He looked over his shoulder, but Declan had already seen himself out.
Pacing quietly down to the front of the church, Ronan made the sign of the cross and slid into the pew beside Matthew.
“Hey, kid,” he said.
Matthew didn’t move.
Ronan put a hand in Matthew’s thick golden curls and tousled them. “Do you want to talk or not?”
Matthew didn’t say anything. Ronan leaned his shoulder against Matthew as he had many times before, trying to imagine what his brother needed from him in this moment. Probably a hug. Matthew nearly always wanted a hug.
Matthew remained motionless. He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t doing anything. Matthew was always doing something. Fidgeting. Talking. Laughing. Falling. Getting back up. Singing.
But he wasn’t doing anything right now.
The church was quiet except for the dyspeptic sigh of the old heating system. It varied in tone like a human snoring, a phenomenon that had offered much mirth to the two younger Lynch brothers over the course of their Masses there.
Ronan caught a sudden whiff of incense, of salt water, the smell of a tiny green mermaid Mass coming to a close. Go in peace, but Matthew was far from peace.
“What do you need me to say, little man?” he asked.
Matthew said, “I don’t want …” He didn’t say anything else for a long moment. Then he added, “To hear you say anything—” He seemed to be measuring the words out, tipping them out of a jar and checking to be sure he still had enough to go on. “—because now I know—” He did not remotely sound like himself when he spoke that way. “—you’re as big a liar as Declan.”
Ronan’s face felt hot. Stinging.
“Oh,” he said.
He could feel the heat in his stomach, too, in his knees, his legs, a rush of it, something like adrenaline, familiar—
Shame.
Ronan sat back.
The two of them sat there for a long time as the light slowly changed through the tiny green windows.
They didn’t say anything else.
Jordan thought that she might be furious with Hennessy. In her life, she hadn’t been angry about many things, and she’d never been angry with Hennessy.
But she could feel it now.
It was as if hope were oxygen and anger the flame. It couldn’t properly take hold while Hennessy was pitiable and recovering, but by the time she was well enough to go out with Jordan to Senko’s that night, it was burning outrageously. It was burning down the whole place.
Ordinarily Jordan liked Senko’s, even if it was associated with bad times. She’d been in more artist studios than most people would be in their entire life, and yet Senko’s professional garage was one of the more satisfying creative spaces Jordan had ever been in. And in comparison to the space she shared with Hennessy and the other girls, it was positively zenlike. Inside, the space was bright and open, the ceiling high enough to accommodate three auto lifts. The lifts were stark, black, and purposeful, and the three of them always looked like a modern art installation, each holding a candy-colored automotive corpse with hood agape and dark innards dripping from beneath. The concrete floor was swept clean, but it was scarred with oil splatters, paint overspray, tire scrubs, and a blood-red stenciled logo. One wall of shelves held bright knobs and joints, metallic body parts waiting to be fitted into the Frankenstein’s automotive monsters, it lives, it lives. A cheap but chic black vinyl sofa faced the dyno. One of the huge walls was covered with bright, modern automotive paintings, gifts from Hennessy and the girls over the months. There was a single space left on the wall. Waiting for Jordan’s contribution.
She had always vowed she’d paint something original when she got to live as an original.
So, never.
She was very angry, she thought with some wonder. So this was how Madox felt all the time. How did she ever get anything done? There wasn’t room inside Jordan for anything else.
In the place where an office should be, there was Senko’s tattoo parlor, and that was where Hennessy and Jordan headed that evening. Jordan wasn’t exactly sure how hygienic it was, but Senko didn’t ask questions about the Supra’s origin and he didn’t ask questions about Jordan’s, either. It wasn’t the easiest thing to find five different tattoo parlors to do identical flowers on each of the girls each time Hennessy got a new one.
“Another flower,” Senko said. “Two flowers this time, we’re nearly done.” He was the most compact man Jordan had ever met, both short and slight, like a taller person seen from far away. His densely curled hair was either dull brown or gray. She had no idea how old he was. Thirty? Fifty? Supposedly Hennessy had slept with him once, but for Senko’s sake, Jordan hoped this wasn’t true. “Pink this time.”
