by Sarah Noffke
“If you’re so evil, then why do you do things to help the world?” she says, her voice rising in pitch with curiosity.
“I got bored,” I lie. “I ran out of books to read so it seemed like a nice distraction until death takes me away from this bloody planet.”
She kind of smiles, looking amused. “And how long have you been distracting yourself with this hobby of sorts?”
“Nineteen years.”
Adelaide’s mouth falls open, an idea dawning on her. “That’s why my mum could never find you. She said she searched for you. That she wanted your help with me, but you had disappeared.”
“Right,” I say, remembering how Dahlia spent millions of dollars trying to find me when I disappeared and she was unsuccessful. Adelaide’s mum had zero chance. I was as good as dead while stationed inside the Institute.
A sudden knock hammers on the front door, almost making me jump. My nerves are frayed after my encounter with Blocker and her minions.
“Are you expecting someone?” I say to Adelaide.
She narrows her eyes at me. “What do you think?”
“Has the cleaning woman been by today?”
“Yes, and the woman has a name, you know,” she says.
“Oh really, what is it?” I say, although I don’t care.
“I don’t know. She told me but I always call her some random name that I know isn’t hers,” Adelaide says with a proud smile.
“You don’t…” I say, an irritated heat in my voice.
“I do,” she chirps. “And I eat crumbly biscuits with a dangerous force in places where she’s already cleaned.”
I catch myself before I smile.
The knock sounds again.
“Well, go get it already,” I say, waving my hand at the door. “Maybe it’s a solicitor and you can berate them for the better part of an hour. I’m quite bored and could use the entertainment.”
“Me too. I hope it’s a Jehovah’s Witness. I love messing with those people,” Adelaide says, making for the door. She opens it and releases a frustrated sigh that sounds like she’s half gagging. “It’s her,” she says with a growl. She leaves the door open and turns, walking back to the table. “And she’s wearing enough perfume to make me barf.”
There, just framed in the opening of the door, is Dahlia. Two guards stand at her back. She’s wearing a black mink coat and winking out under it is the red dress I always tell her clashes horribly with my hair.
She leaves the guards in the hall, closing the door behind her. Her eyes on me the whole time. Everything about her is rushed, all worrying movements. “Ren, are you okay?” she says, her heels hammering across the parquet as she crosses the space. “Trey called. Told me your condition was uncertain.”
“Fuck that man,” I say under my breath.
“Then he just phoned again to say you were well and he felt it was his responsibility to update me on your state,” Dahlia says.
Because he knew I was unlikely to, I think. “Isn’t he a doll,” I say, throwing my head back on the cushion behind me. My skull feels close to splintering into a thousand gross pieces. “I’m fine,” I say, feeling Dahlia too close. Smelling her.
“That’s not what you told me,” Adelaide sings from the dining room. “I believe you said ‘not even a little bit’ when I inquired into your physical state.”
“Shut up, little girl,” I say, my voice monotone.
I catch Dahlia give Adelaide a look over her shoulder. Not a nice look.
“What happened?” Dahlia says back in my direction.
“Doesn’t matter,” I say, irritated on a new level. Dahlia staring down at me with a half pissed, half concerned look is more than I care to wrap my mind around right now. Honestly, God couldn’t be shoving any more down my throat presently, which means there’s probably a shit storm brewing just outside the walls of my flat.
“It does matter. You were almost killed,” Dahlia says, click-clacking to the other side of my chair. She sits on the couch so we’re eye level, but I keep my gaze off her.
“Almost doesn’t count,” I say.
“Trey says you were in a coma of sorts. That they had done everything they could for you and were just hoping you’d wake up,” Dahlia says, really working herself up with each word.
“Wow, that’s kind of cool,” Adelaide says, her eyes on the sketch before her.
I ignore her obvious eavesdropping and say, “And I woke up, so there.”
“It was a level five case, wasn’t it? You convinced Trey to give you one,” Dahlia says, her voice punishing.
“What’s a level five case?” Adelaide asks from the dining room.
“Color me a picture and mind your own bloody business,” I say to Adelaide.
I hear a long exaggerated gasp from the table.
“Ren,” Dahlia begins. “I knew this kind of thing was going to happen. It’s just a matter of time―”
“What?” I bark at Dahlia. “Before I get myself killed? Yes, the life expectancy of level five agents isn’t entirely long. I wrote the fucking book for them. But now it’s my time to jump in the bloody book and be one of those agents.”
“Even if it gets you killed?”
“Dahlia…” I say, using all my reserves to keep myself from exploding with anger.
“I don’t think he wants to discuss this further,” Adelaide sings from the table, a strange glee in her voice.
“Shut up,” I sing back. Less song in my voice.
Dahlia’s eyes narrow into slices at Adelaide, then she directs her half-moons at me.
“You don’t have to be taking chances like this,” Dahlia says to me.
