Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change (29 page)

He froze, turning to see who had called his name. When he locked eyes with her, he looked …

Disgusted?

He turned away and headed back along the path he’d been treading before she’d called out to him, toward the elevator. “That’s weird,” she said, watching him go. “That is weird, right?”

“Just ignore him,” Flannery said. “He’s probably gay. That’s why he’s interested in your friend with the touch disorder. No one would expect him to do anything with her.”

“Ohhh,” Kat said, nodding along, a smile breaking across her face. “Yeah, that’s probably it, right?”

“Ouch,” Scott said.

“Oh, whatever,” Flannery said, brushing it off. “Did you hear what she said to the president?”

“No,” Scott said. “Why?”

“I just figured maybe you heard,” Flannery said with a shrug. “She met him right after you did.”

Scott’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t meet the president.”

Flannery made a face, petulant and irritable. “Yeah, okay, whatevs—”

Whatever Flannery had meant to say, she was interrupted by a crack somewhere outside on the balcony, and Kat felt her pulse quicken, looking around. She looked for shots, for gunfire, for the threat, but nothing more than a mild ripple of surprise passed through the crowd. “What was that?” she asked. Everyone’s head was pointed toward the enormous balcony.

“Oh, wow,” Flannery said, her eyes riveted. “Just … wow. Nice entrance.”

“What are you—” Kat caught sight of her just a second later, a flash of movement just outside, motion against the background of the night sky.

Sienna.

“Party’s over, I guess,” Flannery said, more than a little amused.

“No, it’s not,” Kat said, feeling the bitterness roll over her at the sight of her last bodyguard. “No, it damned well is not.”

I set down on the balcony outside, scanning the party for Kat. The place was packed, filled with people dressed entirely too nicely for a Sunday night. I suppose it was always Friday out here or something, kind of like how they had summertime all year long.

As soon as I landed, I started forward, figuring I’d find my subject somewhere inside. It was kind of a breezy night; she probably wasn’t hanging out out here. It’d mess up her hair. Mine, on the other hand, was perpetually wrecked. I’d thought about getting a pixie cut, but I just wasn’t ready to embrace that yet.

“Heyyyy,” a guy said, making his way over to me, clearly oblivious to the single-minded purpose with which I was cutting through the crowd. “I know who you are.” He arched his eyebrows at me.

“You and everyone else with one of those idiot boxes,” I said, looking past him. It was tough to see much, though, because I’m so short. “Hey, was the idiot box named after you? It’s all starting to make sense now.”

“Ooh,” he said, grimacing a little. “Okay. You live up to your rep, so I’m just gonna get right to it. I’ve got a proposition for you, something maybe to get your foot in the door in the biz—have you ever thought of having sex on camera before?”

My head snapped around on him, all thought of finding and beating Kat gone in favor of giving this guy two seconds to explain himself before I beat him instead. “You want to film a snuff movie? With me as the star? What is
wrong
with you?”

“No, no,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’m in the industry—you know, adult movies. Succubi are a big fantasy and—I mean, there are things we can do, tricks we can use, when we’re filming—you know, in post—but there’s stuff we can do on the day to capture usable footage without endangering anyone—”

“‘On the day’?” I picked one phrase out of the shit he was spewing. “On what day? The day I murder someone on camera while filming a sex scene?” I shook my head. Why was I letting myself be drawn into this conversation?

Oh, right. Because letting Wolfe run my life meant killing douches like this instantly.

HEY
.

True, Wolfe. You know it, too.

Maybe
, he grudgingly conceded.
Okay, yes. But it would be so much more fun.

Also true. But new. This was brand new me, embracing change for the better.

“On what day,” the guy said, amused by my question. “You’re new, I forgot.”

“I’m getting older by the second,” I said, “and so is this schtick.” Change isn’t an instant thing, okay? It takes time.

