by Gareth Otton
Tony snorted a laugh. “Alright wise arse. As true as that may be, if your default setting is that, then maybe your brain looked for all the problems in the usual places. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I’ve kind of been struggling a little.”
“I’m sorry, I should have noticed.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. It’s my fault for not telling you. The thing is… well, it’s not an excuse, I just act out. You know what I’m like. It’s what I’ve always been like… will always be like, probably.”
Tad frowned. He didn’t want to say what he knew he had to say next, especially not in the face of Tony apologising, but he’d just be dooming them to repeat the same mistakes if he didn’t speak.
“That’s bullshit, Tony, and we both know it.”
“Say that again?” Tony asked, confused.
“Both of us are guilty of living under the excuse that you will never change because you’re a ghost.”
“But it’s true,” Tony said.
“Maybe in the most literal sense. You’ll never change physically and your emotions will always be on par with a fourteen-year-old boy. The thing is, even a toddler can learn their lesson. You might not be able to control your circumstances and how your body… spirit, reacts to things, but you can make new memories and learn new facts which proves you can still learn from lessons.
“You’ve been hiding behind not changing for over fifteen years and I’ve been letting you for just as long. It’s got to stop. It's a different world, we’re different people, and I need to trust that you have my back.”
“I’ve always had your back.”
“When it comes to physical threats and helping me out with healing, of course you have. But we both know I’m talking about more. I’m talking about helping me by thinking before you act, not behaving like a liability all the time and—”
“Liability?” Tony asked, bristling at the term.
“That was a bit strong maybe, but it stands true. Whether it’s you acting like an idiot in front of cameras or deliberately winding me up by bringing ghosts to the house when you know full well I didn’t want them. You’ve always been a pain in the arse. That needs to change.”
“You’re asking me to be someone I’m not,” Tony complained. “I can’t promise that.”
“Of course I’m not,” Tad said. “You can still joke, you can still tease, and still do your million and one Tony things. But we both know you cross the line regularly, not because you don’t see it, but because you have been hiding behind that old excuse of never changing. The thing is, I need that to stop. You don’t need to become the next Charles or anything like that, I just need you to respect the line and don’t cross it.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” Tony said hesitantly.
“Maybe not at first, but are you at least willing to try?”
There was a long pause, long enough that Tad feared the worst was coming.
“I’ll try, but on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to genuinely consider taking on new ghosts.”
“God damn it, Tony! What did I just say?” Tad snapped, suddenly furious again that Tony still wasn’t listening.
“I heard you,” Tony shouted back just as hard. “It’s you who wasn’t paying attention, mate. I just sat through you telling me I’ve been hiding behind excuses all this time and not being willing to see the truth. Yeah, well pot, kettle, black. Do yourself a favour and ask yourself if you're just hiding from taking on new ghosts. Oh, I’m sure it still hurts that Charles and Miriam moved on. Trust me, I miss them too. But you’re a Proxy with only one ghost in a time when you need all the help you can get. It doesn’t matter whether you’re hiding behind your pain or the excuse of not being Joshua King, the point is that you’re hiding. If I’ve got to admit that about myself, then you’ve got to swallow your medicine too, pal.”
Tad opened his mouth to argue, but no words came out.
For the sake of not returning to the same point of anger where he told Tony to leave, Tad forced himself to hear what Tony was saying. He just admitted that half the reason he wanted Tad to take on a new ghost was because he was trying to distract himself. But just because that was true, it didn’t mean he also wasn’t trying to help.
Suddenly Tad couldn’t find that much wrong with what Tony was saying. He was hiding behind his pain and excuses. Sure, he never wanted to feel pain like losing Charles again and didn’t feel ready to move on, but since when did life care whether he was ready or not? Was he being selfish for not taking on new ghosts? He talked a big game about wanting to make up for his role in the Merging and everything that followed, but he’d never been willing to pay the price.
“God, you’re a pain in the arse,” he said to Tony, who just grinned in response as he sensed Tad’s change of mood. “Fine, I’ll consider it. Next time a ghost crosses our path, I’ll give them fair consideration. You happy now?”
“Not even slightly,” Tony said, still grinning. “But you’re not either, and I can live with that.”
Despite himself, Tad laughed. “I missed you, mate.”
“Urgh,” Tony grunted, making choking sounds. “Leave off. I thought you wanted my help, not to talk about our feelings like little girls at a slumber party. If that’s what you want, you can shove—”
“Fine. Fine. No more talk of feelings.”
“Finally. Now, are we going to do this? I don’t know about you but I haven’t had a good night sleep in about a week and I wouldn’t mind getting on with this. So, you going to let me back in or what?”
Sensing that there was more that Tony was leaving unsaid, he gave his oldest remaining friend a break and released his mental barriers so he could invite Tony in. The rest happened as it had thousands of times before. Tony collapsed in on himself, forming a cloud of vapour that Tad breathed in with both his lungs and a mental command.
