by M. R. Forbes
"What do you mean?"
I sat down next to her, leaning forward and putting my elbows on my knees. I coughed into my hands, and shifted against a small tightening in my gut. "My friend was a ghost. She saved my life. I wasn't a necromancer then. I wound up hearing the fields later, once I got more sick. A guy like me... career options are kind of limited."
"How long have you been sick?"
"A lot longer than I was supposed to be. If God had His way, I would have been dead years ago."
"Do you believe in God?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think about it much. Do you?"
She didn't hesitate. "No. God wouldn't have played such a cruel trick on man, letting us think we were His children, and then showing us the monsters that we truly are. For all the plots and schemes of the Houses, we aren't the ones intended to inherit this world. What happened to my aunt is proof of that."
"What do you mean?"
"The human beast desires power, and the thirst for power breeds chaos, however much we may try to pretend we control it. When the reversal first occurred, everyone was frightened, and when people are scared they are able to come together, to work towards a common goal. To form bonds to the familiar, and ostracize the unknown.
"Today, the new world is understood. We have adapted to this environment. We stay inside at night, we don't stray into the forests unarmed. The fear is eroded. Now those who know of the Houses are losing their fear of our power as well. It starts with House Red. Do you think it will end there? It is only fitting that they are using monsters."
I didn't completely agree with her, but I didn't completely disagree either. "There have always been tyrants, maniacs, outsiders. For every doctor working to save a life, there's an evil son of a bitch looking to take one. If it's us or them, let's make sure it's them."
She smiled and reached out, putting her hand on my arm. "I told you the Houses would be cautious. Like I said before, I don't want to be cautious, Phantom. Of all the Houses, Red is in the best position to be bold."
I put my hand on hers and turned towards her. "Then be bold, but not stupid. We're at a huge disadvantage right now, and we need to shore up our defense and work from the shadows until we know what we're up against."
She looked me in the eye, her expression thoughtful. I expected her to say something, but instead she excused herself and vanished into the bathroom.
I was left with the distinct feeling that there was something she wasn't telling me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I thought things were bad before.
"Woo! I mean I've seen some crazy digs before, but this shit is like freak central," Amos said, the moment I opened the door to let him and Dannie into our suite.
He was kind of what I expected. Overweight, a bit sloppy, with a multitude of scruffy chins and a massive face. His hair was all over the place, in a weird kind of wild afro, and he wore a heavy leather duster that I was sure covered a hidden armory.
"You must be Conor. Anybody told you that you look like shit?"
I glanced down at Danelle, and she mouthed the words 'I told you so'.
"I've heard it one or two times, yeah."
I moved aside so she could roll in. Jin was sitting on the couch, leaned back with her knees in her arms. A relaxed, defensive position. She must have heard Amos say my name. Oh well, it was out of the ordinary, but so was everything else about this job.
"You gonna invite me in?" Amos asked, following it up with a throaty guffaw. "Could use a nice soft cushion. My ass is killing me after riding in that piece of shit van of yours. And the smell... fucking thought something died in that rattle trap."
I wanted to get Danelle alone, to ask her what the hell she was thinking. I could picture her reaming me out, because it wasn't like she had a lot of choices. "So, Amos... You planning on sticking around? Dannie told me you owed her a favor."
"She told me you were working a job, a big-time job. Heh, I didn't even realize she'd found a boy-toy to run her jobs for her, and an ugly one at that. Look like you crawled out from under a rock, and then got hit by it." He paused to laugh. Nobody joined him. "Anyway, she said I'd get a share if I teamed up with you losers."
Dannie looked at me apologetically. I knew her well enough to know it was the only way she'd been able to get him to come along.
"So, yeah... about the job? What is it we're work-" His eyes landed on Jin. He stopped talking, his mouth closed, and his whole demeanor turned frigid. "What the fuck is this?"
Jin put her feet on the floor. "Do you have a problem?"
Empathic. I didn't need to be to recognize the charge between the two of them.
"Bad to worse. You brought a fucking racist?" I whispered to Dannie.
"You wanted me here, I'm here. Don't you dare question how."
I started moving to get between the two of them, but Jin put up her hand.
"I asked you if you have a problem?"
Amos was staring at her, his hand drifting towards the opening in his coat. "Dirty, filthy, pointy-eared, tree-hugging-"
It happened fast. His hand whipped under the coat, while Jin took a few quick steps forward, smacked it away from whatever it was he was reaching for, and slammed him in the kidneys with an elbow. He bent over in pain, and she kneed him in the face. He fell onto his ass and clutched at his nose.
"I think you broke it," he said, the anger drained.
Jin didn't respond, she just looked over at me and smirked.
"Okay, okay, enough of this. Amos... seriously? You want to be a racist asshole, try being a racist asshole to someone who can't kick the shit out of you. Danelle, meet Jin. Jin, Danelle. You already met the fat lump on the floor. Jin is Red's negotiator. You're lucky all she did was break your nose."
