Nerves of Steel

by Lee Hayton

  “What about if we want to stop, halfway through?”

  I shrugged. “Then let me know. It’s a simple chemical change. To reverse it is easy. If you don’t like what you’re feeling at any time, give me the word, and I’ll put you back to how you were. I’m not here to harm you, Mrs. Pennyworth, nor to take anything away from you. This isn’t open-heart surgery.”

  That raised a small smile on her tight lips, and she nodded again, this time letting her feet carry her out the door. Graham followed along behind her—a move that left me shaking my head. Here I was, scum of the earth, yet he left me alone in a room with enough silver and gold to furnish my rent for a year.

  Picking up another chocolate sandwich cookie to nibble on, I stood up and moved over to look out the French windows. A thin lace curtain hid me from the view of the gardeners working outside. Although the grounds looked well-kept to me, I counted three men moving among the carefully shaped bushes, lawns, and trees.

  A piano sat in the corner of the room, the deep mahogany finish protected from the sun by an extra thermal layer in the curtain nearest it. I traced the edge of the baby grand casing and wondered if anyone would mind if I pulled up the lid and had a tinkle on the keys.

  It had been a long time since I’d last enjoyed the pleasure of making music, but I figured it was close enough to riding a bike. I might be rusty, but music was forgiving, depending what tune you pick to play.

  I decided against it and moved over to the mantelpiece. A series of framed pictures were balanced at regular intervals along the shelf. I picked up one, guessing that the gold tint of the frame wasn’t from gilt, and peered at the tiny figures. I recognized Mr. and Mrs. Pennyworth, and in the far right-hand corner, I fancied that the arm sticking into the frame belonged to Graham. Another couple to the side I knew tangentially through another client—the Waxmores; them of Motorhead magazine fame.

  I replaced the picture and moved farther along the line. The nearer to the fireplace, the higher up the power couples in the photographs seemed to be. My heart skipped a beat as I recognized one—the politician from the news a few nights before. The man who’d stood in front of a free vampire who shouldn’t have been there.

  I turned the frame over, thinking with a flash of idle hope that the name might be imprinted on the back. The family snapshots I remembered from childhood had been labeled that way. Alas, the Pennyworth’s photographs were not.

  “Asha? This is my husband, Andrew.”

  I put the photograph back onto the mantel and turned around with a welcoming smile. I nodded while walking toward the man, then extended my hand in greeting. Instead of taking it, he sniffed and shook his head.

  “Will this take long?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I replied, letting his rudeness pass over me. “If you have a firm appointment that you can’t miss, tell me the time, and I’ll be sure to end the session before then. I can always drop by to finish up if need be.”

  The baleful glare Andrew gave me told me in no uncertain terms that I most certainly could not “drop by to finish up.”

  “Madeline tells me you’re the best marriage counselor in the city.” He looked me up and down, frowning when he saw the obvious joins connecting my faceplates together. “When did you work off your debt?”

  “A few years ago,” I said, lying with the ease of practice. If I grew startled when people asked me unexpected questions, I’d have been back in the empire’s slammer a long time ago.

  “As your wife said”—I inclined my head toward Madeline, oddly pleased to have learned her name, since it suited her so well—“I’m the best in the city at what I do, and that means I charge the highest prices.”

  He flapped his hand at me. Money was such an uncouth subject when you had more of it than you’d ever need. Only the lower segments of society obsessed over their pay, their debts, their cash.

  “If you’ll take a seat, I’ll just take you through a few relaxation techniques first. It allows me to practice my craft more easily when you’re already receptive.”

  I caught the warning look from Madeline at that. She’d told him some of what I was there for, not all.

  Poor bugger. If this chemical alteration did turn out to be the one that I made my first mistake on and rendered Andrew a vegetable, he’d never even know beforehand of the potential risk. I tried not to let the imbalance in knowledge cause too much delight, but it was a hard-fought thing to keep my emotions in check.