The effect was immediate. His aches and pains vanished, his weariness became a thing of the past, and most blessed of all, light bled in at the edges of his vision. It was little more than vague blurs at first, then slowly they coalesced into fuzzy shapes, and finally the details faded back in and he could once again see the world around him.
In the few minutes between the end of his chat and his eyes returning to their former glory, Jen and Stella returned and were watching him. When his eyes moved from one to the other, Jen took a step forward and held up her finger in front of his face. She moved it from side to side, and when he followed it without failure for the third change of direction, Jen dropped the finger and shoved him with both hands hard enough to send him crashing back into the sofa in surprise.
“That’s for getting blown up. Don’t do it again!” she snapped. Shaking her head, she muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a swear word and then to Stella she said, “I’m going to bed. Come on, Hawk.”
Suddenly she vanished, bypassing the stairs all together and appearing in her room upstairs. Her puppy looked from Stella to Tad with what Tad would swear was a disapproving frown before he too vanished.
“What the hell?” Tad asked, and Stella just shook her head. Then it was her turn to test his vision, though she did it from the seat beside him and not standing in front of him.
“You can really see okay again, no blurriness or anything?”
“Like it never happened,” he answered.
“Good.” Then, without warning, she smacked him on the arm hard enough to leave his fingers tingling and another bruise for Tony to fix. “That’s for getting blown up. Don’t do it again!”
“Ow,” Tad groaned, rubbing his arm. “You too?”
“Just be glad you don’t get another one for that shit you pulled with my grandmother.”
“Ah.”
“Exactly. Ah.” Suddenly she sighed and rested her forehead against the spot on his arm she had just punched. “What the hell are we going to do, Tad? Everything’s falling apart.”
Tad was vaguel
y aware of Freckles and Growler both looking toward the kitchen again, and sure enough there was another muffled pop as Jen no doubt had come down for a quick snack before bed.
“I tell you what we'll do. We’re going to find your mole, then we’ll grab those bloody dreamcatchers and pay them back for what they did to those men… Pay them back for Morris. Then maybe we can…”
His words trailed off as both puppies suddenly jumped to their feet and Growler started growling. There was a sudden thud from upstairs as Jen was alerted, because this wasn’t a normal puppy growl. Growler was once more living up to his name by calling over Dream.
Tad would later blame the mental exhaustion of the last few days for how long it took him to realise that if Jen was thudding about upstairs, it meant she wasn’t in the kitchen. He was just about putting that together when the living room door opened and a young woman walked in, hands held high in surrender and tattoos shining.
“Hi. I’m sorry to intrude but… uh… I think I might be able to help with that,” Mitena Campbell said right before two outraged puppies rushed to attack the intruder.
26
Friday, 15th July 2016
01:32
“And she appeared, just like that?” Norman asked, glancing at Amelia and sharing one of their telepathic conversations.
“Just like that,” Tad agreed. “She said she wanted to help, then the dogs attacked her and it was chaos getting them calmed down and Mitena in handcuffs.”
Again the silent look, again Tad knew more was said than he would ever know. He’d called them shortly after they’d got Mitena to the Dream Team headquarters and the Prime Minister had turned around and come straight back. He wanted to be on site to see what happened with this. Unfortunately, this frustrated Stella to no end because it took them nearly an hour to show up at which point Stella was itching to get to work.
“What’s your take on this?” Norman asked Trevors. Stella had been insistent on calling him in, though Tad wasn’t sure what he could do. Trevors would be best left with a fresh head so they could plan their next steps after the interview was over. From what TV shows told him, this interrogation might take all night.
Trevors didn’t answer immediately, and when he spoke his words surprised Tad and made him reevaluate the young woman in the interview room.
“She’s got that same look as those soldiers coming back from Iraq… You know the ones I mean. The kind who got carried away and did things they shouldn’t have. That look on her face is the same I saw on theirs when what they’d done caught up with them. She’s guilty and wants to make it right.”
“Guilty for the deaths?” Tad asked.
“That would be my guess, unless she’s been up to something else.”
Something in Trevors’ tone said shut up and stop bothering me with stupid questions. Putting it down to crankiness at being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night, Tad let it slide and turned his attention to the monitors.
Stella had just finished her preliminary questions and the legal procedures she needed to get out of the way before the interview could start. Sensing that no one wanted to talk right now, Tad tuned in to what she said.
“So you’re from Chicago?” Stella asked, getting a nod in response. “Never been before Thursday. Heard it’s a rough place.”
“Every city’s got streets you don’t want to walk down. The place I grew up was really nice,” Mitena answered.
“It was nice,” Stella agreed. “Your parents picked a good spot to put down roots.”
“Grandparents,” Mitena corrected. “My grandpa built that house with his own hands. Lived there for the rest of his life. My mom was born in that house. Me and my brother too.”
“Lot of history in that house then. It’s a shame you had to lose it.”
Mitena didn’t answer, only looked down at her nails where her hands rested on the table. It was hard to tell on the monitor, but it looked like she’d bitten them down to nearly nothing.
“Is that why you turned yourself in?” Stella asked. “Because Kuruk blew up your grandfather’s house.”
