by Chloe Garner
Samantha snapped her fingers.
“That’s right. Lindsey.” She pointed her finger at Carter. “I want to file a formal charge for removal.”
“You what?”
“You heard me.”
Carter stopped walking.
“You’ve never taken any interest in our politics before.”
“She let a possessed psychic run loose in Detroit for more than a decade,” Samantha said. “Splashed dozens if not hundreds of people in that time. I called her to take custody of the psychic, and she said it wasn’t her problem, that I should shoot the… girl.”
“What did you do?” Carter asked.
“Well… Jason shot her after she killed Sam.”
“Sounds like it worked out to me,” Carter said.
“It was gross negligence,” Samantha said. “I don’t care if you pull her or not, but I want her punished.”
“I’ll let you do it, if you want,” Carter said.
“Do what?”
“Punish her.”
Samantha thought about it. Carter’s mouth twisted to one side.
“She was that bad, huh? The academic would consider being the sword of justice?”
“She was Canyon Road,” Samantha said. Carter’s smile faded.
“Ten years?”
“Ten years.”
“Who would you suggest I get to replace her?” he asked.
“Don’t start with me.”
“You know the bylaws as well as anyone does,” he said.
“I’m not taking her region,” Samantha said. Carter shrugged.
“Your call. Doesn’t change that you should get someone else to train Sam.”
“Why?” Sam asked, finally close enough to hear them.
“She’s in love with you, and isn’t thinking right,” Carter said. Sam looked at her, but knew even before he could start to become worried that she hadn’t considered it. Carter pushed a door open into the small underground parking lot where the Lincoln was parked. Samantha unlocked the doors and let Sam and Jason into the back seat. Carter looked at her as she started the car and pulled out of the lot.
“Think about it. Long and hard. What you know and what you don’t know. You’re taking more risk than you’re admitting.”
<><><>
Samantha sat on the bed, knees touching Sam’s, with her fingers across the top of his head.
“Just pick someone who isn’t doing something particularly private. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“So, you’re going to stay where you are, but move backwards. What happened ten minutes ago?”
Sam swayed as he tried to push backward in time. She felt his mind swirl as the complexity of moving in time eluded him. She waited. He opened his mouth to speak, once, but thought better of it, redoubling his focus. It wouldn’t be surprising if he got it the first try, nor would it be disappointing if he didn’t. She had let his training slack since he died, but, though it was time to pick it back up again, his learning curve was impressive; competitive with what Abby’s would have been, if she hadn’t had Carter pushing her as hard as he had. Sam would get there in good time, today or another day.
He nodded a slow rhythm, fingers tapping a separate beat against his thumbs. Something in his brain clicked into place, and his mind reeled.
“Whoa,” he said.
“What?”
“Back… forward… It’s all just a big spool.”
“You know the risks of forward,” Samantha warned. “Be careful.”
“I know… but… I can see his parents dating. When they were teenagers.”
“You what?”
“You said ten minutes?”
“I did.”
He focused.
“Time is… weird. How long is ten minutes?”
She waited. He nodded again, eyelids fluttering over active, closed eyes.
“That’s about ten minutes. Okay.”
“Just watch. Up through the present.”
“I can’t,” he said. She smiled. “That was a trick.”
“Sorry.”
“I’ll be ten minutes behind forever.”
“There’s a method to it,” she said.
“Oh. Yeah. I get it,” he said. She raised one eyebrow.
“Okay.”
“What?”
“I didn’t think it would be that easy.”
“Why not?”
She thought.
“Don’t know.”
She sat quietly for a minute.
“You can let go, if you want,” he said.
“You want to try it on your own?” she asked. He thought about it for a second.
“You can come get me if I get stuck?” he asked.
“It would take me longer, but yes.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
She lifted her fingers one at a time, alternating hands, until she was clear. He was getting better at keeping the dark pollution out of his brain on his own, lately, and even if he lost his grip on it, with everything else, it shouldn’t be anything he couldn’t handle. She waited. He swayed for a minute, putting his arms out at odd angles as though he had lost track of where up and down were, then stabilized. She put her arms around her knees, keeping close track of his mind over the bond.
Moving in space, she could feel where he had gone - how far, what direction - but in time was something different. Forward or back, he felt closer in space than she knew he was, and somehow altered. If she had to put words to it, she would have said that it was as though he were standing in front of her, but she could feel him behind her.
He gradually regained the present and, taking a deep breath, opened his eyes.
And pitched over backwards.
Trying not to laugh, Samantha sprung after him, trying to keep him from landing head-first on the floor, but his instincts were good. He got his arms over his head and straightened his legs so that he didn’t actually fall off the bed.
“You okay?” she asked. He rolled onto his side and pushed off the floor to stop from sliding, and eventually got himself stable again.
