* * *
I’d thought maybe the anger would help me focus. As if all that energy would have to go somewhere, and I’d finally get what Jackson had been trying to tell me. It didn’t work out that way.
I tried meditating. I tried praying the rosary. I tried reciting nursery rhymes over and over again until the words ran together and I wasn’t sure what they meant anymore. Nothing chased out the image of Mina’s face in Jackson’s passenger seat. Nothing I could recite was louder in my head than what Shane had said over the phone. There’s nothing wrong with you... Did you already decide to just cut and run? Every time my brain went quiet for more than a moment, I remembered the way he’d stroked my hand by the fire, the feel of his mouth through the lace of my bra.
I tried lifting my thrift store couch and broke the slats underneath the cushions. It sagged in the middle like a limp flower stem and I kicked it, hearing wood and plastic crack and loving the sound for the instant before I hit my knees on the carpet.
By the time Jackson came by to pick me up at six o’clock, I’d showered and changed and made myself look normal. I buried the past six hours as deeply as I could, and when he opened my door I smiled and thanked him and asked all the right pleasant questions about his day. After a few minutes of faking it as he drove down Guerrero, it started to feel almost real.
“Is Mina doing all right?” It hurt to even ask the question—as though I were tensing in preparation for the blow of his response. He chewed on his bottom lip.
“She’s not eating.”
It hurt as much as I’d thought it would. “At all?”
“I got her to take some coffee this afternoon, but that’s it.”
I closed my eyes. “She may just need some time.”
“I’m keeping an eye on her. Don’t worry.”
“Yeah, right.” I shot him a look.
We stopped at a red light, and he turned to face me. “Give her time to grieve. She’ll be all right.” He covered my hand with his. “Trust me.”
“Yeah.” I shifted in my seat. “Thanks.”
He hadn’t said where we were going for the meeting, so I was surprised when he parked in front of Featherweight’s. I gave him a curious look, and he grinned back at me.
“Private banquet room?”
“You could say that.”
I shook my head and followed him through the front door. The bartender from before was working, and he gave Jackson a wave as we walked in. He cast a questioning look at me, and Jackson nodded.
“He knows?” I asked in an undertone.
“Oh, yes,” Jackson said, still with that smile.
I headed automatically for the bar, but Jackson took my elbow and guided me to the back, toward the bathrooms. There was a door marked Employee Only—the s had fallen off—and Jackson walked through it. I remembered seeing it the last time I’d been here, when someone had held it open for me. Inside, it was pitch-black and cramped; I could hear Jackson’s breath close by.
“Uh,” I said, fumbling for a light switch. A moment later, Jackson conjured up a light ball, and I saw that we were in a broom closet.
“This is kind of small for a council meeting.”
“Very funny.” He shifted a crate full of mops aside to reveal a second door. There was no knob, just a deadbolt lock. After a moment, Jackson had telekinetically picked it, and the door swung open to reveal a flight of concrete steps leading down.
“Come on,” he said, and led the way.
I hesitated for a moment before following him. The steps ended in a low-ceilinged tunnel with another door at the far end. The passage was lit by a few bare light bulbs in metal cages, and the air was damp and cold. Every so often, twisted clusters of army-green pipes protruded from the concrete like alien weeds. I kept in mental contact with him as we walked, absurdly afraid something would jump out at me from one of the shadowy alcoves cut into the tunnel walls.
“It used to be a fallout shelter,” Jackson said, his voice echoing in the empty space.
“I’d hate to have to wait out the Apocalypse down here.”
“Wait’ll you see the bar.” He opened the door at the end of the hall. It swung wide, and I let out a whistle.
“Damn.”
“Not bad, right?”
