by Fiona Zedde
Mai looked at her sister in surprise, but Abi shrugged and turned her back to the railing and draped her arms along the rain-damp iron, her body an elegant line even in cutoffs. The chunky crystals on her long necklace rattled with her movement.
“It’s true,” Abi said. “You all have so many shared secrets I don’t have a clue about. I see hints of those secrets in your faces and in the things you don’t tell me, even now, when you talk about Uncle Stephen. There’s something about him the whole family knows that no one will tell me.” She shook her head, and the flower crown fluttered in the breeze along with the swaying cloud of her hair. “The version of the family I see when I come home for holidays doesn’t feel like the real one.” She looked at Mai with a slow blink. “And I think you know what I mean?”
“I do.”
But how could Mai tell Abi that her version was the best one for her to know? She’d never considered that her sister might have felt like an outsider, only that she was protected from everything Mai had endured as a child. Abi’s abilities had presented themselves spectacularly and suddenly. There had been no need to test her to find out what she could do and what her place would be in the family. She hadn’t been drowned again and again by someone who was supposed to love her.
The memory of that afternoon under choking water never left Mai. But that memory wasn’t something she wanted to saddle her young sister with. Abi had her escape. She had a better life away from all this. Still, her lightness and the kind glow in her eyes charmed Mai and made her want to get to know her only sister for real.
She turned to Abi. “Why don’t you—”
“Coming to steal the china again, Mai?”
Her teeth snapped shut over the rest of what she was about to say. Abi jumped and looked toward the source of the voice, the doorway where Ethan stood. He must have teleported onto the grounds from wherever he was, then walked into the house like everyone else because of the protective power fields her mother put around the property.
Mai had been aware of footsteps at the back of her mind but had paid them little attention since she’d gotten what she came for. She glanced briefly over her shoulder at Ethan but said nothing to him. Mai still hadn’t gotten over him just turning up the day before to supposedly discuss family business. It didn’t make any sense.
“As the oldest, she’ll inherit all this,” Abi said. “Why would she have to steal anything when it already belongs to her?” Her tone implied that nothing in the house belonged to him. Mai allowed herself a small smile before she straightened and turned fully to face her cousin. He looked like he’d just swallowed a spoonful of dog shit.
“Your mother sent me when she heard you were here,” he said.
“Well, to save you and her any further panic, I’ll just head out.”
As Mai walked past him, he looked her over as if he could see through her clothes to what she carried in her pockets. Normally, he wouldn’t hesitate to push into Mai’s personal space and interrogate her. Strangely, he was reluctant to engage in his usual bullshit with Abi around.
“Will I see you before I leave, Mai?” her sister asked, although she kept her frowning gaze on Ethan. “I want to talk more about what I was saying before.”
Mai’s suspicion reared its head, but she consciously restrained it.
“Sure. I can drop by and pick you up after the funeral.” All of her shuddered with revulsion at the thought of coming back to the house with her mother in it, though. At her sister’s knowing look, she thankfully changed direction. “Or you can stop by my place.”
“Okay. I’ll text you when I’m on the way.”
“Cool. See you then.”
Ethan’s power meant he could travel just about anywhere he wanted within the blink of an eye; he could even grab Mai and teleport her somewhere she didn’t want to be. As if that didn’t worry her in the least, she sauntered past him. As she did, Abi stepped toward their cousin and asked a question, low voiced but urgent sounding, giving Mai the perfect chance to damn near run from the house, never more grateful that it was impossible for her cousin to teleport into a moving vehicle.
Her condo had nearly the same protections as her mother’s house, and so far, they had proven strong enough that only her mother had been able to get past them. As she sped through the early afternoon traffic, she hoped that still held true.
At home, she reinforced the protective fields around the condo and immediately went into her office, flash drives in hand, to the computer. Her mother wanted her to find out what happened to Stephen, but it was interesting and telling that Mandaia didn’t offer any information about what her uncle had been doing that attracted a killer like Absolution.
She settled in front of her computer and turned on the machine, listening the whole while for any noises that did not belong. So far, there was nothing but the faint hum of the fridge, the heater set on low despite the already warm weather, and the creak of the leather chair under her.
The clone of Stephen’s computer sat next to hers, but right now she was more interested in the things he’d kept hidden, the small flash drives in the ring box and the photos she’d taken.
Mai clicked on the first drive, holding her breath, then released a relieved sigh when all that came up were numbers on a spreadsheet. She’d been anticipating the worst. Then she began to look carefully at them. Her relief ended.
Even though the drives had been hidden, the information itself wasn’t even encoded. The digital trail on the first of the small devices was practically a red carpet rolled out through the glaring and suspicious debits from her uncle’s main accounts.
And with each revelation, she couldn’t stop thinking about Ethan and how he just kept showing up. Mai frowned at the computer, unable to shake a nagging feeling.
With the cloned hard drive open to her uncle’s calendar, she easily matched the dates of her uncle’s “fishing trips” he took twice a year to a payout, usually in the thousands. The GPS history from his phone that she accessed remotely allowed her to trace his movements, the money, the victims. It shouldn’t have been that easy to find, but it was.
