Second Guess (The Girl in the Box Book 39)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Sure,” I said, “though I probably won't be able to receive it until I get a new phone–”

  A beep and buzz from my pocket surprised me. I fished out my phone, which had at least four black spots suggesting it had absorbed voltage with me, to find–

  The damned screen was lit. And I had thirty plus notifications.

  “Sonofa,” I said, opening it up. The newest was a photo from Jamal. It was me, my hair much tamer and less fried, looking very seriously at a map of Texas. He'd taken it at DPS, before the incident at the Ship Channel and the refinery. I shook my phone delicately, and it didn't make any noise of components jangling, or burst into flames. “Well done, Cassidy.”

  “She's a smart one,” Jamal said. “Probably knew what kind of stuff you tend to run into in the course of your duties.”

  “And she didn't wiretap me?” I shook it again, as if that would reveal any spying or maybe cause it to fritz out.

  “Not that I could find, and I gave it a pretty deep crawl,” Jamal said. “Looked to me like she just built you a deluxe model. I mean, the screen isn't even cracked yet.”

  I looked at the screen, at what I'd assumed was a crack. With a wipe of my finger, the line smudged and disappeared. “Hm.”

  “I'm sure you'll burn it to death or something soon,” Augustus added, so helpfully. He was holding a cold compress to that nasty cut on his head. He looked over, then down at the phone. “Damn, girl. Don't you ever check your messages?”

  “Oh, right,” I said, turning back to my notifications. I had four voicemails. Three from Lethe, one from a Washington DC number. I picked that one first, and the voicemail auto-transcribed the message before I had even fully finished clicking it. “The case just went federal,” I said, reading it. “FBI is officially taking the fore. Texas DPS is being asked to relinquish or take second seat, which I'm sure they will. I've got a contact number for the FBI agent quarterbacking it from DC–”

  “Old friend of yours?” Jamal asked.

  “I don't really have any friends left in the FBI that I know of,” I said, thinking about it. “Two of the members of my unit died in the line of duty, I arrested the other and she's awaiting arraignment in DC. My old boss would probably deny knowing me at this point, so...” I shook my head.

  “Things are heating up,” Augustus opined.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Can one of you get ahold of Olivia and Angel in New York? I'd like to get them on standby in case the next hit lands up that way. Then touch base with Kat and Eilish, see if they're in NoDak yet and tell them to stick by the phone, too.” I chewed over some thoughts about that, but decided leaving them all where they were was probably safest. It was entirely possible our villains would decide to hit New York or New Jersey or somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard next, in which case dragging Olivia and Angel down to Texas would actually set back our efforts to confront them.

  “I see you're taking charge with your brother out,” Augustus said snidely. But he already had his phone in hand, dialing up a contact that read Angel.

  “Aren't you used to me wearing my bossypants by now?” I asked, giving him shit right back. He cracked a smile, then Angel answered and he started talking to her.

  I clicked the next voicemail, then the next – both boilerplate WHERE R U?!? style inquiries from my grandmother. I texted her the name and address of our hotel, added the hospital bit so she could be sure she came to the right one, then deleted all the voicemails. I had a feeling if things continued apace, that sucker would fill up soon, and I'd need the space.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  The knock at my door was loud and commanding, filled with impatience and irritation. I could tell all this not just from the resonant noises of knuckles on steel, but because it continued, loudly, long after the first few thumps, as I tossed aside the wash cloth with which I'd been scrubbing my face and yelled, “Keep your damned pants on, I'm coming!”

  I threw open the door after only a glance through the peephole. To my utter lack of surprise, it was–

  “Finally,” Lethe sighed, strolling in like she owned the place. She had a bag on each shoulder and shoved one of them into my breadbox, causing me to grunt in surprise at the sudden, unexpected violence of the maneuver. She looked around the room twice, then tossed her own bag on the bed by the window.

  “I answered the door as quick as I could,” I said, looking at the bag she'd thrust at me. “Hey, is this...?”