  “I don’t know about all this psychological mumbo-jumbo,” Andrew said, settling himself down into a chair, nonetheless. “Just get whatever you’re going to do, over quickly. I have an important politician to brief this afternoon.”

  My eyes flicked back to the photo frame while I put the two of them under. At the best of times, I’m not a great hypnotist, but a little trance goes a long way to help me do what I do best.

  When Andrew and Madeline were in such a relaxed state that they both held their hands in place at my bidding like catatonic patients, I decided to push back my usual tinkering to ask a few pointed questions.

  There’s no harm in it, I justified to myself. Afterward, the couple won’t even remember the slightest thing.

  “Andrew, while I’m getting set up, why don’t you tell me about your briefing later?” I asked. The question was innocuous enough that if he woke up unexpectedly, he might be persuaded of my innocence.

  “I’m meeting with Governor Crawley. He’s a right pain in the ass, but I need his sign-off to be able to win the contracts for first choice, attorney-at-law.”

  I nodded and made a small “hm” to let Andrew know that I was listening if he even cared in that state. The contracts weren’t something I’d dealt with before, but I understood what he meant.

  Although the empire had changed many of the nation’s regulations after inheriting control from the ramshackle government before it, free counsel was still on the books. From what I’d heard, the lawyers provided by the state were more likely to cut a deal to lock you up than mount any kind of genuine defense.

  To win the first-choice contract for the city, would mean a thousand new clients a week flooding through Andrew’s law firm’s doors. Best of all, by settling quickly, they’d flow straight back out again. All that and a bill payable by the empire, whose currency was king.

  Excellent work if you could get it.

  “What do you have to offer the Governor to get that pushed through?”

  Andrew smiled, revealing a neat line of the smallest teeth I’d ever seen. They looked like they should be gracing a child’s mouth. A young child at that.

  “He’s got some friends that have price tags on their heads. I know some people who can fix it so those disappear.” A sneer appeared on Andrew’s upper lip, distorting it into a used ribbon, tossed aside after one use. “If that man had any real notion of power, he’d know how to get that done without me. The fool’s been in office for a decade already and still doesn’t know the basics of how to deal.”

  Just as well. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be getting the earful that I was.

  Time to get to work. I leaned forward and felt for the connective tissue inside Madeline’s mind, following a nerve along to the junction where it meshed and intersected with a thousand others. Those thousand joined a million, became a billion, led to a trillion, and I eased along each pathway until I found the right lock for my key.

  Just as I was about to trigger the chain reaction that would flood endorphins into Madeline’s pleasure centers, a hand gripped onto my shoulder—the fingers pinching tight.

  “Wake up the Pennyworths now,” Graham said in an ominous tone of voice. “I think that this session is at an end.”

  Chapter Seven

  I turned around, placing an innocent expression on my face, and saw instantly that the game was up.

  For my self-respect, it was still worth a try.

  “I’ve not really begun yet,” I said. “I’ve only helped the two of them calm down and then had a short
chat, so they’d relax.”

  Graham wiggled something in his fingers. I squinted, then my stomach dropped to my shoes. He was holding onto a memory card from a recorder.

  Mrs. Pennyworth, more attuned to emotion than her husband, started to stir even though I hadn’t yet issued a command to bring her out. Her blue eyes opened wide, as innocent as a brand-new dawn, and she smiled in genuine pleasure while recognition lit up her face.

  “Asha. You’re still here! I think I fell asleep.” She looked up at Graham and frowned at his thunderous face. Turning back to me she leaned forward and whispered, “Did it work?”

  “Miss Smith was just about to leave,” Graham said, stretching his arm out to cup my elbow in his hand. “I’m afraid that she wasn’t able to do what she promised. However, due to her failure, Asha has agreed to waive her fee.”

  My mouth dropped open, but there was nothing that I could do. The dirty sneak wiggled the damn memory card in his fingers and pulled at my arm.