“That was weird.”
“That was funny,” she said. “You did great up to that point, though.”
He lay on his side and she scooted under the covers.
“Do you think Carter is right? That someone else should be training me?”
“No,” she said. “Not even a little bit. Something else he said tonight is bothering me, though.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re different,” Samantha said.
“What do you mean?”
“Since you died.”
“Oh. Yeah. You think there’s something wrong?”
She lay on her back, and he got up and pulled the blankets back to get into the bed next to her. She looked at him.
“I wish it were this easy. All the time.”
His mouth worked over the shape of words as he started to react.
“What’s going to change?”
“Brandt would use any opportunity to get a shot at possessing you. And I gave him a huge window, using him to help resurrect you.” She paused, trying to figure out what she actually believed. “There are so many things he could have done to leave himself a trap door. Other things he could have done just out of spite.”
“Like what?”
She shrugged, latching on to the first passing worry that she hadn’t yet thought through.
“Dark barb. People have native resistance to it, depending on their outlook and health, and a lot of other things. You aren’t particularly susceptible, but I let him get close. Underneath all those layers of protection. He could have barbed you, and, gradually, over years, you could turn darker and darker. I’m not sure I would notice, under ideal circumstances, but what if your death injured our bond so that I can’t tell that he barbed you? What if it were to poison me, too? I can absorb some of the power of spells that people cast against you. Carly would have killed me, too, if I hadn’t broken her spell
. What if he managed to turn both of us dark, because I didn’t want to have to play by the rules of the bond?”
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“You weren’t very interesting when I first met you.” He grinned and she rolled her eyes and laughed. “You weren’t. I’ve made you interesting, first by mistake, and then on purpose. Carly got a hold of you for a while, but mostly she was just trying to wrangle you in for Brandt. I’ve opened up a whole new world of risk, letting him get that close with that much magical power, and I’ve been pretending I could just ignore it.”
“So what do we do?”
“I don’t know. I need to think about it. Just… You should know that things probably can’t stay like this for too long.”
He rolled onto his stomach, bunching his pillow under his chest and staring at the far wall.
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“I guess I should probably tell Simon we’re still alive,” he said.
“Yeah. You probably should.”
“If he’s got work?”
“Take it. I can train Jason on the road for a while, now. I needed the hell cage, but that’s about it, for the short term.”
He nodded. Rolled on his side and tipped his head to look at her.
“How does that island sound now?”
She closed her eyes, and he hugged her, ashamed for hurting her, but confused at her reaction.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. I wish I had the depth of character flaw to just do it.”
“I probably wouldn’t love you if you were willing to just run away,” he said.
“Yes you would.”
“Yes I would.”
<><><>
Samantha wiped the sweat off of her face with a towel.
“We done?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jason said, stumbling toward the wall. “Yeah, I think we’re good.”
Sam’s eyes were stuck wide-open. Samantha grinned. Jason hadn’t noticed yet.
“Dude. What?”
“Do… Uh… Jason, I’ve never seen you move that fast.”
“Well, yeah. That’s the point.”
“No. Like you knew what she was going to do before she did it,” Sam said.
“Not enough,” Jason said, rubbing the spot on his arm where she had whacked him. She hadn’t been willing to let him have the win. There had to be something to aspire to. She tossed him the towel.
“You talk to Simon yet?” she asked. Sam shook his head. “Well, I promised to take Jason out in Justine, and I swear you won’t fit in that back seat. Can you handle Carter on your own for a bit?”
“Sure. Have fun.”
She jerked her head at Jason.
“Go get washed up.”
He pushed himself off of the wall and threw the towel at Sam, who caught it, then dropped it. Jason laughed at him and went to flag the elevator.
“You sure it’s going to start?” Sam asked as she pushed the door to the stairwell. “When was the last time you turned the engine over?”
“I’ve got a techie demon who worked with me on her. He comes and starts all of them every other week,” she said.
“Techie?”
“Demons have hobbies, too.”
“Huh.”
She found the key in the box and went to kneel next to the Mustang.
“Justine was the first. I always wanted a Mustang. I drove Carter around in this car for a year and a half.”
“And then?”
“Range Rover, the Lincoln, this silly Firebird, I don’t know. Maybe a dozen others.”
“Why aren’t you with Jason?”
“Because he’d use them to pick up chicks,” Samantha said.
“Fair point.”
“Yup.”
“He’s good, isn’t he?”
“Not bad,” she said. He grinned.
“You can’t lie to me. He surprised you.”
“He worries me.”
“Why?”
“He’s going to push it too hard. He isn’t careful.”
Sam shrugged.
“That’s not fatal, is it?”
“No.”
“Then so what?”
“Other things will be.”
“So you tell him that.”