  “I picked it up from your friend's house before I got on my first plane,” Lethe said, almost growling. “Figured you might need some clothes that fit you.” She stared at my face and hair. “Did you stick a power cord up your ass?”

  “Fought a damned Thor,” I said, mussing my fingers through my hair which was, indeed, more full-bodied and frizzed than usual. As much as I complained about it under normal conditions, it had really gone to the next level here. “And I forgot to channel my nominal, weak tea immunity to it, so I kinda took the brunt.”

  “Explains why your heart rhythm is slightly off,” she said, keeping her distance, like I'd zap her with residual juice if she got close. “Don't worry. It'll stabilize overnight.”

  “Good to know.” I tossed my bag onto the bed nearest the bathroom and started rifling through it. “And I wasn't worried.”

  “About anything, it seems,” she said. “Since you damned sure didn't seem to be concerned about me catching up with you.”

  I froze, then turned to her, a weathered T-shirt in my hand. “I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were going to fly to an airport across the state from where I actually was in North Dakota. I was preoccupied with the job. My bad, okay? And I told you about Texas almost as soon as I knew.”

  Lethe's eyes narrowed. “Count yourself lucky it's the modern age, my dear, complete with modern sensibilities about violence and child-rearing, because this is the sort of shit that Hades happily killed his own offspring for.”

  “Lemme say this in a way you'll understand – mea culpa, all right?” I threw my hands up in surrender. “I screwed up. I didn't act with consideration toward you, and you ended up driving and flying across the damned country because of it. My fault. I got my head stuck in a case and...” I shrugged. “Sorry. It's a personality flaw of mine. I'm not working on it, though, so please don't expect different results in the future. Off the clock, I'm very considerate of the people around me. On the job...” I shrugged broadly. “All other, more personal considerations get...unconsidered.”

  She looked like she was about to pop a vein in her head, standing with her arms crossed, fury just dripping off of her, but with a sigh the tension lifted off her by at least seventy-five percent. “I guess I can understand that.”

  “Yeah, just imagine it's like your olden days of charging into battle on a horse or whatever,” I said, turning back to my bag.

  “My horse had wings,” Lethe muttered under her breath, “and I wish she was still around, because flying commercial is, as you weirdos say, 'ass.'”

  I paused in my rummage. “Wait, your horse had wings?”

  She handwaved that away, like I'd just forget she'd admitted to owning a Pegasus in her Valkyrie days. “Tell me what we're up against here.”

  “Pure joy,” I said. “We had a plasma burner, now dead–”

  “Good work. Those are tough.”

  “That was Augustus, actually, and don't celebrate yet. The succubus absorbed plasma guy before he died.”

  “So she's unleashed?” Lethe asked, eyes widening a little.

  “She has used the plasma power,” I said, “so yes. She's unleashed.”

  “I hate unleashed succubi so much,” Lethe said, adding swear words in additional languages, some of which I knew, some I didn't.

  “Tell me about it,” I agreed, plopping onto the bed, ass-first.

  My grandmother settled into silence for a moment. “Except us, of course.”

  “Of course. Because we're awesome.”

  “Exactly.” She had a glint in her eyes. />
  “So...” I sighed. “Any chance this chick is related to us?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “...Maybe?”

  “I don't exactly keep a genealogy on hand,” Lethe said. “When you have as many kids as my siblings have, it gets hard to keep track. The family tree isn't exactly a shrub.”

  “What about direct relations?” I asked, doing a little fishing.

  “Describe her for me.” Lethe folded her arms in front of her, and I got the feeling there was a little stonewalling going on. A hint of defiance was my clue.

  “Dark hair, brown eyes,” I said. “Skinny as–”

  “Not one of ours.”

  I froze. “Wait. Did you say that because...?”

  She slapped her own ass, which...I mean, it wasn't huge, but wasn't the near-nothing that Skinny Succubus was carrying around. “We're not a small-hipped family, my dear. We have at least a little 'junk in the trunk.'”