  I forced a smile on my face to cover the panic. The rent was due, and we had no groceries. Even if I held Earnest off for a few more days, by tomorrow evening the electricity company would cut our power.

  Welcome to freedom. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it blows.

  “At least take the money for the work you’ve done up to now,” Madeline said. Just like earlier, she ducked her head forward so that her fringe formed a shield to hide her face. I wondered how many emotions she hid behind that curtain. From the stiffness in Madeline’s shoulders, it would soon be too many to fit.

  “I can always try again at a later date,” I said. “If it doesn’t work then, of course, it would still be gratis.”

  The hand that Graham cupped my elbow with turned into a vice of unrelenting steel.

  “No, thanks,” Madeline said after a quick glance at Graham’s face. “I think we’ll try to find a different service next time. To be honest, I’m quite relieved that it didn’t work.”

  That emotion at least was genuine. I snapped my fingers under Andrew’s nose and said, “Wake up.” A second later, he blinked and shook his head.

  “Are we done now?”

  It was Madeline that answered. For all I felt sorry for myself as Graham dragged me from the room, it was nothing to the pity I felt for Andrew. His wife answered with a dull voice, “Yes, dear. I think we’re done.”

  “I’m not going to be paid,” I said as soon as I walked into the apartment. Norman barely glanced up before he went back to dancing the cat. He had Miss Tiddles’ front paws up in the air and moved her, so she stepped back, to the side, to the front.

  “Something’ll turn up,” he said with complete equanimity. “It always does.”

  I opened my mouth to protest how this time was different, but sighed instead.

  “I need to get out of here for a while. Do you want anything?”

  “I’m good. You could get Miss Tiddles a toy if you come across any good pet stores.”

  I raised my eyebrows. I couldn’t think of where a single pet store would be in the city, let alone a good one.

  “How old is that cat, anyway?” I asked. “Surely, she’s a bit too old to need toys to play with.”

  That earned me a glare from her sparkling green eyes. I swear, at that moment, I thought she heard and understood me.

  “Get her something with catnip, then.” He grabbed her and pressed a kiss to the side of her belly. “She can get drugged up.”

  “Right.”

  “And you still haven’t gotten the new bags yet. I’ll need those for feeding later this week, remember?”

  Shit! I’d completely forgotten, despite my reassurances to the contrary.

  “How you going to pay for this?”

  I didn’t have the faintest clue, so I just smiled and said, “I’m sure something will turn up.”

  I headed for The Waterside, hoping to catch Mike and maybe wrangle him back into a bit of debt for a good cause. Truth be told, he was the only acquaintance I knew of with a bank account. I could transfer funds with a bit of online manipulation with the agreement of the computer systems involved. I couldn’t stroll into a bank branch and produce the three forms of ID required to open an account.

  Living life on the downlow ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  The new barmaid cast a grumpy look in my direction before jerking her head toward the back office once more. I guessed that Mike and she had had a fling—any reassurance I tried to offer that I didn’t have the slightest interest in touching any of Mike’s man bits would probably go in one ear and straight out the other. When women crushed on Mike, they crushed hard. It was enough to make me occasionally wonder what the giant of a man kept tucked away downstairs.

  “Nope,” he said as soon as I made my case. “No can do. I’ve got an empire audit team threatening to come in here and take my license away as it is.”

  He glared at me, and when I went to sit, he waved me back. No friendly conversation was going to happen here.

  “Did they trace back the transactions?” I asked, genuinely surprised. I’d been sure that the clients I tapped wouldn’t be the slightest bit interested.

  Mike snorted. “Not everything is about you, my dear. They’re putting the squeeze on me so I’ll keep my mouth shut, nothing more.”

  “So, if that’s all, you can easily lend me a few coins against a future client payout.”

  My logic was sound, my need was great, but the stubborn man just shook his head.

