The Wild Road

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “No,” Lannes and Koni said in unison, voices firm. They gave each other suspicious looks.

  Which, of course, only piqued her curiosity more. But she did not ask. She happened to glance right—and found an old man staring at her.

  He stood less than twenty feet away and was the seeming leader of the tour group. He wore a badge, thick black glasses and a yellow polo shirt tucked into khakis. His white hair was thin and had been combed over. He was all skin and bone.

  His querulous lecture had been part of the background, but he was silent now, and the people in the tour were glancing at each other and Lethe. One of them, much to her embarrassment, waved a hand over the old man’s face. He blinked, but instead of looking at the owner of that hand, he lurched through the tour group and headed straight toward her.

  Fear hit Lethe. Lannes grabbed her arm. Rictor and Koni slid in front of them, silent, graceful. Dangerous.

  The old man hesitated when he saw the men, but he did not break into shouts or pull a gun or knife from under his shirt. Instead he stood, swaying, peering between the men at Lethe. His pale bleary eyes searched her face, and his wrinkled mouth trembled.

  “My God,” he whispered. “Runa.”

  Runa. Run? She felt her gut twist, and not in a good way.

  “Do you know me?” Lethe asked, moving closer.

  Maybe it was her voice that broke the spell. The old man suddenly blinked, leaning back. Disappointment filled his face, so bitter it seemed to snake through the air.

  “No, of course not. You couldn’t be her. I’m so sorry. I…” He stopped, disappointment becoming red-faced shame, even sorrow. “I got old-age disease.”

  He started to pull away. Lethe pushed between Rictor and Koni. Hands caught at her, but not before she grabbed the old man’s arm. “Wait. Why couldn’t I be the person you think I am?”

  “Oh,” he said, his voice heavy with grief. “She’s dead.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The old man called himself Ed. He had to finish his tour, so they waited for him outside on the promenade, which was deep and elegant and felt like an island among the evergreens.

  Lannes leaned against one of the wide pillars, his hip neatly balanced on the wide banister. His wings draped over the side, invisible but caught in a breeze. It felt good, as did the sun on his back.

  The other two men ranged around him. Koni also perched on the banister, with a light-boned grace that was effortless and dangerous. Shape-shifter, Lannes thought again. He did not know what animal called to this man’s blood, but it hardly mattered. His brother had told him that Dirk & Steele had the “golden eyes” among its agents, but seeing was different than believing. And it had been thirty years since he had crossed paths with a true shape-shifter.

  Rictor stood behind Lethe, who was the only one sitting, her body curled up tight in a wicker chair covered in thick cushions decorated with embroidered flowers. The entire veranda was filled with an assortment of outdoor seating. Lethe’s eyes were closed, her long pale throat exposed. Merely looking at her was enough to make him feel aroused, but fortunately, it was an easier reaction to control with some distance between them. Lannes wished he could have been more cerebral about the matter.

  He found Rictor glancing at him, though the man’s eyes—and mind—gave away nothing of what he thought. He was closed up tight. The only thing Lannes could sense was that he was not human. Just how far past human? That was another matter entirely.

  There are mysteries I have not dreamed, Frederick had once written, and it was true. Mysteries walking a world that had no room or heart for them.

  You are one of those mysteries, Lannes thought at Lethe, wishing he knew what she was thinking. All he felt from her presence in his mind was quiet determination.

  “So,” Koni said, “that was awkward.”

  “Just a bit,” replied Lethe, opening her eyes to glance up and down the empty porch. “Obviously, I’m not dead.”

  “Obviously,” Lannes said. “But even Orwell seemed to recognize your face. Which means you resemble someone.”

  “I must be a goddamn twin,” she muttered, rubbing her arms. “Did you see the way that man looked at me? Like I was a ghost.”

  A ghost Ed missed very much, if his initial reaction and subsequent disappointment were any indication. But the whole situation made Lannes uneasy, and he stretched his wings, gazing down at the garden beneath him.

  “Run,” he said quietly. “Runa.”