Based on where her uncle had been, how much money was paid out, the headlines of missing children, and the hospital records she looked through until her eyes burned, he had been the cause of at least one suicide.
A girl killed herself because of him. Killed herself.
Her fingers went ice cold while the details of the young girl’s death stared back at her in stark black and white from the computer screen.
She could have been like this poor girl. Broken. Driven mad by a man who cared more for his own sick pleasure than preserving the childhood and lives of girls who came in contact with him.
Who’s to say you’re not mad now? A reedy voice whispered at the back of her mind.
Despite her horror at each thing she found, Mai kept looking. Her mother had taught her a long time ago—one of the few positive lessons Mandaia had passed on to her—that humans were frail and shouldn’t be broken. Metas needed them as much as they’d been trained to need us. Breaking them would serve no purpose. But that apparently wasn’t a lesson she’d passed on to Stephen.
He’d broken enough humans and other vulnerable people that someone had emerged from the ether to break him in return. And Mai couldn’t help but feel a hot burn of satisfaction for it.
Something inside her wished she’d been there to see it.
To watch the blade carve into his skin again and again.
To trap a leather-covered palm over his mouth when he tried to scream.
To strip every dignity from him, piece by piece, violation by violation, breath by breath.
Mai shook herself from her blood-smeared fantasies. It didn’t do her any good to wish those things. She had enough to occupy her now. Refocused, she dove into the files again, looking not just at her uncle but at the children he victimized an
d their would-be protectors, the people who were around them and realized too late what needed to be done to keep them safe. Unlike the police, she expanded her search beyond American borders until she found similar cases in Canada and what seemed like the very first Absolution killing in Mexico.
She frowned at the obscure news article she found, buried as an anecdote in an American tourist’s blog.
Interesting.
A pattern emerged slowly, a thread. And she tugged on it, turned it over, peered at it from every angle until the truth was too bright to ignore. The leather creaked as Mai sat back.
The first Absolution kill she found was a man in his fifties. Mai traced a connection between him and a young woman, a freshman in college, who’d drowned under suspicious circumstances. The girl had a surviving brother, but he was very much a human. Every sign pointed to him being the Absolution Killer, yet how could a human, even one swollen with grief, bring down a beast like Stephen Redstone?
Mai was missing something, something she was very close to finding.
But what is it?
She sighed in frustration, running her hands over her thick hair and down to the back of her neck. Her head hung low. It was late, nearly two in the morning according to her phone.
Maybe fresh eyes could help her see what was just on the edge of her awareness. Fighting a yawn, she stood up and stretched. Her back cracked, each vertebrae making a sound like slowly popping corn. She groaned from the hint of pain there.
I’ve definitely been at it too long, she thought. Even her body was telling her she needed a break.
Mai closed the computer and stood up, but something made her pause. She ejected the flash drive and, along with the others she’d gotten from Stephen’s safe, tucked it in a hidden closet drawer. Just in case. She knew well enough that her mother had no boundaries.
Then, without bothering with her usual shower, she fell into bed naked, the thin covers pulled up over her ears.
The light is wrong. Sunset and sunrise are both happening at the same time, brightness coming at Mai from both sides of the long porch. Usually, she loves the light, but this brightness makes her flinch, and when she huddles down to protect herself against it, her shoulders tucking up around her ears, she realizes she is a child. The breath hesitates in her throat.
She is powerless and vulnerable, sitting in a chair too big for her small bones, too high for her short legs. The light comes from both sides, but instead of burning, it is cold. She shivers and curls even more into the chair, tucking her feet under herself and cowering back. She feels a presence rising from the direction of the sunrise, but whoever it is, she can’t see them, only their silhouette, tall and vaguely female, approaching her on quiet feet.
“Who is it?” Her childish voice quavers.
But whoever it is says nothing, and Mai is left to stare into the blinding sun, eyes squinting uselessly against the glare. The person comes closer, and she stares harder. Just when she thinks she can make out their features, a heavy hand lands on her shoulder from behind, from the direction of the sunset. Too late, she hears the heavy boot steps. Surprised air rises up in her throat to choke her, and before she can turn around, a plate of cookies lands in her lap. She jumps, and the cookies tumble off the white plate, off her lap, and to the ground.
The sunset feet come closer, and the crunch of cookies under heavy shoes is loud on the otherwise quiet porch. The suns hover, neither rising nor falling, just burning Mai with their united cold fire until she thinks she will die from the shivers that wrack her body.
From the direction of sunset, a glass of milk appears under her nose, and she turns her head away. She hates milk. But the owner of the boot steps, also hidden in silhouette, keeps pushing the milk toward her, putting it to her mouth, choking her with it until she is crying and the milk is running down her chin and she is dying, dying, dying. And screaming out for—
Mai sat up in bed with a gasp, clawing at her own throat, the sound of her labored breathing a loud and wet rattle in the bedroom.
“Bad dream?”
