Another One Bites the Dust

by Jennifer Rardin

  She looked at us with pain-drenched eyes. “It’s been the same for me ever since. I can’t save the people closest to me, because they never believe my visions.”

  Cole and I shared a moment of stunned silence. There was no way to grasp the scope of a life that long. But the love. And the pain. I could connect to that. And I was always awed by the survivors.

  “People only hear what they want to hear,” I said finally. “One of the more idiotic traits of humans, but one that has its perks. For instance, when someone says, ‘Don’t be stupid, there’s no way you can come up with a cure for AIDS.’ That’s an excellent time to develop situational deafness.”

  “So what do you want to hear?” she asked.

  “That you’re relieved because we believe you,” I said, glancing to Cole for confirmation. He nodded quickly.

  “You know what I think this means?” he asked us both. We shook our heads. He took Cassandra’s hands, smoothing over the flaked polish, the chipped nails. “I think the gods have stopped laughing.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Having already eaten dessert, we decided a healthy lunch was in order. While Cole opened three cans of ravioli and Cassandra made orange Kool-Aid, I called Evie.

  “Jaz, the best thing happened!”

  Thank God. I am so ready for some good news. “What’s that?”

  “E.J. cried all night last night.”

  “Awesome!”

  “Okay, I can see how you don’t get that’s a good thing. But you’ve got to understand. There we are, just me and her, rocking in the chair beside her crib at four a.m., both of us crying buckets. And suddenly it hits me. This is complete and utter bullshit!”

  I held the phone away from my ear and stared at it. Evie does not swear. And I mean never. I finally realized the extremity of her situation. “So what happened?”

  “I woke Tim up and I said, ‘Tim, you can only cry so long before it doesn’t do you any more good.’ I don’t think he really knew what I meant by that, but he did think it was a good idea to take E.J. to the emergency room. We met this amazing pediatrician there who said E.J. had an awful ear infection. She said E.J. had to have been in utter misery. Plus she said there’s medicine we can give her for the colic, which is actually reflux. She doesn’t have to suffer, Jaz. Isn’t that incredible? And we are sticking with this new pediatrician. She’s amazing!”

  “That is such a relief! I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that! Hey, are you listening really closely to me right now?”

  “Of course.”

  “Because I want to make sure there’s no interference on your end when I say I told you so.”

  Evie’s laugh, finally stress free and full of the same joy I’d heard the day her daughter was born, lifted my spirits like nothing else could. “Yeah, I guess you did.”

  “Okay, you keep on being an excellent mom and I’ll get back to work. And, hey, next time she takes a nap, you take one too.” I, on the other hand, would be avoiding sleep like a bad concussion victim until further notice.

  “Yes, ma’am!” Evie sang.

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  I took ten minutes to shower and change. By then lunch was ready. After I’d related my good news we ate in relative silence, which might’ve been why Cole’s eyes quickly lowered to half-mast and, if not for Cassandra’s rapid reflexes, his entire face would’ve been masked with pasta sauce when he fell asleep a minute later. I woke Bergman and he willingly changed places with Cole once he learned we’d saved a can of ravioli and a handful of chocolate for him.

  “Are you women going to stay in here all day?” he asked as he sat down to his meal. One glance at the monitor had shown him what Cole had reported seeing all morning. A whole lot of nothing. “Since the Constance Malloy seems to be in a temporary coma, I thought I’d do some experiments.”

  “Are these tests so painfully shy they can’t stand an audience?” I asked.

  “Something like that.” Despite the fact that we’d all signed Bergman’s lip-zip oath the night before, it looked like old habits would be dying real hard, or possibly not at all, on this trip.

  “No problem,” said Cassandra. “It’s time for Jaz to meet my friend anyway.”

  “What, did he send you a message by courier fairy?” Bergman asked, his lip curling.

  That is it. “Bergman—” Cassandra cleared her throat, shook her head, and mouthed, “Later.”

