Ren Series Boxed Set

by Sarah Noffke

  “Adelaide, I think you’d better go,” I say, watching new lines form on Dahlia’s face.

  “But, I-I-I…” And the girl sounds afraid. Rejected.

  “Not forever,” I say, cutting off her nervous stuttering. “Just pop down to the market or take a walk. Give Dahlia and me some privacy, would you?”

  And then the girl nods, but suddenly she doesn’t look like a girl at all, but rather like a fragile child. “I won’t talk to anyone, I promise,” she says, pushing up from the table. “Or touch them.”

  “Good,” I say, realizing she’s trying, really trying to show her compliance. And I don’t know what to say to that. It should satisfy me, but it doesn’t because I know that she’s being this way so she can stay in my life. And I don’t know if I can have that. I pictured that when I trained her that would be the end of it. Sure, she’d come round to my pops’ on the off weekends that I wasn’t visiting. We’d keep a distance. Separate lives. But she wants more from me. And not only is that a burden, it’s a decision and I’m not prepared to make it.

  When the door clicks shut Dahlia spins around to face me. I rise at once, realizing that I need to be on my feet to properly have this fight. She matches my stance.

  “Ren, where do I even begin?” Dahlia says, throwing her arm wide at the door.

  “How about with an apology,” I say, crossing my arms in from of my chest.

  “You’re out of your mind. I have nothing to apologize for.”

  “I’m a man, Dahlia. A real one. I’m not one of your lemmings who bow to your every command.”

  “I love that about you,” she says.

  “Obviously you don’t. If you did then we wouldn’t be apart,” I say.

  “We’re apart because of her,” Dahlia says, pointing at the door where Adelaide exited.

  “And because of this job. You want to dictate what I do and who is in my life, but that’s not how this arrangement works.”

  “I just find it stressful, is all,” Dahlia says, her voice a little calmer.

  “You’re speaking to the man on blood pressure medicine. I get it. But this is my life and I’m not changing. You don’t like that I’m working level five cases. Would you rather that I was still scamming? Still stealing old women’s retirement funds? Taking businessmen’s gambling money?” I say, feeling on the verge of passing out again. Never have I been this exhausted.

  “Well, no. But if you were then I would be okay with it knowing you were safe,” she says.

  “Dahlia, you’re fucking ridiculous. I’m finally doing something I enjoy and you want me to stop because it makes you worry. When have I ever told you what to do? Not to go on tour? Not to kill yourself churning out another album? The answer is that I haven’t. You live your life by your rules and I do the same. You must really misunderstand me to think that I’d allow you to control me. I’m not that kind of man. I’m the kind who does whatever the fuck I want and you either accept it or you leave me alone. There is no negotiating over this. I am not the compromising type and you had better know that by now,” I say.

  “I get that there won’t be any compromises with you. But still. There’s a lot that you’re asking me to accept. A dangerous job. A bitch of a daughter. And after—”

  “Don’t call her that,” I say, cutting her off.

  Dahlia pauses and regards me with a sideways stare. “You’re starting to like her, aren’t you?”

  “God no!” I say, arranging my face so I appear offended by the question.

  “Of course you do. She’s exactly like you. Adelaide is you with a vagina,” Dahlia says with a humorless laugh.

  “No…I mean…maybe.” Then an almost smile breaks across my face at a sudden memory.

  “What?” Dahlia asks, having read the look on my face.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” I say, hesitating a little. “It just the other day Adelaide told the doorman that he was a worthless piece of shit and a monkey could perform his job. And then she told him, ‘Open the door for me, chimp.’ She’s fucking hilarious. About like you. I’ve been wanting to say that same thing to him forever.”

  “I don’t think your daughter and I are anything alike,” Dahlia says.

  “I get that you don’t trust her and don’t know how to assimilate her into our lives but—”

  “I didn’t think I was going to have to. I thought she’d go away eventually and then we could try getting back together. But as of now it appears she’s stapling herself to you. Soon she’ll monopolize all your free time and you two will be like an inseparable duo,” she says.

