SkinThief

by Sonnet O'Dell

  “So he’s going to be arrested; this country has no death penalty. Arresting him won’t bring my Nikki back to me.”

  “Neither would killing him.”

  “No, but she would be avenged. A life for a life.”

  “This is not Soviet Russia, comrade; this is the United Kingdom. Our justice system does not work on the eye for an eye principal. Even if it did, you have killed three people for one person.”

  “They all deserved it; they all had a hand in her death.”

  “That may very well be true, but you’ll never know how involved each of them was. Mr. Powell had no idea who Jackson Warner was. He showed less response to the photo of his death, and something about Warner was different from the others. He lived in a nice home; he had not just a wife but a kid. He didn’t seem like the criminal type to me.”

  “You don’t have to look it to be it; he was the tightest lipped. He kept going on about how there was money in the safe. I didn’t want his money—I wanted retribution.”

  Jackson Warner had offered him money to get him to leave; he had tried to buy him off like he was a mugger. Kensington Powell hadn’t recognized him or his name either. I was getting a sickening feeling in my stomach. I got up and walked out of the room. I ran straight for the bathroom, and I nearly lost my lunch. Vengeance was so blind to everything but its retribution. There was a knock on the ladies’ room door. I looked around me; the stalls were all empty.

  “Come in,” I said. The door swung open and Hamilton came in. He looked nervous, like he was crossing some forbidden threshold. He seemed to relax when he realized it was just him and me in the room.

  “Are you okay?”

  I walked to the sink and placed my mouth under the tap, rinsing and spitting. I took a paper towel from the rack and patted my mouth till it was dry. “Yeah, I just figured something out, and I felt sick down to the core of me being in the room with that murderer, even if it’s not actually the kid’s fault.”

  “What did you figure out?”

  “Kensington didn’t recognize Jackson Warner. What if he had nothing to do with this? No connection whatsoever to Sardi. What if he had some innocent tie to Banks?”

  “It’s possible, but why would he be on the same pages as those two thugs?”

  “What if wasn’t a list of people who were there? What if it was just a list of people who were work related?”

  A female officer walked through the door; she looked at Hamilton and coughed loudly. Embarrassed, he exited and I followed him, heading straight for a computer. I Googled Jackson Warner. Hamilton leaned over my shoulder.

  “Warner & Warner Tailors,” he said, puzzled. Pieces in my mind fitted together.

  “Banks was a big man, but I bet he was required to wear a suit for work. He’d have had to have it tailored to fit him. Jackson Warner really was just an innocent man.”

  Hamilton got the same green expression I’d had when I’d had the same thoughts in the interrogation room. I’d felt cold right down to my toes. Just because his name had been there in the diary on the same page, we’d assumed he’d been involved with Sardi. Although his wife and son—in a woman’s body—had denied it, we’d assumed they just didn’t know about it. But in fact, he really had nothing to do with it. The man was a tailor, for God’s sake; he’d been earning an honest living, perhaps one day planning to pass the shop onto his son when he’d grown out of his grunge teen phase. Petrovich had killed him with no thought of checking his facts. All the pity I felt for him went right out of me. He deserved whatever he got.

  My mobile started to ring. I flipped it open, glad for the distraction—anything was preferable to those thoughts.

  “Cassandra Farbanks.”

  “Miss Farbanks, Governor Bird. I’m afraid that I need an update, Petrovich has taken a turn for the worse; we fear he might not make it through the night. Is there progress?”

  “Yes, we have him. I’m going to start switching everyone back around momentarily. Just keep him alive till morning.”

  “I understand. Please hurry, Miss Farbanks.”

  I hung up the phone and turned to Hamilton, who was still hovering by me.

  “Where are the swapped ones?”

  “On their way from the safe house.”

