s just nothing here.”
Thirteen rubbed his hand up and down Heather’s arm while she shook against his chest. Once again I found myself questioning Thirteen’s choice of team members.
“Heather?” he asked softly, gently pulling her away from him. “What is it, exactly, that has you so upset? You’ve seen body parts before…”
Heather choked on a sob and kept her eyes closed. It took her a couple of tries to find her voice. “There’s just so much hate. It’s everywhere. How could someone do that to another human being? All that blood and pain. It’s just so horrible.” She curled
again into Thirteen’s chest.
All that blood and pain? Come on. The hand was pretty gross, I guess, but there wasn’t really even that much blood.
I met Thirteen’s gaze and, even though he didn’t think it, I got the distinct impression he wanted me to look inside Heather’s mind.
I reached out to her thoughts and had to step back. The sheer openness of her mind was overwhelming. She wasn’t just cringing from the severed fingers on the chair—she was cringing from every evil act that had taken place in this building. She couldn’t see visions of actual people being tortured, but she felt their pain. As well as the hatred that had caused that pain.
And I recognized the hatred that she sensed. I still didn’t feel any residual power in the room, but the intensity and depth of the evil she felt was like a homecoming for me. Oh, my family had been here all right. Maybe not this time, with this guy, but they had used this building. And often.
A wave of violent tremors shook Heather. Her empathic abilities had her so scared and confused—no wonder Thirteen had kept her from crime scenes.
“We should be going,” Thirteen said.
I nodded absently, then followed as he led Heather back to the car. I locked the alley door behind me and waited on the curb as Thirteen laid Heather down in the backseat. Once the car door was shut, he walked over to me.
“My family didn’t torture David Sasser in there,” I said before he could ask. “But they did others. She felt it all, even though the lingering power had faded too much for me to sense, she still felt what had been done in there.”
Thirteen ran a hand through his hair and looked back at the car. “I shouldn’t have brought her. She’s too raw. Too sensitive for these things.”
I frowned. “If she’s going to be on this task force, she’s going to see horrible things. That’s just the way it is with my family. I’m surprised she hasn’t sensed things like this before.”
“We try to protect her,” Thirteen explained. “Jon especially. If he could, he would get her to leave the Network, but she has to help. Has to do her part for the greater good.”
I didn’t get it. Why did she put herself through this? Especially when she didn’t even understand why she felt the things she did.
Thirteen got in the car, and I followed without argument. I closed the door and turned to check on Heather. She’d stopped crying and was just lying on her side on the backseat. Her thoughts were swirling, but always came back to Jon. The very thought of his arms around her calmed her somehow.
I thought of Theo. A warmth filled me as I pictured his five o’clock shadow, the masculine tendons of his neck and the way they flexed. Was this comfort? Probably not. I doubted I’d be blushing this much if it were comfort.
It didn’t really matter anyway. However intense this thing between us was, he would never feel that all-encompassing love like Jon felt for Heather. At least not for me.
“Why does your family do such terrible things?”
Heather’s voice was quiet. I started to turn away.
“I’m serious,” she said a little louder. “I want to know because, truly, I don’t understand it. Why do they hurt people so badly?”
I looked in her eyes and saw the scope of her naïveté.
“Because we’re evil, Heather.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Thirteen flinch. Heather sniffed, but she nodded for me to continue.
“None of us ever met Grandfather, but Grandmother said that’s where the power came from. She was the drive behind the Kelch empire from day one. I’m pretty sure Grandmother was a sociopath. She wanted everyone to either fear her or desire her. She took Grandfather’s powers to a whole new level of malevolence with her sons. She trained them, pounded into their heads that they were superior because of their gifts. And pain? That was her way to both punish and reward: if Uncle Max did something wrong, he was tortured. If he did something right, Father was.
“She might not have had any powers of her own, but I can tell you that she was the worst of any of us. Couple that with Grandfather’s powers and what else can you expect? Pain and torture is all we’ve ever known.”
Heather’s eyes were blank, just staring at me. Part of me wanted to peek in her mind again and see her real reaction. But I didn’t. Truth was, I didn’t want to know how different I looked to her now.
I turned back in my seat and put in my iPod earplugs. Somehow, the sun’s uncomfortable glare felt very appropriate for the drive home.
The double beep of the alarm pulled me awake. It had been one month and one day since I’d moved into my little farmhouse, and my dreams were worse than ever. Exhausting. So intense with the reds and golds. Much more of this and I’d have to start adding coffee to my morning whiskey.
I stretched my neck and peered at the bedside clock: 4:30 a.m. Yesterday’s training had gone long, so waking up now meant I’d had about five hours of fitful sleep. Not bad, but definitely not enough.
