And she'd made no mention of Nick.
He'd be classified, officially, as a disappearance, and in the absence of evidence, the absence of a body, there'd be no investigation. That, Alex thought, was for the best.
There were some events that didn't fit protocol, no matter how you turned them, and it was better to let those events fade into obscurity. But he still wanted to know, for himself, what had happened. What she'd done with his remains, and how she felt about it.
It was late at night, two weeks and a day after Jaguar had saved his life, that he marked the assignment complete and transferred the file to the inactive folder. He stared out the door of his office, down the halls that were dark and empty. The case was closed.
He tucked his computer in for the night, closed up his office, and left the building. But he didn't go home.
He thought he knew where she would be.
Jaguar possessed the stage, and all the people who occupied the bar. They were, for once, silent and listening, eyes pressed onto her swaying, silk-clad form. When Alex walked into the Silver Bay, she was singing a song that used the upper range of her voice. He sat with everyone else and listened.
It was a song about the Serials. An old one, mourning the losses. Trust, hope, anything like a chance for beauty. Then, somewhere in the wavering notes of grief, a chance for the world to reweave itself, a pleading for the heart that heals and lives again.
Her voice was a thin ghost of a line carrying the blade of sorrow to his ears. He listened and waited, ordering a brandy that he sat twirling around and around in its glass and not drinking.
Between songs, he caught her eye. He signaled to her that he wanted her, and she tossed a nod at him. At the set break, she didn't stop to talk to the other band members, but walked right over to him.
When she reached him, she didn't say a word. Not hello. Not what are you doing here. Not how'd you like the song. Nothing.
She knew.
"Sit," he said, motioning to a chair. Then he leaned over close to her and took her face in both his hands, holding it very still. He leaned close, catching the scent of mint as he did so.
Anyone who saw them would think they were lovers caught up in a moment of intimacy. The moment of contact looked like that sometimes, though it could also seem as violent as fire, or soft as feathers, depending on the empath and the subject. Alex let his hands search, find the way in through this dear and unfamiliar flesh, even before his dark eyes washed into the deep green of her abundant sea, going in slowly, taking time and taking care as he went. She made no motion to escape his hold. She was letting him do this. Consenting to it. He hoped it was a good sign.
The first levels were easy. Just a simple slide across the surface. Here he found some tension. Not fear. Not yet, anyway. Just the tension of facing the unknown. Nothing he needed to deal with. Then there was something else. Something lovely and serene, still and holy, the quiet place of the empath. This was a place he rarely got to know in others, though he knew it from himself. He explored it, respectfully but thoroughly, and found no sign of the shadow sickness. No darkness. None of the ice, slippery and reflexive, that had been Clare's.
What he found here was all Jaguar. A pacific clarity, shining and fresh. If it had a scent, it would smell, like her, of wild mint under a bright sun. He recognized something he had always known about her, but had never been able to put into words. She acknowledged no discipline except that of her own spirit, but her spirit was perhaps the most principled he would ever know.
He continued moving unhurriedly, aware of both the fragility and the strength of what he touched. With no resistance, she allowed him access to the memory of what had happened with Nick. Easy to find her here. Easy to see what she'd done, and why.
Here, she had plunged the knife into his heart, with no remorse, no regret, and no guilt. Here, she'd said the death prayers, cleansed the shadow from his spirit as it left his body. Here, she let go of her final grief. They'd both been through hell, and now only one of them remained to talk about it.
He'd saved her, and tried to trap her, and she'd killed him before he could kill her. No remorse, no regret, but some grief for a world that mangles its children so badly. Most importantly, there was no sign of creeping shadow. She was well. That was all that mattered.
With relief, he moved on.
Now he found something cloaked and protected, though not closed. Not, at least, to him.
It was warm here. Warm and sweet. God, it felt so sweet, like good water after thirst, sun on your face after a long cold winter. He stopped and let it soak into him, a brief moment of unadulterated pleasure, unexpected and precious. He savored it, and she let him, trying for no defensive maneuver.
