Mind Games (26 page)

He calms down and swallows a few times, which is exactly what I wanted him to do. Most anybody will detect swallowing weirdness if they concentrate on swallowing. That’s because swallowing is a bizarre, snakelike thing we do. We discuss his swallowing as only two hypochondriacs can.

“You gonna call the cops?” he asks at one point.

I shake my head. “I don’t think that will be necessary. You’re under enough of a sentence already.” He regards me with a mixture of horror and trust. It’s the way Aggie used to look at me whenever I’d tell her a new Osiris virus detail. Connor’s bonded to me, thanks to the zing; he finds me inexplicably familiar because it’s my fear he feels. Maybe the spelunk-zing magnified it.

He feels familiar to me, too, like a song I’ve heard a million times. Because I was so deep inside him.

I try not to think about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t gotten out. Instead we discuss swallowing, and some minor aspects of ASN. Now and then he looks away from me as we talk, expression hopeless, tears pushing out from the corners of his eyes. I feel bad for him. It’s monstrous, what he tried to do to me, but I understand the pain he’s in now. Our conversation drops off and we sit in silence for a while. I watch the cloud-shadow of sleep pass over him, remembering how it was when I had health worries: sleep was the only time I’d forget.

When I’m sure he’s out, I reach down and touch his hair. I want to get away from him, but I can’t stop remembering the things I sensed when I was inside him, the ways we’re alike. We’re both monstrous. That’s what I’m thinking as I touch his hair and watch him sleep, stunned how different yet alike we are.

A voice: “My goodness, Nurse Jones.” I look up, startled. Simon’s in the doorway, leaning against the frame, smiling.

No doubt I’m quite the sight in my bloody, sexy nurse’s outfit, sitting on a bed next to a tied-up, taped-up target. “Oh, please.” I collect my purse, my phone, and my stun gun and walk around the bed.

Simon’s smile reaches deep into his dark blue eyes. He has a long face and delicate features for a man.

I grab the sleeve of his black jacket and pull him into the outer room.

“What the fuck are you wearing? You look insane,” he says.

“This? This is the creepy outfit the Alchemist put me in after he kidnapped me.”

Simon stops smiling. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

He looks at me searchingly.

“I’m okay. Nothing happened. You know, nothing like that.” I give him a rundown of what did happen. “Anyway, I bet he’s ready to drink with Jay now. And I need to get back to town.”

“Nice work.”

“Don’t be impressed.”

He smirks. He’ll be impressed if he wants to be.

“Simon,” I touch his arm. “Your spelunking trick saved me.”

“You did it?”

“Yeah. Thank you for taking the time to explain that whole thing. I know you didn’t want to tell, but you told it honestly.”

“I can’t believe you did it!”

“If I didn’t, I’d be where he is right now. Worse.”

“Glad to be of service.” He takes out his phone. “Let’s see if Jay’s sober enough to drive himself out here.”

The new plan is for Jay to come and untie Connor, and start the debauchery phase of destabilization.

It turns out Simon was at a casino a ways west, which is how he got to me so quickly. I take out my phone and think about calling Cubby while Simon calls Francis and Vesuvius, who are apparently racing down from the city, to tell them to turn back, and then he calls Packard with a quick A-OK.

I hit Cubby’s number. No answer. It’s nine-thirty—over six hours since I left the supermarket. Is he out looking for me? “Cubby,” I say to his voice mail, “I’m okay. I had a slight ordeal, but I’m okay and I’m on my way back. I’m so sorry—I know you were probably worried, but I’ll be back soon—” Simon holds up a finger. I sigh. “Okay, we’re an hour away still.” I mumble some lame sentiment about explaining everything.

I listen to two out of three
Where are you?
messages
from Cubby before my phone runs out of juice. I stare at the flashing empty battery image, unable to decide if he sounded angry or worried on that last message. “I have to get back there fast.”

Simon goes into the bedroom to check my knots, and then we’re off.