“Grandmother’s house,” Mitena corrected. “Grandpa built it, but grandma was the one who made it a home. And yeah, that’s why I’m here. Part of the reason, anyway.”
“What’s the whole reason?” Stella asked.
Mitena didn’t answer straight away, lifting her hand as though she would nibble at another nail but getting caught short by the chains around her wrists. Tad doubted they’d stop her dreamwalking away, but they might hinder her long enough for Tad to catch her. He was hoping Growler might be able to follow her, though how he’d convey that request to the puppy he didn’t know.
“You got to understand that my brother wasn’t always like this,” Mitena said suddenly. “It’s my fault he got this way.”
“What way?” Stella asked.
“You know… The way he is. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“How about you tell me what he used to be like and how he changed?”
Mitena smiled as though remembering a better time, but the smile didn’t last long.
“He was popular at school,” she started. “He’s always been big and looked out for people smaller than him. Mom used to worry about kids picking on us because we were the only native Americans at school, but that was never a problem for us with Kuruk the way he was. Other than our names we didn’t have much to do with the old ways so we fit in fine, and Kuruk was just so big that any kid who didn’t like him wouldn’t dare pick on him. By the time we were in high school he was a sure thing for the football team. We all knew he’d get a scholarship and eventually go off to the NFL.”
“He was that good?” Stella asked.
“More than good. He’s a natural leader. His teammates loved him because off the field he wouldn’t hurt a fly and he’s genuinely interested in people. He’s like my gran was, always trying to help anyone and everyone.”
“Why are we listening to this?” Norman asked, growing impatient. “How is this getting us any closer to finding that monster and—”
“Stella knows what she’s doing,” Trevors said. “That girl’s talking and that’s what’s important. Stella’s listening, that’s what she’s paid to do.”
“She’s paid to get answers,” Norman pressed.
“And she will, but you won’t get them by pissing off the person talking. Stella will lead this where you want it to go, you just need patience.”
Norman said nothing else, but he did look at his watch like he might only give her another five minutes.
“…known her since he was five. They’d been a thing since they weren’t much older. She never had to worry about him with other girls,” Mitena said.
“I never meant Kuruk would cheat, I just know that going to separate colleges can put a strain on a relationship,” Stella apologised.
“Not theirs,” Mitena disagreed. “I told you what Kuruk was like. He’d sooner cut his own throat than see someone else hurt. How he is now… that’s after his change. That’s after what happened to Lucy.”
“Something happened to Lucy… his girlfriend?” Stella asked.
“Wife in everything but the ceremony,” Mitena disagreed. “That girl was a sister to me and everything to Ruk. It’s why what happened hit him so hard.” She fell silent, and Stella let that silence linger. Tad recognised the tactic, she’d done it to him enough. Sure enough, Mitena was the one to speak first. “She came here for New Year.”
“Here? You mean the Borderlands?”
“I mean Cardiff. Her friends wanted to come and have their dreams come true,” Mitena said. “None of them were short of money so the cost of a last-minute flight didn’t mean much. It did to me and Ruk, though. With mom and dad gone, gran and grandad dead, and neither of us working, we were using every last penny of our inheritance to put us through college. Kuruk told her to go without him and have a good time. It’s why he blames himself, you see.”
She paused and sighed,
clearly struggling with the next part.
“It happened on New Year’s Eve. Lucy and her friends were in the hotel bar for some pre-drinks before heading out, when suddenly Lucy starts acting strange.” Mitena’s face hardened and her voice grew a sharp edge. “There was this fucking dwarf at the bar, a dreamwalker. He’s sitting on the stool right next to where Lucy was ordering her drinks. Next thing you know, he’s talking to her. Her friends said she spent so long talking to him that they had to go find out where their drinks were.
“She was like Kuruk, see, too nice for her own good. They thought she was being polite to the guy. But when they tried to rescue her, she didn’t want to go. She told them to get lost while she talks to her new friend, and she’s serious.” Mitena leaned forward and started hammering the table with her finger. “That’s not the Lucy I know. She’s never so much as frowned in her entire life, let alone told her best friends to get lost. So they got worried and tried to lure her away. Only the more they try, the nastier she gets. They’d never seen her like that before, so now they’re all worried. They decide to see the New Year in where they are so they can keep an eye on her.
“About half past ten, that prick leads her away by the hand like he’s taking her to his room. It turns out that’s exactly what was happening and Lucy’s going along with it like it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her.”
“So her friends tried to stop her,” Stella guessed, keeping the conversation flowing when Mitena paused.
“Of course they did. They knew Lucy wouldn’t cheat on Ruk. If there’s only three guarantees in this world, they’re death, taxes and the fact that Lucy and my brother were in love the first time they met and nothing could ever change that. Yet here she is following this guy like… I don’t know what. They just knew they had to stop it.
“That’s when Lucy gets nasty. She yells at them, acting like she’d never even met my brother. She was a different person and wouldn’t calm down until the hotel staff got there to separate them before it got nasty. By the time they were done talking to the girls, Lucy and the dreamwalker had gone to his room.”