“It’s what I want to do,” I say, on the verge of blowing up, my head the detonator.
“Even if it gets you killed?” Dahlia roars.
“I can get rolled over by a vehicle walking across the motorway,” I say.
“Ren, we both know this is way more lethal than crossing the damn road,” Dahlia says.
I press my eyes shut and try counting back from ten. When I’m at seven Adelaide says, “It sounds like he’s made up his mind.”
“Would you mind your own business?” Dahlia screams, her eyes still on me.
“You’re the one having the argument for me to hear. Stop parading your business right in front of me and I’ll stop offering my incredible input,” Adelaide says over the sketching sounds she’s making.
“When is her training done? When will she be gone?” Dahlia says, looking almost madder than I’ve ever seen her. Almost.
“I don’t kno—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Adelaide says, cutting me off.
Both Dahlia’s and my heads spin around to face the girl at the table.
“What?” I say, surprise in my voice.
“Well, not in the foreseeable future,” Adelaide says with a casual shrug. “I like it here. Feels natural.”
“Oh, no fucking way,” Dahlia says.
“Way,” Adelaide says and there’s a hint of pride in her voice. Then she brings her eyes up to look at me. “And Ren, you probably don’t want to hear this, but I like you. I’m sure most don’t, but you make sense to me. You help me to feel like I make sense. We’ve both been hardened by having these powers. And it’s nice to have someone I can finally relate to. I need that in my life.” And she says all those sentences so calmly. So matter-of-factly. Like they aren’t the ammunition that’s about to rip my life right apart.
“Adelaide, I think you’d better go,” I say, watching new lines form on Dahlia’s face.
“But, I-I-I…” And the girl sounds afraid. Rejected.
“Not forever,” I say, cutting off her nervous stuttering. “Just pop down to the market or take a walk. Give Dahlia and me some privacy, would you?”
And then the girl nods, but suddenly she doesn’t look like a girl at all, but rather like a fragile child. “I won’t talk to anyone, I promise,” she says, pushing up from the table. “Or touch them.”
> “Good,” I say, realizing she’s trying, really trying to show her compliance. And I don’t know what to say to that. It should satisfy me, but it doesn’t because I know that she’s being this way so she can stay in my life. And I don’t know if I can have that. I pictured that when I trained her that would be the end of it. Sure, she’d come round to my pops’ on the off weekends that I wasn’t visiting. We’d keep a distance. Separate lives. But she wants more from me. And not only is that a burden, it’s a decision and I’m not prepared to make it.
When the door clicks shut Dahlia spins around to face me. I rise at once, realizing that I need to be on my feet to properly have this fight. She matches my stance.
“Ren, where do I even begin?” Dahlia says, throwing her arm wide at the door.
“How about with an apology,” I say, crossing my arms in from of my chest.
“You’re out of your mind. I have nothing to apologize for.”
“I’m a man, Dahlia. A real one. I’m not one of your lemmings who bow to your every command.”
“I love that about you,” she says.
“Obviously you don’t. If you did then we wouldn’t be apart,” I say.
“We’re apart because of her,” Dahlia says, pointing at the door where Adelaide exited.
“And because of this job. You want to dictate what I do and who is in my life, but that’s not how this arrangement works.”
“I just find it stressful, is all,” Dahlia says, her voice a little calmer.
“You’re speaking to the man on blood pressure medicine. I get it. But this is my life and I’m not changing. You don’t like that I’m working level five cases. Would you rather that I was still scamming? Still stealing old women’s retirement funds? Taking businessmen’s gambling money?” I say, feeling on the verge of passing out again. Never have I been this exhausted.
“Well, no. But if you were then I would be okay with it knowing you were safe,” she says.
“Dahlia, you’re fucking ridiculous. I’m finally doing something I enjoy and you want me to stop because it makes you worry. When have I ever told you what to do? Not to go on tour? Not to kill yourself churning out another album? The answer is that I haven’t. You live your life by your rules and I do the same. You must really misunderstand me to think that I’d allow you to control me. I’m not that kind of man. I’m the kind who does whatever the fuck I want and you either accept it or you leave me alone. There is no negotiating over this. I am not the compromising type and you had better know that by now,” I say.
“I get that there won’t be any compromises with you. But still. There’s a lot that you’re asking me to accept. A dangerous job. A bitch of a daughter. And after—”
“Don’t call her that,” I say, cutting her off.
Dahlia pauses and regards me with a sideways stare. “You’re starting to like her, aren’t you?”
“God no!” I say, arranging my face so I appear offended by the question.
“Of course you do. She’s exactly like you. Adelaide is you with a vagina,” Dahlia says with a humorless laugh.
“No…I mean…maybe.” Then an almost smile breaks across my face at a sudden memory.
“What?” Dahlia asks, having read the look on my face.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I say, hesitating a little. “It just the other day Adelaide told the doorman that he was a worthless piece of shit and a monkey could perform his job. And then she told him, ‘Open the door for me, chimp.’ She’s fucking hilarious. About like you. I’ve been wanting to say that same thing to him forever.”