The curved concrete walls were all that hinted at the original purpose of the room. The floor was covered with polished hardwood, and instead of electric lights, thick cream-colored candles flickered in sconces every few feet. In the center of the ceiling, a cast-iron chandelier held hundreds more, and the floor below it was stained with years of scraped-up wax drippings. The low gold light would have made the place look like something out of a Victorian romance novel if it hadn’t been for the concrete ceiling. It was covered in graffiti, most of it names and dates, but some drawings, too. In one corner, a converter was leaning back in his chair and looking up as he telekinetically ran a thick red marker over the concrete, sketching the figure of a woman with huge eyes and long hair. The woman sitting next to him smiled and punched him on the arm, and he grinned without looking at her.
“Come on.” Jackson led me toward a bar made out of reddish-brown oxidized steel. He was smiling, more relaxed than I’d ever seen him, wearing a dark green sweater and faded jeans. This was only the second time I’d seen him not wearing a tie.
“Something to drink?” he asked.
“Sure.” We pushed our way to the bar, and Jackson nodded to a few people along the way. The bartender, a tall black man with a shaved head and stretched earlobe piercings, was telekinetically muddling mint while an old-fashioned cocktail shaker agitated itself in midair in front of him. When I ordered an IPA, he sent it floating into my hand.
Jackson paid before I could stop him, and we backed away from the bar to make room for newcomers. We ended up at a table next to the graffiti artist, who casually conjured miniature light balls as he and his date talked.
“Is it always this packed?” I asked.
Jackson shrugged. “I guess. There are a lot of us in the area.”
“Must be nice, to have a place like this.”
“No shadowmind speakeasies in New Orleans?”
“Not that I ever saw.” I rolled my beer bottle back and forth in my hands, leaving damp arcs of condensation on the wood. I couldn’t stop the flare of envy. Everyone here was so comfortable with their powers, with each other. No fear.
“You shouldn’t have had to deal with it alone,” Jackson said, and I looked up, surprised at the bite in his voice. “Someone should’ve recognized your gifts, helped you—”
I held up a hand to stop him. “You’re helping me now, right?”
“For as long as you need me.” His eyes met mine, and for a moment, he looked as if he was going to say something more. But it passed, and he checked his watch and stood up. “Come on. It’s almost time for the meeting.”
Jackson led me behind the bar, exchanging a look with the bartender, who gave me a kind of mental nod. I realized it was more than a greeting—he was the gatekeeper, and Jackson was vouching for me. We went through the archway behind the bar into what looked like a storeroom. More doors led off on either side, and Jackson took me through one of them to a small room with a concrete floor and a collection of battered metal chairs. There were already half a dozen people seated throughout.
“This is the council room?”
“Imposing, I know.”
He pulled out a metal chair for me with a flourish, and I sat down. While we waited, a few more people came in. I recognized the bartender from Featherweight’s and a few of the converters I’d noticed in the speakeasy. Up front was a battered metal fold-out table with five chairs, and three of the newcomers—a redhead in designer jeans, a brunette in dress slacks and a man in track pants and a T-shirt—sat behind it.
“Council members,” Jackson said, and the sound of his mental voice surprised me. “Colleen, Sara and Gordon. And I probably should’ve told you, but—”
“Jack!”
We both turned around. Behind us was a man who could only be Jackson’s father. If his looks and tall, broad build hadn’t tipped me off, the way Jackson’s jaw tightened would’ve.
“Dad.”
Yep.
“I didn’t realize you’d be coming tonight.” The man had salt-and-pepper hair and a handful of laugh lines, but otherwise he looked like Jackson’s twin. He turned to me, eyes twinkling, and gave me a little bow. “You must be the mysterious Cass Weatherfield.” He held out his hand, and I took it automatically. “Charmed.” Instead of shaking my hand, he lifted it and kissed the back.
“Dad,” Jackson said. “Cass, this is James Herring. My father.”
“So glad you could join us tonight.” James smiled at me, and it was so genuine and infectious, I couldn’t help smiling back. “Jackson tells me you’ll be staying in town for a while.”
“Maybe. A little while. I’m not sure.”
“Well, I certainly hope we see more of you while you’re here. Jack, why haven’t you asked her over for dinner?”
