Tempest (Playing the Fool #3)

by Lisa Henry

  I didn’t mean for your son to get into this mess. Didn’t mean for him to get shot, didn’t mean for him to lose his job.

  He didn’t really feel responsible; he had tried to stay as far away from Agent Ryan McGuinness as possible, and Mac was the one who’d insisted on involving him in the FBI’s affairs. Sure, Henry was a witness—but he’d been more than willing to forget what he’d seen and flee Indianapolis.

  He refused to feel guilty, but he did regret what Mac was having to risk and sacrifice. More importantly, he regretted the risk to himself. Because if this mess really did have to do with Jimmy fucking Rasnick . . .

  Don’t want to go there again. Ever.

  When he was done in the yard, he went to the kitchen for some water. As he stood in the center of the room, holding his glass, he got that feeling again. A prickling on the back of his neck, spreading slowly. He looked out the window at the flat green fields. No dark clouds, but the sky was a soft, whitish gray. He felt like he’d been lured here by some unknowable force instead of dragged here by a cranky FBI agent who apparently thought hiding meant putting his hands over his eyes: if he couldn’t see the bad guys, they couldn’t see him.

  Suddenly, Henry didn’t want to turn around. He wasn’t sure what he was afraid he’d see. His mother, leaning in the doorway, smoking a cigarette? Ana, her face too pale, a vague smile on her face, gliding toward him? Placing a weightless hand on his shoulder and saying didn’t he want to stay here forever, because he’d find out she’d been dead for thirty years and there’d never been any Special Agent Ryan McGuinness at all, and Henry was actually a demighost, hovering between this world and the next . . .

  A thump from upstairs brought him back to reality. He shook himself like a dog coming in from the rain. Set his glass down and headed to Cory’s room to see if she and Vi wanted to learn three-card monte. He knocked on the door.

  “Come in!”

  He entered to find Cory wearing a sparkly silver top hat and a fake mustache. Viola had on a cape. Cory’s laptop was open, a BIOHAZARD sticker faded next to the trackpad. They both glanced at him, giggling.

  “You two look very nice,” he said.

  “I’m teaching Viola about the science of disguise,” Cory announced.

  “Oh?” Now there was a science Henry could get behind.

  “It’s easy to fool people into seeing something—or someone—they don’t,” Cory informed him.

  No kidding. Maybe he didn’t have to teach the kid three-card monte after all. He wouldn’t be surprised if she already knew how to play.

  “It’s about expectations,” Viola added.

  “Yes.” Cory removed her glasses and rubbed the lenses on her shirt. “You can disguise yourself as someone other people expect to see.”

  Like your twin sister. He thought about the fiasco at St. Albinus. Or a detective at a crime scene.

  “But sometimes,” Cory went on, “you can disguise yourself as the unexpected. Instead of focusing on who you actually are, people will focus on how they never expected to see anyone like you.”

  Like Henry Page. Poor Mac. Never expected to get saddled with Henry.

  Except Mac had focused on who Henry actually was—to an uncomfortable extent. He had thought that being unfamiliar, unpredictable, and thoroughly annoying would keep Mac away from the truth. And yet Mac had homed right in on the parts he most wanted to keep hidden.

  “That’s pretty smart,” he said. It was Conning 101, and Cory knew her stuff. “I certainly didn’t expect to see a magician and a magician’s assistant when I came up here.”

  “Which one of us is the magician?” Viola asked.

  “I’m not sure.” He looked them both up and down. “I mean, you have a cape, but Cory has a top hat. Which one of you is hiding the rabbit?”

  They both snorted at him.

  He inspected the Club Werewolf books on Cory’s shelf. Reached out and ran his finger down the soft, cracked spine of one. Thought of Mac.

  Mac had been doing that to him all day. Invading his thoughts like he was some kind of alien overlord and Henry was in desperate need of a tinfoil hat. Perversely, Henry was annoyed at Mac. How dare Mac upset his equilibrium by making him worry, like he was a normal person? Not the sociopath he’d told himself he was.