She just let him.
Then something sharp—here at the edge of this place—made him pause. Something like a fear. It darted away, and he let it. They were probably headed in the same direction anyway.
To the closed space.
What he wanted. Where fear and desire met, challenged each other. A place of all the most profound memories that told the story of who you were. The place she let no one walk except herself. He tested the strength of it with an initial push. Not a bit of give.
He pushed a little harder, his hands against her face, his eyes pressed against the back of her brain, and she gasped. He held her there, at the edge of it. Then he said, apologetically, "I have to, Jaguar. I'm sorry, but I have to."
Her breathing was rough, and her eyes wild. He took a moment to let her adjust, to make sure he had informed consent for this. "Jaguar," he said, "what you let Clare see—I want to know that. Who you are. Where you've been—that's important. Do you understand?"
Her hands clenched on the table. She took in a ragged breath. "Go," she said. "Just go ahead. I can't... help you with it."
He took a breath. Slow and easy. She could feel with him, the air entering his lungs.
More breathing. Keep it easy. Let the breath move the energy. Slow and easy. He waited until the rhythms of her breath flowed with his.
"Jaguar Addams," he said, "see who you are. Be what you see."
The worst thing about it was the smell, the pervasive constant smell of bodies left too long in the sun. The bodies piling up in the streets and the ambulances too busy to handle them all at first, then the drivers too frightened to answer calls.
Jaguar remembered the awful smell floating up to the fourth-story window of their apartment. She would open it and look out, and her grandmother would pull her back in, closing the window hard, but not soon enough to close out the smell of death.
Her grandfather gave her mint, showed her how to crush it to release its sweet sharp scent.
Mint, to cover the smell of rotting flesh.
"You shouldn't be down here," her grandfather told her as she stood in the lobby of their apartment building. "Not alone. Not anymore."
She had snuck down to the lobby to meet him while her grandmother was at a friend's apartment, having a cup of tea. Her grandfather looked frightened. She didn't understand. Death meant little to her, and when it became the norm, it seemed merely normal. Already, she'd seen a few people killed. She wasn't going to school anymore, and she heard her grandparents talking about arrangements to leave the city, at least get her out. But she didn't want to leave them. Didn't want to go live with people she didn't know. Why should she leave?
He knelt down to her level and put his soft hands on her shoulders. "Jaguar, it's not safe." He shook his head at her unblinking, uncomprehending eyes.
She rode on his shoulders, up the elevator to their apartment, and they entered it, laughing at a joke he had made.
"Why did the chicken cross the road?" he asked her. When she said she didn't know, he told her, "To show the raccoon it could be done." They both laughed. He unlocked the door.
The man with the gun stood on the other side, a smooth smile growing on his face as he brushed back his smooth, light hair. He wore a lab coat, a white, unwrinkled shirt, a dark t
ie. His hands were encased in the second skin of surgical gloves.
"I've always wanted to kill someone," he said politely, merely by way of explanation. "This seems like such a perfect opportunity, I'd hate to have it pass me by. So," he added, smiling from grandfather to granddaughter, "who's first?"
Her grandfather stood in front of her, pushing her back, trying to push her out the door.
It all happened very fast after that, with only a little noise, and a great deal of blood.
Her grandfather, shot twice in each leg, writhing in pain on the floor. Bullets spit out, the blood everywhere, this nameless man standing over him, looking into his eyes, saying, "How does it feel?" Her grandfather too weak to share even his pain.
She rushed over to him, hanging on to his neck and screaming. The man pulled her off him and flung her onto the couch. She remembered the feeling of flying through air, not knowing where she would land, like the dreams she had sometimes of flying, then falling.
The man pointing the gun at her grandfather's head. Then the man laughing.
"Maybe," he said, "I see another opportunity presenting itself. Another experience."