          Twenty-two

“H
E WAS ASKING
to see you,” Simon tells me as we bump down a dirt road in his old white Camaro.

“Packard?”

“The Alchemist. Jay’ll have him drinking for three days straight.” He gives me a look. “You thought I meant Packard?”

“I didn’t know who you meant.”

Simon studies my face. “I heard about your lovers’ quarrel.”

“We’re not lovers. Never were. Never will be.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah, we kissed once, okay? Something I considered a mistake at the time, but when I found out the truth about what I got myself into here …” I shake my head. “I wish I never had to look at his face again. And I promise you, I won’t be his minion for much longer, either.”

Simon smirks.

“I’m serious.” I hang my arm out the window, resting my fingertips on the car body, still warm from the day, even now in the evening chill. The glory of glory hour fades a little every time I think about what happened and what almost happened. “I’m getting out of this.”

He looks over at me. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m feeling a lot better than I should, considering
what I went through. It seems like I should be way more upset.”

“Not necessarily. You zinged all your darkness into the Alchemist, including the trauma of being kidnapped, drugged, and manhandled. If anyone’s feeling the brunt of it, it’s him. And hey, you’re a disillusionist now. The darkness of human nature is your territory.”

“Just what I always dreamed of.” I stare out the window as we turn onto a paved two-lane road. Big, bright moon. Patches of forest, patches of farm. Broken-down trucks in waist-high weeds. “Cubby’s going to be so upset. He was having this dinner party, and I was making the dinner, and I need to get back there and make things right.” I imagine myself in the plush coziness of Cubby’s condo, warm and safe in his arms. “I have to get back there.”

We drive in silence past moonlit fields and crumbly stone silos, eventually getting stuck behind an RV. Simon complains, but I’m not listening. I’m thinking about my dad, just a few towns over, holed up like a hermit. I should visit more. He can’t help that he’s scared.

“So how’d you like it?” he asks. “Spelunking like that?”

“Creepily intimate,” I say. “Touching a person’s energy dimension in order to zing them is one thing, but invading like that?”

“We’re like reverse emotional vampires.”

“I prefer the term
crime fighter.”

Simon snickers.

“I’m not joking,” I say. “The stuff we’re doing is directly helping Chief Sanchez make the city safe.”

Simon turns to me. “I bet you haven’t heard the big news.”

“What?”

“The Brick Slinger’s finished.”

“Caught?”

“Dead. Just this afternoon. He was slinging bricks at a schoolyard, and Chief Sanchez was driving by. Sanchez sees what’s happening and susses out who it is, and he just jumps out of his car, leaving his assistant and driver in the middle of an intersection, and chases the guy on foot. A few other guys join the chase, but the Slinger is slinging all sorts of shit back at them. The guys lose their nerve, but Sanchez keeps running and dodging. They turn into this alley, and Sanchez shoots him in the knee and the stomach. Guess Sanchez was about to read him his rights when this cinder block from way up high falls down and crushes ol’ Slinger’s head.”

“Are you serious?”

“Obviously it was the Brick Slinger killing himself. Rather be dead than be taken in. Officially it was a freak accident, but this old woman saw the whole thing from a doorway. She’s been on the news shows yakking it up.”

“Wow, that is so brave,” I say. “That is just so amazing. Sanchez put himself in a ton of danger to get that guy.”

Simon rolls his eyes.

“And the Brick Slinger’s finally off the streets.”

“Most of him is,” Simon says.

I give him a dirty look. “Are the kids in the schoolyard okay?”

“Little girl’s in a coma.”

I sigh. We drive on in silence. I’m more in awe of Chief Sanchez than ever, and I’m not feeling upset that the Brick Slinger killed himself; it would be hard to hold a guy like that in prison. He would’ve probably joined the ranks of Midcity Pen escapees in no time.

“Fuck, I could run faster than this,” Simon says.

I stare at the back of the RV, hoping his gambling streak won’t extend to trying to pass it blind.