Jordan was already situated in the chair as Senko examined the new flower on Hennessy’s throat, making sure that the one he was about to put on Jordan matched precisely. He was taking his time. Senko was not the sort to do anything rash. He wasn’t the sort to do anything at speed, really, which was ironic considering that his profession was making things go faster. Senko himself was the slowest driver Jordan had ever seen; she’d once encountered him in his GTR north of the city and had spent ten minutes trying to provoke him into exceeding the speed limit before realizing first that it was impossible and second that it was him.
“Pink is the oldest color on the planet, did you know that?” Hennessy said. She still sounded a little drugged, but she had stopped bleeding hours before. She lolled in a rolling desk chair, holding the shop dog, a tiny female Yorkie named Greg. The story was that Senko used to have a shop guy named Greg who’d botched a turbo swap years ago and been unable to pay for the fix, and Senko had taken his dog in reparation, but Jordan found the story suspect. Senko wouldn’t let any of his shop guys touch a turbo. “According to fossil records. Cyanobacteria. I read that in Smithsonian Magazine. Ground ’em up, add them to solvent, it turns bright pink, making it one-billion-year-old pigment. I’d like to paint with that. Maybe a steak. A rare color for a rare food. Too on the nose?”
Jordan didn’t answer.
Jordan didn’t want this tattoo.
It seemed impossible how much she didn’t want the tattoo.
A decade of matching tattoos, matching hair, matching clothing, matching lives. Matching hopes, matching dreams, matching expiration dates.
“I’m gonna piss first,” Senko said, standing slowly. “Don’t go away.” He moved out of the room with slothlike intention.
The moment Jordan heard the shop bathroom door close, words blew out of her mouth; she couldn’t even stop them. “What did you tell him?”
Hennessy and the dog looked up in surprise. “Steak? Pink? I didn’t make him need to piss.”
“Ronan Lynch,” Jordan said. She didn’t even fully recognize her tone. She sounded like Madox. The words were spat out. Hateful. Ronan. Lynch. “He was all ready to take us on and in he went to you and something you said sent him sodding right back out that door.”
“He couldn’t do anything for us.”
“And how would you know? Did you see the painting he did? Out of his head? It took him no time at all, maybe even better than the original Dark Lady. He said he might be able to do something just for you. You didn’t even let him try.”
Hennessy said, “It’ll just get the girls all strung out.”
“On hope, is that what you mean? Are you saying they’d be all strung out on hope, like they might get excited about seeing the other side of twenty-one? You’re right, that seems truly fucked up. What was I thinking.”
Hennessy gave Jordan a fond look. “This doesn’t look good on you, Jordan. Leave it to Mad.”
This did nothing to quench Jordan’s anger. If anything, it strengthened it.
“I spent every second of every day for months getting The Dark Lady,” she said. “For you, so you wouldn’t be like this. But also for them, because they needed it. Before this, Trinity was about ready to eat a bucket of pills, you and I
both know that. Having an idea it might go somewhere kept her from going off her oats. For once it didn’t just hang over us. All of us. And now you’re saying that’s not worth going after again?”
Now Hennessy looked angry right back. It was a version of Madox’s anger, but a shade darker, more complicated. She put her finger on her temple. “You don’t know what goes on in here, Jordan. I played along with you, I played along with The Dark Lady, even though I knew it would just fuck us up the arse. And here we are, fucked up the arse, as predicted.”
“We never had another dreamer,” Jordan said. “He knows what you can do. He knows what’s possible.”
And then she saw from Hennessy’s face that this was exactly why she didn’t want it. Jordan narrowed her eyes. “Is this a cry for help?”
Hennessy said, “Don’t dig in this hole, Jordan. It’s not what you think.”
“I’m thinking about the others. You might try it.”
Hennessy’s eyes simmered. “As if I ever think about anything else.”
Senko returned. He began to slowly assemble the alcohol and his gloves and his envelopes containing needles. The air crackled with tension, but he seemed oblivious.
“What is the closest you’ve ever come to death, Senko?” Hennessy asked, with aggressive carelessness, not meeting Jordan’s eyes. “I don’t mean a swerve in traffic. I mean a good, quality, brand-name near-death experience.”