He came over to the couch and held the gun against her head. It felt cold, she remembered. His hands, made sleek by the gloves, ran lightly over her skin, caressing her, then tugging at her clothes.
She closed her eyes as he undressed her. Was he going to put her to sleep? Like they did to the dog? Put her in her pajamas first? She didn't understand. She heard her grandfather moaning, a scrabbling sound of his feet against the floor, the sound of a shot fired, and the scrabbling sound stopped. She opened her eyes and saw that more blood was coming out of her grandfather now, only this time from his chest. His open eyes stared at her.
The man turned to her. "I hope," he said, "he can still see."
He took off all her clothes, then pulled down his own pants.
He looked at her, examined her carefully, the cold of the gun brushing against her skin. She remembered his laugh, because it wasn't a laugh that said something was funny.
He laughed, and spoke. "I just had a thought," he said. "Maybe you'd like to have some fun, too?"
She stared at him, not understanding. He took her hand and pressed the gun into it. "Go ahead," he said. "Shoot me."
She stared at him more.
"If you don't, you'll be sorry."
She shook her head, holding the gun, heavy in her hands.
He sighed. "Okay, then. Have it your way," he said brightly, and took the gun back, pushed her hard against the couch, starting pressing himself into her and laughing. Laughing.
It hurt. It hurt. Like knives cold gun at your head. Like suffocating being strangled knives hands on your throat. Like surprise all of everything gone no way of knowing what what what. He hit her, twice, three times, more, and then there was a great darkness.
When she came to, it was to the sound of the door opening. She looked, and saw her grandmother standing and staring at her grandfather's open eyes. Her grandmother would do something. Her grandmother would know what to do.
The man in the lab coat was still there, sitting there as if he'd been waiting for her grandmother. He laughed, and pulled the trigger on his gun again. Again. Again. Again.
Her grandmother's face went white and her breath went ragged. She clutched at her chest and fell to the floor. More blood. More blood.
Then, the darkness. Then, waking to the sleek feel of plastic against her skin. Then, the feel of knives in her. Again.
Again.
Again.
She decided she was dead, and lay still, feeling nothing. Not even letting her skin know what was happening to her.
Again. Again. Again.
How long did he stay? Maybe just a day. Maybe a week. She didn't know, because she was already dead, and when you're dead there isn't any time. Isn't any body. Isn't anything to feel anymore. He moved her here and there, and the plastic against her skin became her skin as she became plastic, just plastic. Just dead.
Then he looked down at her and said, "This is getting boring."
And he left.
She lay still for a long time, wondering if she would stay dead. After a while the smell from the floor made her feel sick, and she got up, walked to the apartment door, and left. If she was dead, she'd go and be a ghost. If she was alive, she should go and get someone. Go and tell someone what happened.
She stumbled her way down the stairs, out the lobby, and into the street looking for ... what?
Help. Someone who would help. But everyone kept walking. Nobody even looked at her. Like she was invisible. There was a guy up the street yelling at a woman. A boy kneeling by the curb, crying.
Nobody looked at her. She sat down on the curb, next to the little boy, but she didn't cry.
Instead, she sang a song her grandfather taught her, and opened her arms wide while she sang.
All around her was the smell of rotting flesh. The smell of mint, still lingering on her fingers. The look of fear as it crowded her. The taste and touch and arms and legs and face of it.
All around her were the fears, reaching for her. All the fears, yellow and acrid smelling, soft and suffocating, sharp and sudden, crowded around her. All the fears, and the attendant weeping, the attendant rage. The fears of all the people on the street. The fears of everyone with a gun. The fear of every fanatic.
The emptiness of it, never-ending repetitious spirals of dull sameness. The awful banality of it, dragging on from day to day in the same acts of repetitive pointless violence, petty or grand. The utter emptiness. The fear of every Wall Street stockbroker and Madison Avenue adman. The petty fears of the politicians. The things they should have been afraid of, but weren't. The things they turned their faces from out of fear. Fear in the dark and cold waters of refusal to see.