  “Get them here faster; we don’t have a lot of time left.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Merrick Stone was sitting, hands cuffed behind his back, in the backseat of LeBron’s car as we drove to Birmingham. It had taken just over an hour to get everyone back into their right bodies, starting with Oliver Warner. I had to swap back in the opposite way he’d swapped in the first place. He had gone from Oliver to Gwynne to Chloe and back to Merrick, and as soon as we made it to the prison, he would go back into his original body. I had the pendant in my purse. I didn’t dare wear it around him; all he’d have to do would be to get skin-to-skin contact with me, and he’d memorized the spell words. He could swap us quicker than I could have blinked.

  Petrovich sat grumpily but passive in the backseat. I had been obliged to tell him of his mistake with Jackson Warner once I had confirmed with the wife that they’d known Charles Banks as a valued customer. He’d come to a work BBQ at the house once, which was why he had the address. Charles Banks had attended one social event with the man, and it had been enough to get him killed. The fact that Petrovich was sullen proved that he at least had a conscience, and perhaps even felt guilt for having ended the life of an innocent man.

  Oliver Warner, now back in his right body, and his mom had told us what had happened at his house. He’d been playing video games, the sound turned up while his parents did other things about the house. They’d been upstairs in the bedroom, the wife had said, talking about Jackson’s day at work, when there was suddenly a redheaded woman standing in their bedroom doorway. Gwynne went for her, but during the scuffle she’d hit her head and been knocked out. When she came to she was duct-taped up in the spare bedroom, and the redheaded woman was duct-taped up next to her. Oliver filled in the blank there. He’d paused his game because he was hungry; when he’d gotten to the hall, a redheaded woman was coming out of the spare bedroom. He’d shouted for his dad but got no answer. The woman had attacked him; then it was like he was having an out-of-body experience. He was suddenly looking down at himself, and Petrovich had clocked him. He was woken again when he felt someone putting fingers on his neck, which had been me when I was checking to make sure the two duct-taped women were living.

  I felt a great pang of sympathy for the Warner family. They’d been struck by this tragedy not because they were guilty of anything, but because they had known the wrong person. All sorts of shades of gray, I reminded myself. Ivan had been so consumed with his narrow-minded revenge that he’d only seen things in that same old black-and-white monotone.

  When LeBron and I took Merrick back to the prison, we left the station abuzz. They were preparing to move on Sardi at his home out on the road to Pershore. Organized Crime, Homicide, and PCU were all going to work together—enough men to make sure the operation went down without any casualties. Even if Sardi had security personnel at his property who were trained to shoot first and ask questions later, with enough men, they wouldn’t be a problem; according to Hamilton, private security don’t tend to put up a fight when they can see they are outmanned. I hoped that was true.

  I opened my purse and peered inside. I had a little baggy containing some of Hamilton’s hair, and I’d borrowed an old passport-sized photo I had found in his desk drawer. They wouldn’t let me go on the raid in person because I had to take care of Merrick, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be there. Hamilton, being a complete norm, probably wouldn’t even register my presence if I didn’t try to talk or influence him. I wanted to see for myself that little Anna Lewis was all right.

  After my taking Merrick back, Rourke had put her foot dow
n and said that was my involvement in police matters finished. I didn’t argue with her; instead I’d decided to be sneaky. I was good at sneaky. I could do the spell at the prison. LeBron would never tattle on me even if he realized what I was doing. LeBron was a good sort, but not a goody two-shoes who would run and tell the minute he was out of my sight. I felt like I could trust him. There had to be someone at PCU whom I trusted.

  “Cassandra, in the glove compartment, can you find the sat nav for me?”

  I leaned forward and pulled the little drawer under the dash open. It was absolutely stuffed with bits and pieces, including a little black square—his satellite navigation. I pulled it out and found the little on button. It came to life, and a little message said “searching for satellite.” Look up, I silently suggested.

  “I’ve never liked these things,” I said to him, keeping my voice down because I didn’t want Ivan to listen to our conversation. I almost wished we’d taken the cruiser so there would be that plate of Plexiglas between us. “I prefer maps.”