Senko’s was generally a place of no-questions-asked-or-answered, so Jordan thought this one would be ignored. But Senko paused in the middle of examining his needles under a magnifying glass.
“Those bullet holes in the door,” Senko said.
“Don’t leave us hanging,” Hennessy said.
Senko turned to Jordan and began to wipe her throat down with the alcohol.
“Better not be swallowing like that when I’m working or you’ll turn this thing into a lily,” he told her. “Three guys came in here to rob us. Years ago. This wasn’t my shop then. It was my boss’s. Tubman. They were coming to rob Tubman. Nobody would rob me, I was an asshole. I had nothing. I was nothing. Tubman hired me to keep me off the street. Said I’d make an ugly corpse. I was an ugly tech, too. Good for nothing. I don’t know why Tubman himself didn’t kill me. These guys who broke in, they were tweaking. They got me down on the ground and they had a foot on my neck, a boot, just like this, and a gun right here, just like this, and they told me they were going to kill me. You know what I thought?”
I’ve never lived my own life, thought Jordan.
“This is the most boring thing to do on my back,” guessed Hennessy.
Senko quirked an eyebrow. For Senko, this counted as intense humor. “I thought, ‘I’ve never tried to fix anything.’ Not a car, not my life, nothing. I just messed over it. I just turned a few bolts. I never saw it through. I was going to die, and I was going to leave all this broken shit laying around I never really even failed at fixing. I just didn’t even try.”
“I hope this story ends with you explaining this to them and you revealing to both of us that those three yobs were Eliot, Pratt, and Matt,” Hennessy said. These were three of the other shop guys.
“I spat in the guy’s eye and took his gun and pistol whipped him, then shot the other guy three times through the door. Served two years for it, which is where I got interested in tattooing … and here I am today,” Senko said.
“Truly inspirational,” Hennessy said.
Jordan could feel her pulse pounding in her neck, right where Senko was about to place another flower, one step closer to choking the life out of her. She didn’t want this, she thought. She wanted to stop being afraid, and she wanted to be able to call Declan Lynch and give him something she’d painted with Tyrian purple, and she wanted to have a future that didn’t look exactly like her past.
There had to be something they could do.
This wasn’t living, it was just giving up while still breathing.
“You ready to go?” Senko asked Jordan.
Jordan sat up. She locked eyes with Hennessy. “I’m not getting the tattoo.”
“Oh, we’re doing drama,” remarked Hennessy.
Jumping up from the chair, Jordan thumbed a twenty out of her bra. “Buy yourself something pretty,” she told Senko, who didn’t look surprised, probably because he wouldn’t be provoked into changing his expression that quickly. She headed for the door. She heard Hennessy murmuring something wry to him before scuffling after her.
“Jordan,” Hennessy said, “you arse, come on.”
Jordan pushed out into the cold night. It was ferocious, suddenly freezing her nose and throat and skin. She heard cars howling on the distant interstate, honking on the highway. Someone was shouting several blocks away. She felt more awake than she had in one thousand years.
The shop door slammed behind her.
“Don’t be pissed at me,” Hennessy said.
Jordan swiveled in the lot, still walking backward to where the Supra was parked. “Then say you’ll ask him for help.”
Hennessy bit her lip, sealing in the answer.
Jordan spread her arms to say see?
“Why don’t you think of me for half a tick, then?” Hennessy snarled. “You aren’t the one bleeding black shit and turning inside out. You’re the dream. I’m the dreamer. I’m the one who has to live with this. I get to call the shots here.”
Jordan’s mouth hung open.
Hennessy didn’t back down from her words. She meant for them to wound, but Jordan was too shocked for even that.
She opened the Supra door.
“Have fun with that,” Jordan said. She got in, slammed the door, stared at Hennessy out the open window. “Get yourself a fucking Uber.”
She tore out of the lot. Jordan didn’t know how Hennessy felt about it, because she didn’t look in the mirror as she left her behind.
For the first time, she was very, very sure that she and Hennessy were living two different lives.
It hadn’t remotely occurred to Farooq-Lane that Parsifal Bauer might have lied about heading back to the hotel after he got out of the rental car. For all the many annoying facets of Parsifalness, untruthfulness didn’t seem to be one of them. And yet he did not come back to the hotel, and he did not pick up his phone or answer texts, except for the first one she sent. He replied: You are still talking. Farooq-Lane waited for him in the room for hours, simmering.