I had told Jin I was going to name her Red's niece, but between what she had done on the bike, and seeing her fight... I knew guys like Amos. He wouldn't back down and stay down without finding something about her to respect. It wasn't enough for her to beat him up once. He had to know she would beat him every single time he even thought about it. A House negotiator was part assassin, part fixer. She'd have enough autonomy to offer work on the House's behalf, and enough training to take care of the hard, delicate stuff herself.
By naming her a negotiator, I had solved that problem before it became one. I looked over at Jin. She was smiling.
"I'll get you a towel." Se walked past me to the bathroom.
"So, what the hell happened to you?" Dannie asked, trying to cut around the tension.
"You already know most of it. The parts you don't know... Remember when you told me control took out the ferals in Connecticut?"
"Yeah."
"They didn't. I mean, maybe they found some other sub-humans to shoot, but it wasn't the ones that went after me. They almost got to Jin before I did."
That was when she noticed the rips in my trench. "Oh shit, Conor. Does that hurt?" She reached up, careful not to touch the area.
"It's fine now. Jin got me some troll juice. We barely made it out alive."
"She's really Red's negotiator?"
I nodded. "Yeah. Red sent me to her because she was worried about a traitor, and she trusts her implicitly. We came to an agreement." I motioned my head over at Amos. "That was before you brought Tweedledum into the picture."
"I heard that," he said.
Jin came out of the bathroom with a damp towel. She knelt down and handed it to Amos, who glowered at her at the same time he accepted it.
"What is it you desire?" she asked the fat ghost.
He looked confused. "Huh?"
"Even ignorant fools who want to hate everything that isn't like them have desires. What is yours?"
"You don't want to know. And you don't need to. They say money can't buy happiness. I say enough money can buy as much of it as my libido can handle."
It was a disgusting thought.
"You want money? How much?"
He pulled the towel away and looked at
the blood in it. Then he put his hands to his nose and pressed. I could hear it cracking, moving back into some relative semblance of place. It wasn't even close to the first time he had gotten his face busted.
"Four million. Sounds good."
She didn't hesitate. "Done. On the condition that you save your racist hate for the enemies of House Red. I don't care about you. I don't care what you think of me. Red does demand loyalty and good service. One wrong motion, one wrong word..."
"Yeah, yeah. No hard feelings. Money talks. Deal." He put out his hand.
Jin took it. Then she got to her feet and walked over to Danelle.
"Is Dannie your name, or your handle?"
"My name. My handle is Daaé."
Jin glared at me from the corner of her eye. "You must have valuable skills for Conor to have asked you to come here."
She laughed. "I think he wanted Evan and the guns more."
"Dannie..." I started to protest.
"I know, you were worried about me. I don't know if I'm any safer here, but at least I'm not twiddling my thumbs, waiting for a kill team to drop in and shoot me in the head."
"It's more than that. We need to go into the Machine."
"You do? For what?"
"You need to sign up for team Red before I can tell you."
She put her hand out to Jin. "Yeah, sure, whatever. I'm in. Conor might be a solemn asshole, but I want both of us to keep breathing. You may be our best shot."
"Our only shot," I said.
Jin took Dannie's hand. "Thank you, Miss Daaé."
"I guess you'll need your own handle for this one," Danelle said.
"We can worry about that later. Do you know anyone in this neck of the woods who can jack us in?"
"I could name half a dozen places in Chicago. I'll have to check around here. You still haven't told me what we need it for."
"Black's card. We need to know where it originated. Right now, it's our only lead to whoever arranged the job against Red. Jin is positive it wasn't Black."
Dannie pursed her lips. "Considering the outcome, I tend to agree with her. What about the stone?"
"I hid it in a hotel downtown. I'm going to make a run to get it."
"I'll come with you," Amos said. He'd moved from the floor to the couch, and was sitting there with the towel against his nose.
"I'll go alone." The last thing I wanted was to have to babysit him.
"Amos will go with you," Jin said.
I didn't like it. "Are you sure?"
"Red isn't paying him to sit on the couch."
"Don't worry, Baldie, I got your back. I have my vices, but I ain't survived the last twenty years on luck and booze and sex alone."
Another disgusting thought.
"Fine. We'll leave in a couple of hours when the traffic thins out a bit. That will give your nose a chance to stop bleeding, and time for me to grab some room service. I've been running on Coke and Twinkies for the last twenty-four hours."
"Do you think it's a good idea to wait?" Jin asked.
"If it's still there now, it will be there in two hours. To be honest, I'm kind of hoping to run into that redhead again, now that I've got some backup." I reached my hand into my pocket, picking up the dice. Warm and ready to go.
"What redhead?" Dannie asked.
"A user. She came into the Gas and Sip in Connecticut while I was there, and then turned up at Jin's place when the ferals attacked. I think she's controlling them somehow."
"And she's been in the same place you've been, at the same time you've been there twice now?"
I paused, and then shook my head. "That doesn't mean anything. We've had the same targets."
"The Gas and Sip was a target? Why would she have been there?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. She bought some cigarettes and Twinkies."
Danelle shook her head, like she couldn't believe I was so dense. "Was she on line with you? Did she talk to you?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Dammit, Conor. You're such a newbie sometimes. Take off your clothes, empty your pockets. She may be tracking you."