  “Nice,” I said, feeling along my own hip a little self-consciously.

  “I don't think we have many...direct relations...left,” Lethe said, easing a little closer to me. She'd switched quickly between standoffish and oddly comforting, and it was nearly seamless. “Between your mom and Charlie and the general loathing held for succubi and incubi by most metas pre-Sovereign...” She stared off into the distance. “...Well, there just weren't that many of us to begin with before the extinction.”

  “The fact that these four powered people came together can't be coincidence,” I said. “They either met up because of their powers, like it was the common thread that brought them together, or else–”

  “They got them after they joined up and found their common purpose,” she said. “Which is, I have to assume, related to environmentalism in some way?”

  “Seems so,” I said. “Based on their choice of targets, the things they've said about carbon.”

  “Carbon?” Lethe made a face. “The element?”

  “How detached are you from the world?” I asked. “Climate change. Their cause is climate change.”

  She was still making the face. “Do they actually believe that Malthusian bullshit?”

  “Uhhhh...I assume so?” I felt a little like she'd just struck me in the head. “I take it by your tone that you don't?”

  She snorted. “'Climate change.' That's what they call it now. I remember when it was just global warming, which was, I think, around the year 2000, maybe a little before – it gets muddled for me because they were also predicting the complete extinction of the rainforests around that time, which...still waiting on that, because, me? I hate rainforests. Oxygen is so overrated.”

  I couldn't keep the creeping frown off my face. “You seem to feel strongly about this.”

  “I was kidding about the oxygen thing,” she snapped, “but not about the rainforest alarmism. Before global warming they were predicting a new ice age, did you know that?” She paced over to the window and pushed open the curtains. “It's all part of the same piece, though – the world is always coming to an end. Forgive me if I don't rush out and panic this second.”

  “There's...I mean, there's real evidence that this is happening,” I said. “Admittedly, not as fast as some of the doomsayers predict, but temperatures are warming.”

  “Maybe they are.” Lethe shrugged broadly. “I'm not saying it isn't. I just have a jaded eye toward it because the people bleating loudest about it aren't the scientists, whose interest is in both the science and the solutions that might fix it.” Her eyes gleamed. “The people screaming about it are politicians and elites who have 'solutions' that align perfectly with what they want to do anyway, that involve transferring power to them, that don't actually fix the things they say are going wrong. These are the people who ride around in private planes and live in houses that give off more carbon in a day than the average person does in a week.”

  I fanned my face, which suddenly felt hot. “Ouch. Well.”

  “Yeah, I have strong feelings,” she said. “I'm cynical. And old. Don't let it get to you.”

  “That's just...wow,” I said. “Sorry...I don't feel the same.”

  “I don't care and you don't have to,” she said. “To be brutally honest, I'd think you were an idiot if you believed all the same things as your grandmother. Or that you were brainwashed.” She waved a hand at me. “Anyway, we don't have to argue about this. Like I said, I don't necessarily disagree with your premise. I'm just...wary of those who never waste putting a crisis to work for their own benefit, and pissed off from days of traveling.” She sagged onto the bed. “What's your plan?”

  I chewed my lip. “I don't know. I'd like to try and understand these villains better. I feel like if I did, maybe I could predict their next move.”

  “What's your sense for that? Absent trying to get into their crazy heads?”

  “Well...” I cocked my head, thinking about that. “I...could get inside their heads, couldn't I?” I thought about Skinny Succubus. “I could visit that succubus's dreams, couldn't I?”

  “If you think that's the best idea,” Lethe said. She didn't seem certain.

  “The guy that's left is the leader, I think. The Thor – Punk Rock Chick – she lost a foot. She's bound to be in pain.” I chewed my lip. “Yeah. Yeah, I think the succubus is the right one to make contact with. She feels...I don't know. Sort of on the edge. She ran at our first encounter. Maybe...maybe she's not as all in on this as I thought. Or maybe...” I felt a new determination slip into me. “...Maybe I can flip her.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  “Hey, weirdo,” I said, figuring I'd open up my dreamwalk with Skinny Succubus on the right note – confrontation.