Lock called and she, too, ignored it, like Parsifal’s Parsifality was rubbing off on her. Really she couldn’t stand telling Lock that she’d lost their Visionary. That she hadn’t found anything this entire time but the old Zed. She felt as if she had been given a craft project without any tools, a puzzle without all its pieces. A quest with only Parsifal Bauer as her guide. It was unsolvable as currently structured, and yet she was being blamed for it.
For a few hours she tried to research Bryde on forums, looking for any clues that might be helpful beyond what a vision might offer. She made herself some bad coffee. She ate some of the apples Parsifal had found too flavorless.
Finally, she went through Parsifal’s stuff.
This was very bad behavior and she knew it, but so was getting out of a car and walking away when the world was literally depending on you.
Parsifal’s case was neatly packed, which was no surprise. Three days of clothing folded, each day’s outfit folded skillfully into each other so that he could simply remove it as one piece and apply it to his body. Toiletries tucked into a spotless canvas zipper pouch. Two Nicolas Mahler comics. A notebook with a single journal entry started in it. March 14: Ich versucht so zu t.
He’d drawn a very ugly, savage dog in the bottom corner, the lines rigid and unfriendly. She didn’t care for it.
In the webbed flat pouch of the case, she found a chipped old CD case. Opera. It was Wagner’s Parsifal. As she was sliding it back in, she noticed the name of the performers. JOANNA BAUER. Sister? Mother? She flipped it over, looking for a copyright date. It was all in German. S
he opened it up and inside was a CD and a photograph. It was a posed photograph, and although no one was laughing in it, it was easy to see from their faces they were all finding it hilarious nonetheless. A plump woman (mother?) and three girls (sisters?) all stood on one side of the shot, pointing dramatically at the other side of the photo, where a much younger Parsifal looked dramatically long-suffering, so dramatically long-suffering that it was obvious he was being a parody of himself. It was painterly in its compositions, the four arms all directing the viewer’s attention from their shocked forms to his contrite one.
I killed them all, Parsifal had said.
Uncontrolled Visionaries were frightening in their destructive power, even to themselves. Lock said he’d never known one to come to them without a tragedy already packed in their suitcase.
Here was Parsifal’s tragedy.
He didn’t return.
A few hours into the night, Farooq-Lane’s annoyance turned to concern. He must be lost. Kidnapped. Hit by a car. Any number of things could befall a teen boy with poor social skills and a lack of appetite.
He wasn’t picking up his phone.
She bundled up and packed a small bag of food for him, then went out, making sure the DO NOT DISTURB plaque was still in place.
She drove. She drove all night. She drove to where he’d gotten out of the car, pulling into every café and still-open shop, and then she tried the hotels that were anywhere close to the route, and then she tried the hospitals.
She dreaded telling Lock she’d lost him. She couldn’t really believe that she had. What would Parsifal do if he wasn’t being a Visionary, here in this strange country, no family, no friends? Farooq-Lane was starting to feel like she might have been unkind. If only he’d been easier to like.
The night stretched and pinched in changeable measure: minutes would drag as she coasted through neighborhoods she’d already checked, and then hours would fly by as she leaned on hotel desks asking, Have you seen anyone who looks like this?
It reminded her of the night Lock had found her, the first night she’d lived through after Nathan’s murders. She’d gotten into her car that night, too, because what else was there to do? She wasn’t going to sleep, or watch TV, or read, and the thing about a murder instead of an accident is that there’s no hospital to sit vigil in. There’s just the night, the night, the night. She’d circled and stopped and gone into every place that was open in Chicago in the middle of the night. She collected all the late-night artifacts one could collect: lottery tickets, frothed coffee, old corn dogs, cheap sunglasses like the pair Parsifal had been wearing in the bathtub. Somewhere, she thought, Nathan is out there in this night, and she didn’t know what she would do if she saw him. When she finally got home to her crime-scene row house, Lock had been sitting on the steps waiting for her. I think you need for this to mean something, he’d rumbled.
Call Down the Hawk Page 26