  “Dahlia, you’re not being fair.”

  “No, I’m not,” she admits at once. “But you’ve changed since she’s come into your life. I see the way you look at her.”

  “What?” I say, and I’m actually offended now. “What are you talking about?”

  “Not in a weird way. She’s your daughter. You look at her with a strange fondness,” Dahlia says.

  “I don’t,” I growl.

  “You do. And it’s kind of cute, but then also not at all. It’s not how I’m used to seeing you. It changes things between us,” she says.

  “You realize you’re sounding like a possessive witch right now?”

  She purses her lips slightly, tightens her eyes. “I do. But that’s how I feel.”

  “I’m the same person I’ve always been. You’re the one trying to change me,” I say, feeling almost zapped of the will to live from this bloody conversation.

  “I’m not. I just don’t like how your life is changing. I’m allowed to say that,” Dahlia says.

  “Get out,” I say in a low voice.

  “What?” She blinks at me like she misheard.

  “Get out,” I repeat.

  “But—”

  “What? You thought we were fixing this?” I say, cutting her off. “Is that what you really believed? Dear Dahlia, what you’re too small-minded to realize is there’s no fixing us when you’re so much a part of the problem. After almost two decades, I came back to you. I put aside my pride. I apologized,” I say with a disgusted shiver. “But you don’t want this. Maybe you never did, only thought we worked. Maybe you romanticized the idea of having a relationship with a Dream Traveler. But what you, Dahlia, fail to understand is I was given these powers and can’t waste them working in a ticketing booth in the Underground. I’m a fucking agent for the Lucidites. And yes, as much as I don’t love the idea that I have a daughter who shares my powers, I’m not abandoning her for you. For anyone. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not the kind of person who avoids responsibility,” I say, and feel my heart hammer too fast in my chest from all the angry words and frustrating truths I’ve spoken.

  There’s something breaking in Dahlia. I see it so plainly in her eyes. A tragedy writing itself deeply inside her and welling to the surface little by little. “Ren, I can’t be with the person you are now.”

  “I know. That’s why we won’t ever be together,” I say. “I don’t plan on changing.”

  And too fast she pivots and marches across the space, the urge to exit heavy in her every movement.

  I whip around and with an incredibly blinding force I throw my foot into the side of the coffee table. As the leg cracks and pieces spray in the opposite direction, a hot pain rockets through my foot. Immediately I know my shoe failed to protect my toes from being broken. The table leg finally gives way, buckling to one side, and all its contents slide down at my feet. Behind me I hear the gentle click of the door closing. Wondering if Dahlia has changed her mind and wants to act like a civilized and reasonable human being, I turn. But to my disappointment I find Adelaide, her eyes wide and on the broken table behind me.

  “I’m guessing you’re not up for a hug, huh?” she says, her voice flat and her words strangely making me feel better somehow.

  “You didn’t leave the building, I guess,” I say.

  “I sat in the hallway and antagonized her goons.”

  I nod.

  “I�
�m afraid of being out there,” she says, pointing to the window, meaning the world.

  I nod again. I acutely remember having those same fears. It’s hard being in a world that doesn’t understand me and that I can so easily break. It’s a wretched combination, like God was hoping I’d try to destroy his world and was just testing my self-control.

  “Well, you can stay here,” I say, turning and almost falling over with the next step. My toes are definitely broken. I manage to save myself and shuffle my foot forward, hopefully in a way that doesn’t attract that much attention.

  “For a while?” Adelaide says, a bit of hope in her question.

  I slide my head over my shoulder and briefly glance at Adelaide. “For as long as you need to,” I say and leave.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It’s rustling that awakens me. A small sound, but sharp in my head, like brittle leaves underfoot on an autumn day. She’s a blur but I still catch Adelaide as she throws something on the side table next to me and darts for her room. Like a sloth I push up from my slouched position, everything turning sideways in my vision before righting itself. I twist my head to the side table and my brain overheats at once.