  Skinny Succubus was standing in the middle of a field of infinite darkness, blinking in surprise as she looked around. I'd chosen the setting with an eye toward ominousness. There was no light source whatsoever, and that left her stuck with me in a place she hadn't traveled to, and where she couldn't even see the person speaking to her.

  I imagined it would have a chilling effect on her – for however long it lasted.

  “Where are you...?” she whispered. I could see her perfectly, but she peered into the darkness that surrounded her.

  “Everywhere,” I said, my voice shaking the dream.

  Her eyes went wide, panicked. She looked around frantically. Seeing me was an element of control for her, and she was desperately seeking it.

  “What's your name?” I asked, in that same voice. I made it shake her right down to the bone.

  I'd always used dreamwalking as a chance to talk to my friends in circumstances where I couldn't actually talk to them. Occasionally, I'd confronted a villain this way. Like Jaime Chapman, though with him I'd added the twist of catfishing him.

  But with the knowledge that Lethe had just added to my repertoire, I was about to pull out some serious stops and make this dreamwalk one that she was unlikely to forget, ever. Unless I ripped the memory out of her head.

  “Scout,” she whispered. It was low, breathy, terrified.

  I heard it anyway. Right now I could hear everything in this constructed world of dreams. Well, dream for me, nightmare for her.

  “That's easier than saying 'Skinny Succubus' but harder than 'SS.'”

  She blinked, face creased with fear. “I...I...”

  A shadowed outline of someone appeared next to her, casting light into the darkness.

  I looked away; my form was illuminated, and Scout was now looking right at me.

  “Shit,” I muttered. Under my breath.

  “I heard that,” Scout said. She was looking right at me; her fear had subsided, and now she was peering at me with distinct...interest.

  “She ain't so scary now, is she?” The figure next to her was a man, slightly ghostly as he shed his light. It didn't take a rocket scientist to work out who he was – plasma guy, the one Augustus had cut down to size.

  “Listen, hobbit,” I said, pointing at him, “By which I mean you are literal
ly half a man now – this is an A – B conversation, so why don't you C yourself out?”

  I caught a flash of a grin. “I'm not going anywhere without my lady here.”

  “Oh, were you two...together?” I pointed between the two of them. “In life, I mean?”

  Scout exchanged an uncertain look. “No, I mean...”

  “Oh, whew, I was gonna say,” I pretended to be greatly relieved. “I figured after catching the other two boinking in the control room that maybe you guys were just acting out one big couples' therapy session. But I see it now – your flying guy and the lightning Punk Rock Chick are the couple, you two are the third and fourth wheel.”

  Scout's eyebrows looked as though they might creep up into her hairline. “You...you didn't...” The lines of her face snapped into anger. “You're lying!”

  “About what?” I could sense the pain, and I moved to press it harder to her. “Catching your friends going at it like a pair of teens on lover's lane? I wish I hadn't seen it. I can't un-see it. But unfortunately, it's in here.” An idea occurred to me. “You know what? Since I have to live with that imagery in my head, how about I share the pain?”

  The darkness around us disappeared, replaced by the control room as it had appeared when I'd burst in with Jamal and Reed. I spared no embarrassing detail, dumping my memory, bright and clear, into the middle of the dreamwalk.

  Every little sight.

  Every noise.

  Every smell.

  Scout and the ghostly guy watched the short replay, and I stopped it after our two players got their pants up. I didn't add any fluff, but I did omit the audio of my stuttering and freezing.

  “Whew,” I said, when it had played out. “Gotta admit. That was one of the more awkward situations I've ever stepped into in my life.” I made a show of wiping my brow.

  Scout's face was ashen. Even in the dreamwalk, where she had no blood, it looked like it had all drained from her face.