“Shouldn’t you be up there?” Jackson waved toward the folding table.
“A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Weatherfield.” James gave me another smile and another courtly bow and took his place next to the redhead.
“Well, he was charming.”
“Everyone thinks so at first,” Jackson grumbled. He slumped in his metal chair.
“You guys don’t get along?” I asked, but before he could answer, someone entered the room, and I forgot my question. No one had to tell me that the council had a leader, and this man was it. He was dark-haired and handsome, and he had a casual self-possession that made everyone in the room go quiet, but what really tipped me off were his sweeping, coal-black wings.
Chapter Twelve
I’d always thought guardians were a myth. The way Lionel talked about them, they were like something from a kid’s fairy tale. People with wings who snuck around like Batman and scared the shit out of criminals. But I’d never imagined the stories were true. I didn’t think they were real.
He walked through the room and stood behind the table. His wings were folded behind him like an overcoat, like an afterthought. I couldn’t stop staring. Jackson noticed.
“That’s our guardian. Sebastian.” When I only stared, he asked, “Doesn’t New Orleans have a guardian?”
I could only shake my head. The man stretched his wings out and refolded them. No one else seemed even mildly interested in them. He sat down at the center seat with the chair turned backward and his legs splayed wide. His wings relaxed and brushed the concrete floor. This seemed to be the only call to order that was needed; the room went silent.
“Are we waiting on anybody?” His voice was just as deep as I’d expected.
Everybody glanced around. Nobody spoke. Sebastian nodded, and the redhead at the end of the table stood up.
If not for the winged man, I might’ve thought we were at a town hall or the business meeting of a volunteer organization. The redhead—Colleen, I finally figured out—read off the sums in the treasury and the motions that had passed last month. The guardian looked bored.
“How are things progressing with that bank robbery?” he asked.
I gaped at Jackson. “Bank robbery? What the hell?”
He chuckled. “We’re not committing them, we’re stopping them. Couple of converters used telekinesis to immobilize tellers and keep them from hitting the panic buttons.”
“I bet that freaked them right out.”
“We got them, but now we have to do damage control.”
“Perpetrators are still in custody.” James canted back in his chair with one leg crossed over his knee as if he were watching television.
“Giving you any trouble?”
He smiled. “Nothing Jack and I can’t handle.” Jackson rolled his eyes. I gave him a look.
“I help out now and then.”
“I’m sure.”
“Sara?” The winged man turned to the brunette.
“I wrote a piece about the police response and laid in some breadcrumbs about fear-related paralysis.” She shrugged. “My editor bought it.”
“Good. Gordon?”
“There’s only one detective who suspects anything strange is going on. I’m handling it.”
Sebastian raised one dark eyebrow. “Handling it how?”
Gordon rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, last resort, we tell her the truth. But I don’t think it’ll come to that.”
“Do your best.” The winged man turned to the redhead. “Anything else?”
“We have to vote on asking for more levies to expand the prison. And someone approached me about starting a mentor matching group...”
She kept talking, but I was too distracted to really hear her words. A supernatural police force? A mentoring group? Taxes? Suddenly, Lionel’s monthly dinners with the Tooleys and the Gagniers didn’t seem all that organized after all. The discussion and the voting sounded like static in my head, so when the redhead called for new business and Jackson nudged me and whispered, “You’re up,” I jumped in my seat.
The redhead looked at me expectantly. The guardian flexed his wings. I could feel the eyes of everyone in the room, along with the subtle mental pressure of their minds. My shields went up on instinct and I rubbed my thumb over my knuckles, unable to speak. Jackson stood up in a hurry.
“This is Cass Weatherfield, everyone. She’s a good friend of mine, and she needs our help finding someone.” He nodded at me.
“Uh.” Not a good beginning. What was the matter with me? I’d spoken in front of more people than this at work department meetings. But never with this much mental pressure against my shields. Never with this many highly trained shadowminds poking at my mind.