“People who are good at what they do tend to think they’re bullet-proof,” Samantha said. Sam shouldered her.
“That’s why he’s got you.”
She looked at the car, wishing life was simple.
“I think we need to re-bond,” Samantha said. She could tell Sam had known this was coming. He didn’t immediately answer. She felt his fingers in her hair. “It’s just too much risk.”
“I don’t want to,” he said.
“Don’t have to tell me that,” she said.
“You really think…” He leaned his cheek on her head. “You wouldn’t say it if you didn’t.”
“No.”
The back-and-forth of emotions was quick, but damped. It just wasn’t the same as before. Really taking the time to think about it, she could convince herself that she missed the before.
But not that much.
Not even close.
He turned her to face him, kissing her cheekbone. Sighed.
“There really isn’t anything else to say, is there?” he asked. She really was worried about him. There was no way to fix it but to go back to a pure bond. There was no coming back to this, the middle ground where they had been happy. Once done, never un-done. She wanted nothing more than to take the easy route. Nothing. He kissed her mouth, and a fleeting thought wished she could actually feel his lips against hers, but her mind wandered away. She turned her head down, burying her nose into the side of his chin.
“Go track down Simon. See what’s up next. We might be a couple of hours. I think I want to get out of town.”
“Sure.”
He grabbed her hand as she walked toward the elevator.
“Hey.”
She turned.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
<><><>
The engine started with an aggressive roar, spinning back down to a deep, burbling idle. Samantha dropped her head back against the headrest.
“Damn,” Jason said.
“That’s my girl,” she said.
She pulled out of the garage and picked her way at random to an interstate and out of town.
“Can I drive?” Jason asked once.
“No.”
Once she was out of the city, she opened up the throttle, executing quick little passes and remembering the time that this car had felt like an extension of her body.
“So. Justine?”
“Gwen?”
“It suits her,” Jason said.
“It does.”
“No more story than that?”
“Nope.”
“I like it.”
“Me, too.”
Mostly they just listened to the engine and watched traffic go by. The sun was still rising and the traffic against them, making its way into the city, was still heavy. She pulled off the interstate onto a state highway she knew and headed toward the mountains. They were a sad affair compared to the mountains she knew, but she still liked them. She had once teased Carter that they were foothills that got lost. He had called them someone else’s problem, and that had been the end of it. She had to turn back long before she got to them, though. Things to do.
“It’s a good job you did on this car,” Jason said.
“Thank you.”
“I still want to drive.”
“Don’t care.”
They listened to road noise for a while longer. She switched gears more often than was strictly necessary. She glanced at him.
“When Brandt comes at you, it may be fast, it may be sideways. I’m not going to tell you what you should do. Fight him, go along with it, do what you need to do. Trust your gut.”
He grinned and started to say somethin
g cheeky, but another glance from her cut him off.
“Okay. Got it.”
“Whatever you have to do to survive, do it. I don’t care what it is. Alive is always better than dead. Always. Don’t forget that.”
He licked his lips and looked out the window.
“Look, don’t worry about me. You just keep Sam strong, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m serious. First they get blood off of me, he’s going to want to think like, maybe it would be worth it. Don’t even let him think it.”
Samantha stared at the road.
“Jason, I would never, ever hurt Sam. Not on purpose. But I would put a bullet through his brain before I’d let him consider letting Brandt take him.”
He tapped a finger on his lips and nodded.
“Yeah.”
“Is there anything that you love?” Samantha asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Any thing that its destruction or loss would make you grieve?”
“Why?”
“Your mom’s ring,” Samantha said. “How I tracked Sam. It’s called soul-vesting. Making a thing a part of yourself.”
He watched the road and nodded slowly to himself.
“Gwen.”
“Doesn’t help.”
“But that’s it,” he said.
“Nothing from your childhood? Nothing that Sam gave you? Or your mom? Anything?”
He put a hand up.
“I’ve always traveled light.”
“Great. I guess I knew that.”
“Is it bad?”
“It’s actually much safer. Things that are soul-vested can be used for lots of things, and a lot of them are bad. It’s why I keep so much stuff at Carter’s. It’s the only safe place I know for all of it.”
“And why you’re so protective of your backpack.”
“Yeah.”
She looked at him, knowing what she had decided but not ready to accept it. She steeled herself and pulled the chain from around her neck and handed it to him.
“Your engagement ring,” he said. She nodded.
“I can find Sam, Sam can find me. There’s no way I can find you - but I will look; I will never give up looking for you - but you can find me with that.”
“You know they make cell phones.”
“I don’t carry one for a reason. When we get back, I have one more errand I need to run with Sam. You take that and you hide it. Someplace safe. Do not lose it. Please.”
“Can’t Carter always find you?”