“Home.”
The drive back took only a couple of minutes. Anna got out at the curb, waved, and headed in to the apartment.
Karyn was still sitting at the table, shuffling through snapshots and plans. She looked up when Anna walked in, her face a still, cold mask. “You get everything you need?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Anna walked to her bedroom and closed the door. “Absolutely fucking everything,” she muttered.
Chapter 10
The crew spent the next ten days in the usual frenzy of strained, tense activity. The hours were filled with tedious recon and surveillance duty, most of which was a total waste of time, yet a moment’s glimpse of something might mean life or death later, and since they were preparing for nothing less than an assault on one of the richest men in Los Angeles, constant focus, even on dirt-boring shit, was an absolute necessity. Anna thought she’d never been so tense doing nothing before. It got so bad that she took to driving around the city after her shift was up, unwilling to go home and lie still long enough to fall asleep.
It didn’t help that the air hadn’t exactly cleared between her and Karyn. They’d had to make another run to Adelaide’s, which was worrisome so soon after the last one, but they hadn’t engaged in any real conversation during the long, strained trip. And if anything, Karyn had gotten even jumpier after stocking up on her medication. Anna couldn’t tell if she was seeing things or just unusually nervous, and she thought there was even some chance that there was nothing odd there at all. Maybe she was reading her own anxiety into Karyn’s behavior.
By the tenth day, she had gone past frayed and on to ragged. She stopped by the apartment they were renting as a base of operations, dropped off her notes without a word to Karyn and Nail (who were deep in a discussion full of phrases like “line of sight” and “blast radius”), and shuffled out. She thought about heading home to get a few hours of sleep, and, while she would have welcomed the rest, she knew it would take some time for the day’s stress to dissipate. Driving again, then.
At the first landing down the stairs, she met Genevieve coming up. Genevieve grinned, but it was obvious that she, too, was wearing down.
“Hey,” Genevieve said.
“Hey. You holding up all right?”
“Good enough. Five more days, and we can all retire, right?”
“Ha. Maybe you can retire on whatever Sobell’s paying you, but my financial advisor tells me that half a million won’t stretch nearly as far as I might think. Plus it’s a down market, you know.”
Genevieve blinked, her expression transforming into one of comical shock. “Your—what?”
With an incredible effort, Anna kept her face straight. “Yeah, and then there’s the taxes . . .”
That pushed the joke over the edge, and Genevieve grinned and finally laughed, with Anna joining in a moment later. It felt good—and strangely comforting.
“Hey,” Anna said, acting on impulse. “You here on pressing business?”
“Not really. Daily update.”
“Go do your thing, and let’s go get dinner. I’m starving.” She realized that was actually true, and the thought seemed to open up a yawning ache in her belly.
“Sold,” Genevieve said. “Back in five.”
Anna watched Genevieve trot up the stairs and disappear around the corner. Moments later, the sound of a door opening and then closing reached her.
This is dumb, she thought. This is exactly what Karyn was worried about.
No. Karyn was worried about a lot of things, and maybe Genevieve was one of them, or maybe Karyn was tired and pissed and scared and clawing at anything that made her more tired or pissed or scared. How much damage could Genevieve really do? Like she’d said herself, everybody knew she was working for Sobell, so it wasn’t as though there were any surprises waiting there. She was in on the planning and had a similar stake in the outcome.
Anna had thought it over since their late-night conversation in the car, and there wasn’t really much downside that Anna could see. And there wasn’t really any risk of social embarrassment. Even if Anna put Genevieve’s holding her hand after the bad scene at the garage in a special box marked STRESS REACTION—DO NOT TAKE INTERNALLY, there had been plenty of other signals, enough that they couldn’t be accidental, and the invitation the other night was about as clear as Anna could ask for. Possibly Genevieve was an incorrigible flirt, but Anna didn’t think so—or, at least, didn’t think that was all of it. The overlong eye contact, knowing grins, and occasional touches on the arm or shoulder weren’t mirrored in Genevieve’s behavior with any of the others. She teased Tommy a little, but even Tommy had begun to get the idea that it was no more than that.
If Anna had misread that, that was OK; she could accept rejection with good grace. And if she’d read it correctly—well, fuck what Karyn thought. They were both adults, for Christ’s sake. This was completely manageable.
She was saved from overthinking it any further by a clatter of footsteps on the stairs above. Genevieve descended the steps in a rush and almost bounced at the bottom. “So,” she asked, “what are you in the mood for?”
Anna smiled back. “I was thinking sushi, unless that’s not your thing.”
“You drive, I’ll buy.”
“Done.”
Genevieve’s happy chatter filled the car during the whole short ride to Anna’s favorite sushi spot, a jarring—if welcome—change from Karyn’s taciturn silence, or even the calm camaraderie from back before everyone had turned into a tight ball of tension.
“For someone sporting full-on Goth style, you’re awfully cheerful,” Anna remarked as they got out of the car. “Aren’t they going to revoke your card or something?”
“Fuck ’em,” Genevieve said. “Once you admit that you and everyone you love are going to die, you might as well lighten up. It’s not like you’re going to get another chance.”