  “Adelaide,” I bark once, loud enough it makes my head feel like it’s being put through a sieve.

  “Huh?” I hear from her doorway.

  “Don’t fucking ‘huh’ me,” I say, my own voice making my sleep-hungover head burn with pain.

  She materializes as first a wavy figure and then a solid girl. I bloody hate having emotions. They mess with my head in the worst ways.

  “Do you know what I did to the last person who went through my shit?” I say.

  “Let me guess, you can’t bring them forward to tell me because they’re dead,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her and giving me a snobbish glare.

  I narrow my eyes at the girl who is too clever for her own good. “Would you like to join them in the afterlife?” I say.

  “Depends on the day,” she says, a real melancholy in her voice. She looks pale. Those dark bags always under her eyes look worse. How hadn’t I noticed that until now?

  “Why were you peeping into my files?” I say, pointing to the classified folder that sits half open on my side table.

  “Because,” Adelaide says, throwing herself down on the rug in front of the half burnt out fire. She ties her legs together, sitting tailor style.

  “Because is not an answer, it’s the beginning to an answer,” I say, rolling my eyes at her, which also makes my head hurt.

  “Because you keep me in the dark and I’m tired of it. You took me in, but you keep me out,” she says, her face suddenly angry.

  “Oh, how very poetic of you. Entertain me more with your clever phrases,” I say through a yawn.

  She narrows her green eyes at me. Shakes her head. “You introduced me to your pops but refuse to talk about your mum, who you obviously loved a great deal. And I realize after hearing your chat with Dahlia that you love what you do too. But you won’t tell me a bloody thing. It’s not fair.”

  “Don’t tell me about fair,” I say, my voice neutral. “People who complain about fairness—”

  “I’m half your blood and DNA,” she says, cutting me off. She’s worked up I realize now. “And I expect that it means nothing to you that I’m your daughter. But to me, to finally have the opportunity to know my father means something. I don’t idolize you or anything. Hell, half my life I despised you for abandoning me and cursing me with what I thought was mental problems. And currently you madden me more than I thought possible. But I still want a chance to understand you, don’t you get that?”

  I don’t respond and a whole minute goes by. It’s a minute full of our frustrated stares and her nervous fidgeting. Finally she says, “I get that you prefer to keep people at a distance. I’m not asking for that to change. I’m just curious about who you are and what you do. You’d feel the same if the opportunity was stolen from you to know your parents.”

  “I can’t say how I’d feel in your situation. No one can speak from a place of unknowing,” I say, realizing I’m dodging.

  “No, because it appears you had two accepting and loving parents,” she says, her words slow and full of a long harbored resentment.

  “I did. Sue me,” I say plainly.

  She pins her hands on the ground behind her and leans back. “You’re an agent. Tell me about that.”

  Adelaide is relentless. I simultaneously want to squash that out of her and also help her preserve that characteristic. I purse my lips at her and make an impromptu decision which I’ll probably regret. “I’m a fixer.”

  “What does that mean? You go and fix things, like FEMA does?” she says.

  “Bloody no. I don’t wait around like those jerks until things happen. They clean shit up. I fix things before they happen,” I say.

  She leans forward, looking suddenly perplexed and intrigued. “How do you do that?”

  “News reports,” I say with a bored sigh. “I receive reports from a department full of clairvoyants who see future tragic events. They see other types of events too, but my responsibility is to work on bad cases.”

  “Level five? That’s what Dahlia called them. She doesn’t want you working those kinds of cases. They’re really dangerous, that’s why, right? ” she says.

  I grind my teeth together, mostly angry that the mention of her name affects me. “We aren’t talking about her,” I say simply.

  Adelaide holds up her hands in surrender. “Sure, whatever. Just keep talking.”

  “I was assigned a level five case,” I say, indicating the file.

