Water to Burn

by Katharine Kerr

  “Fail!” Michael said. “Clean that up!”

  Or-Something whimpered, and the puddle of green slime dried up and disappeared without leaving a stain.

  “Nice trick, bro,” I said.

  “Thanks.” Michael rummaged in his jeans pocket, brought out a couple of linty M&Ms, and gave them to the critter. “It can learn stuff, but you’ve got to be seriously patient with it.”

  “Yeah, I bet. How does it make the mess disappear, or do you know?”

  “I think it just dumps it in another world, probably the one it comes from, wherever that is.”

  “So it can move things between worlds?”

  “I guess.” Michael shrugged and held out his hands palm-up. “It can’t talk, so I dunno for sure.”

  I opened a cardboard box of Ari’s clothes and set it on the bed where I could unpack more easily. Or-Something started to sniff the cardboard in a suspicious manner. When Michael snapped his fingers, it disappeared, much to my relief.

  “There was something I wanted to ask you,” Michael said. “About Lisa.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one in the deviant level. I’ve sort of broken up with the one here.”

  “Just sort of? You mean: she doesn’t know it yet.”

  He winced. I spent a few seconds rejoicing that I was no longer a teenager.

  “But anyway,” Michael said, “the one there, y’know? I was wondering if I could bring her here.”

  “Say what?”

  “Help her start a new life, y’know? She’s stuck in that crappy world, working as a—a—” He braced himself. “A whore, really, a cheap whore, and she’s too good for that.”

  “They’re all too good for it, the women who get forced into prostitution. Look, Mike, when you say ‘cheap whore’ you’re being really judgmental. She’s got to do what she’s doing to survive.”

  “Well, yeah, I know that. I just didn’t think, like, you would.”

  “I’m not judging her. Women have worked in the sex industry practically forever.”

  “Thanks. But I still want her to stop doing it. She sure wants to stop.”

  “Good for you and her, but getting her the new life isn’t going to be easy. She’ll be an illegal immigrant. Her life’s going to be one long juggling act.”

  “Yeah, but the family knows how to do that, because of—”

  “Careful!” I paused to look around. “You never know who’s going to be listening.”

  “Sorry, yeah.”

  Michael went to the bedroom door, glanced out into the hall, then shut it. I waited to speak until he’d come back to the closet. He handed me one of Ari’s shirts from the box on the bed. I put it on a hanger.

  “She’ll even need a new name,” I said. “She can’t use Lisa, because there’s a Lisa already here who’s just like her. Who is her, really.”

  “She knows that. And I meant to ask you, what if she did come here, and then ran into the other Lisa? If they met and like maybe shook hands, would they explode or something?”

  “I’ve got no idea. I’ll ask NumbersGrrl.”

  “Thanks, yeah, she might know. Lisa’s always wished she was named Sophia, she told me. She read it in a book somewhere.”

  “She can read, then.”

  “Yeah, when the gang girls take in a baby, they try to raise it right.”

  Except, of course, for expecting these children to end up hustling on the streets or running some other scam, but I kept that thought to myself. What choice did they have, really?

  “Anyway,” Michael went on, “I thought maybe you could get her fake papers. Like, through the Agency.”

  “You do realize, don’t you, that you’re asking me to commit a felony?”

  “A felony?” He gaped at me. “But if the Agency—”

  “The Agency is not God. It has to operate within certain guidelines, for instance, the laws of this country. Getting fake papers for an illegal alien is frowned upon by your typical district attorney. As we all know.”

  “Well, yeah.” He handed me another shirt to hang up.

  “There’s also a person whose permission you’d have to get.”

  “I already asked. Aunt Eileen talked about Mary Magdalene and then said yes. She’d never let a girl live like that when she could take her in and help.”

  “I should have known.” I paused for a long sigh. “I take it Lisa wants to leave and come here.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “You have a point, but look, if we do this, and I do mean if, buster, she’s going to be the only one. You cannot bring your entire gang.”

