Susannah rolled her eyes at him, then sighed and muttered something under her breath. It sounded a little like, “I suppose I’ll handle that as well.” She leaned down into the bed of the truck and nudged Ryan with her thumb. “You’re sure he’s incapacitated?”
“No. That’s why I’m bringing him to you and not the regular police.”
“I should’ve asked for more favors.”
I was pretty sure she was serious.
“Uh—” Of all moments, Ryan chose that one to wake up.
He would’ve screamed if not for the duct tape. Susannah flexed her wings and smiled like a cat in front of a lame mouse. Ryan yanked at the tape securing his hands, and I didn’t have to slip too deeply into his head to hear his thoughts—what did she do to me what did she do nothing there’s nothing can’t hear anything shit shit shit what the hell is THAT she fucking has wings it’s a fucking guardian I am so fucked so fucked so fucked—
Susannah picked him up and threw him over her shoulders. He tried to kick her, but she secured his legs with one hand and his arms with the other as if he were a huge, ugly cardigan.
“Jason.” She turned to Dive Shirt and smiled an actual, genuine smile for the first time. “Can you help her out?”
“Sure thing. See you at home?”
“See you at home.” And to my total shock, she leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. He smiled as he kissed her back for what felt like a minute or more before breaking away. She nodded, dropped into a crouch and then sprang up in a rush of feathers, disappearing into the clouds above. Dive Shirt Jason and I watched until she was gone.
“Here,” he said, turning to me, and he put his hand over my broken ribs. I almost danced away from him, not quite sure what Susannah had meant by “help her out,” but heat seared into me where the pain was worst, and I stumbled. Warmth spread over my face next, from the skin beneath my eyes to my nose and mouth and ears.
I looked at my hands. My fingers were healthy and pink. “You’re a healer.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“Thank—thank you.”
“You must be pretty exhausted. You need a place to sleep? Something to eat?”
“I need to get back.” I looked around. Was there enough energy here for me to pull from? The waves, the breeze, the tide. Could my body take another jump?
“No, no, no, I know what you’re thinking. Bad idea.”
“You don’t understand. My—my boyfriend. He’s hurt. I have to get back.”
Jason looked to the place where Susannah had disappeared. “I understand,” he said, and turned toward a bright red sports car parked behind the Dumpster. He dug into the pocket of his cargo pants and took out his keys.
“There’s a fuzz buster in the glove box and a full tank of gas.” He dropped the keys in my hand and winked at me. “Go get your man.”
* * *
I flew down I-10 with the flashers on.
Dive Shirt Jason’s car was a Mustang tricked out with tinted windows, a custom stereo and a spoiler. I only really cared about the last part. I hit traffic just outside Biloxi, so I brought it down to eighty, but for the rest of the trip, I pushed one-ten.
I used my powers to keep control of the car, letting my telekinetic awareness extend to the tire rubber and the way it hugged the asphalt. When the back wheels slid through a banked turn, I pulled power from the engine and steadied them. The cops only stopped me once, right at the Louisiana border. I left the state trooper slumped over in his driver’s seat behind the Bienvenue en Louisiane sign, unconscious but otherwise unharmed. It had only taken a little sip to knock him out. I made it to the B&B in under an hour.
I’d halfway hoped to find everyone serving breakfast as usual, healed and laughing over coffee and bacon. Instead, I found a half dozen very confused guests milling around the dark dining room looking for the light switch.
“Where’s Mr. Tanner?”
“There’s no coffee in the urn out there, miss, could you refill it?”
“Where’s that boy who used to serve the omelets?” This from the woman who’d asked about Cindy Cepello.
It took what was left of my control not to tell them all—but especially her—to fuck off.
“I’m so sorry, everyone, I’m so sorry, but the Tanners had a family emergency, and, uh, there’s no breakfast today. Uh...” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Could I scramble eggs? How long would it take to scramble eggs? Someone finally noticed the blood on my shirt.
“Oh my God!”