“That’s . . . the most screwed-up way of getting happy I’ve ever heard.”
“Ah, but it works like a champ.” She opened the door to the restaurant. “After you.”
They went inside. The place was decorated in noxious green with white plastic tables, counters, and fixtures, all rounded off in a way that made it seem like kid furniture. Blue-white fluorescents topped off the ghastliness. Anna gestured at the room. “Don’t let the hideous decor fool you. This place is great.”
“If you’re blindfolded.”
“Whatever works.”
They sat at an open table. Genevieve claimed to be a sushi novice and let Anna order for the both of them. The waiter left and, before an awkward silence had a chance to develop, Genevieve leaned forward.
“So at last I get a chance to get the lowdown on you and your crazy crew of misfit toys, huh?”
“What lowdown do you need?”
“Oh, come on—all the usual dirt. Where did you grow up? What’s your favorite color? What’s your critical assessment of Evil Dead II?”
“Right here, taupe, and I’ll have to send you my master’s thesis.”
“You grew up in a sushi restaurant?”
“It was tough. I smelled like eel all the time. The other kids used to beat me up and roll me in sticky rice.”
Genevieve laughed easily, and Anna felt the knot of tension between her shoulders loosen a little. It seemed a long time since she’d just laughed.
“Seriously, though,” Genevieve said.
Karyn’s suspicions lurched to the forefront of Anna’s mind, and she frowned. “Is this recon?”
Hurt flashed in Genevieve’s eyes before she masked it with a half smile and a shrug. “Can be if you want. But, no. That wasn’t the idea.”
“Sorry. I—you know. This is weird.”
Genevieve traced circles in the condensation from her water glass. “Only as weird as you make it.”
Anna looke
d to the window, but there was no escape there—ghostly reflections of both her and Genevieve floated on the surface of the glass, and the night beyond was too dark to dispel them. The chatter in the rest of the small restaurant was too low to mask the silence. “I’ve known Karyn for over ten years,” she said, watching Genevieve’s reflection in the glass. “Since high school.”
“I didn’t ask about Karyn.”
Anna bit her lip, then turned away from the reflection to look at Genevieve. “You can’t know anything about me if you don’t know about her. For real.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Genevieve put a hand on hers. It was cold, wet with droplets of icy water, but welcome. “Let’s have it.”
Anna fought down the urge to look back at the window. “She was the one that should have gone to college, had a real life. School came pretty natural to her, I think, before . . . before. Me, I couldn’t make myself focus on that shit. I guess I could have got by, but I never would have been able to pay for it. In and out of foster homes forever, you know?” She swallowed, took a drink of water with her right hand, not wanting to move her left from the warm cradle of Genevieve’s palm.
“Anyway, her probation officer at juvie was right across the hall from mine, and she always needed a cigarette when she came out. I always had ’em.”
“Nice girls on their way to college don’t have probation officers,” Genevieve pointed out.
“Yeah, well, one day Karyn lost her shit and attacked a taco vendor. Like, bad. Cut the shit out of him with a piece of a beer bottle. At the hearing, she said she thought he ripped her off. They put her in counseling, gave her ninety days suspended and a year probation.” Another sip of water. “She told me she saw the guy beating the hell out of a little kid, and it was only after she went apeshit on the guy that she realized there wasn’t any kid there. Only way to stay out of the nuthouse was to go to jail, so she lied. Six days later, the guy went to jail for putting his stepson in the hospital.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. That was pretty early on, before she really understood what was going on. With her, you know. Visions, or whatever you want to call them. By the time I met her, she had a better idea of what was happening to her, but it was getting pretty bad.”
Pretty bad didn’t really cover it. Anna could still see Karyn on the steps to the civil building, cigarette held between two fingers as she talked calmly about losing her mind. I’m not really going crazy, she’d said, but as far as anybody can tell, it’s the same thing. Shit, as far as I can tell, it’s the same. It’s all starting to smash together, real stuff and—the other stuff. All the time. I don’t know what to do. Nobody does. Anna had been almost hypnotized by Karyn’s even tone, her heart nearly destroyed by the wide, frightened look in Karyn’s wet brown eyes.
“I fell for her so hard,” Anna said, shaking her head. “I knew she was straight, but I didn’t care. I would have lain down in traffic for her.”
“Been there, sister,” Genevieve said. Her usual glib tone was gone, replaced by quiet melancholy.
“I still would.” Anna summoned up a slight grin. “Maybe for different reasons now.”
Genevieve just nodded.
“So I decided we’d find a way out for her. It was nuts—a seventeen-year-old dyke and a crazy fortune-teller take on the world! Neither one of us had any idea where to start, or any idea of what kind of shit we’d have to get in to make it work. But we fucking did it.”
“And she never made it to college.”
Anna shook her head. “Nope. After the first job, we were pretty much hooked. Her medication isn’t cheap, and I never heard of an insurance plan that covers it, so she needed the cash. And me—well. I was looking at forty years of working the check-out line at the fucking Home Depot, if I was lucky. Can’t say I feel like I really missed out on that.”
Genevieve’s face was sober, her eyes thoughtful. “I think you’re right,” she said softly.