  Lethe’s face paled. “Could it have been a play on her name? Not telling me to run, but a fragment, a clue to the identity of the thing inside my head?”

  “Maybe all of this is a coincidence. Might have nothing to do with you,” Koni postulated. “Maybe you only look like someone.”

  “Someone who could be used to scare men and women like Orwell and Etta,” Lannes added thoughtfully. “Because they committed a crime.”

  Lethe stared at her hands. “Murder.”

  Rictor stirred, arms folded over his chest, staring at the back of Lethe’s head. His gaze was thoughtful, almost disturbingly so, but Lannes did not call him on it. He was afraid of what the green-eyed man would say.

  Footsteps echoed. It was Ed. He walked quickly, with a slight stoop to his shoulders. He was still red-faced, his lips compressed in a hard line.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said when he was close enough to speak without shouting. “Truly, I didn’t mean to embarrass you like that. But I saw you, and I just…”

  “It’s okay.” Lethe patted the chair beside her. “I don’t suppose you happened to see me around last week, did you?”

  Ed looked startled. “I was on vacation. But if I had seen you, I suppose my reaction would have been much the same.” He gave the other men an uneasy once-over. “All of you friends?”

  “Family,” Koni said. “Adopted.”

  “Coerced,” Rictor muttered.

  Lannes smiled to himself. Lethe shook her head, the corner of her mouth hooking wryly. “Ignore them, Ed. Tell us about Runa.”

  “You look like her,” he said immediately. “My God, but you’re a spitting image.”

  “Maybe I’m related.”

  Ed hesitated. “Would be hard to believe it. She had a daughter, Milly, but the little girl passed away around the same time as her mother. If there was other family, none of us in town ever knew it.”

  “When did she die?” Lannes asked.

  “Oh, back in the 1930s.” Ed smiled at his reaction. “I know. You were expecting something more recent.”

  “Well,” Lethe said, and the old man tapped his skull.

  “Photographic memory. I don’t forget a thing. Got almost eighty years of living crammed into this head. I could tell you what I had for breakfast when I was six years old.”

  “That’s practically inhuman,” Rictor said.

  Ed grinned with self-satisfaction. “Some superpower, huh?”

  Koni chuckled. Lannes glanced at Lethe, and her smile made his heart swell inside his chest like an incendiary balloon.

  Pop, he thought. There goes my heart.

  “So,” Lethe said, “she was a friend of yours?”

  Ed laughed. “A friend to us all. She was one of the adults. Used to come here in the summers with her daughter. Good people. She made the best fudge and sugar cookies in the county. Had a soft touch.” He glanced sideways, his smile fading just slightly. “Amazing how much you look like her.”

  Lethe stirred uneasily. “Do you remember her last name?”

  Ed shook his head. “Never asked, never mentioned. She was just Runa.”

  “How did she die?”

  Ed faltered, hands curling in his lap. “She was found here, on these grounds, by one of the Jesuits. The dome had been turned into a seminary by then because of the Depression. And she was just…out there one morning. Not a mark on her. No signs of foul play.”

  “Sounds foul to me,” Lannes said. “Did they find who killed her?”

  “That’s just i
t. The police never ruled it a murder.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Lethe told him. “I assume she was still young. How did they think she died?”

  “She had friends, and they were rich. They told the police to drop it, or so I heard. The police did. Never sat well with us kids, but you know kids.” Ed smiled again, though it was bitter. “Big imaginations.”

  Lethe fingered her throat. “I’m sorry you lost her.”

  Ed searched her face with a quiet sadness that made Lannes hurt for the old man. “I’m sorry, too. She was nice to me, and not many were. So I took it real hard when she died. Looked for clues and everything.”

  “Did you find any?”

  Ed hesitated, rubbing his hands together, then staring at his palms like he was going to read from them. “Just…odd things. Maybe not odd. But secretive. Runa was friends with several families that would come down here every summer. Real clannish. The kids stuck together and never talked much to us locals. Not too strange, I guess. Always been like that since the hotels went up. We had Capone down here, Franklin Roosevelt, even the Marx Brothers. All kinds. But those families really stuck together. Real quiet about it, too.”