  “I know that. Once she’s here, I’ll never go back. I promise. It’s too dangerous. You were right about that.”

  “Occasionally, my aged brain comes up with the right answer, huh?”

  “You bet. It’s not just the rads, though there’s that.”

  “You told me about the cops and the gangs. Life there must be pretty violent.”

  “Unless you’re rich. But—” He paused again, frowning at the floor, thinking something through. “I don’t know what this is, like, all about, but José’s been making some weird hints, about something I could do and like maybe make a lot of money.” He looked up. “I just keep changing the subject. I don’t know why, but whatever it is creeps me out.”

  “That creepy feeling’s a warning. Your talents are coming online, all right. Doesn’t Lisa know what José means?”

  “If she does, she won’t tell me, not yet anyway. No one else is going to tell me anything, that’s for sure.” Michael paused, then smiled like a man with three aces and a pair of kings. “She’s got all kinds of information you can use, about the levels and gates and stuff. She told me she wouldn’t tell me until we said she could come through, but I believe her.”

  I couldn’t blame a girl in Lisa’s position for bargaining. I would have done the same in her place. I still felt like smacking the clever little darling across the face.

  Michael was watching me with large hopeful blue eyes. So, what do you do when your baby brother—the one you bottle fed, changed, pushed in a stroller, walked to his first day of school, taught to ride a bike, helped with his homework, and so on down the whole cruddy maternal list—comes to you because his first real girlfriend lives in desperate circumstances and you can help get her out?

  “Oh, all right.” I took the bargain. “Let me see what I can do. If the Agency ever sends a team to seal off that gate, I want you and Lisa on our side of it, so we’d better get moving.”

  “Thanks, Nola!” Michael beamed at me, then threw his arms around me and hugged. “You’re the best sister ever in both of the worlds. I’m hella stoked! Seriously!”

  I returned the squeeze, but I felt like a complete sucker, not thanks to any psychic talent, but Just Because. As soon as everyone else began eating, I filed a report with Y. I requested his help with getting Sophia a U.S. passport or at least, a green card that she could eventually use to apply for citizenship. I emphasized that the girl had crucial information to trade for the papers. Beyond that, as I told Michael, we could only wait and see what the Agency decided.

  Late that night, after the last of the pizza was eaten and everyone had gone home, Ari and I sat on the old blue couch and contemplated the big stack of folded-down boxes. Outside, the rain began with its usual cozy patter.

  “I did something really stupid this afternoon,” I said.

  “Agreed to help Michael and his girlfriend, yes.” Ari said. “I suppose this information the girl has will be worth it.”

  “It better be! He must have told—” A sudden suspicion appeared in my mind. “Or do you have the bedroom bugged?”

  “No, of course I don’t! The office downstairs is on the security system, but I’ve blocked off the sounds from our bedroom. Simple decency and all that. Can’t have you scaring the neighbors.”

  I was too tired to kick him. “But about Michael—”

  “Yes, he did tell me. He asked me if I c
ould get the papers if you couldn’t. Your brother’s entirely too clever.”

  “You mean, he doesn’t believe you only work for Interpol?”

  “Exactly. I told him that if he let one wrong word slip, they’d find his body on a lonely hillside.” Ari stretched his legs out in front of him, a somehow melancholy gesture. “I doubt if he believed that, though.”

  “Do you think you could get her the papers?”

  “If she were Jewish, we could cover her under the Right of Return, but according to Michael, she’s not. Why?”

  “Just a vain moment of hope that I could pass the buck. Oh, well, if I end up in federal prison, will you visit me?”

  “I’ll do better than that.” He put an arm around my shoulders and drew me close. “I’ll smuggle you out of the country before they catch you. I know how to get a new identity for you.”

  “You’re wonderful.”

  “I’m glad to see you recognize that.”

  He smiled, and I kissed him. We didn’t do much talking the rest of the evening.

  At ten o’clock the next morning, I was unpacking glassware in the kitchen when my uncle, Father Keith, the Franciscan priest, called me. His first words, not even a hello, were, “Is Michael using drugs?”