“Hmph,” he said, making a face. “Yeah, you’re not very nice. This is totally why you don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Oh, no, it’s not,” I said, shoving him hard out of the way. He went face-first into a potted plant, shattering it with his cro-magnon skull. “That’s probably why. And as a sidepoint,” I said, lecturing his insensate body, “whatever will I do if I don’t have a man like you around to validate and approve of all my choices?” I held myself back from curb stomping him into the shards of pottery, deciding it might be just a bit too much. “Why, I might have to live my own life. Gasp.” And I left him in the wreckage, with at least a couple hands of scattered applause behind me. Not enough to indicate overwhelming approval, but enough to cool my anger a few notches, at least until I found Kat. Then, I had a feeling, my anger was not going to be cool any longer.

Karl had wandered around the basement parking garage of the Luxuriant, doing his thing, making his mark. It hadn’t taken too long to set things up the way he’d wanted them, just a few minutes, really, and then he’d decided to wait in the hotel lobby, lingering at the fringes. The paparazzi and the press were outside, and he was in here, just sitting with a copy of the
LA Times
stretched out in front of his face, the edge bent down so he could watch the elevators for her inevitable arrival.

It certainly didn’t bother him that Sienna Nealon hadn’t shown up yet. Her part in this whole thing wasn’t anywhere close to done yet, after all. His backer had one last hurrah in mind for her before this thing came to its finale, and Karl was waiting for the moment that it did. He felt like killing Kat Forrest was sort of like the warm-up; killing Sienna Nealon, that was going to be the real satisfaction.

Because then he would have cut down two of the most famous metas in the world, the powerful one and the one everyone loved, and his legacy would be complete. He could go out with a bang knowing he’d never be forgotten, in LA or anywhere else.

He glanced to the side and saw a little cooler of orange-peel infused water chilled, with cups waiting for the hotel guests. It was a lovely little touch, one that made him wish he could add a dollop of poison. It wouldn’t matter, of course, but this was the shit he hated. When was the last time someone in a poor neighborhood got orange-peel-infused drinking water? They were lucky if they got clean water at all.

He looked over his newspaper, back at the elevator with renewed fury. It dinged, and he felt a thrill of excitement, peering over it to see who it would spit out.

Then it opened. He locked eyes with the lone occupant within for a split second, and that was all it took.

SHIT.

Steven Clayton saw him, knew him, realized exactly who he was in the instant their eyes met, no beanie, overcoat or sunglasses fooling him. Karl just sat, stunned, for a second longer than he needed to, mind locked as he wondered what the Hollywood pretty boy would do with that knowledge—

Then Steven Clayton pulled a gun from his shoulder holster as smoothly as if he’d practiced it a thousand times, and fired it right at Karl.

Three shots tore through the paper, the sound of paper ripping lost in the roar of gunshots. The bullets whipped through the spot where Karl was sitting, slapping into the couch behind him.

Karl threw the paper aside and started to get up as Steven Clayton advanced on him, altering his aim just as Karl started to get to his feet. Clayton fired down, and Karl felt something sharp rupture the skin of his right buttock where it had been pressed against the couch only a second earlier, a feeling like fire that caused him to arch his back in pain.

NO.

Karl triggered his power and went entirely insubstantial instantaneously, passing through the floor within a second, disappearing into the darkness below, swearing under his breath and vowing revenge on all these fake heroes.

“Oh,” Kat said as I strolled up to her, leaving the usual levels of mayhem and broken people in my wake, “it’s you.” Like she didn’t see me coming or hear the disturbance with the snuff porn film guy out on the balcony.

I bypassed Guy Friday, who lifted an eyebrow, and Butler, who apparently had the sense to stay back. I left the crowd behind and entered the small circle of people around Kat, which included Flannery Steiner and Scott. Scott looked a little flushed, embarrassed and maybe defiant, but not in equal measure. Flannery just looked like she was ready to spectate a cat fight. Or a Kat fight.

“It’s me,” I agreed, keeping my voice neutral with heroic levels of restraint. I wanted cookies for this. All the cookies. And maybe a pie or two for good measure. “Time to go.”

“No, it’s not,” Kat said snootily.

“This party is so happening,” Flannery said, and I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to throw gas on the fire or not. “We just saw Steven Clayton a minute ago. He took one look at Kat and bailed for the elevators with the nastiest look on his face.”

Kat flushed, looking at Flannery like she’d been betrayed. Well, that answered that. “He probably had somewhere else to be.”