“Hey, don’t tell Packard about spelunking,” Simon says. “He won’t like it. He wants everybody under his thumb doing everything his way.”

“You got that right,” I say.

We roll by craggy trees, an abandoned shack, a little crossroads with some decrepit buildings. Beyond the crossroads stands a boarded-up gas station, looking like a lonely box in a moonlit expanse of weedy concrete. When our headlights hit the broad wall of the station, a familiar face, seemingly etched in the side, appears and disappears.

I gasp. “Holy crap! Pull over.”

Simon guides the car off the road, a bit past the gas station. “Are you going to be sick?”

I instruct him to back up on the shoulder. He protests, but I insist. “A little more, stop—no, a couple feet more.” And then it’s visible again: the face in exquisite detail, etched so you can only see it when the headlights hit it at a certain angle. The big long beard with the upturned curl at the end, wavy curls tumbling down over his shoulders, just like on the Mongolian Delites door and the apartment building.

“Fuck!” Simon says.

I realize only now how stupid it was to let him see this.

“Fuck!” he says. “The face. Of course! Duh.” He pulls into the parking lot of the ghost gas station.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to investigate.”

“We can’t go in there!”

“Wanna bet?” He gets out. Reluctantly I follow. He opens the trunk, grabs a flashlight and a screwdriver. Of course he’s read the highcap-watcher wikis and websites. “You know what this is, right? The fingerprint of the nemesis. Shit! All this time, I thought it was that brick pattern around Delites’ windows.”

How could I have been so stupid? I don’t want somebody as reckless as Simon to know about Henji. “It could be dangerous,” I say.

“Amazing you noticed this face at all. This is the sort of thing folks driving by every day of their lives wouldn’t notice.” He regards me suspiciously.

“I’m coming off glory hour,” I remind him. “I just zinged the hell out of a guy while
spelunking
him. And you’re wondering why I’m hyperobservant?”

He can tell I’m holding something back, but he says nothing. Up close, the exterior of the gas station appears to be encrusted with pebbles. I hold the light while he runs his hand over the indents and etches that make the face. “This face is likely a character from history or literature, or an archetype,” he says.

“I think he looks Renaissance. A warrior or a king,” I say.

“I think he looks like a guy with a role-playing-game fetish who never shaves or comes out of his parents’ basement.”

“Not at all,” I say, feeling weirdly protective. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Are you crazy?” He heads around the back of the building, where the moon illuminates boarded-up windows and doors, all set into the pebbly walls. Behind us, a patch of weeds gives way to a tree-covered hill stretching up into the darkness.

“Hello? Anyone home?” Simon knocks on a window board.

I grab his arm. “What if somebody dangerous is trapped in here?”

“You think the nemesis has other prisoners? That’s interesting.” He jerks his arm out of my grip. “And all the more reason to go in. You can wait in the car or you can stay here, but you won’t stop me. Packard wouldn’t be keeping all these secrets about what happened and
who this nemesis is if that knowledge wasn’t important and valuable.”

“What if you make the nemesis mad and he seals Packard away where we can’t find him? What if he kills him?”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“I’m not. I won’t let you ruin everything.” My stun gun’s in my purse in the car, but Simon won’t know that. I’m imagining scenarios of knocking Simon out, and tying him up and preventing him from locating Henji.

He eyes me, evaluating. Does he think I can stop him? Can I?

“Think about it,” he says. “If we knew Packard’s secrets, knew this nemesis, that would give us the power to make trouble for him.”

I wait.

“He has a godlike control over our existences. If he even ignores us, we end up in diapers and drool-covered shirts. Don’t you want to be able to push him around a little? You know you want to. Anyway, you’re not going to stop me. One of us brought our weapon out here, and it wasn’t you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

He looks amused. He would. I see now I won’t stop him. And he sees that I see.

He peels off his leather jacket. “Hold this.” I put it around my shoulders and watch him wedge the screwdriver under a corner. “I love being a disillusionist,” he says. “I’m just tired of being pushed around. Same as you.”