  “It said you failed. That the lady, Blocker, abducted the man, Person G,” Adelaide says.

  “My memory is still intact and therefore I don’t need you reminding me of all of that,” I say, my voice aching for some reason.

  Adelaide eyes me as she knits her hands into her oversized shirt sleeves. “You’re not used to failure, are you?”

  “No, maybe you can tell me how to deal with it,” I say.

  A solid laugh bursts from her mouth and the action shifts her usually melancholy face, seeming to give it color.

  “Why was that funny?” I say, feigning confusion.

  “So the report says that you suspect that Blocker is recruiting an army of assassins.”

  I nod, steepling my hands in front of my face and looking down at the girl.

  “And it also said there were still investigations surrounding the persons abducted connected to Person C and Person G.”

  “Sophie and James,” I say, disbelieving I’m actually giving her information.

  “Right. So you’re still investigating why James’s friend and Sophie’s sister’s abductions weren’t forecasted by the news reporters,” she says.

  “Yes, we suspect that Blocker can shield those events somehow,” I begin. “And I’m thinking that maybe Blocker can’t entirely shield the events from news reporters where she abducts the person she plans to use as a weapon. However, I’m not certain why. Currently, with my brain on fire, none of this makes much sense.”

  She huffs with a half laugh. “Because she’s there,” Adelaide says, a great deal of confidence in her tone.

  “What did you just say?”

  “Blocker can’t entirely shield events that’s she’s a part of,” she says.

  I turn my head to the side, struck by this seemingly simple idea. “Go on,” I say.

  “Well, if one of her skills is to block psychic energy then she’d have no trouble doing that with events where she’s not directly involved. But I read something one time about psychic energy. Specifically it was about the conservation of energy and how it can be transferred but never created or destroyed. So if that’s true then that means Blocker is diverting it. And I’ve also heard that psychic energy of certain types can be absorbed remotely but that same energy will always set off a flare when in the presence of a reflector.” She says all this slowly, like pulling up an almost for
gotten memory.

  “Where did you hear all this or read it or whatever?” I say, my adrenaline spiking.

  She shrugs, her eyebrows crinkling together. “I can’t remember. Maybe I didn’t and it’s just a piece of archetype information I’m pulling from the subconscious mind, like Jung talks about,” she says with a chuckle like she only half believes what she said. But I believe it all. More importantly, I know she’s onto something.

  Suddenly I’m overwhelmed by a rush. I bolt to a standing position as an idea springs to my mind. “Collected Works of C.G. Jung. That’s it,” I say.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Adelaide says. “I’ve read parts of that. There’s a lot about psychic energy in his books.”

  I’m at my bookshelf, scanning for the right book in seconds. “She’s not a blocker at all. She’s reflecting. Of course,” I say, my voice a hush as it all fits together.

  “Huh?”

  I turn and glare at Adelaide, who has pushed to a standing position. “Take that word out of your vocabulary. It isn’t a word at all actually, but rather a sound uncivilized apes make.”

  “Aw, and here I thought you didn’t know me at all,” she says.

  I turn back to the bookcase and pull volume five, Psychology and Alchemy, from the shelf. It’s not going to detail my theory precisely, but it will give me the inspiration to decipher this. I’m sure of that. I flip through the pages until I find a passage that catches my attention.

  My eyes suck in the words at once. Jung wrote, “In seeking to explore it he projected the unconscious into the darkness of matter in order to illuminate it.” I look up from the pages, my mind spinning, trying to catch a thread I can pull out to unravel this more completely.

  “I don’t know what this kidnapper’s other skill is,” I begin, half talking to myself, “but it might have something to do with this. Because in light of this new information, I don’t think she’s blocking these events from us at all. She’s reflecting the energy. That’s why we can’t see the visions of the other people she’s having abducted. But we do see the events where she’s there because a reflector can’t reflect off of themselves. Not entirely anyway.”