Just listening to the news on the radio as they flew over, she knew the media had already decided Perfume was to blame, and politicians, including President Patterson, called for strong anti-Shine emergency legislation. Some called for a declaration of war.
Coutant steered them toward the collapsed remains of a coffeehouse, what they were calling the epicenter of the destruction. She’d agreed to participate because she wanted to learn as much about this situation as possible. But she had a strong suspicion she would not love what waited inside. She already felt ready to vomit. Without Twinge’s assistance.
Maybe Dream saw the expression on her face. Maybe she read a daydream. At any rate, the girl spoke exactly what she thought. “I don’t see why we all need to go in there.”
Coutant’s demeanor suggested that she did not relish this any more than anyone else. “The police thought you might be able to help.”
“Why didn’t the LL girls come?” Dream asked.
Coutant blinked. “Who?”
“4B.”
“Oh. You girls roomed with Perfume. You knew her better than anyone else.”
“Aura didn’t. Why did she have to come?”
“I had hoped—” Coutant paused, then restarted. “Never mind. Let’s just get it over with.”
This was the first time she’d been required to wear this idiotic uniform in public. She hated the stupid pleated skirt and string-tie blouse. The other girls didn’t like it any more than she did, but they seemed resigned to it. She never would. It might as well be prison coveralls, as far as she was concerned. And she resented wearing the TYL logo, as if she endorsed the place. It’s like they were forcing her to do a product placement ad for a place she couldn’t stand.
She hoped everyone they encountered stared at the uniform. So they wouldn’t recognize her face.
As they drew closer, she spotted two concentric circles of obstruction. On the inside, a line of police officers stood behind crime scene tape, patrolling the perimeter. And on the other side, she saw what they protected the crime scene from. She supposed devastation at this level always attracted looters and voyeurs. But that wasn’t the primary constituency of this assemblage.
SSS members. All wearing the ritual white clothing, supposedly to signify their purity and their desire to maintain the purity of the species.
Some carried placards bearing messages like OCCUPY OUR DNA and IN GOD’S IMAGE—NOT THEIRS. Some shouted at the police, called them names. All were angry.
Coutant steered the four girls away from the fracas—but not quickly enough. One of them saw the girls in uniform and spit at them.
“Are those Shines?” one of the SSSers shouted. The crowd turned its attention from the police to the girls.
“Shine?” another shouted. “Who let them out?”
“Why aren’t they in Mordock? Or in the graveyard, like everyone in Seattle.”
“Whores! Jezebels!” an older man shouted.
Seemed unfair, since she was still a virgin and she was relatively certain that screaming man in his fifties was not, but she couldn’t expect logic in mob hysteria. She’d witnessed SSS demonstrations before, but somehow, this one seemed far more dangerous.
The man lunged toward Twinge, the Shine closest to him. “You’ll perish in the flames of perdition!”
Twinge raised a finger and talked right back to him. “Don’t you be talking that trash to me, you sorry sack of—”
“Unnatural creature!”
“Talk to the hand, mister!”
Coutant tugged her away. “Do not interact. I brought you here to help, not to make a bad situation worse.”
“What is their problem?” Twinge said, allowing herself to be dragged along. “Why do they think we’re such a threat to them?”
“Look at it from their perspective. Note that most of that crowd is white and male. Once upon a time, white males ran this country. They held all the power. Then other races started changing that. Then women. Now a new kind of power is springing up—and it’s a girls-only club, one that crosses racial barriers. So you can see where they might feel threatened, even if they have a different explanation for it in their own minds.”
As if on cue, someone picked up a rock and threw it. She ducked. The rock crashed through a store window. Shattered glass sprayed everywhere.
Dream whined. “I do not want glass in my hair!”
“They’re getting orders from someone.” Harriet informed them. “Headquarters.”
“Harriet!” Coutant’s voice hovered somewhere between a growl and a whisper. “You are not allowed to Shine. Especially not around people like this.” She paused. “Can you tell who’s on the other end of the line?”
“The man in the ball cap is being told to blame us. Make us the villains.”
“How many more have to die?” one of the SSSers on the front lines shouted. He wore a Lakers basketball cap and appeared to be bald. She noticed he held a tablet and wore an earpiece. “How many good people must be sacrificed before we exterminate this infestation?”
“I saw her!” another man shouted. She thought he pointed at Harriet, but she couldn’t be sure. “Here. Before the explosion.”