  We each grabbed ID and money and I holstered up, covering Grief with my leather jacket. I also wore the outfit Vayl had bought me to replace the one that had been ruined on our last mission, a soft red silk blouse with an ornate, scooped neckline and black jeans. I’d stuck with my boots, since Cole said a guy from Seven Seas Succulents had come for theirs, plus all the other stuff we’d borrowed, earlier in the day.

  We left Bergman to pull a couple of boxes of electronics from the trailer and start playing in them like a kid with his LEGOs. As the door slammed behind us I told Cassandra, “I want to say, ‘Don’t mind him,’ but you should. He’s acting like such a jerk.”

  “He’s afraid,” she replied.

  “Fear is the locus of his entire existence. But that doesn’t make it okay for him to demean you and your work every time he opens his mouth. If he wasn’t so damned brilliant I’d have given him an earful weeks ago. It’s just, he’s very thin-skinned, so you always run an excellent chance of mortally offending him. And then we can kiss our dandy gadgets goodbye.”

  “I can deal with him,” she said. “I have just been so distracted ever since . . .” She looked at me with good-humored accusation. “Ever since I met you, in fact.”

  “What can I say? I just have a way with people. Now, where is this buddy of yours?”

  “At a sidewalk café called Sustenance. We’ll have to take a taxi.” Though I would’ve preferred to arrive in my corvette, I found that as long as she didn’t suggest mopeds I’d be fine with whatever mode of transport she chose.

  We took the twenty-block trip from the festival to Sustenance in a cab that looked like it had been the site of a major WWE showdown. If it wasn’t dented, it was torn and if it wasn’t broken, it was stained.

  “Is that blood?” Cassandra whispered, pointing to a spot on the floor near her feet.

  “That or amniotic fluid,” I joked.

  She looked at me in horror. “Tell me no one has ever given birth inside of this car.”

  “Why not? The seats still have plenty of spring and when a contraction hits, all you have to do is grab this grimy strap here.” I acted as if I was going to slip my hand through it. Cassandra let out a little shriek and clutched my wrist. Shit!

  “Don’t you dare get that faraway look!” I snapped. Too late, she’d pulled a vision out of our brief contact.

  “You must take me and Bergman on your next mission,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “We’ll fight about it later.”

  “Everything all right back there?” asked the driver, his accent placing his parents squarely south of the border.

  “No problem, thanks,” I replied. “My friend here is just a little germaphobic.” Okay, maybe I was hunting a little stop-touching-me revenge when I advised her, “Watch out for the back window. I think that smear could be vomit.”

  Cassandra flinched. “Do you know I spent an entire year cleaning out a rich man’s stables and I never once felt like bacteria were skittering up my dress like a herd of mindless insects? It’s not me. It is this car!”

  “Do you need a shower?” I asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Too bad, we’re here.” She leaped from the cab and, as I paid the driver, ran into the café and demanded to be shown the bathroom. Funny how a good gross out will take your mind off scary dreams and visions. I know I felt better.

  I eyed the tables outside of Sustenance, all round four-seaters with large yellow umbrellas sticking out of their centers. Yellow and white striped tie-on pillows cushioned the black meta
l chairs. Only three were in use at the moment. Two moms with toddlers in strollers lingered over a cup of coffee while their kids shared a power nap. At the other end of the narrow veranda sat a man who would make me believe in aliens, if I were so inclined.

  His thick white hair grew straight up from his head, as if he’d just spent the past fifteen minutes hanging upside down from a trapeze. His eyes were such a light blue they bordered on silver. Deep wrinkles crisscrossed the bits of skin showing beneath his bushy white eyebrows, handlebar mustache, and collar-length beard. He wore a poet’s shirt, complete with poofy sleeves and a V-neck presently closed with leather ties. His corduroy pants were dark brown and matched his intricately tooled cowboy boots.

  “I like your boots,” I told him as I closed the distance between us. I noticed he wore a single diamond in his left ear.

  “Thank you. I had them made special in Reno. I found a store there called Frierman’s that I would highly recommend to any of the gentlemen in your life.” His soft, Southwestern accent invited you to be comfortable, even sit a spell if the spirit moved you.