  “He told you about Lisa?”

  “He told me a strange tale about a girl of that name.”

  “It’s all true, the deviant world levels, his sweetheart in one of them, the works.”

  “Did her parents really dump her in an empty lot when she was two days old?”

  “They did, yeah, because of her club foot. It happens a lot over there.”

  Father Keith was silent for so long that I began to wonder if we’d lost the connection.

  “Too bad it’s true,” he said eventually. “I’d know what to do if he were using drugs.”

  “Why did he call you, anyway?”

  “To see if I’d make her a fake baptismal certificate.”

  It occurred to me that Michael was going to be a firstclass operative at the Agency once he officially joined up. “Will you?” I said. “After all, you’ve done it before.”

  “My sins haunt me. How badly do you need it?”

  “Let’s just say it would be a great first step in a long process. You’d be helping save this poor girl from a life of sin. She’s being forced to work as a prostitute.”

  “Yes, Michael made sure to cite the example of Mary Magdalene. Let me think about this.”

  He hung up before I could say anything else. The abrupt end to the call put me off guard when the phone rang again. I clicked on, expecting it to be Father Keith. Instead, Caleb said hello. It took me a moment to gather my mind. Once I did, I felt profoundly uncomfortable, even though Caleb sounded pleasant and businesslike.

  “Sorry about the phone tag,” he said. “I had to go out of town for a couple of days. Some unexpected business dealings.”

  “Well, we were moving, too,” I said. “Not a problem.”

  “Good, good. That’s always a real chore, all right.”

  I pinpointed the problem as the distinct feeling that someone else was listening in to the call. It was nothing so clear-cut as the sound of breathing, or even that slight hollowness of sound that occurs when an eavesdropper’s on a second phone, but I felt it nonetheless.

  “Now, about that lunch date,” I said, “I’ll be unpacking for the rest of today. Tomorrow? Sunday?”

  “Tomorrow would be best for me. Where are you living now? Is there some place good nearby? We want a place that’s quiet so we can talk.”

  “For sure. None of those bright shiny places where everyone sounds like shrieking parrots. We’re in the outer avenues, near Noriega.”

  “Okay, then I know where we should meet.” Caleb paused for a strangely high-pitched laugh. “How about the Cliff House? The dining room, not that burger place. It’s about as old-fashioned quiet as you can get.”

  “Sounds good. One o’clock?”

  “Perfect. I’ll see you then.”

  We ended the call. I continued unpacking while I went back over the conversation in my mind in order to decipher my feeling of discomfort. In their elaborate security system, Ari and Itzak had included the “interference generator” that protected cell phones conversations and other wireless communications, which made a tap in unlikely. The listener, therefore, had to be in Caleb’s mind, or attached to his consciousness one way or another as a psychic wiretap, as it were. The obvious candidate: Brother Belial.

  I suspected that I was going to meet him at lunch, too, whether he was present physically or not. When I considered Caleb’s odd laugh, I remembered that the Cliff House stood just down the hill from the place where Doyle and Johnson died. Either Caleb’s sense of humor was even stranger than Ari’s, or the thought made him real nervous.

  Although Father Keith never called me back, a couple of hours before sunset, he did drive over in a borrowed red SUV full of werewolves. Since the moon would be full that night, the Hounds of Heaven, as they called their pack, had gone to Father Keith’s protection the day before. All five of them sat decorously in their seats inside the SUV, each wearing a doggie safety harness, Lawrence in the front seat, JoEllen, Matt, Ryan, and Samantha in the seats behind. Each also had a leather collar, decorated with a dog license tag and a small silver cross.

  Keith himself was wearing his floor-length brown Franciscan robes. He’s neither tall nor short, a compact, solid-looking man with curly gray hair, tonsured of course, and pale blue eyes. When I went outside to greet them, I noticed the window of the downstairs apartment next door, which looked our way from right across the driveway. Instead of the usual drawn curtains, I saw faces plastered against the glass, staring.