“I don’t think your daughter and I are anything alike,” Dahlia says.
“I get that you don’t trust her and don’t know how to assimilate her into our lives but—”
“I didn’t think I was going to have to. I thought she’d go away eventually and then we could try getting back together. But as of now it appears she’s stapling herself to you. Soon she’ll monopolize all your free time and you two will be like an inseparable duo,” she says.
“Dahlia, you’re not being fair.”
“No, I’m not,” she admits at once. “But you’ve changed since she’s come into your life. I see the way you look at her.”
“What?” I say, and I’m actually offended now. “What are you talking about?”
“Not in a weird way. She’s your daughter. You look at her with a strange fondness,” Dahlia says.
“I don’t,” I growl.
“You do. And it’s kind of cute, but then also not at all. It’s not how I’m used to seeing you. It changes things between us,” she says.
“You realize you’re sounding like a possessive witch right now?”
She purses her lips slightly, tightens her eyes. “I do. But that’s how I feel.”
“I’m the same person I’ve always been. You’re the one trying to change me,” I say, feeling almost zapped of the will to live from this bloody conversation.
“I’m not. I just don’t like how your life is changing. I’m allowed to say that,” Dahlia says.
“Get out,” I say in a low voice.
“What?” She blinks at me like she misheard.
“Get out,” I repeat.
“But—”
“What? You thought we were fixing this?” I say, cutting her off. “Is that what you really believed? Dear Dahlia, what you’re too small-minded to realize is there’s no fixing us when you’re so much a part of the problem. After almost two decades, I came back to you. I put aside my pride. I apologized,” I say with a disgusted shiver. “But you don’t want this. Maybe you never did, only thought we worked. Maybe you romanticized the idea of having a relationship with a Dream Traveler. But what you, Dahlia, fail to understand is I was given these powers and can’t waste them working in a ticketing booth in the Underground. I’m a fucking agent for the Lucidites. And yes, as much as I don’t love the idea that I have a daughter who shares my powers, I’m not abandoning her for you. For anyone. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not the kind of person who avoids responsibility,” I say, and feel my heart hammer too fast in my chest from all the angry words and frustrating truths I’ve spoken.
There’s something breaking in Dahlia. I see it so plainly in her eyes. A tragedy writing itself deeply inside her and welling to the surface little by little. “Ren, I can’t be with the person you are now.”
“I know. That’s why we won’t ever be together,” I say. “I don’t plan on changing.”
And too fast she pivots and marches across the space, the urge to exit heavy in her every movement.
I whip around and with an incredibly blinding force I throw my foot into the side of the coffee table. As the leg cracks and pieces spray in the opposite direction, a hot pain rockets through my foot. Immediately I know my shoe failed to protect my toes from being broken. The table leg finally gives way, buckling to one side, and all its contents slide down at my feet. Behind me I hear the gentle click of the door closing. Wondering if Dahlia has changed her mind and wants to act like a civilized and reasonable human being, I turn. But to my disappointment I find Adelaide, her eyes wide and on the broken table behind me.
“I’m guessing you’re not up for a hug, huh?” she says, her voice flat and her words strangely making me feel better somehow.
“You didn’t leave the building, I guess,” I say.
“I sat in the hallway and antagonized her goons.”
I nod.
“I’m afraid of being out there,” she says, pointing to the window, meaning the world.
I nod again. I acutely remember having those same fears. It’s hard being in a world that doesn’t understand me and that I can so easily break. It’s a wretched combination, like God was hoping I’d try to destroy his world and was just testing my self-control.
“Well, you can stay here,” I say, turning and almost falling over with the next step. My toes are definitely broken. I manage to save myself and shuffle my foot forward, hopefully in a way that doesn’t attrac
t that much attention.
“For a while?” Adelaide says, a bit of hope in her question.
I slide my head over my shoulder and briefly glance at Adelaide. “For as long as you need to,” I say and leave.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It’s rustling that awakens me. A small sound, but sharp in my head, like brittle leaves underfoot on an autumn day. She’s a blur but I still catch Adelaide as she throws something on the side table next to me and darts for her room. Like a sloth I push up from my slouched position, everything turning sideways in my vision before righting itself. I twist my head to the side table and my brain overheats at once.
“Adelaide,” I bark once, loud enough it makes my head feel like it’s being put through a sieve.
“Huh?” I hear from her doorway.
“Don’t fucking ‘huh’ me,” I say, my own voice making my sleep-hungover head burn with pain.
She materializes as first a wavy figure and then a solid girl. I bloody hate having emotions. They mess with my head in the worst ways.
“Do you know what I did to the last person who went through my shit?” I say.
“Let me guess, you can’t bring them forward to tell me because they’re dead,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her and giving me a snobbish glare.