  I stuck my hands in the pockets of my jeans, mostly because it would’ve been polite to shake his hand. Polite, and stupid.

  His gesture invited me to join him. I sat in the chair opposite his, thinking I’d heard that name—Frierman’s—somewhere before. But this was no time for mental inventory. The old gentleman was looking at me expectantly.

  “Cassandra will be out in a second. She just had the most harrowing cab ride.”

  He smiled. “It is so difficult to put your life in another’s hands.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My name is Desmond Yale.” The waitress cut him off, asking for my drink preference. I ordered iced tea.

  “I’m Lucille Robinson. Cassandra tells me you’re from New Mexico,” I said after the waitress left.

  “Born and raised,” he agreed.

  “She didn’t really tell me any more than that.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  I considered him for a moment. “How did you come by your Gift?”

  He thought awhile. “After my wife died I became something of a hermit. I spent a lot of time in the desert . So I would have to say the loneliness did it.” He took a sip of his coffee and smiled. “I spent so much time in my own head that I finally found a way beyond the grief and the loss. After years of study I learned to do the same for others.”

  I nodded, but a kernel of doubt popped in my stomach. Yale didn’t come off like the wise old dream interpreter Cassandra had described. What the hell did this guy have in mind?

  “Can you give me some idea of what to expect? Cassandra made it sound so easy.”

  “It is,” he assured me. “We simply clasp hands and away we go.”

  “Away where?” Was this kook going to make me literally revisit my nightmares? And where was Cassandra? She had some explaining to do!

  The waitress came back with my drink, a refill for Desmond, and three sets of napkin-wrapped silverware. “Are you ready to order?” she asked.

  “Still waiting on my friend,” I told her. “Actually, maybe I’ll go check on her, make sure she hasn’t fallen in.” The waitress smiled at my pathetic joke as she left, for which she would be tipped at least 15 percent.

  I tried to stand, didn’t get the chair pushed back far enough, and knocked the table with my thigh. Biting back a curse as my tea wobbled, I put both hands on the table to steady it. But Desmond’s coffee cup tipped precariously. He caught it before it could crash, however, saving himself from a lap full of hot caffeine.

  His hands. I looked at the waitress, hoping she’d confirm what I’d seen, but she was looking over her shoulder at the babies, who’d awakened at the same time, howling. I knew that cry. It expressed something-spooked-me hysteria, the kind E.J. experienced every time she heard a siren. Tim now had to watch COPS in his bedroom with the door shut and the volume as low as he could stand it.

  At the same time the toddlers were inspiring their moms to quick action, I saw Cassandra through the window. She rushed toward me, pointing at Desmond, shaking her head so hard her braids whipped across her face.

  I looked at him again, almost sure now that I’d seen his hands blur as they’d moved to grab the coffee cup. That underneath those long, pinkish white fingers I’d caught the hint of claws.

  “Don’t let him touch you!” screamed Cassandra as she burst through the café door.

  I pulled my hands back, but too late. He caught them, pinned them to the table by sinking his fingernails (claws, my mind whispered frantically) deep into the soft areas between knuckles and wrist. It hurt so much I screamed. Blood welled up instantly, much more than such an injury should release. It flowed onto the table, dripped to the floor.

  The babies wound it up a notch, and as soon as their moms saw my situation they joined right in. We were making a regular ruckus in the heart of the city. I’d heard so much about Texas SWAT, all of it good. Where were they in my time of need?

  “What are you doing to me?” I yelled. I tried to pull my hands free. They might as well have been nailed to the table. Hell, maybe they were.

  Desmond fixed me with those gleeful alien eyes and said, “You killed my best student, you little bitch. He had a real gift for reaving. Now I have only one left.” He cocked his head to one side, as if tuning to his own personal radio station. “Stop whining, all right? I’m getting to that.”

  I fought panic as the schizoid reaver held me down, and one of the moms yelled into her cell phone, “Police! Woman being attacked! Sustenance on East Leopard!” I was glad to know the cavalry was on its way. But at the rate blood flowed from my hands, I’d be dead long before then. I was positioned so awkwardly I couldn’t have delivered an effective kick if I’d strapped on six-inch heels. So I went with my last resort.