"How? Why? I wasn't even supposed to make it out of there alive." I started taking stuff out of my coat at the same time I complained. My phone, the dice, a lighter, my credit card and fake ID. I had been traveling light for the plane ride.
"Insurance, Baldie," Amos said. "In case you didn't stick to the plan and croak."
Shit. I still didn't think it was likely, but they were right. We couldn't take the chance.
"Just take it all off," Danelle said.
"In front of everybody?"
"Christ, Conor. We're all adults, and its not like you're anything much to look at anyway. The more eyes checking you, the better."
It was true, and I shouldn't have been embarrassed. Dannie and I had been together, and Amos had nothing to say about the shape of my body. It was Jin that was making me feel modest, even though I'd already seen enough of her. I wasn't normally such a prude, but for some reason her presence was making me very aware of how bad I looked.
Even so, I complied. I took off the trench, and Danelle set about picking through it, turning it inside out and feeling along the entire length. Jin took my pants, examining them closely, while Amos volunteered to search my shirt and boots. I was left with my underwear. It wasn't exactly clean, but it wasn't bugged either.
At least, I hadn't thought it would be bugged, until I found a small pin shaped device sticking to the elastic. "You've got to be kidding me."
I picked it away from the cloth and held it up for Dannie to look at.
She held out her hand, and I gave it to her. She brought it up to her eye. "They probably tracked the airline manifest, matched it up with car rentals, and waited to see who headed out that way. You aren't exactly inconspicuous."
I hadn't noticed anyone following me. I hadn't been looking for it either. "Then she knows we're here?"
"She knows you're here. She probably knows everywhere you've been since the convenience store."
She would have also known that I was still in Jin's apartment building. Maybe it wasn't accurate enough to know exactly where, but they had been waiting for me to come out.
"Reva," Jin whispered.
They would know we had visited her, too. We couldn't go back for her, so I hoped they would just leave her be. She had that shotgun, and she was a troll, so if they did hit her... she wouldn't go down easy.
"So we destroy that thing, right?" Amos asked.
"Not yet." I slipped my undies back on, collected the rest of my clothes, got dressed, and then returned my things to my pockets. "I'm going down to the hotel where I left the stone."
"Conor, she knows you want the stone. How much do you want a bet someone will be waiting for you to come back for it?"
"I expect that someone will, but a trap isn't much of a trap if you already know about it. Besides, I don't plan to be there alone. I'll have Amos and Evan."
"I'm coming, too," Jin said.
"I don't think that's a good idea."
She smiled at me, all sweet and innocent. "Don't forget who I am, Baron. It's time to be bold."
I wasn't sure if she meant who I had said she was, or who she really was, but it didn't matter. The bottom line was that I couldn't outright tell her what to do. Wizard or not, she was still Miss Red.
"What did you call me?"
"Baron, like Baron Saturday. Baron Samedi? The voodoo Lord of the Dead? That is who you remind me of, with your skin so tight against your bones."
She had seen me naked, and that was who I reminded her of? I had been right to be embarrassed.
Dannie laughed. "I like it. You need a new handle anyway... it's bad enough she knows your name."
"Amos was the one who spewed it out as soon as I opened the door. I didn't tell her."
"Can you two shut up?" Amos asked. "It sounds like we have a date with a hot redhead who's into dogs."
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
I thought thing
s were bad before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Are we there yet?
"You going to be okay?"
I was behind the van with Danelle. Amos and Jin were already inside, digging through the trunk full of guns. Jin had found a couple of shoulder holsters and a pair of pistols to put in them, while Amos had discovered the shotgun. Not that he needed it - he'd already shown off the six handguns and two Uzis he kept strapped to his bulk beneath the duster.
"More surface area, more firepower," he'd said with a laugh.
"I'll be fine. I'll take your cards and ask the front desk for a new room. Without the tracker, they won't be able to find me. What are they going to do with me, anyway? I'm not a threat."
"Bullshit. You're easy to underestimate." She had a handgun tucked under her seat that only she and I knew about. I leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. "Just find a Machinery for us. There have to be a bunch of them around here."
"I will. Be careful, Conor... Baron."
"Aren't I always?"
"Are you ever?"
"Shut up."
I climbed into the van through the back and pulled the doors closed.
"It does smell a little in here," Jin said.
"It comes with the territory. Amos, let's get moving."
"Was hoping I was done driving this crap van. What's the address?"
"I don't know the address. It's the Golden Sunrise Hotel. It's near the bridge."
"Which bridge?"
"I don't know, it's downtown somewhere. I took a cab."
"Oh, for fuck's sake. Thanks for the highly detailed directions, Skeletor."
"It's the Bright Sun Hotel," Jin said. "It's on Gold Street."
"Christ, the elf is smarter than you are." He started the van and backed out of the double spot he had taken. It shuddered a bit when he put it into drive. "Piece of shit."
It was ten o'clock, early enough that the city hadn't been left to the denizens of the night, and late enough that there wasn't much traffic. The rain had slowed to a steady patter, replacing the pounding downfall that had soaked us earlier. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the slight gnawing in my gut, while Amos navigated the streets with the adeptness of someone who had spent more than a few days in the urban jungle.