  LeBron laughed and reached over for it, setting the little box onto a stand that stuck out of the dash. A new screen came up, asking him to input the postcode for his desired destination.

  “I think they’re a boon, especially if you’re on your own. You’d have to pull over to read a map; this you just tap in a few digits and it directs you.” He tapped in the postcode of the prison. We were reaching Birmingham city limits, and I wouldn’t have been able to direct him in how to get there.

  “The more modern the technology, the less magic friendly it is. If I had to use power now, I would probably fry that by accident.”

  LeBron looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Ah, well, please don’t use it in my car. I like my sat nav—it cost a small fortune.” The little box started to give us directions in a voice not too dissimilar to that of Lara Croft. I cocked an eyebrow at LeBron. “What? It came with that voice, I swear.”

  His cheeks flushed a little, and I laughed at him behind my hand. I turned to look out the window, watching the houses at the edge of the city flash past us in a blur. Sometimes it was like we were standing still, and it was the houses moving at seventy miles an hour.

  “He’ll get out of the charges, you know that,” came a voice from behind me. I jumped a mile in my seat. Merrick had shifted over to my side of the car, leant forward so that his forehead was resting on the headrest. I rolled my head round and I could just about see his nose.

  “What?” I asked him to clarify.

  “I bet he’s rich, to have kept the police at bay this long; he’ll have top lawyers and he’ll get out of the charges for Nikki’s death. He’ll go unpunished. Do you think that’s right?”

  “I don’t, but I don’t think a vigilante-type killing spree is the answer either. And you don’t know that—neither of us knows what will happen.”

  “He’ll get away with it and I’ll go to my grave with unfinished business.”

  “Many people do.”

  “I’ll come back and haunt you, let you know my misery.”

  “You go the hell ahead. I’m not an ectomancer. I can neither here nor see the dead; it won’t affect me one bit. Haunt away.”

  Merrick’s grumble was loud enough to attract LeBron’s attention to our whispered conversation. He braked sharply, pulling off to the side of the road.

  “Back in the middle where I can see you,” LeBron demanded. His hand was reaching down to the door where he kept his sidearm. Merrick shifted himself so he was back in the middle of the seat; the belt around his waist sighed with relief after being stretched to its limit. LeBron checked him in the rearview mirror before pulling back onto the road and continuing to follow the directions as the sat nav communicated them to him. His eyes kept darting up to check what Petrovich was doing in the backseat—I bet he too was wishing we had taken his police cruiser for this trip.

  The prison gates came into view less than ten minutes later, and we drove right up to them. There was a guard sitting in the booth, pen poised in his hand as he stared at a folded paper in his lap. He was probably doing the crossword or something. LeBron rolled down the window and honked his horn to get his attention. The guard took a deep snort of air, slapped his paper down on the bench inside the booth, heaved his belt up over his belly and sauntered over like a man not happy to be disturbed. I leaned over LeBron as he bent over to look in the window.

  “Hi there,” I said, dropping my ID down so he could see it, “I’m here to see Governor Bird. He should be expecting me and Merrick Stone.” I nodded toward the backseat. The guard looked behind LeBron and waddled back over to his booth to call inside. We waited, the cold air gusting in through the window. He came back a minute later.

  “Go on in, they’re going to open the gates now.”

  The large gate opened a bit like that of an old castle letting in the refugees from another kingdom in those old films. LeBron drove in and followed another guard’s directions as to where to park. He parked, and I climbed out of the passenger side. Pert-Smith was the guard who came down to meet us. He gave what I supposed was his version of a smile and shook me by the hand.

  “Glad to see you back in one piece, Miss Farbanks.”

  “Pert-Smith,” I said in way of greeting. LeBron got out of the driver’s side and looked at me across the roof. “Would you be so kind as to help officer LeBron with Merrick?”