She sang to them, and to her own fears.
Death and the shock of it. The surprise. Fear of abandonment. Fear of being separated from those who loved her. Fear that losing their love would break her. Fear that she would break. Fear of betrayal. Fear of the bogeyman. Fear of exactly what did happen.
They clutched at her with bony fingers, reaching for her, wanting to touch her, and she opened her arms wide, sang them to her, welcomed them.
Thin and solitary, a little girl who was already a ghost because she had survived her own death, she opened her arms wide. She opened her arms to all the fears, yellow and acrid smelling, soft and suffocating, sharp and sudden. All the fears, and the attendant weeping, the attendant rage. She did the only possible thing she could to survive. She accepted her fears, holding them as her own.
She opened her arms to them, and when they rushed to her she held them, rocked them close as if they were her children, until she and they, spent from pain and weeping and rage, fell into a dreamless sleep.
Here, at last, Alex felt her pull away, and here, at last, if she chose to do so, he would let her go.
Alex dropped his hands from her face and breathed deeply in and out. He clenched and unclenched his fingers. The sounds of the bar—glasses clinking, people talking, the holodisk playing through the break—came back to them both.
"I'm glad I know," he said softly, "at least some of it."
She nodded, shifted in her seat, looked off to a far point across the bar, and began to speak quietly. "When I was very little—before the Serials, when we still lived in New Mexico—I was afraid of monsters," she said, her voice sounding long ago and far away. "My grandfather showed me how to chase them away."
She held her hands palm forward in front of her and pushed hard. "Out, out, out. Like that. We'd say it together, and the monsters would go away."
Alex suppressed a smile as he contemplated the image of a young Jaguar, eyes serious and intense, holding off monsters with her bare hands.
She continued speaking. "When he died, I was furious at him, because he let the monsters get him. How could he, when he was such a strong man? Then I met Nick, and I thought—"
&nb
sp; She paused, shook her head. "I don't know what I thought. That he'd teach me what my grandfather didn't have a chance to. How to push the monsters away. But he couldn't. He couldn't live beyond the Serials. He died then, and he never found his way back to living. I was angry at him, because I thought he was stronger than me. Like my grandfather."
Alex understood. If Nick or her grandfather couldn't survive, how could she? But she had not only survived, she kept her spirit intact, and Nick hated her for that. How did she dare to think she could escape the darkness of her memories when he couldn't escape his. How dare she live, whole and well, and what did that say about who he was? He wanted nothing except for her to sit in the pit he lived in so that he could justify staying there. Alex had seen it before, in others who lived within the bitterness and rage of their pain.
"He was shadowed," Alex said. "Too far gone. Didn't want anything except—except for you to be what he was. I'm sorry I didn't see it sooner. And I'm sorry I doubted you."
"I doubted myself, Alex," she said. "Nick... he saved my life."
"And he tried to kill you. If he had—" Alex left the sentence unfinished, tried another one instead. "Jaguar, he saved you, but he didn't want to save himself. It was too hard. Too much work. That's not your shame. It's his. Only, I wish you'd trusted me enough to tell me what you knew." He let that sink in, and saw her acknowledge it.
Then he leaned back in his chair and brooded.
There was one thing left.
Something lingering in the sweet warm space he found. It was a small fear, or a new fear. Perhaps a residual. He wasn't quite sure how to place it, or what to name it. Or even if he should.
Professionally, did it make a difference? Personally, did he have to know?
The answers were, respectively, no, and yes.
She kept her face turned from him, but he could see it in profile, her gaze fixed on some distant point.
"Jaguar, there's another fear you carry. Something new," he began, but she anticipated him and interrupted.
"Residual fear," she said, waving it away. "Just... there."
THE FEAR PRINCIPLE Page 22