A Taste of You

by Jennifer Stevenson

  He’s poised inside. He feels like a cop, the boss, in control.

  As I look at my mother I imagine how she must seem to Nick: platinum-blonde, sparkle-eyed, and so fresh, you almost don’t notice how old she is.

  Then I remember this is Jilly. I am filled with dread of what she might tell him about me.

  “Cute for a Fed, I mean,” Jilly says, and then I worry about what he might tell her about me.

  Jilly is in one of those moods, I can tell, where she seems like a daffy old lady, and she takes you by the bowels and squeezes you with both hands until everything you hoped to hide from her comes squishing out.

  She says, “Have you told Hel all about your anti-magic work for the government?”

  I can feel Nick’s shock, and his double take, and then, weirdly, he starts to laugh.

  “I can see where she gets her mouth, Mrs. Nagazy,” he says, hitching up his jeans and sitting down beside the bed in the visitor chair. He’s still wearing the shirt I pulled off him. I remember how charming he can be.

  Jilly shakes hands. “I’m not married. Call me Jilly.” She smiles. “So what do you think of my little girl?”

  Nick sits there and stares. I think he’s trying to stare her down.

  Jilly leans forward just a little and smiles extra-sweetly. “Chicken,” she says softly.

  Amazingly, Nick laughs again. “Okay, okay! I guess this is a stickup.”

  “A mom stickup,” Jilly says, looking less like a mom than any female her age alive. She dimples. “You and Hel. How’s that going?”

  Stop, Ma. Please.

  I can’t help fuzzing myself out, like a bad photocopy blowup of my misty self, until I come close enough to touch Nick’s shoulder. He’s relaxed. I can tell Jilly tickles him. In spite of what is screamingly obvious to me, he seems to feel that she’s nice and harmless and weak and fun.

  Well, she’s always fun.

  I pull away so that Nick doesn’t feel the shark-music in my misty aura.

  “I’ve only just met her,” Nick says. “She’s very brave.”

  What, is she drugging him? Has he forgotten he just watched me kill somebody? And overheard me strangle his boss half to death?

  “No, she’s not,” Jilly scoffs. “She’s a big chicken, like you. Afraid of risk, afraid of life. What about you? Are you afraid of magic? Is that why you fight magic for the government?”

  “Yikes, lady, cut a guy a break!” She just looks at him expectantly, and he throws his hands up, laughing. “All right, I’m afraid of magic. I’m afraid of what it does to people.”

  She leans forward. “And what does it do to people?”

  He says soberly, “It makes them crazy. It makes them want stuff they can’t have. Power. Eternal life. Ways to control people.”

  I bet he’s thinking about Sageman. It occurs to me that he must have figured out some time ago that his boss could read his thoughts.

  Which means Sageman probably knows about me and Nick kissing in the bar. Ew.

  Of course Jilly doesn’t need to read his thoughts. She uses Jilly-radar, or witchcraft, or whatever.

  “If you had magic, what kind of magic would you want?” Jilly says.

  “That’s funny,” Nick says. “When I joined the agency that’s one of the questions my boss asked me, over and over again, about sixty different ways.”

  “And what did you tell your boss?”

  I hold my breath. I reach out to touch Nick with a misty finger.

  Inside, Nick tightens with confusion, some kind of change that makes him sick to his stomach. He says, “I told him I want to know the truth. That I didn’t want special powers.”

  But Nick has special powers. He gets horny around magic. And he hates himself for it. Sageman knows this and uses it. I hate Sageman all over again.

  It occurs to me that Nick is probably thinking about his boss right now. His boss wants special powers.

  I feel a ripple of determination in Nick’s energy, as if he’s decided to go Federal.

  I want to warn him not to trust Jilly, but how?

  His eyes narrow. “Did you know Hel is some kind of a vampire?”

  And just like that, blam, my secret’s out. My brain freezes.

  Jilly nods. “She told you? Wow. She’s never told me. Sneaky little brat,” she adds, as I go cold all over, which Nick apparently can feel, because he shivers. “She must really trust you.”

