by Mark Fassett
Nice glanced around the room again, catching sight of the hostess seating another couple. They looked like regular people, he in a suit and tie with close cut dark hair, she in a subtle blue dress and chestnut hair that hung down far enough to cover any skin she might be showing on her back. But they were here. They weren’t normal, or, at least one of them wasn’t normal. She could not have guessed which one.
“Just,” she said, without turning back to Reggie, “how many normal looking Gifted are there? I mean, there are actually more people here than I expected, and most of them just seem kind of normal. Even you.”
“Thanks, I think. Most of us are normal, or mostly normal. We can do things, but not like Dad. People like him are rare.”
Dad. The way the word rolled off Reggie’s tongue struck a wound deep inside her. She’d never been able to call him that. And she never would be able to in the future, either.
Wow, she was all over the place. Just the mention of Red sent her skidding down another trail. Too many shocks. First Red’s funeral, then Reggie, then this place and the number of people in it. She’d known there were more Gifted than just the ones that perpetrated crimes and the ones like Red that fought them. She just hadn’t imagined…
“How rare?” she asked, dragging herself back to the conversation. She could allow herself to drift in her head later, after they were done here.
“I don’t know, one in twenty? One in thirty? Most of the things we can do are simple things, like seeing the gun inside your coat pocket. They let us be good at certain jobs, but they’re not really the kind of thing that fights crime. I mean, they’re not like Dad’s super speed, or excessive strength, or…”
Reggie drifted off as Henry approached with their drinks, and Nice couldn’t help but finish his sentence in her head with immortality.
Or, as she thought further, the ability to read minds, or to see things the rest of us can’t see.
She put her drink, a rum and Coke, to her lips, and started to sip. One wouldn’t hurt her, and she obviously needed to relax.
But the shape of something was beginning to form in her head, and she didn’t want to drown whatever it was in alcohol. Besides, she and Reggie were still supposed to go looking for any of the three they thought might have had reason to kill Red.
And if they found them, then what?
She didn’t have any powers to compel them to speak the truth. For a moment, she wished she had the hostess’ power, but set that thought aside. Wishing wouldn’t make it true.
Henry left, making his way to the table where the newly arrived couple had been seated.
“Tell me,” she said, “have you ever met any of the people we’re looking for back there? Ever seen them there?”
“I haven’t,” Reggie said. “I don’t frequent this place a lot.”
“But everyone seems to know you, and you seem to know things about everyone.”
Reggie sipped his own drink before answering.
“Part of working with Dad,” he said. “He has files on most of the Gifteds that come here, and I’ve read them all. I guess it depends on what a lot means. I meant to say that I’ve come once or twice a month with Dad for years, and I’ve only been in back a couple of times.”
Nice guessed that made sense. Although, as she thought about it, if Red was protecting Reggie, why would Red bring Reggie here at all? Wouldn’t bringing him here put him in danger?
There was too much she didn’t know.
“So what do you think we should do if we see one of them?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I thought you had a plan.”
She thought about it, and realized she never really had much of a plan. Just getting here was as far as she thought.
“We could just walk up to them and ask where they were four days ago,” she said. It was a silly idea, and she knew it.
“You think they’d tell us?”
“No,” she said. “I just had to say it to get it out there and shot down so we can move on to other ideas. But, I mean, what do we do? How do we find out what they know? Maybe it was stupid to come here.”
“It’s never stupid to come here,” he said. “If we see one of them, we could follow when they leave, see where they go. We can’t really confront them here, anyway.”
“The rules?” Nice asked. She took another sip of her drink.
“They’re not really rules, so much as a generally accepted set of behaviors. We’re all Gifted, and this is a place to get business done among people like ourselves, and no one wants to see that ruined. If anything happened here, police or the government might get involved, and then things could get really messy.”
“So, basically, no one gets into fights here, because they’re all worried about what might happen if they did.”
“Look, before places like this existed, long before even Dad was born, when there were only a few Gifted, we were hunted and studied by anyone who was afraid of what we could do. You know this. Only a lot of effort and negotiation by people like Dad made these places possible. So, yeah, none of us on any side wants to see them go away.”
Of course, the government would have to know where they were. And maybe they did. But maybe they didn’t. She’d been liaison to Red, and the only reason she knew how to find the place, or that it even existed, was because of her mom. The Mayor obviously knew about them. He’d told her not to come here. Did he know where it was at? She had to assume he did.
She did know, though, that the general public didn’t know about them.
And they didn’t know how many Gifted there actually were. The only ones you ever heard about were the heroes like Red, and the villains that announced themselves.
She glanced around the room again, doing a quick count. Twenty booths like theirs, about half of them with a couple of shadowy diners. Twenty, maybe thirty Gifted just in this dining room. She had no idea how many were in the back, but it wouldn’t surprise her if there were just as many or more.
And right then, she had a thought.
“The warning about my safety here,” she said. “It’s more to keep places like this from being exposed. It’s not a real threat.”