I dragged myself out of bed and stumbled my way to the kitchen. I was dropping ice in my whiskey when Jon and Theo rushed through the front door, Shane and Thirteen right on their heels. Instantly I tensed. Theo and Jon had made copies of their old house keys. Well, wasn’t that nice to know.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
No one answered. They didn’t even acknowledge my presence. They were too busy pushing on floorboards and moving around paintings. Thirteen even removed the sill from under one of the large windows.
I threw back another drink and let the burn wake me up. As each man rummaged through the room, serious weapons were exposed. Guns, ammo, knives, and that was just what I could make out from the kitchen. I’d wondered why a Network Headquarters didn’t actually have any Network stuff in it. Apparently, artillery storage had been this place’s primary purpose before I showed up. I peered around the kitchen. What else was hidden in my small house?
“Hey!” I shouted. “What the hell is going on?”
Theo looked up at me while he loaded a long-barreled shotgun. Thirteen stepped in front of him, his own large gun held in both hands.
“Banks is gone,” he said. “He didn’t call in for the three thirty check, and when Chang tried to contact him at home the line had been disconnected.” Thirteen cocked his rifle with a loud, terrifying sound. “I went by there personally and found his door completely splintered. Only the doorknob’s brass was left. The rest of his house was in order, but there was blood in his bedroom.”
My stomach dropped. My family had Banks. Suddenly all the other Network abductions seemed much more real. Thirteen turned back to the disjointed windowsill and gathered more ammo.
“So what exactly are you going to do?” I asked. The high of a coming fight burned in their eyes. For some reason, I couldn’t think clearly enough to check if their thoughts were rational.
“We’re going to get him back,” Shane said and swung a second long gun with a leather strap over his shoulder. “We’re going to the estate and we are going to get him back.”
Yeah, OK, definitely not thinking rationally.
“Uh, no, you’re not,” I said.
“No, Shane,” Thirteen said at the same time. “That’s not what we’re doing.”
Jon moved to get in Thirteen’s face. “Then what the hell are we doing?” he yelled. “We won’t wait for Banks’s body to show up weeks from now after being tortured in some supernatural way. We’re getting him back. Now!”
Thirteen stood at his full height, his jaw set. Whoa. Jon didn’t back down.
“To break into the Kelch estate now would be suicide,” Thirteen said. “We aren’t ready to fight them. We don’t know the layout of the private lands. At this point, we would be more likely to get arrested than one of the brothers. It would be counterproductive to go in there now.”
Theo cut in. “Then what are we going to do?”
Thirteen kept his eyes on Jon. “We are going back to Banks’s house. We don’t know for certain that he was taken back to the estate, b
ut if we can find a trail that leads us in the general direction, we’ll have a better chance of finding him before it’s too late.”
Jon glared at Thirteen. “Fine.”
They all turned and started to walk out.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Was that a thud from my jaw hitting the floor? “What?”
“If Banks was taken by supernatural force, we won’t be able to find any traces of a trail to follow. You’re the only one who would recognize it.”
“Can I change?” I asked.
“There’s no time,” Jon called from the front door. “We have to be back here before dawn to brief the others and figure out what to do next. So just move it already!”
So much for a nice little “please join us on tonight’s mission” moment. I threw back the rest of my whiskey, tightened the drawstring on my pajama shorts, slipped on my flip-flops, and we were on our way.
…
We rode together in Thirteen’s SUV, the extra weapons stored in the back. Fuzzy images of Banks kept flashing through my mind. His meaty hands, that metal eye patch—pieces of someone I knew. And now my family had him. I shifted in my seat. Turned up Korn on my iPod. It didn’t help. I was still uncomfortable.
Of course, it didn’t help either that I sat bitch between Jon and Shane. Theo had insisted on sitting shotgun.
I had no clue where Banks’s house was. We passed a street sign that probably said where we were, but Shane shot me such a glare that I turned away. OK…I’ll just look out Jon’s window, then.
Thirteen wound the car through side streets lined with pear trees. Pristine turn-of-the-century homes sat on wide manicured lawns. Thirteen pulled up to the curb in front of a line of dark brick brownstones. Each townhouse stood three stories high with cement steps that led to the front door. And the doors were exactly alike—thick, chiseled glass with iron detailing.
Except, of course, for the one with its glass door splintered into a thousand tiny pieces.
We parked under an old-fashioned lamppost, or at least one that was made to look old-fashioned. The warm gold light mixed with the bright silvery moonlight to create an eerie glow along the sidewalk. The instant I stepped out of the car I felt it. The fog of power was everywhere. It felt amazing: tingly and warm. For a moment I closed my eyes and just savored the familiarity.
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