“This is a joke,” I mumbled thickly. “A bad joke. Go away.”
“It’s not much to look at, Mr. Eye, I know, but I did bring a cinnamon roll and coffee from the outside world. I hope that will make up for our cafeteria’s failings.”
My eyes widened to fully alert. I’d assumed it was Hector. I must’ve been stupid with sleep; Hector had never smelled like that. She smelled like oranges and cinnamon. When Charlie’s memory didn’t pop up to comment on the change from lemon, I decided either the scent was new or Charlie was beginning to fade. It didn’t matter which, because either one was a good way to start the day. I’d liked Charlie, but it was time for him to go. I couldn’t be his tombstone, eulogy, and life’s history all rolled into one forever.
I sat up and reached immediately for my gloves. After pulling them on, I shoved my hair back and snapped a rubber band around it. “I’ll take the roll and coffee, thanks.”
She aimed gray eyes at the eggs and gave a philosophical sigh. “I’d throw them to the crows, but they won’t touch them, either.” She deposited the tray on the desk and handed me a paper bag fragrant with the smells of butter, icing, and dark roast.
“I didn’t know doctors made house calls anymore, much less with cinnamon rolls.” And a damn fine cinnamon roll it was, too. It was the size of a saucer and dripping with all the things that made life worthwhile—sugar, butter, grease. I had to take my gloves back off to eat it, and it was more than worth the trouble.
“Yes, well, most doctors don’t tend to patients who are being held against their will.” Her lips tightened. “Who are being blackmailed.”
Maybe, like Eden, she was on my side, too. Charlie had nothing to contradict absolute integrity in her. Then again, Charlie had been too good for his own good. And good people are gullible.
“True.” My eyes narrowed as I wiped sticky fingers on a napkin from the bag. “And you think a roll and coffee makes up for that?” She was an amazing woman, and I didn’t need Charlie to tell me so, but that didn’t let her off the hook for all this.
“No,” she responded quietly. “I’m not sure anything would.” Laying warm fingers on my arm, she added, “I am sorry. I know it counts for very little, but I am.”
Behind the words, I saw her. Five years old and standing by the window where the cage hung. Her abuela kept two doves, gray and white with soft pink eyes. They watched the sky through silver bars, and that wasn’t right. No one should be in a cage. Everyone should know freedom. Libertad. Everyone should know the sky. And so she’d opened the window and then the door to the cage, and off they flew, without hesitation. As if they’d been waiting for this moment all their short lives. Meleah had waved in joy until she couldn’t see them anymore. Waved and waved.
I looked blankly at her hand on my arm. “Don’t.”
She removed it instantly, mortified, I could tell by the flush under warm amber skin. “I’m sorry. I forgot. It is inexcusable of me.” Because a good doctor didn’t forget that one patient was a diabetic, and she didn’t forget that another was psychic.
“It’s okay.” I took another bite of the roll. “It’s not an easy thing to remember.” I smiled, ready for a little harmless payback and because, hell, I was curious. “Did your granny bust your ass for letting her birds go?” I raised a hand for a short wave, a simple one-two bend of the fingers. “Libertad, pequeñas palomas.”
Freedom, little doves.
Her mouth opened slightly, and the flush faded. Then, amazingly, she smiled back, her gray eyes warm. “She scolded me quite fiercely, but it was worth it. Of course, the silly birds came back the next day looking for supper.” She gave a gentle shrug. “I did what I could.”
Which is what she was doing now. For Charlie. He was in a cage, the same as I was, the same as the birds, but the door to it was much more difficult to open than when she’d been five. Maybe if we were lucky, both Charlie and I would get our libertad.
Maybe.
I finished up the roll and the coffee just as Hector came through the door. “It’s a party,” I drawled, toasting him with an empty paper cup. “BYOCB, though. Bring your own cinnamon bun.”
Hector was not amused. Tense and on edge behind his usual stone mask, no amusement to be found. “Get dressed, Jackson. We have to get set up at our location.”
“Not the cavern, right?” I demanded with a little tension of my own. I’d had enough of that place—more than enough. Charlie could come through there wearing bells and whistles and dancing a goddamn jig, I didn’t care. I was not going to be there.