  “It’s warm down in town today,” Keith said. “Since I was coming all the way out here, I thought I’d take the pack to the beach for a run.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “What’s with the crosses on the collars?”

  “Just something to help them keep their focus. It’s not easy for them, keeping the chaotic side of their nature under control.”

  I helped him unlatch the wolves from their safety harnesses. They bounded out of the SUV one by one, shook themselves, and began sniffing around the sidewalk and the steps like ordinary dogs, tails wagging, tongues lolling. Of course, they all looked like wolves, not dogs, and they were all larger than Great Danes and stockier than St. Bernards, especially Lawrence, the alpha male. When I glanced at the building next door, I saw that the neighbors in the upstairs apartment had also come to their windows to stare. I gave them the sorority girl wave, that is, hold your hand up straight and waggle only the fingers, but they didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed.

  “Why not come with us?” Father Keith said. “We haven’t had a chance to talk in a long time.”

  I hesitated, tempted by the thought of fresh air and exercise. “I dunno,” I said, “Ari’s at the gym, and I should wait till he gets back.”

  Keith raised an eyebrow. “What’s this? He keeps you on a leash? I could get you one of those ornamented collars.”

  “Very funny! Ha ha. But no, I’m worried about rogue waves. Did you hear about that girl who drowned not far from here, and then the lawyer down by the Ferry Building?”

  “I did. You don’t think the waves were natural.”

  “I sure don’t. I don’t want another one coming for me.”

  “Well, it should be low tide now, according to this morning’s paper.”

  “Okay.” I realized that if a wave did erupt, I’d be able to confirm my theory, assuming I got out of the way in time. “I really should take a look at the ocean, anyway.”

  “I could pray to Maria Stella Maris for protection,” Father Keith said. “Or we could just go to the park.”

  “No, let’s try the beach. I’d better leave Ari a note. I’ll run upstairs and be right back.”

  “Wait a minute.” Father Keith leaned into the van and took a piece of paper out of the glove
compartment. “You’d better put this somewhere safe inside. Oh, and get yourself a sweatshirt. The wind’s going to be chilly.”

  The paper was a baptismal certificate for one Sophia Chekov, dated sixteen years earlier and artfully stained with weak tea to age the paper. He’d put a couple of crumples in it, too, and rubbed a little dust along one edge.

  “Why is her birthplace listed as Kiev?” I said. “And why was she baptized in Italy?”

  “Italy because I was there that year. Kiev because Michael wanted it that way. He’s got a scheme in mind.”

  “I see. It’s a good thing you joined the church. The criminal element would have been real glad to employ you if you’d given them the chance.”

  “Just go get the sweatshirt, will you? My wolves are getting restless.”

  Since the beach was so close, we walked. The Hounds formed up into a tidy pack and sauntered ahead of us until we crossed the Great Highway. On its western edge we climbed the low rise of dunes, covered in ice plant, sea grass, and assorted weeds, and looked down onto Ocean Beach itself. A cool wind smacked us with the scent of dead and decaying ocean critters that most people call the “fresh smell of the sea.”

  The tide, just at its lowest point, rolled white foam onto the long stretch of pale beige sand, littered with dead kelp and driftwood. At a distance to our right, far up the misty beach, a few people were strolling on the firm sand at water’s edge. Otherwise, we saw no one but a flock of sandpipers.

  At the smell and the wild view, the pack broke ranks. With yips and muffled howls, they raced down the rise, slipping now and then in the soft dry sand, and headed for the water’s edge. The sandpipers threw themselves into the air and flew away. I noticed, though, that Lawrence hung back, trotting after the others with his tail and head held low, still mourning his slain mate.

  “Be careful!” Father Keith yelled after the wolves. “Remember who you are!”

  We followed more decorously. Down by the water the air felt a lot colder than it had on the city streets. I zipped up my orange sweatshirt, and Father Keith pulled up the cowl of his robe. When I looked out to sea, I spotted a thick gray line at the horizon.