  From the moment it had stopped hurting, he’d told himself that. The moment he’d stopped crying, no matter what a trick did. When he’d started lying, cheating, and conning. He was only faking normal human emotion. He could no longer feel it.

  Lies.

  Or he wouldn’t have needed Stacy or Remy. He wouldn’t have cared about Vi. He wouldn’t have let Mac get under his skin the way he did.

  He’d never been a sociopath. He’d just been numb.

  “Cory!” Ana called. “Come here, please.”

  Cory rolled her eyes. “I’ll be back.” She scrambled up and hurried out of the room, placing one hand on her top hat to hold it on.

  Henry peered into the terrarium and pretended to study the lichens. He could feel Vi watching him.

  “I like it here,” she said at last.

  “Me too,” he admitted.

  “Can we stay here?”

  He sat on the floor next to her and leaned against Cory’s bed. Glanced at the dinosaur comforter. “For a couple of days.”

  “I want to stay forever.”

  “Can’t, Vi. It’s not safe.”

  “I don’t want to go back to St. Albinus. I want to live in a house. I want to have friends.”

  His head ached. “You had friends at St. Albinus.”

  “I want friends I can play with.”

  Yeah, Henry couldn’t really imagine that old Mr. Crowley had ever played magicians with Vi.

  “And I want to live with you.”

  He blinked. Tried to swallow.

  Being numb never helped at all. I’ve always been scared. Scared I’ll lose her. And now I’m scared I’ll lose Mac, and what the fuck? What the fuck am I supposed to do?

  “I don’t know where we’re gonna end up living,” he told her honestly. “But I’ll make sure you’re happy, okay? I promise you that.”

  Because I’m so good at keeping promises.

  But he’d never lied where Vi was concerned. He’d said he would take care of her after their mom died, and he had.

  Leaving her in a care center while you disappear for weeks on end doing work that could easily get you arrested or killed—that’s taking care of her?

  “Will Mac go with us?” she asked.

  “Mac’s gonna get his job back in Indianapolis. He likes it there.”

  “I like it there.”

  “I don’t think Mac . . .” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t think Mac has room in his life—or his house—for both of us.”

  “Do you not like Mac?” Viola drew figure eights in the carpet with her finger.

  “I like Mac.”

  “You don’t like Remy. Or Mom.”

  “Vi, no. I . . . I like Remy. I was just angry with him is all.”

  “But you don’t like Mom. You always say mean things about her. You smiled when you said she died, to Ana.”

  “I didn’t hate her.” Wanted to. But she was all we had. “She just wasn’t very nice. You remember that, don’t you? The way she’d talk to us? And the way she’d just forget about us and go and do whatever she wanted?”

  God. Wasn’t that exactly what he did to Vi?

  Viola didn’t answer right away. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “She taught us about the plays. And we sang in the car. And she took us to pet Sammy, because he was lonely, and he was always chained up.”

  Sammy. The dog two streets down who’d been chained to a stake in the yard, even in winter. Who’d wagged his tail every time he saw them coming. Their mom had greeted Sammy in a sweet voice, had shown Viola and Henry how to pet the dog gently. When it was cold, she had urged the dog to think warm thoughts, and had slipped him scraps from a bag she’d brought.

&
nbsp; Henry half smiled. “And boy, she gave it to that guy who owned Sammy. When he came out to yell at us.”

  “She yelled at him!”

  He laughed. “Yeah, she did.”

  “And she called the police. Because that man was mean to Sammy.”

  The cops hadn’t done a thing. One day, Louise had told Viola to watch Henry and she’d left with a blanket over the backseat of the car. She’d been gone about an hour, and later, Henry had noticed dog hair on the blanket. They never saw Sammy after that, and their mother would only say that hopefully that man had found Sammy a good home, since he clearly didn’t want the dog.

  He’d never asked where she’d taken Sammy. Now he wished he had.

  “You remember the good stuff, Vi.”

  She pushed her finger into the carpet. “What do you remember?”