“No. I made sure we pulled another site. The last thing I want, Eye, is you gnawing on my shinbone.”
Well, I stood corrected. There was a little humor in Allgood after all. Desperate and dark battlefield humor but humor all the same. “Stringy as hell,” I said, wrinkling my upper lip. “I wouldn’t waste my time.”
Meleah’s smile widened then faded. “Hector? You’ll let me know when something happens, yes? Thackery certainly will not.”
“Of course.” He rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “You’re as much a part of this as anyone, no matter what that bastard says.”
Thackery apparently knew everything about winning friends and influencing people—and had tossed that knowledge into the toilet and flushed repeatedly. I definitely wouldn’t be sorry to see the last of that bastard. If I had to take bets on who might murder Charlie, although I was very carefully not thinking about that, he’d top the list.
Meleah, though, and even blackmailing Hector—they weren’t that bad. Good people in a bad situation, I was forced to admit, as much as I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be sympathetic to their situation and them, I just wanted out. Wasn’t that right? I told myself. Wasn’t it? As Meleah left, she raised her own coffee cup to me. “A la libertad,” she said solemnly. “To liberty.”
Here was hoping it was that easy, I thought as she closed the door behind her.
Hector eyed me, assessing, but said nothing—at least, not about Meleah. “Get dressed,” he repeated. “We don’t have all day.”
“That statement has Mom written all over it.” I tossed my cup into the garbage can. “You want to remind me to use the bathroom before we go? Maybe tell me to wear clean underwear, too, while you’re at it.”
This time, he said nothing at all, the pale eyes narrowed to slits.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Sheesh. Do I have time for a shower?”
“No.”
“Great,” I mumbled as I stripped and changed into jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. “If Charlie does show up, he’ll be promptly driven away by my funky stench. There’s a ghostbusting tool Murray and Aykroyd never tried.”
“Actually, you smell like a giant cinnamon bun. Very manly. Now, get your goddamn ass in gear.” There was humor in the words, but his eyes didn’t show it. Why would they? Today was the day he was hoping to take what was left of his brother and end it permanently. It had to be done, but that didn’t mean it hurt any less.
I finished tying my sneakers, put on my gloves, and stood. “Okay. Let’s go save Charlie.”
It wasn’t as cool as, say, let’s go kick some noncorporeal ass, but it was far more true. We might be ending Charlie, but we would be saving him, too, because Hector was right. Charlie would far rather be gone than continue hurting people. The nonexistence of the grave would be vastly preferable. Then again, Charlie believed in life after death … real life, not the lab-created kind. Funny how someone so brilliant could be so damn naive. And may a heavenly choir of angels sing you to sleep.
Shit.
• • •
Our location turned out to be an old mill. Lassie could’ve told us those were never good places to hang out. Trouble was bound to pop up—it was the law.
It was nice, though. Weeping willows bowing over a chuckling creek. The silver wood and stone of the mill was like a pool of moonlight at odds with the bright morning sun. I tossed a rock into the water with my left hand. In
my right, I held Charlie’s key chain. When the time came, I’d strip my glove off and try to track Charlie, try to get the jump on him by at least a few seconds, give the team at the chosen location a heads-up.
Our location didn’t have the big guns this time. The equipment had been taken to the place with the highest body count: the cavern. It was considered the most likely place with the highest amount of “fraying.” When I asked Hector why he hadn’t gone there with that team, he hadn’t responded, unless you consider jaw clenching a response. Thackery. The son of a bitch had a lot of power, maybe enough to get Hector thrown off the project. It was the only thing that explained Hector’s presence behind me at the stream and made Thackery seem more suspicious—keeping Charlie’s brother at arm’s length from Charlie was what a murderer would do.
“It’s time,” he said quietly. “Ten minutes until ETE.” I looked over my shoulder and raised my eyebrows questioningly. “Sorry. Estimated time of ether-disruption.”
“Scientists.” I snorted. “Geeks.”