  “I didn’t believe her,” Nick says. “At first.” He seems puzzled. Jilly’s not reacting like she should. Jilly never does.

  Wait, wait, back up, I’m thinking, horror-struck.

  Ma, you knew?

  She’s never told me she knew.

  “But you believe her now?” Jilly pursues. I ease my misty self down behind Nick, until he is shielding me from my mother’s bloodshot, cheery, all-seeing blue eyes. I want to eavesdrop on his feelings, but I can’t focus. I’m freaking out.

  Jilly knows.

  “Do you?” Jilly says again.

  Nick doesn’t answer her. His Fed side is getting all cranked up again, the way he was when he found me in the alley. I wonder if he feels like that because of what she’s saying to him, or because he can feel my energy touching his.

  My mother is tearing the lid off my life, and my lover is helping.

  My first feeling is rage.

  Then I feel relief. I don’t have to break it to her.

  “I saw her kill somebody tonight,” Nick says. He’s watching her for a reaction.

  Jilly groans. “Great. Now she’ll hate herself for another month.”

  I hit the next level of shock. How much has Jilly always known?

  A childish scream of rage is building inside me.

  Nick squints at her. “Don’t you care that your granddaughter kills people?” He thinks he’s pushing her.

  “Tell you what,” Jilly says cozily. “You tell me how much your mother cares that you spy on people for the government, and I’ll tell you how much it matters to me that Helen kills.”

  “My mother is in Pittsburgh,” Nick says.

  Jilly puts her head on one side. “Okay, you win the pity prize. But I think I’m ahead on points.”

  Nick chuckles, but his focus is Fed-sharp.

  She says, “So who did she kill, then? Somebody nice? Some sweet puppydog-loving little golden-haired crippled child?”

  His focus wobbles. “Uh, no. No, actually not.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  Nick has his Fed face on, but I can feel the wheels turning inside. She’s not reacting properly. Inside, he feels like a doberman pinscher that’s just been bitten by a rat.

  He and Jilly have a stare-down.

  Madly, I want to rematerialize and explain to Nick. Macy had to die because nobody else would protect me from him. Macy was going to kidnap me for Sageman, who wants me to make him into a vampire so he can take over the world and live forever, and then he would have killed me. I was all alone. I had to kill him. I’m still all alone. I’m responsible for everything and I have no one I can tell any of this to. I mean, at least I’m not rolling drunks and then killing them for fun.

  None of this sounds like a good enough excuse.

  “You’d be a lot happier,” my mother says gently, “if you’d just forgive and let live.”

  Nick blinks as if she’s punched him.

  I feel the punch he feels, double, because I know I can’t forgive, any more than he can.

  “The Hinky Policy, eh?” Nick says. He’s starting to lose his temper. “Chicago handles magic by ignoring the sin and loving the sinner.”

  “Are you so sure magic is a sin?” Jilly comes right back.

  Wow. She’s sticking up for me.

  And I want to scream in her face. Why?

  What is the matter with me? I should be thanking her for defending me to Nick.

  I’m so close to jumping into the conversation.

  Thank goodness I remember that I can’t face anybody right now, ’cuz if I
materialize, I’ll be naked.

  Jilly interrupts the silence. “Anyway, she’s not my granddaughter, she’s my daughter. I thought you knew that.”

  “Um—” Nick begins.

  “Did she say I’m a drunk?”

  I cringe. What is Jilly up to?

  Nick blinks. “Uh, no, she didn’t.”

  “Well, I am. Her life hasn’t been easy. Mine has. But I’ve always been lucky. Helen hasn’t. Something terrible happened to her when she was seventeen, and she’s been trying to atone for it ever since.”

  “Atone?” Nick seems to perk up. “How do you mean, atone?”

  “As in, she’s been apologizing for breathing since then. She was a feisty kid.” Jilly shakes her head at my current nonfeistiness.

  “She’s feisty,” Nick murmurs.

  “Not where it counts. The other night, she shocked the shit out of me.”