  J.J.’s voice: “Shut up. Shut up.” J.J.’s hand over his mouth.

  No way to pay the bills. And J.J. had money. Henry had tried to lift some from his wallet, and J.J. had caught him. Said he could either turn him in to the police, or Henry could figure out a way to earn that cash.

  His body on Henry’s. Henry pushing him off.

  Their mother, passed out, doing nothing to stop J.J. from using Henry the way he’d used her dozens of times before. Viola and Henry called J.J. their mom’s boyfriend, but he’d never seen any love between them. Saw only their mother’s need for drugs and J.J.’s willingness to provide.

  “I remember that she loved us.” His throat ached. She’d loved them for as long as she was able, until love was gone. Until she didn’t have feelings anymore, just one enormous, unending need.

  “If you like Mac, you should live with him,” Viola said. “Like Cory’s nana and papa.”

  “Hmm. Think I’d rather stay with you.”

  Because I know you, I trust you. I love you. And you’ll always need me.

  Even a good guy like Mac can be wrong about what he thinks he wants. What he’s willing to put up with.

  Viola hit his shoulder. It was something she’d started doing after her accident—a jerky, almost unintentional-seeming movement. Something a child might do, but Viola had the size and strength of an adult, and the blow hurt.

  He remembered having to explain to her why it wasn’t okay to hit people. Having to explain the concept to his sixteen-year-old sister—who’d always been calm, brave, kind, and in control—as though she were a child.

  “Don’t hit, Vi,” he reminded her softly.

  “Are we near our house?” Viola asked.

  He jolted. “Uh . . .” He wasn’t sure how far away the farm was from where they’d grown up. Altona was a small town, but they were out in the Nowheresville part of it. “Pretty close, I think.”

  “Can we go visit?”

  Not unless it’s been burned to the ground. Then I’ll go and dance on the ashes. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” He tensed, in case Vi meant to protest.

  But she just said, “Okay.”

  “I’m going back downstairs. To wait for Mac.”

  Viola shrugged. “Okay.”

  He nudged her. “What’s up with your shoes?” Her sneakers were untied, and there were knots all the way down each dirty lace, like a climbing rope.

  She looked at the shoes but didn’t answer.

  “You know how to tie your shoes, right Vi?” It had been a long time since he’d had to reteach her anything that basic. Guilt stabbed at him again. Maybe she’d been having trouble with this for a long time, and he didn’t know because he hadn’t asked her caretakers at St. Albinus.

  She just smiled—a gentle, tiny smile as she stared at her feet and waved them side to side.

  “You want me to show you?” He reached for the laces of the left sneaker.

  She slapped his hand away. “No! I like them like this.”

  “You’ll trip.”

  “I won’t.”

  “But you remember how to tie them. Right?” He needed to know.

  “Yes!” She turned away.

  He left the room and started back down the steps.

  Stopped. Went back up and stuck his head through the doorway. “Vi?”

  She had two Club Werewolf books in front of her and was studying the covers. She looked up. “Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

  She smiled—a big smile this time. “Love you too, Sebby.”

  When he got downstairs, he slipped into the laundry room, shut the door, and tried to call Remy. No answer. Tried again. Unreliable. Always unreliable.

  But I love him.

  Nothing so scary about loving people. Except that loving them meant having to think about all the horrible things that could happen to them. It also meant trusting them, and face it—who in this world was actually reliable?

  He heard Ana in the kitchen and headed in to see how she felt about omelets for dinner.

  The drive back to Altona was nerve-racking. It wasn’t the police cruisers Mac was worried about—not that he even saw any of those on the busy stretch of the I-69 between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne—it was the black or gray or dark-blue sedans that screamed FBI when they were framed in the rearview, but then turned out to be full of bored businessmen, or moms with kids, or, once, a bunch of teenage girls. Mac really only noticed them because the one in the front seat was changing into her cheerleading outfit as they barreled down the highway, her ass pressed up against the window.

  “Seat belt,” he muttered, and wondered when he’d turned sixty. When he’d gotten boring.