“Supergeek, actually, and proud of it,” he corrected, and tapped his watch. “Jackson …”
No more putting it off. Taking a deep breath, I transferred the keys to my other hand, stripped off the right glove, and then cradled the hunk of metal again, this time against bare skin. The mill was already verified; now it was time to read Charlie. There were the usual bits and pieces of him floating about in the keys. Driving for groceries. Taking Meleah’s puppies to the vet for shots. Cruising in the rain with Elvis wailing about wild horses and hound dogs. The flotsam and jetsam of daily life. The normal results of a reading. Unconsciously, I relaxed and enjoyed the warm weight of a puppy in my lap and the sounds of the King shaking the speakers.
Then it started.
At first, it was almost indistinguishable from the backdrop of the memories. It was just another emotion. Lost. I’m lost. It was so faint and muted that I expected to see Charlie pull a map from the glove compartment. Just a mild annoyance. Maybe he’d stop at a gas station and ask for directions.
It was because I forgot. For a moment, I forgot what had happened the day before at the caverns. The talent was banged up a bit thanks to reliving Charlie’s death, bent but not broken. Emotions were hazy TV viewing instead of living 3-D, and Charlie wasn’t feeling the kind of lost that a map could do a damn thing about.
Trees. Water.
How do I get in?
Where’s the door?
Where’s the door?
Where is me?
Where, where, where, where, where, where …
“Shit,” I muttered, shoving the keys into my pocket and looking around wildly. As if I’d be able to see anything.
“What?” Hector demanded.
“He’s here,” I said instantly. “He’s looking for a way in. He’s lost. He’s looking for a way home. He’s looking here.”
Hector was on his cell phone immediately, but the caverns were easily an hour away. They’d never get there in time. I started toward the mill at a run to warn the others. We had a team of six: Hector, me, and four others. And one of us was about to get real ornery real quick.
The mill didn’t have the history Carlson Caverns did, but it wasn’t all kittens and frigging rainbows, either. Hundreds of years before the phrase “going postal” was around, there’d been a similar one in these parts: “gristed.” Or, to be more precise, “done got himself gristed.” This one hadn’t been a legend needing my confirmation. This had been in the papers of the day. One of the mill workers, I had no idea what his name had been, had flat lost his mind, tossed his coworkers off the roof, then chopped up their bodies with an axe and fed the pieces down the hopper to be milled, a.k.a. gristed. By the time someone found out what had happened, whatshisname—really, what the hell was his name?—was chopping off pieces of himself to feed to the hungry mill.
There were no axes here, though. That was a good thing. It’s hard to chop up people without the proper tools, any homicidal maniac could tell you that. Reasonable, logical, but it didn’t stop the screaming from starting.
I hesitated for a split second, then ran on. How bad could it be? Three of them were scientists loaded down with their geeky equipment. The remaining guy was a soldier, but he was unarmed as a safety measure. Everyone was. Not even a penknife among us.
And yet the screaming went on.
As I continued toward the mill, I could hear the grass-muffled pounding of Allgood’s feet behind me. He pulled even with me as the first person was thrown off the roof. I skidded to a stop and could feel my jaw slacken as the man tumbled through the air, white-coated arms windmilling and mouth stretched wide in a scream. He hit the ground with a highly unpleasant thump and a bounce. He was still twitching, though, when he came to rest; the fall was only a little more than two stories. I liked to think that was an excuse for what I said next, but it probably wasn’t.
“Geeks falling out of the sky. If that’s not a sign of the Apocalypse, I don’t know what is,” I said, awed.
Hector swore and ran into the mill. I didn’t follow, not yet. Instead, I shaded my eyes and peered at the roof, because a little information goes a long way toward not having to realize firsthand that you can’t fly. I didn’t know for sure who was up there—I tended to label the scientists as geeks one, two, and three and the soldier as goon one. Geeks and goons didn’t need names—or so I’d thought. This was geek number two on the roof and unfortunate geek number three on the ground. The guy on the roof doing the tossing, his name was … Damn. His name was … Bob, I pried out of my brain, triumphant.
“Uh, hey, Bob,” I called up. “Can you just, I don’t know, not throw anyone else off the roof for a minute and listen up?”