—better get a refund—not paying for—
“Are you all right, honey?”
—she all right?—hospital—drive—
“Is anyone hurt?”
—car accident? Oh, Lord, I hope no one was drinking—
“Everyone’s okay.” God, please, God, I hoped it was true. “I, uh, I’m going to give you all reimbursements. For breakfast out in the Quarter. There’s Café du Monde, and, uh...” I tripped through the door to the kitchen and headed for Lionel’s office, where I knew he kept a small stash of cash. They all followed me, some of them concerned, some of them still grumbling. I dug through the filing cabinet until I found a dark blue Crescent Savings and Loan deposit bag so old the plastic had gone stiff. Inside was a stack of twenties. I handed them out like perfume cards at the mall while their chatter washed over me.
“Could you give us directions to Café du Monde?”
“Oh, it’s easy—right there in Jackson Square. We went there yesterday.”
“Is that where the big church is?”
“Yeah, and all those artists.”
“Good choice, Cass.”
We all looked up. Shane was in the doorway.
“I mean, last time you scrambled eggs, we had to throw away the pan.”
It took me a moment. He smiled at me, and the guests all went quiet, watching as I ran at him, wrapped him up, buried my face hard in the crook of his neck. Behind me, the woman who’d called him “boy” exclaimed, “Well, I’ll be.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Sit down!” Bruce glared at Lionel over two plates of pancakes and sausage on the morning after Shane had come home safe.
“What?” Lionel leaned over the kitchen sink with a washcloth. He’d been released the night before with a fractured leg. “I’m helping.”
“Damn fool man.” Bruce backed through the swinging door to the dining room with the pair of plates and came back a moment later empty-handed. He took Lionel by the elbow and deposited him in his wheelchair. “Ima tie you to that chair if you don’t stay off that leg. At least use your whaddycallit—you know. Do it the easy way.”
“Don’t tell me you made me fly all the way back here on a red-eye to watch you do everything yourself anyway.” Mina was at the counter, cutting up strawberries.
“Guests might see,” Lionel grumbled.
“They won’t see,” Shane said from the stove. “You’re just being stubborn.” He flipped two sausage patties and gave the pan a shake.
Bunny had used up most of her supernatural battery healing Shane. It hadn’t been easy. The bullet had shattered a rib before lodging in the wall of his heart, but Bunny had healed him in only moments. I had no idea how she’d talked her way into the ER, but apparently no one was dead.
“It won’t hurt you to be careful, either,” I told him. He might look like it never happened, but I couldn’t forget the way it had felt to press my mental hands against the hole in his chest.
“Yes, it will.” Shane plated pancakes and sausage for Lionel. “The guests’ll never come back if you make breakfast.”
I grumbled at him while he wrapped his arms around me and nuzzled my neck. A little mental stroke started up along my waist, and I batted him away, smiling. Lionel concentrated studiously on his pancakes, but he was shaking his head and laughing. Mina only smiled.
The doorbell startled all of us. Lionel made to get up, but Mina and Bruce glared him back down.
“Don’t you dare,
” Mina said. “I’ll get it.” She walked off down the hall.
Mina had taken the first flight she could get back to New Orleans. She seemed better, or maybe she’d just gotten better at hiding her grief. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about her powers, but we could all tell they hadn’t returned. Jackson said she still wasn’t talking about it. We were going to have to give her time.
Thankfully, the guy from 3B I’d knocked out had woken up with no memory of what happened to him. The San Francisco shadowmind community—mostly Gordon the detective—had managed to get my destroyed apartment written off as an isolated burglary, so I wouldn’t have to go back and answer awkward questions.
The deputy who’d driven Lionel and me out of Briny Point hadn’t been so lucky. Ryan had killed her when he teleported us. I knew this time that I wasn’t responsible, but somewhere, deep in my head, I marked her down as another casualty of my gift. Another thing I had to atone for.