“She’s the one who did it!” another shouted.
The roar of the crowd swelled. She wasn’t certain the police could contain them all. Two of the officers removed their revolvers from their holsters.
“The man on the phone wants a riot,” Harriet said. “That’s why he sent these people.”
Someone in a black leather jacket emerged from behind police lines. Someone she recognized.
“Listen to me!” he shouted.
The crowd continued to press and shout and shake their fists in the air.
“I said, listen up!” The man pulled a gun out from under his jacket and fired it three times. The tumult faded. “Look, I don’t like this Shine business any more than you. But these girls had nothing to do with this. They’ve been safely under lock and key. They’re only here because I asked them to be here, to help with the investigation. And if you people can’t control yourselves I will have you forcibly removed.”
“We have a constitutional right to demonstrate,” the leader shouted.
“Not if your actions endanger a crime scene. I can and will have you arrested and detained for an indefinite period. Is that what you want?”
Apparently it wasn’t.
The man in the leather jacket turned to the girls and made an inviting gesture toward what was left of the coffeehouse door.
Coutant took the cue. “Let’s go, ladies.”
They crossed the crime scene tape and entered the remains of the Java Underground coffee shop.
As soon as they were inside, she made two distinct observations. First, this coffee shop was run by the SSS. Their logo and paraphernalia were all over the place. Second, the shop had hosted twelve-step Shine meetings. Big posters with the Twelve and Twelve were plastered on the walls.
1. We admitted we were powerless over our Shine—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of a higher power as we understood it…
She winced. Like she hadn’t heard all this crap a thousand times. You have a disease. Okay, if I have a genetic disease, why are people treating me like I’m a bad person? Would you treat a cancer patient this way? Or an epileptic? Or—
She brought her brain back to the present. Help now, whine later. Examine the room. See if you can contribute anything useful.
Twelve-step books and materials were scattered all over the room. The floor was littered with books ripped from their bindings, chairs upended, spilled chips.
Coutant stepped past two officers through the threshold to the next room, then covered her mouth. She seemed to be gagging on air. “You girls—might want to stay outside—”
Twinge pushed past. “If Perf
ume was in there, so am I. You with me, Aura?”
She followed before Coutant could stop either of them. She wasn’t even sure why. But she’d come this far, so why stop now?
And then she knew where the stench came from.
It hit her like a wall, so powerful it almost knocked her off her feet. But that wasn’t what made the strongest impression. That wasn’t what made her knees go soft and the room swirl.
Blood and entrails coated the walls like a Jackson Pollack painting.
The inner room appeared to be a kitchenette, a place where people could add cream or sugar or asperbean to their coffee. But now it looked like the site of a ritualistic blood cult virgin sacrifice.
The smell was death, steaming from the walls and the floor. The tornado that hit Santa Monica must’ve started in this room.
Perfume’s intestinal tract was strewn across the counter, like a string of sausages in a butcher shop.
She felt her stomach heave. She turned away—too quickly. Her shoe caught on sticky coagulated blood and she tumbled downward, face first.
“Aura!” Coutant cried, but the doctor was much too late. Her face hit the floor and smeared across the surface, red streaking her face.
“Oh Gandhi. Oh Great Gandhi.” She pushed herself up, but her hands slid across the floor. She fell down again, chin first. She cried out. Her face slid sideways.
Right into the disembodied head of the girl once known as Perfume.
14
Aura screamed.
Strong arms lifted her off the floor, then wrapped themselves around her.
“It’s okay,” Twinge whispered. “It’s okay.”
“Let go of me,” she said, desperately wiping the blood off her face. “I think I’m gonna hurl.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m telling you, I’m—” She stopped short. The queasiness had subsided.
She gave Twinge a sharp look.
“Like I said, you’re not.” Twinge avoided her glance. “Stay calm. Getting upset won’t help Perfume.”
“Nothing will help Perfume, I’m pretty sure,” Dream said. “I don’t know who had the brilliant idea to bring us into this, but it was a mistake. This place is beyond icky.”
Coutant had a handkerchief over her mouth. “I have to agree. I’m sorry, ladies. I didn’t realize…”
Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she turned back to stare at the remains splattered across the room. So little was left of Perfume, she couldn’t possibly have identified the body, but for the head. She wondered if anyone could. All she could say with certainty was that there had at one time been a body.