A cloud crossed the sun, blocking the glare, and I could suddenly see him perfectly. Raging eyes, saliva cascading over his chin, and his mouth twisted in a hoarse scream. Because he was the one screaming. Without a second’s pause, it went on and on and on. It was the kind that rips throats to bloody shreds and minds to the very same. The worst part was that I didn’t know if it came from Bob himself or the recording playing in him. It reminded me of an old commercial: Is it live or is it Memorex?
But he didn’t stop or listen. He bent and dragged another form into sight. The goon. I could see blood in the blond hair. Bob hadn’t been able to find an axe, but he’d found something to use to whack his coworkers over the head. A length of wood, maybe. It seemed that when the recording loop within him couldn’t reenact the event exactly, it stuck with the spirit of it: death. Lots and lots of death.
Bob grunted as he moved the soldier over the peak of the roof. Grunted, screamed, grunted, screamed some more. Insanity incarnate. I’d only seen one thing in my life more disturbing than this.
A well and a drowned little girl.
Tasting bile, I tried to hold on to the casual tone. “Bob …” No. That wasn’t who he was now. Jim, Joshua … what the fuck had been that guy’s name in the file I’d skimmed?
“Jacob!” I said triumphantly. “Jacob, I know you can hear me. I need you to listen to me, okay?”
Jacob Messersmith was long dead and had nothing to do with this current mess, but a certain pattern etched into the fabric of reality didn’t know that. The energy, alien and trespassing, flowed along that pattern like water filling an empty riverbed—it brought to the pattern a very limited facsimile of life. An imitation of it. But imitations don’t always know that about themselves. Computer programs are a good example. Jacob didn’t know that he didn’t exist, and Jacob recognized his name.
The screaming stopped. He stared at me, his hands tangled in the dark green T-shirt of the soldier, one heave away from moving forward with his task. “Jacob.” He said it in a voice thick and gravelly. It sounded as if his throat was choked with stones and blood, and it was as far from human as you could get. “Ja-cob.”
But that made sense, because he wasn’t human, was he? He wasn’t even a he. It was nothing … nothing that thought it was somet
hing.
“Jacob, you look like you’re having a bad day. Want to talk about it?” That was me, a shrink to a paranormal rerun. It didn’t get much more screwed up than that. I wasn’t even sure I could talk to a pattern. Did it have enough information imprinted in those violent moments to be able to respond beyond killing? Was there an imprint of Jacob’s mind-set, his emotions and thoughts? Or only his actions?
“Jacob,” I repeated when the doughy face stared down at me blankly. “What’s going on? What’d these guys do to piss you off?”
“Jacob.” There was blood on his lips—from the screaming, I thought. “Jacob.” The limp form of the soldier bobbled in his grip. “Gott. Gott tells Jacob. Gott erklärte mir. God tells me. They are against me. They plot. They would murder. They are demons. God tells Jacob to be his right hand. To smite the fallen ones.”
Great—not just an animate pattern but an animate, schizophrenic pattern. I had no hopes of reasoning with him. How do you reason with a DVR player? I could only hope to distract him, to make the disk skip, so to speak, to give Hector—
And there he was. On the roof behind Jacob-Bob. He’d left the scientist part behind, and now he was all soldier, loose and tense all in one.
“Jacob,” I called again hurriedly. “Demons. Tell me about the demons.”
“The fallen ones. Gott says smite the fallen ones,” he mumbled, the blood streaking his chin as he hefted the unconscious soldier. “Gott took their demon wings. They can no longer fly. They can only fall.” And with a horrible smile, he started to toss the soldier.
But Hector got there first. With an arm around Bob’s windpipe, he choked him out, quickly and ruthlessly. With his other hand, he caught the soldier before he tumbled over the edge of the roof. Which was good for me. It saved the awkward decision of do you try to catch the poor bastard or do your damnedest to avoid being hit by his falling body. Instead, I was able to check the guy already on the ground. Both of his legs were bent at brutally ugly angles, but he was still breathing, and, considering, that definitely put him in the “came out ahead” column for the day.