Footsteps in the hallway brought me back to the present, and I looked up to see Mina reentering the kitchen, followed, to my surprise, by Bunny. She was wearing a charcoal-gray blazer over matching pants and a pale blue silk blouse, and she looked like she’d just come from a haircut. You’d never know the woman made her own supernatural healing candles in the workroom behind her spa.
“Bunny!” I said, walking up to greet her. “Come to check on your patient?”
She gave Shane an appraising look. “I knew he’d be fine. I came to see you.”
I stared, nonplussed.
“Walk with me,” she said, and I put down my dishtowel and followed her out of the kitchen, casting a helpless look back at Shane. He shrugged.
Bunny led me up the street toward the touristy part of the Quarter. It was an unpleasant day, gray and overcast and threatening rain, and I wished I’d brought my jacket. She was silent for several blocks until, I realized, we were out of mental earshot of the B&B. We walked to Jackson Square, to the fence where street artists were selling caricatures and fleurs-de-lis paintings to a meager crowd of tourists. Across the square, Café du Monde was as crowded as usual, and a dozen already-drunk college guys were swaying around with plastic hurricane glasses. It wasn’t my favorite part of the city, but it was the reason the Tanners were in business. Bunny stopped and leaned against an empty section of the wrought-iron fence.
“Well,” she said finally, “I was wondering if you’ve decided.”
“Decided what?”
She fixed her gray-blue eyes on me and raised a single eyebrow. “Whether or not you’re staying.”
“Oh.” The Tanners hadn’t even asked me this yet. “Well, I—yes,” I said, surprising myself. Now that she’d asked, it was obvious.
She nodded. “I heard about your deal with Susannah.”
“How do you know about that?”
She smiled her small, unnerving, Bunny-smile. “Healers and guardians have a special connection. I have my ways.”
This was news. “So do you know what she’s going to ask me for?” God only knew what she had in store for me.
“I don’t. But if it means you’ll stay in New Orleans, I can’t regret it. We need...an enforcer.” She started walking again, and I had to follow.
“You don’t mean me,” I said.
Bunny studied the Saint Louis Cathedral across the street and then her manicure. “Come now, darling, you must know Ryan wasn’t the only unscrupulous shadowmind in the city. We don’t have a guardian of our own.”
I thought back to the council meeting in San Francisco. The telekinetic bank robbers. I thought of what Susannah and Sebastian had said, how the city had been without a guardian for a long time.
“What we have,” Bunny said, “is you.”
* * *
I left Bunny at the front door to the B&B. I didn’t want to go back inside and talk to the Tanners about it, not yet, so I went through to the courtyard. I hoped the impending rain would mean the guests had left it free, and they had. It wasn’t empty, though. Mina was sitting on one of the metal chairs in front of the fountain.
I sat down next to her. The steel latticework of the patio furniture was cold even through my jeans. I almost asked her what she was doing outside in the chilly damp before I realized it was obvious. I didn’t need to scan her surface thoughts to know that the cheerfulness she’d been projecting was a careful mask.
“They need me in there?” She was playing with a few dead leaves that had collected on the table, breaking them up into tiny pieces.
“They’re fine.” We sat in silence for a few moments. I turned Bunny’s words over in my head and watched Mina destroy the leaves, and it came to me. It would be so simple, now that I knew how to go about it.
“I want to try something,” I said, and Mina’s hands stilled.
“What?”
“I don’t know if it will work.” Until I was sure it would, I didn’t want to get her hopes up. “Will you let me in for a minute?”
She laughed harshly. “Not like I could stop you.” She spread her hand on the cold tabletop.
When I pulled from Ryan, I’d understood for the first time in my life what I was doing. Being that deep in his head, that connected, I’d felt the way his shadowmind had broken apart. I’d rewired the connections that made him powerful, and if I could do it to Ryan, I could do it to someone else.