“So do you,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kat said, sticking her nose up in the air. “Why don’t you go find Steven?” She smiled nastily. “He’s clearly looking for a beard.”

I gave her a stony stare; that was a low blow, even for Kat. “I don’t care what he’s looking for—”

“Of course you don’t,” she sniffed. “You’d probably be totally cool being his side piece, sponging off his fame.”

“‘Side piece’?” I looked at her in thinly layered disbelief. “You’re a piece of something, too.” I glanced at the camera crew filming her dramatic attempt to draw me into a verbal brawl. “… Which I will not say on TV.”

“Oh, no, you’re good,” the cameraman said, shoving his lens into my face, “we can totally bleep it out in editing, like what I’m saying right here. Fire away.”

“Get real, Sienna,” Kat said, drawing my attention back from the shitshow that was currently making us its stars, “the only reason Steven probably wants anything to do with you is because he’s got a squeaky clean good guy rep to shed or because he’s gay and needs a plausible reason not to have sex with his girlfriend.”

“Well, I have sex, as you well know, so that’s right out,” I said, flushing. She did a little flushing, too, and I got the feeling Kat was in way over her head on this one. “Alternatively, did you ever consider he might just be a good guy who’s got questionable taste in women?” Yes, I insulted myself. On television. Dr. Zollers suggested some humility in public spaces, and I was working on that, too.

“Oh, sweety,” Flannery chimed in, “you’re in the wrong town. Go back to podunk America before you get hurt, please.”

I didn’t punch her, but it wasn’t easy. “Not everyone is a user, even here in Los Angeles.” Pretty sure my eyes were rolling from the exertion of still not killing Flannery as I said that.

Kat bristled like … well, a cat. “Oh, come on. You’re here because you still think of me as a meal.”

“I don’t want to eat you, Kat,” I said. “I don’t even want to be around you, but this is how screwed up you are—you’re complaining about how I look at you but you let Taggert use you sexually without a thought.”

Kat’s face flushed scarlet with heat, looking sidewise in alarm at the camera before turning, fully enraged, back to me. “You don’t even know. You have no idea. You don’t even try, and you get attention.”

“Yes, negative attention,” I said, staring back at her in stunned disbelief. “People hate me.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Flannery Steiner said, all snotty, playing to the crowd.

“Because I’m impulsively violent and have problems controlling my anger,” I said, leveling my gaze on her. She squirmed and I liked it. “Neither of which either of you are helping at the moment.” I snapped my attention back to Kat. “There is a psychopath out there bombing houses and parks—anywhere he can that you are, all in a desperate bid to get attention of his own. Now you’ve come to this—this—atrocity of a party, held in the middle of a multi-story grand hotel, exposing everyone here and in the building and around it to danger because—
why
, Kat?”

“We’re not afraid of him,” Flannery said, putting a hand on Kat’s shoulder in support. “And he ought to know it.”

“Yeah,” Kat said, ghostly quiet. “I’m not afraid of him.”

“You’re so brave,” Flannery said, nodding along, lip almost quivering.

I slapped my forehead. I couldn’t help it. “You are so. Very. Stupid.”

“Lot of that going around,” Scott said with more than a little resentment. I looked right at him and he looked back, unbowed.

“Yeah, I’m stupid,” Kat said, getting huffy again. “I’m stupid and you think you’re God. That you know better than everyone else, that you can just do whatever you want, whenever you want because you’re Sienna Nealon.”

“Not to go quoting Spider-Man to you,” I said, “but with power comes a level of responsibility, and you’re being so damned irresponsible right now—”

I froze when I heard the muted sound of gunshots. It was floors below us, wafting through the crowd that was silently watching, silently judging us for our public spat, and enjoying it all the while. The sharp cracks rang over the whispers, so far away that I wouldn’t have heard them save for my meta hearing. Sharp, staccato, and definitely gunfire.

“Party’s over,” I whispered.

I shot over the heads of everyone at the party and zoomed over the edge of the balcony toward the ground below. I could see the red carpet still laid out, although all the guests of honor had presumably already arrived for this blowout party that was probably about to turn into an actual blowout. I held my breath as I descended at high speed, listening for further sounds of gunfire.