A masked woman sat on the edge of her sheets, one leg drawn up to rest comfortably against the mattress, the other on the floor. She wore an outfit Mai would have worn once upon a time. Black and skintight. An expensive type of jumpsuit, the material snug enough to show off her shape. Soft leather boots brushed just below her knees. She wore matching leather gloves. A leather jacket sat unzipped over the slender torso. A mask covered her entire face and head. Even her eyes were hidden, concealed by dark, green-tinted goggles that looked heavy-duty enough for night vision.
Swimming from the terror of her dream, Mai was more afraid of what she was running away from than what was in front of her. “Get out.”
“You’re not very welcoming, are you?”
The voice was deep but feminine. Even muffled under the mask, something about its low, mocking quality rang a faint but familiar bell at the back of Mai’s mind. But she wasn’t in the mood to pursue it.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Mai said.
The sheet had fallen down around her hips, baring her breasts and stomach to the woman, but she refused to pull it back up. She was sick of people breaking into her apartment and trying to make her uncomfortable in the place she lived.
The woman sighed and moved. At first, Mai thought she was getting up, but she only leaned back in the bed, balancing her weight on her flattened palms and settling that glowing green gaze on Mai.
“I’ll make this quick since you’re feeling so inhospitable.”
“I’d rather you just leave,” Mai snapped.
The woman tilted her head, a coy movement that reminded Mai of a cat, absolutely relaxed, absolutely amused. “Wouldn’t you be even the slightest bit disappointed if I left without telling you why I went through the trouble of breaking into your very secure little place?”
“No, not at all.”
“Liar.” Laughter rang in her voice. “Liar, Liar. Mercy on fire.”
“How did you—?” Mai started to get up, her heart tripping faster in her chest.
Suddenly the woman wasn’t idle anymore. “No. I’d rather you stay there, if you don’t mind.” Her lean figure was all readiness and corded muscle underneath the thin suit and jacket.
Mai slid her feet from under the covers anyway. The woman was on top of her in a heartbeat, smelling of exhaust and leather. Her weight easily pinned Mai to the bed while her hands clasped Mai’s wrists and held them down. One of the things Mai prided herself on was her speed. She might not be as strong as others in the family, but she moved fast enough that she didn’t have to be. This woman made her feel like she was moving through sludge. She’d only just thought of leaping across the small expanse before she was held down and gasping under the slight but immovable weight.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” the woman said. Her breath whispered against Mai’s cheek through the face mask.
“Then leave.” And don’t tell anyone about Mercy.
“I can’t. Not yet.” She shifted slightly on top of Mai, getting a tighter grip on Mai’s wrists. The leather jacket brushed over the skin of Mai’s breasts and then her nipples, and she shuddered inexplicably at the contact.
“This investigation you’re doing,” the woman continued, “you have to stop.”
Not this again.
Mai ground her teeth in annoyance and anger. First the cops, then her family, and now this stranger. Her uncle was proving to be as much trouble in death as he’d been in life.
“And what if I don’t stop? Are you going to break my legs? Tell the people I work for something about me they shouldn’t know?” She bucked in the woman’s grip, growling. But the woman didn’t move a single inch.
“No,” the woman said, her voice going softer than before. “If you don’t stop, you’ll discover something even more dangerous.” Her breath brushed against M
ai’s cheek again.
“Dangerous for who?”
“For you”—Mai didn’t even try to smother her incredulous laugh—“and for me.”
Mai went absolutely still. Her heart began a hard beat in her chest, a frantic rhythm that even finding a dangerous stranger in her bed hadn’t initiated. “Was it you?” she asked. “Are you the one who killed him—them?”
The woman shifted on top of her, the cool zipper on her leather jacket rasping again over Mai’s bare breasts and belly. “Does it matter?” The hands around her wrists tightened briefly, grinding the bones together. But it seemed like a reflex, not a deliberate cruelty. “He wasn’t a good person. None of them were.”
“But you don’t get to say who is good or bad, and you sure as hell don’t get to decide who dies.”
“I do a lot of things without permission, Mandaia-Pili.”
Mai bristled, not missing that the woman knew who she was. Maybe even what she was. But she focused on the obvious and most annoying. “Don’t call me that.”
The woman sat back, still pinning Mai’s legs with her weight. She sighed, and her breath moved over Mai’s cheek, down to her throat. “The world is a complicated place. You can’t escape where you came from any more than I can.”
For a moment, the stranger was a quiet and thoughtful weight on top of Mai, her mind seemingly very far away. Then she shook, and through the mask, those eyes fixed on Mai again.
“Don’t pursue this, Mai. It won’t lead you anywhere good.”
Then she was off the bed and slipping through the bedroom door Mai had closed before she went to sleep. Mai leaped up to follow but quickly lost sight of her. Seconds later, she heard the faint click of the living room window and ran toward it. She threw it open, fingers gripping the ledge as she stared out into the empty night.
The woman was gone.
Mai wasted seconds staring out the window before she remembered the work she’d been doing before bed. With a curse, she ran to the desk, banging her knee into the edge of the wooden antique in her haste to grab the computer and turn it on. The machine was hot, scorching under her fingers. She hissed in surprise but didn’t take her hand off the power button. The machine didn’t turn on. Mai tried again, frantically pressing then holding down the button. Sparks shot from the side of the computer. She jumped back just as a trail of smoke snaked from the keyboard.