  “You think they knew something about Runa’s death?”

  “I thought so, since they were the ones who hushed it up. But see, she died near the end of summer, and they were all gone not long after. The next year, most didn’t come back. So the trail,” he said, with a sad smile, “went cold.”

  “What about her daughter?” Lannes asked. “You said she passed away, too.”

  “Milly,” said Ed. “Oh, she was cute. She disappeared, that’s all. Up and gone. There was a search, but no one ever found a body.”

  “Some coincidence,” Koni said.

  Something cold entered Ed’s gaze. “Like I said, big imagination.”

  Lethe rubbed her arms. “Do you know where they used to live?”

  “Down where the lake is now. Patoka Lake, that is. Part of a reservoir that was built in the seventies, but the state had to steal from farms to do it. My daddy’s was one of them. We had to move to town, and he went to work making golf balls. It wasted him.”

  Lannes bowed his head, fingers digging into the banister. “Ed. Do you remember the names of those other children?”

  Ed smiled again, but it did not reach his eyes. “Bredow, they called themselves. Marcellus and Etta.”

  “Anyone named Simon?”

  The old man went very still. “How do you know that name?”

  Lannes wanted to kick himself. Koni, glancing at him, said, “We came down here because a friend of ours died and left some paperwork behind. Bragged about this area. One of the names was Simon. I might have even seen a Bredow in there, but I can’t really remember.”

  Not smooth enough, Lannes thought. Ed still looked suspicious, his heart closing up a little towards them. As though bringing up that name had created an undesirable association.

  “Simon,” murmured the old man, a hard look entering his eyes. “Simon Says. Yeah, he played with those children. Most of them—all of us, I guess—were the same age. I almost put a rock to his head once. He hit Milly in the face. I saw it.”

  The admission surprised Lannes, as did the rage still simmering in the old man. Rictor said, “Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Ed simply. “Probably saved me that I didn’t. I might have killed him. But at the time, it wouldn’t have bothered me. He had no call to hurt Milly. She was…sweet. And just a little younger than us big boys.”

  His face crumpled. “Anyway. I had the rock in my hand, ready to throw. And Simon, he sees me, and I just stopped. Like my body didn’t belong to me. I dropped the rock and turned around. Walked home like nothing happened, and all the while I didn’t know why. Strangest goddamn thing ever. If I was a suspicious man…”

  “You’d think he was controlling you,” Lethe finished quietly.

  Ed frowned. “Young lady. Why do I get the feeling you know more than what you’re saying?”

  Lethe hesitated, and looked into his eyes with a sadness that would have melted stone. “Would it matter? Would it bother you if I was looking for answers?”

  Ed’s breath caught. He leaned back sharply, staring. “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I was lucky to meet you, Ed.”

  The old man looked stricken, and he reached out slowly to touch Lethe’s cheek with the back of his gnarled hand. “The honor was mine,” he said.

  Ed had another tour scheduled. He made them promise to say good-bye before they checked out of the hotel.

  “It’s obvious,” Koni said to Lethe. “You were cloned.”

  “Gee,” she replied. “Thanks.”

  They were upstairs on the fourth floor, in a suite: two adjoining rooms separated by a parlor. The decor was muted and cool, with pale silver walls and white trim. Shopping bags littered the floor, clothes from the high-end guest shops downstairs. Lethe had nothing, but Lannes had a credit card—a good match as far as he was concerned, though her anxiety at not being able to pay her own way had followed them from downstairs to upstairs, and had abated only slightly.

  Trays of food covered the tables. Lannes stood by the window. He had tried to open it, but short of ripping it off the sill, that was not possible. No more cool breezes. Just a view of the garden and a sliver of late-afternoon sunlight. The room felt rather small to him.

  Koni was sprawled on a couch. Rictor, who never seemed to sit, stood by the door. Lethe was curled up in the chair closest to Lannes.