I covered Mina’s hand with mine. With my mind on hers, I reached out to pull, but instead of latching on to her, I focused on my own power. I could feel the breadth of it, the possibilities, everything I would be giving up. It was tangled in my head, brambles on barbed wire, so complex and interconnected I could barely follow the way my shadowmind was tied to the part of me that was normal. For a moment, I hesitated, intimidated. Then I pulled.
It was like swimming upstream. The natural tendency of the pull was to run from Mina to me, and it took all of my energy to force it to move the other way. Mina’s mind reacted to the pressure of mine, reaching out for the connections I made. I followed them down through the broken depths of her shadowmind, searching for the way to make it whole again, to give her the power I didn’t want.
It didn’t work.
Sweat soaked my back and underarms, and I was vaguely aware of Mina asking me something. I kept going, stubborn and angry. Mina had to snap me out of it, first touching me on the arm, then shaking me when I didn’t respond.
“Cass!” she said, her voice loud and a little frightened. I opened my eyes and looked at her. “Are you okay? What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry.” Tears stung my eyes. “I’m sorry. I thought maybe I could fix you.”
She was crying, too, and she pulled me into a tight hug. “I think I’m past fixing.”
“No, don’t say that.” But I was afraid she was right, and there was nothing I could sacrifice to change it.
“It’s okay. Cass...I’m not staying. I should have told you sooner. I’m not staying.”
I leaned back. “What? What do you mean?”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m going to move to California. Jackson said I could crash in his spare room until I find a job out there. It seems like as good a place as any to start over.”
I stared at her, dumbstruck. I’d spoken to Jackson the evening before, mostly to tell him I wasn’t coming back. “Yeah,” he’d said, and I’d heard the beginning of a laugh in his voice. “I figured that out.” He hadn’t said a word about this.
“I can’t stay here,” Mina said. “Not without—not when I don’t have my powers anymore. You know?” She was keeping her voice casual, but I could feel how hard it was for her still.
“Yeah,” I said. “Or I understand, anyway.”
“You aren’t angry?”
“If this is what you want, I’m happy for you. And you can trust Jackson. Have you told Lionel yet? Or Shane?”
She shook her head. “I was hoping you’d help me out with that.”
“I haven’t had much practice. I left without saying goodbye, rem
ember?”
“I guess the bar’s pretty low, then,” she said, and smiled.
* * *
That evening, the church in Briny Point made the local news. I watched with a mixture of satisfaction and anger as Dominic Geary stood in the center of the stage and read from his printed speech. I already knew what it said, having written it myself, but it was different to hear it coming out of his mouth while flashbulbs went off like popcorn all around him.
“I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering I have caused. I take full responsibility for my actions and I will be donating the entirety of the proceeds from the sale of the church to the New Orleans Rebirth Fund. Thank you.” He backed away, refusing questions, just as we’d told him to. Good. That meant we wouldn’t have to follow through on our threats.
After everyone was back from the hospital, I’d gone up to Geary’s guest room and explained the conditions of his release. He’d never promised anyone anything in return for the money he’d collected at the church, so we couldn’t get him on fraud. Besides, the truth of what went on there wasn’t something we wanted the general public to know. We decided to let the believable lie stand. Fear was obvious in Geary’s eyes through the news cameras, and I was glad. I’d done a thorough job of explaining what would happen if he didn’t go through with it.
“That bastard’s getting better than he deserves,” Shane said, echoing my thoughts.
“And wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if we all did.” Lionel was propped up in an armchair, his broken leg stretched out in front of him on an ottoman.
“How do you feel?” I asked him. I could tell he was still in pain.
“I’m all right. Just need to mend, now.”
The news switched to footage of a sailboat race, and Shane flipped it off. Mina went up to bed, and Lionel left not long after, Bruce helping him slowly up the stairs. Shane and I were left sitting on the couch together. I polished off my beer and sent the bottle floating into the recycling bin in the kitchen.
“Ready for bed?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said, and we went upstairs together.
Afterward, when I was lying against his shoulder, spent and happy and listening to his heart, he sat up a little and turned me on my side to face him.
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