  Not that a bunch of cheerleaders was exactly likely to flip his party switch. Where was a carload of college lacrosse players when he needed one?

  Nowhere. That’s fucking where.

  He rattled along the highway in his dad’s beaten-up old truck and tried not to think about how Henry Page had ruined him for college lacrosse players. Sometimes he felt like one of those rugged, taciturn heroes from a 1940s’ movie, who was stuck with some talkative, troublesome broad with a wit as sharp as the cut of her jacket. Driven to distraction by the sway of her hips and the curl of her smile and the way she just didn’t listen. Then, right in the final scene of the movie, the hero would grab her by the wrist and crush her to his powerful chest. “You are the most irritating, annoying, confounded woman!” the hero would begin, and then he’d kiss her almost violently until she shut the hell up.

  That was Henry. Driving Mac way past distraction and straight to the kissing part.

  He tapped the steering wheel as he drove.

  He really didn’t need Henry, not on top of everything else. Yet he couldn’t imagine being without him, for all his fucking craziness. He’d never understood the whole bad-boy thing before. Was Henry even a bad boy? He was a criminal, but hardly gave off the dark, brooding, and dangerous vibe. Mac didn’t even think he owned a leather jacket.

  Henry was undoubtedly bad for Mac’s career. Bad for Mac’s sanity. Bad for Mac’s heart.

  Sugar. Henry was like sugar.

  More addictive than heroin.

  No, that was caffeine, not sugar.

  Or no, maybe it was sugar. Henry had told him that, so it was probably bullshit. Still, it had a ring of truth to it, so what did it matter?

  And that was Henry too. Mac liked his world in black and white, but there was Henry, bringing in the gray areas. Bringing in other colors too. Lighting up his world with a laugh or a smile.

  Jesus fuck.

  Lighting up his world with a smile?

  He shook his head to try to clear it as he turned off the highway toward Altona.

  He had it real bad.

  He stopped at a supermarket in Altona to get a prepaid phone and a candy bar—fuck it, he was on the run. He needed the extra calories. Or some other completely senseless justification.

  The clouds were coming in again, low and dark, and the first drops of rain hit as he turned onto Holloway Road. He watched as one slithered into a fine crack in the windshield. A few others splattered the glass. He fli
cked on the wipers and smeared dust across the windshield.

  It was pouring as he turned onto the gravel driveway of his parents’ farm. He wondered if Henry and Vi were over at the old house. He’d go and see his folks first anyway, let them know he was okay and return the truck.

  He pulled up outside the house, then strode through the rain to the front door.

  “I’m home!”

  His mom came out of the kitchen, a relieved smile on her face. “I’m glad you’re back! Everyone was getting worried.”

  He looked around. “So where are they all?”

  “Well, your father went out to the shed to work on the tractor. You know how he gets when he’s anxious.”

  He knew. His dad’s approach to dealing with a problem, however abstract, was to take a piece of machinery apart and put it back together again.

  “Cory and Vi went to play pirates and princesses in the basement—” She raised her hands at the expression on his face. “Ryan, she’s a little girl. She’s allowed to be a pirate if she wants. And I think Henry fell asleep waiting for you in your room.”

  “My room?”

  “Mmm.”

  He glanced at the stairs.

  “You’re not in high school anymore, honey,” his mom said. “You can close the door if you have a boy in your room.”

  “J.J.? I need to talk to you.”

  “What the fuck do you want, kid?”

  That face still gave him nightmares.

  This, this was a nightmare. Henry knew it. He’d been here so often that it didn’t even feel real anymore. Just a replay of the same tired old images.

  “I need money. For Viola. For the hospital.”

  “Not my fucking problem.”

  “But J.J.!” It was our fault. Mine, but yours too.

  “You want money, kid?” J.J. smirked.

  “Y-yeah.”

  J.J. leaned closer, his skinny face twisted up with a sneer. “Then go and suck some dick, bitch. It’s all you’re good for.”

  “J.J., please. Please.” The world dissolved into tears. “J.J. Jimmy. Please.”