  “Okay,” she said to them, sipping from a cup of green tea. “Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that a murder was committed. Let’s also assume the victim was Runa, and quite possibly her daughter.”

  “That’s a big assumption,” Koni said.

  “Not really,” she replied, a wave of uneasiness washing through her link. “Call it instinct.”

  The shape-shifter shrugged. “Fine. And the perpetrators?”

  “Simon and his friends.”

  “Who could be any number of people,” Lannes spoke up, glancing at the two other men. “We found a group photo, but that might only be the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Show it to Ed,” Lethe suggested. “He’ll give us names.”

  “Consider that secondary,” Rictor rumbled. “Your main focus should be on finding Simon, and locating the source of the thing inside her.”

  “And how do you propose to find a ghost?” Lethe asked him sharply. Koni, cleaning his teeth with a toothpick, started humming the Ghostbusters theme.

  Rictor gave his companion a hard look. “Find where the crime occurred, and you’ll find the spirit.”

  “You’re making the wrong assumption,” Lannes said. “The thing hooked into her mind isn’t the murder victim. It’s alive. It has to be. No ghost, no spirit, could have that kind of control over a person.”

  “You’re sure of that?” Rictor asked, a hint of disdain in his voice.

  “I’m sure,” Lannes told him. “At least, I’m sure about this. I felt the anchor. We’re not dealing with a dead person.”

  Lethe set down her tea. “I can’t live like this.”

  Koni frowned. “Are you sure you don’t remember anything about your prior life?”

  It was an unnecessary question, and something in the way the shape-shifter asked it made Lannes uneasy, a feeling he had harbored off and on, watching the two men from Dirk & Steele interact with Lethe. They were friendly enough sometimes, but he also sensed a tension he didn’t think had anything to do with the fact that she was a stranger. Something else was going on.

  Lethe sat up, stared at Koni. “Say what you mean. You think I might be faking the amnesia.”

  “I think you might be exaggerating it,” he replied, with brutal honesty. “Because you need help.”

  “Stop,” Lannes said.

  “So you can ignore the coincidence of her stumbling on someone like you? With your history
? Your…background?” Koni shook his head. “No, man. Don’t be that dumb.”

  Lannes pushed away from the window. “I won’t tell you again.”

  Koni narrowed his eyes. Rictor shrugged and said, “You can’t blame him.”

  “Lethe,” Lannes said, deadly quiet. “Now would be a good time to take that shower you were talking about.”

  “I never talked about a shower,” she said. But she got up, sweeping shopping bags into her hand, and stared at Rictor and Koni. Spine straight, eyes hard. Anger and hurt were pulsing down the link with Lannes.

  “I don’t know who I was before,” she said coldly, “but I’m no liar now. Don’t ever accuse me of being one again. Especially when it comes to Lannes.”

  She left the parlor for the second bedroom. The door closed softly behind her. No one spoke. Not one word. Not for five long minutes, until Lannes heard the shower start.

  Rictor stepped away from the wall and walked into the other bedroom. Koni followed. Lannes, after a moment, joined them. He shut the door, his wings folded tight, his heart settling into a dark, cold place.

  Koni and Rictor stood before him, impassive, eyes glittering.

  “My brother trusts the both of you,” Lannes said. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent you to help. So, that means something to me.”

  “But not enough to stop you from throwing me out a window, is that it?” Koni’s eyes flashed, his mouth curling as a line of feathers erupted along the back of his hand. “Maybe you should try.”

  Rictor shook his head. “What do you know about the woman?”

  I know her heart, Lannes wanted to say, but that would have been unforgivably sentimental. “I’ve been inside her mind. I’ve seen what was done…and it was nothing less than brutal. She can function, yes. But everything pertaining to her life was stolen.”

  “You’re certain?” Rictor asked.

  Lannes forced himself not to throw a chair at the green-eyed man’s head. “If you know my brother, then you know what happened to me. If I had any doubts, I would not have risked my secrets with her. Not mine, not my brothers’.”

  “And her memories? Will they return?”