  Gathering all my breath, all my power, every last iota of energy in my aching body, I focused it all on that wrinkled piece of parchment between Desmond’s eyebrows. I imagined that spot highlighted with a big, black X, and slammed my head right into it.

  The old reaver staggered backward, looking as stunned as if he’d been shot. Cassandra used that lull to drag the moms and their kids off the street and into the relative safety of the café. I used it to bind my bleeding mitts with two of the brown linen napkins that had been wrapped around silverware moments before.

  The thought of pulling Grief never entered my mind. And I didn’t care if Desmond looked like somebody’s kindly Martian grandpa. I’d forgotten every lesson Vayl had tried to teach me about keeping a reasonable distance and decided to kick this reaver’s ass up close and personal.

  I started with his torso. Bam, bam, bam. Three kicks to the diaphragm. Damn, it felt like hammering concrete blocks! Still, if he could breathe through his ears, now would be the time to start. The force of the blows backed him hard into a table. It caught him just under the ass and the momentum took him off his feet.

  I hadn’t seen his shield, not once, until now. Maybe my attack had distracted Yale enough that he’d allowed it to show. Maybe I’d hurt him. But if so, no gaps appeared in the thick black outline that danced around him like a live wire, so I doubted I’d done much damage. However, I figured if I beat on him long enough a weak spot would eventually appear. Then I’d finish him. For now I kicked him again. Twice to the shoulder and once to the head to make sure he hit the ground.

  But he hadn’t come to the game without a few tricks of his own. As he fell, he swept one leg around and caught me behind the knees, bringing me down. I rolled with the fall, taking the brunt of the impact on my butt.

  Something came flying at me as I began to rise and I hit the deck again. Metal clattered against metal as it hit. Knife? Throwing star? Whatever, I figured it for lethal, and part of a set.

  I rolled to my feet and lunged to my right as another missile flew past my head, the high-pitched whir of its spin making my ears throb. I watched it whirl into the street. It was a knife. An
ancient one by the look of the black rune-covered hilt, with a curved blade that punctured the first minivan tire that hit it.

  I upended a table and dove behind it just as Desmond pitched another close one. It sliced right through the metal and stopped just inches from my eye. Holy crap! Apparently they had access to Ginsu technology in Reaverland.

  I wrestled Grief out of its holster, not an easy task with mummy hands. I nearly dropped it, and accidentally pushed the magic button as I recovered, which meant I suddenly held a crossbow rather than a pistol. At this point I didn’t even care. Anything that could fly through the air and hit the son of a bitch worked for me.

  Sirens wailed somewhere close at hand. Yes! Come on, boys! There may just be a big fat kiss in it for you if you get here before I pass out!

  Another knife thudded into the table, ripping sleeve but missing skin. I bobbed up and took a quick shot. It hit Desmond’s shield, knocking him backward. But it didn’t even penetrate to his body. In full defensive mode now, he spun three more knives at me as he backed out of the seating area. When I rose to return the volley, all I could see was his back receding into the distance. The professor in Cassandra’s Enkyklios had neglected to mention the reavers’ vampirelike speed.

  I considered chasing him. Okay, not really. The cops sounded interested, at least that’s how I interpreted those sirens. Which meant they’d want to get in on the fun. Plus I felt like hell.

  I holstered Grief, took a couple of steps, and decided sitting sounded more appealing. My hands began to throb so loud they drowned out Cassandra’s first words to me.

  “What’d you say?” I asked as she righted the chair that had been lying beside mine and took a seat.

  “You look morbidly pale,” she told me.

  “I lost a lot of blood.” I nodded to the small pool I’d made beneath my original table.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Orange juice and some chocolate-chip cookies.” And somebody to pat me on the back and tell me I didn’t just screw something up here. I mean, I was the victim, right? Plus, nobody died, and our mission is still viable. So I feel like crying right now because . . . adrenaline and blood loss, I decided. It’s all chemistry, baby, and don’t you think any different.