“Huh?”
“Knowing about your relationship with Karyn tells me a lot about you.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No. Not at all.” The old smile resurfaced, with a touch less mockery than usual. She squeezed Anna’s hand. “It’s all good stuff.”
The moment was broken up by the arrival of half a dozen types of sashimi, plus the obligatory California roll for the sushi novice. Genevieve ignored the chopsticks in favor of eating with her fingers, and Anna laughed.
“What about you? What’s your story, Madame Mysterious?”
Genevieve’s eyebrows shot up. “Mysterious? Me? Ha.” She licked soy sauce off her thumb. “It’s not actually much of a story.”
“Why don’t I believe that?”
“No, really. I figured out pretty early on that I could do a few tricks, and my dad hooked me up with a guy he knew who could show me the ropes. That got me started, and by the time old Hector . . .” A cloud passed over her face, and her mouth twisted as though she tasted something sour. “By the time he was done, I was hooked into the occult underground in fifteen different ways. And, yeah, by then a career climbing the corporate ladder didn’t look all that attractive. I’ve been working the ‘very, very odd jobs’ division ever since.”
“What happened to your teacher?”
Genevieve sighed and rolled her eyes, like she’d known this question was inevitable. “Demon ate him.”
Anna paused in the act of selecting a piece of spider roll. “You’re fucking with me, right?”
“Nope.” Genevieve lowered her voice to a whisper. “Here’s a little secret for you: All real magic involves dicking around with demons. All of it. You do it long enough, and carelessly enough, and eventually they will take so much of you that there’s nothing left. Then they just move in and own the place.” She shuddered. “They’re pretty tough on their meat suits, so they usually get a pretty short run before the body gives out and they go back wherever they came from.”
“That’s awful.”
“But true.”
“And Tommy?”
Genevieve nodded. “Dealing with the devil, just like the rest of us. In a manner of speaking. I have to have a talk with him. He’s pretty obviously self-taught, and he treats this stuff like a box of toys he found lying around. Dude’s practically sending out invitations for something nasty to get its hooks in.”
“What about you? You’re smart enough to keep that from happening to you?”
A slow, sad shake of the head. “Nobody’s that smart. Keep at it long enough, and it will happen. These days, I use the stuff as little as possible, but somehow it’s just about impossible to leave it alone. One day, I’ll be like Hector, walking around with something else at the controls, making me eat my fingers and shit like that.” She pulled up a smile. “By then, I’m hoping to be ninety and in a wheelchair. See how the fuckers like that.”
Anna dropped her chopsticks and flicked them away with the backs of her fingers. “Why is everybody around me a ticking bomb?”
“Everybody’s a ticking bomb, sweetheart.”
“Might as well lighten up, then—isn’t that right?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on, then. Let’s get out of here.” She threw a couple of twenties on the table, took Genevieve’s hand, and headed toward the door.
As the door swung shut behind them, Anna felt a tug on her hand. She turned, and Genevieve was inches away, standing below the silly plastic awning. She wasn’t sure if she moved first or Genevieve did, but the space between them was suddenly gone, her lips pressed against Genevieve’s, and for a breathless span of moments, everything was all better.
Chapter 11
“Anybody else worried about the essential insanity of this?” Tommy asked as they prepared to leave their makeshift base of operations. He always asked some variant of this question just prior to the moment where turning back would become impossib
le. Everybody feel good about this? Anybody want to back out? It had become tradition.
Karyn didn’t look at him. Barely had for days. Mostly he appeared normal, but two more times she’d seen something awful—once his eyes had been burned from his head, and another time his throat had been cut, his tongue lolling obscenely from slack lips. There was never any direct threat in evidence, and each time the gruesome vision had vanished as quickly as it had come. The closest she’d come to saying anything about it was to categorically ban anyone from the basement of Mendelsohn’s place. If everything went well, they shouldn’t have to go in the house at all, let alone go anywhere near the basement, but based on Tommy’s vision and Genevieve’s intelligence, it was better to ditch the job than risk a trip downstairs. Since delivering that edict, she hadn’t seen anything else—but she hadn’t looked all that carefully, either.
Her other visions had gotten more numerous, too, and only a worryingly high dose of blind made them manageable. She was taking so much now that she had real concerns about whether she was crippling herself for this job. What the hell good was a seer who couldn’t see? And besides that, she was going to need to visit Adelaide again, right after the job was done.
“I’m good,” Nail said.
“I can’t even tell what’s insane or not anymore,” Genevieve said.
Anna merely shrugged.
“Just checking,” Tommy said. He turned anxiously to Karyn. “We good?”
I don’t know. Other than the visions of Tommy, she’d seen nothing useful, but she was at a complete loss to know what that might mean. And they’re tough to interpret anyway. Half the time they don’t mean what I think they do. Maybe Tommy was in danger, but maybe not. In the past, real mortal danger had always revealed itself in the moments before it struck, and she’d always been able to head it off or escape. Even if Tommy was threatened, she could probably make sure he was protected. It would be stupid to abandon a job of this scale, with this much planning and this much payoff, without being sure.
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