  Nick looks blankly at Jilly. He’s in that numb state my mother can reduce people to, where she pokes them, looking for the control buttons, and they just let her.

  Jilly says, “She told me to quit drinking.”

  I feel sick.

  Only Jilly would repeat that conversation to a total stranger as if it hadn’t mattered — or even if it had. She leans forward on the bed. I can tell she’s headed for the jugular.

  “Mr. Federal Agent,” she says, “what do you have to atone for?”

  He turns his head to look at her, and I see that she’s done it again. She’s made this guy completely forget that he doesn’t know her. She just strips herself naked for people, and they respond by stripping, too.

  But to my surprise Nick punches back. “Have you told Hel that you know?” He looks her straight in the eye.

  Her gaze drops. “That wouldn’t have been convenient, would it?”

  Wrong answer.

  I’m sick, miserable, rageful, stupid.

  I can’t take any more. My life is over. I want to stay and listen and materialize and tell them both to go fuck themselves, but I can’t. The only two people in the world I care about, and they’re crashing-and-burning their relationships with me. Together.

  I blunder mistily to the doorway, grateful that no one can see the convulsions I’m in.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I sink to the floor and float along over the tile like an inch-high fog. Of course the nurse comes bustling in, kicking through me as if I’m the nothing that I am, making me feel disorganized. She drops off Jilly’s meds, then hustles next door.

  I follow, nauseous, exhausted, angry, and desperately sad.

  Next door, a candy-striper is helping a patient get ready to go downstairs and watch TV on the seventy-inch screen.

  I trickle up the doorjamb and wait, like a nearly-invisible vulture, for the patient and her candy-striper to come tottering out.

  “I don’t want to miss the news,” the patient says. She has one of those storks with a drip bag on it, which slows her down nicely. I drop onto her shoulders.

  She stops dead in the doorway. “Brrr! This hall is cold!”

  “Would you like me to bring your sweater?” By the time the candy-striper fetches the sweater I am lying low, clinging to the patient’s trailing robe and the wheels of her rolling stork.

  Because I have remembered that there’s a stair access direct from the TV room that goes all the way down to the main lobby. From there to the parking ramp, twenty yards. My clothes are in the Cherokee. From there I can boogie like a normal human being and find a bus to throw myself in front of.

  I’ve forgotten something. The TV room is full of sick people.

  Jilly’s wing of the hospital is for those without hope. Long term stays, incurable illness. Inoperable cancer. They’re all in here, some on drip stands, some on oxygen, hacking into hankies and telling each other about their operations. If Sageman ever sees this, he won’t rest until he’s gotten somebody to make him a vampire.

  I wouldn’t blame him.

  Thank goodness I won’t live long enough to be one of these people.

  I let go of my hostess and retreat to the wall, where I can move slowly upward and finish my escape along the ceiling. Away from Nick, I’m feeling weak. I’m hungry.

  Oh no. Not here.

  I can’t touch this energy. A tiny sip off someone in this room might be enough to finish them.

  Disgusted by the smell of their prana, I can’t help looking at them, sitting there, not yet buried but oh so close, watching the monster-size boob tube.

  I’ve never before hung out and spied on people in a group like this, in my mist form.

  Now that I’m paying attention, I see that when they interact with each other, their energy lights up with streaks of colored light — not unlike the show on Dr. Katterfelto’s psychespectrometer. It’s fascinating and icky. I feel like a dreadful voyeur.

  But I hang there, watching.

  They’re all so tired-looking. Jilly, spilling the beans to Nick in her room, has a thousand times their vitality. If I hadn’t been so busy freaking out I might have seen what her interaction with Nick looked like. I push away the thought.

  Everything that’s wrong with the world seems to be sitting here on these grubby chairs, going mindless.

  Then I see something even weirder.

  Streaks of color flicker across the room. The space between the patients and the television comes alive with light.

  Cautiously I drift across the ceiling and extend a misty hand down, down, until I’m dipping into the lines of colored light.

  I draw back in shock.

  But not before I’ve taken a gulp.

  It’s prana!