Reggie’s eyes narrowed just a hair, and for a moment, Nice thought she might have stumbled onto something he hadn’t wanted her to know. But any hesitation in answering on his part was imperceptible.
“It is a real threat, but you’ve figured out why. Some of us don’t take kindly to normals being here, and things happen, and when things happen, they get hushed up. We don’t want the outside looking in.”
They didn’t want the ungifted knowing how things were changing.
The thought disturbed her. The Gifted tended to hide who they really were. As gifted as they were, most of them could still die from a policeman’s bullet, or the clubs of a mob. Especially those like Reggie or the hostess.
Even people like Red.
She took a much bigger sip from her drink, trying to hide her discomfort behind the glass.
“So, if we see one of them,” she said, changing the subject back, “we’ll just follow them and see where they go?”
“Sounds good,” Reggie said, seemingly unphased by the change of subject. “We don’t actually have to confront them tonight. We can just find out where they hang out, who their friends are.”
“Detective work,” Nice said.
“Yeah.”
They sipped their drinks in silence for several minutes. Nice assumed Reggie was thinking about his father. He hadn’t even learned his father was dead until after the funeral was held.
Of course, no one had known Red had a son. No one who wasn’t a Gifted, anyway. They certainly didn’t know he had a daughter.
And so they’d buried him quickly, and with as much secrecy as the Seattle Mayor’s office could muster.
The hostess led another customer, a massively fat, tall man with greasy hair, a graying beard hanging to the center of his chest, and an immaculately pressed suit. If anyone resembled a well-dr
essed mountain, it was this man.
Nice almost missed the strange signals the hostess was giving her out of sight of the mountain. At first, Nice thought she was pointing at the man, as if he was one of the people she was looking for, but he didn’t match any of the descriptions in the files. It was only with a second, more emphatic gesture, that Nice realized the waitress was pointing in the direction of the restrooms.
Nice hadn’t seen anyone go down the short hallway where the restroom sign hung.
She glanced at Reggie, and he was just staring into his glass.
It was clear the hostess, Aidan, wanted Nice to go, and she didn’t seem to want Reggie to see.
But why?
She wouldn’t find out unless she went. She pulled her purse up into her lap and then started to scoot toward the edge of her seat.
“Hey,” she said to Reggie, “I need to go to the bathroom.”
Reggie looked up from his drink and stared at her.
Then he shook his head.
“Sure. Be careful, though. Don’t let on…”
“I get it.”
She did.
She’d be out of Reggie’s sight.
But the hostess could read people’s minds, and if she wanted to talk to Nice alone, maybe she’d learned something. Perhaps from that mountain of a man.
Nice had to find out.
Chapter 11
THE BATHROOM WAS spotless and well-appointed with plants on either side of the mirror, three separate sinks, automatic hand driers, and an array of lotions and soaps.
The best part—it was empty. She didn’t have to worry about any Gifted hassling her, and secondarily, she wouldn’t have to worry about anyone overhearing whatever Aidan wanted to say.
Of course, considering they were in an establishment full of Gifted, there was no guarantee that someone couldn’t hear what they were saying. There was no guarantee that Reggie couldn’t see her through the walls. There was no guarantee that it would be Aidan following her into the bathroom.
And that thought caused her to shiver.
She unzipped her purse exposing the dark steel of the gun.
The door opened at that moment. Nice quickly shoved her hand into her purse and tilted her head down, as if she was looking for something inside, but not so far down that she couldn’t see whoever entered.
Aidan walked in, and quickly pushed the door shut behind her.
A bit of relief washed through Nice, and she looked up and lowered her purse. She didn’t remove her hand, however, preferring to leave it close to the gun, just in case.
“I don’t have much time, but I wanted to warn you.” Aidan glanced down at Nice’s purse, but only for a moment.
“Warn me?”
“Yes,” Aidan said, glancing at the door. “I don’t think Reggie is as nice as your father, and there’s something else…”
“Wait,” Nice said, interrupting her. “What do you know about my father? I thought…”
“He was in your thoughts, right after I stepped into it when I talked about your parents. He was a good man, but I really don’t have a lot of time, and I have to tell you another thing.”
“Okay, about Reggie?”
Aidan’s eyes shifted to the door again. She seemed nervous about something, worried that someone might walk in, or that someone was listening.
But she didn’t let it stop her.
“Yeah. He was blocking me tonight, keeping me out of his thoughts,” she said. “He normally doesn’t bother.”
Nice was intrigued.
“How is that possible?”
“Mostly, it’s just keeping your mind focused on some unimportant thing, like the color of your shoes. But that really doesn’t matter. You just need to know that he’s hiding something.”
Nice tried to turn over what the hostess was saying, find the meaning behind it, but she struggled to find anything.
“He was probably trying to hide our father’s death,” she said.
Aidan seemed to ponder for a moment, then looked back at the door again.
“You keep looking at the door. Why?”