  “I can’t do that.” He tapped the end of a pencil on the desk, starting softly and ending up jamming it into the wood so hard that the eraser bent at a drunken angle.

  When he spoke again, his voice was so soft I had to lean forward to hear it. “Did you have something to do with the Pennyworths?”

  Fucking hell, that information had moved fast. I frowned and shrugged. “I had a gig lined up with them, but they changed their minds. I think the wife decided it was just as easy to walk out and start again as to have him back in love with her.”

  “I’m not talking about your sideline,” Mike said. “I’m talking about asking questions when I’d warned you to keep your trap shut.”

  “I just…” My words trailed off as my inventive mind failed to deliver.

  “Yeah, you just. You just dropped me in it.”

  This time, I was genuinely confused. “I never mentioned your name—I wouldn’t do that. How on earth would a few questions about a legal contract have led anyone back to you?”

  Mike snorted and snapped the pencil in half. “Because, my dear, the people we’re dealing with here are a lot smarter than you give them credit for.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “They must be trailing you. Pass by any good CCTV lately?”

  This time, I sat down in his chair, despite not having an invitation. My legs shook too much to keep me on my feet.

  I bent forward, shielding my face with my hands while I tried to think. With my eyes closed, I retraced my journey. But was it just today they were looking or had it been all week?

  “Fuck me,” I said, sitting upright. “What the hell is going on here?”

  Mike leaned forward, his muscular chest pressing against the desktop. “What’s going on here is that you asked me for information you shouldn’t have, and now we’re both in the shit.”

  Except we weren’t both in the shit. Mike had roots in this community. Maybe shallow, it’s the nature of the place, but they’d spread out wide after so many years here. People would come to his aid, obfuscate on his behalf. Whoever was behind this operation could give a few good shoves, but they wouldn’t knock him off his feet.

  Me, on the other hand… Well, if they came for me, I was finished.

  “I need some money,” I said. “If I can’t pay my rent soon, then I’ll be turned out onto the street.”

  “Yeah, boohoo. Tell your troubles to someone who doesn’t have his own.” Mike turned his gaze up and let his glance linger as he eyed me up and down. “If you get thrown out on t
he street, I’m sure you could always land in someone else’s bed.”

  I opened my mouth to retort, then closed it again. The exhaustion that had been nibbling at my heels the past couple of days opened its jaws and took a proper bite.

  If I kept talking now, I might reveal that there was more than me living in the apartment to worry about. Norman didn’t deserve to be outed. Not even to a man who knew how to keep a secret better than most.

  “Are there any jobs coming up on the grapevine?”

  Mike snorted. “After the number, you did on the Pennyworths today? Count yourself lucky you’re still roaming around free.”

  He leaned over the table, tapping his finger on the polished wood.

  “When you rely on word of mouth as your sole form of advertising, it pays to not piss off your richest clients. The Pennyworths had turned your name to mud before you even rode out of their manor gates.”

  Damn it. I knew it was true. I could build my clientele up again, I’d done it from scratch before. The lousy timing was the biggest roadblock. That, and my continued curiosity about what the hell was going on.

  “You may want to lay low for a couple of days,” Mike continued. The man was just full of good tidings. “Stay indoors and keep your head down. The Pennyworths have their spies out and about already. Best they don’t catch you on the street.”

  From bad to worse.

  “Can you loan us a couple of bags of chips and nuts, or something?” I asked as my stomach growled. “I’m starving, and since you won’t lend me any of that money I saved you, I can’t afford to buy any food.”

  “Ask Gwen on the way out,” Mike said, jerking his head toward the door. “She’ll fix you up with something.”

  As I got to the door, he cleared his throat, and I turned back, ever hopeful.

  “Don’t come in here for a few months, okay, doll? It’s better that we don’t drag each other down.”

  I nodded and turned away before he could see my girly tears. Stupid face never knew when its teenage hormones weren’t wanted.