  I pull back up to the ceiling and watch.

  The show is some reality thing, with doors bursting open and people squealing in fake surprise and fake cameramen taking it all in. Door opens. Squeals. The patients sigh, and another wave of streaky, multicolored light emits from them toward the television.

  I move down the wall, tasting carefully.

  Yep. It’s prana. These poor stretcher cases are almost dead already — and the TV is sucking away the last of their life.

  It’s the most repulsive thing I’ve ever seen.

  My first thought is, I hope Jilly doesn’t watch TV in here.

  And then I think:

  How long has this been going on?

  And then:

  Really how long has it been going on?

  I’ve got to tell Katterfelto about this.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  That sobers me. I remember that, while suicide seems really, really attractive right now, I have work to do.

  And Sageman is out there.

  I try to put myself in his shoes. He’s underfunded. His agency is not behind all this. He’s gone rogue, hunting out magic for his own benefit, stealing the power he finds for himself. I’ve killed Macy, and Nick is with Jilly.

  So Sageman is on his own now. I hope.

  If Sageman can’t get hold of Jilly or me, he will go after Dr. Katterfelto. He’ll do horrible things to that sweet flaky old man until he has tortured all the magical knowledge out of him.

  And then he’ll go after the coin.

  This is what mobilizes me at last. With the coin, Sageman can’t be stopped.

  So I have to beat him to the coin.

  I slither to the door along the ceiling and ooze toward the hall.

  My clothes and shoes and things are in Nick’s Cherokee where I left them. I materialize and dress one-handed while I call the mad scientist with the other hand.

  “Listen, Doc, I just found out how the prana is getting into the power grid.”

  “Vot? How is your head?”

  “My — oh.” I remember his password. “I have a headache.” Boy, do I. “I mean, I haven’t even got to the coin yet, I’m just — just listen, okay?”

  I describe how I saw and felt the prana flowing out of the stretcher cases into the TV at the hospital.

  Katterfelto gets all excited at this. “But excell
ent! Zis is final piece of the puzzle!”

  “You think? I’m totally creeped out. My mother has the TV on twenty-four-seven.”

  “Of course! This tells me how to get power grid to release all ze stored prana back to der public.”

  I feel like hitting my head on the cinderblock wall. Why is everybody in this mess crazy? Can’t I have a rational conversation with someone, just once?

  “Go, Ms. Hel. Go find the coin. Remember you haff the ultimate weapon,” he hisses.

  I have what? I have to think. “The elixir.” Oh boy, the ultimate weapon. Something to give me BO, bad hair, and a good attitude, yeah, that’ll save everyone. “The ultimate weapon,” I repeat, knowing he wants to hear that.

  “I vill stay in my hideyhole and vork on this puzzle vot you give me final piece of. Unt be careful, Ms. Hel. The coin will tempt you mit more magical powers.”

  “No worries,” I say darkly. “I’ve got all the magical powers I can do with.”

  “You are very brave, Ms. Hel.”

  “Yeah, bye.”

  I clamber out of the back of the Cherokee and scoot around the building to the bus stop — only to panic once I’m standing there.

  I’ll never beat Sageman to the coin on a bus.

  The sun beats down. Morning-shift health care workers go into the hospital, wearing clean scrubs and morning faces. The bus stops, belches stinky smoke, takes on tired evening-shift health care workers in dirty scrubs, and lumbers off.

  I stare at my phone screen while buses come and go, wondering who I can call.

  I can’t go home. Sageman may go there, or he may send another goon. Although if Sageman had had a third man, he’d have sent him after Jilly instead of Nick.

  Hm.

  I apply reason to more problems I’ve been too busy to examine up until now.

  If I were Sageman, what would I do now? I might waste time looking for Katterfelto at his lab.

  But no.

  Actually, it’s an excellent bet that Sageman has staked out my place. I’m bound to show up either there or at the hospital. And he thinks Nick is his minion.

  So he’ll be at my apartment.

  While I’m thinking this, underneath, I’m in black despair. I feel betrayed by the two people who are my only reasons to live.