“I need to find someone,” I said finally, and my voice was rusty. I cleared my throat. The nudging became slightly more curious, slightly more insistent. Pain crawled through my skull, and I made my shields more opaque. “He’s a converter, and we think he can pull.” A gasp went through the room, and I glanced at Jackson. He gave me a nod. “We think he attacked my friend, and we need to find him. If anyone here recognizes him, I’d be grateful for your help.” There were murmurs of assent and a few angry nods. Their minds crowded mine, and I had to suppress panic as I thought about letting them all in.
Jackson put his hand on my bare forearm, and his thoughts made it through. “It’s going to be fine.” I took a deep breath, and I opened up my memory to the room.
Chaos. Over a dozen unfamiliar presences in my head, watching, searching. I could feel their surface thoughts and moods, the undercurrent of their curiosity. Some of them nudged gently, wondering what had brought me to San Francisco, how I knew Jackson, whether I was staying. I put a hand on the back of my chair to steady myself and felt Jackson slip an arm around me, concerned. It was a few moments before I could draw my focus to the face of the man on the riverbank. The visitors in my brain shifted their attention to the image. The force of their concentration was painful. I wanted my pills.
Just a little longer, just a little longer.
I held up the image of the man as long as I could, letting the watchers linger over the details: his eyes, his hair, his clothes. I noticed for the first time that he seemed to be wearing dog tags. His plaid shirt was torn and dirty. How long had he been out on the riverbank before Mina stumbled across him? Snatches of the shadowminds’ thoughts came through.
—no one I know—
Looks like David but I know it’s not him.
—dirty—some kind of bum—
And then—
—fucking puller goddamn freak of nature oughta find him and kill him—
I almost slammed up shields. The fear and hatred behind the thought was stunning. Only threads of it were getting through, but once I was tuned into it, I could hear them all.
—evil. Every one of them. Just evil. Just—
—how many he killed before—
—should’ve
wiped them out, should’ve—
Wiped them out? My heart pounded and I looked to Jackson. Was there this much prejudice against pullers? What would they do if they knew I—
His eyes widened and he shook his head. Too late, I realized that my shields were down. Too late, I realized they could hear me. I shut down fast, but not before the woman closest to me—a tall brunette in chinos and a jean jacket—heard. Her eyes met mine, and I knew she’d caught my thoughts before I’d silenced them.
I tried to ask her not to speak. I nudged open a line of mental communication, meaning to ask her—plead with her—not to reveal me. But at the first touch of my mind, she panicked. Anger, the shocked, terrified kind, washed over her face in a wave. First her eyes narrowed, then her nostrils flared, then the muscles in her jaw hardened and she clenched her teeth. It all happened in an instant that lasted ages. And then she was on me.
It was a physical attack, not a mental one. She reached for my throat, fear boiling off of her in frantic waves. I raised my arms protectively and crouched on instinct, but my body wasn’t the only part of me that reacted. My powers responded unbidden.
The rush of telekinetic force was enough to knock over a linebacker. The woman fell on her ass on the concrete in shock, but it only took her a moment to recover. I backed up, apologizing, expecting her to run at me, but her reaction this time was telekinetic. Hands at my throat again, but mentally this time, crushing my windpipe.
“She’s one of them!” the woman screamed.
I hit my knees, clawing at my throat as if it would help. The room had gone pin-drop silent, but when I fell, almost everyone rushed toward me. I noticed the few that rushed away. Everyone was yelling; everyone was mindspeaking. The noise was everywhere and nowhere and I couldn’t make out the words of any of it. My head pounded. My vision started to go black around the edges. The burning sensation in my lungs was stronger than anything I’d ever felt, and I flashed back to a time in high school, hanging out on the river with Shane and Mina, swimming next to the anchored boat. We’d been testing how long we could hold our breath, pushing ourselves to the limit. I saw Shane’s wet-slick brown shoulders above the surface of the muddy river as he treaded water, the gleam of his smile in the summer heat. I heard the splash of wake against the side of the boat. I realized I was passing out.
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