  Pert-Smith nodded and opened the back door of the car. He stared inside at his former co-worker now inhabited by Ivan Petrovich. Between the two of them, they forced him out of the car and Pert-Smith took charge of him, leading him ahead of us.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “The infirmary,” I replied, and Pert-Smith changed direction, leading us through the security gates and into the long pale corridor I remembered from my first visit up here. Governor Bird was pacing quietly in and out of the doorway to the infirmary. He looked up at the sound of our footsteps, and he appeared overjoyed. He had to have been worried about his employee trapped in the body of a dying man.

  “Miss Farbanks, you’re just barely in time, I fear. Come inside quickly.” We marched in behind him. The doctor was hovering over the bed of Ivan Petrovich. He was awake, but not really all that lucid, and he looked like he was in terrible pain. Merrick’s eyes looked over his former shell and what he had done to it; he paled at the thought of having to go back into it. He must have truly believed that he wouldn’t get caught, the he would have been free to just choose a body he fancied and live the rest of someone else’s life out in anonymity. He might not have beaten his own body so badly if he’d not been so arrogant.

  “He’s not doing so well,” the doctor said as I came around the right side of the bed to where a small trolley sat. I put my bag down on it and fished out all the little bits and piece I was going to need. I saw how weak and frail Ivan Petrovich’s body looked, but his eyes were wild, moving around in their sockets with the spirit of a younger man. I pulled on my gloves; I was going to need to help secure the skin-to-skin contact. It didn’t look to me like the real Merrick could hold his arm for long enough to complete the spell. I turned to Pert-Smith and LeBron.

  “Bring him as close to me and the bed as possible, un-cuff him but hold on to him.” Pert-Smith grabbed him in a vice-tight bear hug while LeBron unsnapped the cuffs, holding his hands behind his back. He tried to struggle, but Pert-Smith was a strong man and held him still, though with visible effort. I pulled the amulet out of my bag and carefully put it around the neck of Ivan Petrovich. I took his hand and directed Pert-Smith to force Merrick’s hand under it. Skin-to-skin contact. I held Ivan’s aged hand up.

  “Merrick, Merrick, can you hear me?”

  He nodded his head ever so softly, like even that much of an effort hurt. I gave his hand a gentle squeeze to encourage him. His eyes focused on me.

  “I need you to repeat
after me, okay? My heart to yours, my soul in exchange.”

  It took him three tries and being fed some water through a straw before he managed to speak the words. Once he did, the emerald in the center of the amulet glowed with a soft green luminescence, and I felt the exchange run under my hand. It might have been a three-way mix-up if I hadn’t been wearing gloves. Merrick’s body relaxed in Pert-Smith’s grip, and I quickly removed the amulet from around Ivan’s neck.

  “Did it work?” Governor Bird asked, looking anxiously between the limp Merrick in Pert-Smith’s grip and the bedridden Ivan. I put the amulet safely back into my purse.

  “It worked, but it’s going to be a bit of a shock for both of them going back to their original bodies. Merrick will need to sleep it off, as he’s been in the least healthy state all day.” Pert-Smith dragged him to another bed and slung him on it, carefully catching his feet and propping those up on the end of the bed. I didn’t know how long Merrick was going to be out of it; it could be anywhere between five to fifteen minutes, as we’d discovered when changing the others back.

  “Everything should be fine now, Governor Bird. I promise you, everything is back to the way it should be.”

  Ivan coughed and spluttered next to me; the doctor gave him some water through the straw and nearly got his finger bitten off. Ivan turned his bruised and menacing eyes on me.

  “Meddling witch,” he growled.

  “I was just doing my job; I wasn’t the one who made this personal.”

  “I should have stabbed for your heart.”

  I ignored him, and the governor dabbed at his sweaty head with a handkerchief.

  “Miss Farbanks, I am so grateful for your assistance in this matter. You will invoice me for your time and such.”

  “Of course, Governor; you can expect it in the post sometime next week.”