“I don’t want anyone to come in and find me here,” she said. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps he was just trying to hide your father’s death from me.”
She put her hand on the door handle.
“But,” she said, “be careful, anyway. Think about this… If he was trying to hide your father’s death, why didn’t he warn you about me? Why didn’t he warn you to do the same thing?”
The question about Reggie was something to ponder, but Nice had other questions that she suddenly realized she could get answers to, especially since Aidan already knew Red was dead.
Aidan started to walk out the door, but Nice reached out and grabbed her arm, stopping her.
Aidan spun around, her eyes wide and her eyebrows raised.
“We’re looking for three people, here,” Nice said. “I was wondering…”
“If I’d seen them,” Aidan said, cutting her off. There was something cold and less welcoming about her voice. “You think they might have killed Red.”
Nice nodded.
Aidan looked down at her arm where Nice was still clutching it.
Nice let Aidan go.
“Have you seen them?”
“Yes, all three are in the back.”
Nice drew in a breath, preparing to ask Aidan if she knew anything, but Aidan didn’t give her a chance to ask.
“I don’t think any of them killed Red,” she said.
“Why do you think that? Did you read their minds?”
Aidan shook her head violently, and shivered.
“If they caught me doing that… No. They’ve been here every night for a week, all night long, really. From what I’ve gathered, they’ve been hiding from him. Now, I’ve got to go, or I’m going to get fired.”
With that, Aidan turned and exited the bathroom, leaving Nice to wonder what was really going on.
Red hadn’t mentioned any of them to her before he died. But if they were hiding from him, he was after them for something, something they had done together.
And if they were still hiding, chances were they didn’t know Red was dead. Which meant someone else had killed Red.
Chapter 12
NICE SAT BACK down at the table and pulled her phone from her purse. She started thumbing through the pictures she’d taken of the dossiers.
“That took a while,” Reggie said.
“Yeah,” she said absently, while scanning the documents as quickly as she could. Was there anything in them that could tell her why they’d be hiding from Red? It still wasn’t all that quick. She had to zoom in, slide things around, in order to read the pages, then flip back and forth, comparing.
“What did you and Aidan talk about?”
At this, Nice looked up from her phone.
“How did… What?”
“I saw her go up there right after you. She came out, then you. You two must have talked.”
Is that what he saw? Or did he see her gun, perhaps other things? She had no idea as to the extent of his Gift. In fact, she didn’t really know the extent of Aidan’s powers. Did anyone? Red, it was mostly easy to tell what he could do. He was really fast. A physical gift, not a mental one.
But Aidan, if she hadn’t apologized for reading Nice’s thoughts, Nice might not have ever known what Aidan could do. Even Reggie. He could see her gun in her pocket, and maybe more. But she really didn’t know what he could do. Heck, if Reggie hadn’t told the doorman she wasn’t Gifted, they could have pretended she was. There were enough normal looking people here, she might have blended right in.
And with Aidan’s comment about Reggie hiding from her ability…
She could feel herself growing nervous.
“We did,” she said. If Reggie could see into her coat, he could possibly have seen the gun in her purse through the walls of the restroom. He would know they had talked. No point in denying it. “I asked her if any of the thr
ee we’re looking for are here tonight.”
“Ah,” said, and settled back into his seat. “What did she say?”
“They’ve been here all night,” Nice said. She decided he didn’t need to know the other details. It was entirely possible Aidan was wrong.
“I guess that means we got lucky,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, then went back to studying.
Henry brought their food moments later, and Nice reluctantly set down her phone, frustrated. She hadn’t found one thing that linked them.
The steak in front of her smelled amazing, and at any other time, her mouth would be watering. Instead, she felt pressure in her temples, the precursor to a headache that might threaten everything she’d hoped to accomplish that night.
She was used to intrigue within the Mayor’s office. They were always scheming against and with various members of the City Council, trying to get things done, and none of them were ever completely on the same page.
But this was different. In the Mayor’s office, she’d always felt she could trust the Mayor. She had someone to go to.
Here, she’d thought she could trust Reggie, as they were obviously brother and sister, even if they probably had different mothers, but Aidan had driven a wedge into that burgeoning relationship, and Nice couldn’t shake the feeling that Aidan had a point.
If Aidan was right, if none of the three they had targeted were involved in Red’s death, then what?
She was alone, here, even with Reggie sitting across from her.
She forced herself to pick up her fork and steak-knife, to cut a bite-sized piece, and slip the piece into her mouth.
It practically melted, it was so tender. It had the perfect seasoning of pepper, enough to give it a good flavor, but not so much that it challenged her to eat it.
Bite after bite, enjoying the flavor, but still having to force herself, she ate what was in front of her in silence, watching Reggie, waiting for him to say something that would relieve her stress.
But he too ate in silence, as if he could sense her distress and wanted to prolong it.
But that was unfair. He had just learned of his father’s death. He’d cried on her shoulder, back at his house. It wasn’t a day for polite conversation.