“Girls, I want you out of here,” Coutant said. “I can’t believe the police asked you to come. What is wrong with these people?”
They all moved out of the kitchenette. Coutant marched up to the officer in the black leather jacket. “Have you completely lost your senses? Asking me to bring my clients here. Many of them already suffer from PTSD. A traumatic incident like this could completely undermine our therapeutic goals.”
The stubbled officer appeared completely unruffled. “I needed them to identify the body. They were her friends, right?”
“Did that mean they had to be subjected to that horror show?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I also thought they might be able to help with the investigation.” The officer glanced over Coutant’s shoulder. “Aura?”
No point in hiding. She wiggled her fingers in an embarrassed hello.
“Aura, did you know this girl?”
“Barely.”
“Well, if she didn’t know the girl, there’s no point in her being here.” He looked over Coutant’s shoulder. “Aura, you can leave.”
She could still hear the mob outside shouting. “And go…out there? Alone?”
“Good point. You can wait in the outer room. Well behind the crime scene tape. I want to ask the other girls some questions.”
***
Aura couldn’t hear every word, but she heard enough to realize that her roomies were, generally speaking, not much help. They could definitely identify the head as Perfume, aka Merena, who was at Transforming Your Light for almost a month until she somehow managed to escape. No one seemed to know how she eluded the security team at the hospital, nor what she was doing at this coffeehouse, especially given that she apparently despised both coffee and twelve-step meetings.
Coutant did not mention the incident at the stables. Or whatever must’ve preceded it.
Outside, the near-rioting intensified. The SSS crowd more than doubled in size. Additional police officers were brought in, escalating the tension. Some of the SSSers shouted that this was “just the start” and that Shines were plotting “to destroy us all.”
When he finished, the officer in the black leather jacket—Lieutenant Sharma—sat beside her on a bench in the alley behind the coffee shop.
“Hell of a thing, isn’t it, Aura?”
She nodded. Wasn’t sure what to say.
“Sorry about hauling you out here. Truth is, I asked for you specifically.”
“You did?”
“You disappeared so suddenly. I was—” He cleared his throat. “Taj was concerned about you. He asks about you almost every day.”
“I’d call, but they don’t allow that at TYL.”
Awkward silence ensued.
“Well.” Sharma slapped his hands against his thighs. “Anyway. If you want my advice—“
“No.”
He grinned. “You haven’t changed much.”
“Should I?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. No one knows what the hell is going on. Least of all me. Don’t be shocked, but I’ve known for years you had some healing abilities.”
“How?”
“Kid, I am a detective, you know. But I didn’t see any harm in it. I never dreamed. Forgive me for bringing up what must be an unpleasant subject, but how does healing ability lead to the disaster in Seattle? This Shine—Perfume—apparently had the ability to generate odors, or to stimulate the brain to make people believe they detected odors. How could that create all this destruction? Doesn’t make any sense.”
She was glad to see she wasn’t the only one who had picked up on that detail.
“I do know this,” he continued. “This is not a safe time for Shines to be out on the streets. Especially in those cute little uniforms. I wish you hadn’t been outed, kiddo, I really do. But I can’t rewrite the past. All I can do is try to prevent bad futures. Like hate crimes perpetrated by a panicked populace. The safest place for you is inside that treatment center. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I do.” Like she hadn’t heard it before.
“Good. ‘Cause I gotta tell you—I looked into the eyes of those people outside, those SSSers. And I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s almost—it’s like a bloodlust or something. Fear and frenzy. Lynch mob mentality. It scared me. I don’t think they’re going to be satisfied until they see some Shines punished for their crimes, real or imagined. And I don’t mean sent to a cushy rehab. I mean dead.”
“You really think that could happen?”
“I’m worried it could happen. And if they decide to start killing Shines—I don’t want you to be anywhere in the vicinity.”
15
“Impressions?” Dr. Coutant asked.
She watched Mark with the utmost attention to detail. Even before her training in psychotherapy and neurolinguistics, she knew you could learn more from how a person behaves when they answer a question than you could learn from the spoken answer.
“In many respects Aura behaves as you would expect. Rebellious. Irritable. Cops an attitude, but she had that before she got here. She has PTSD and an advanced case of survivors’ guilt. And a big chip on her shoulder.”
“And by that I assume you don’t mean a thirty-day chip. Anything else?”
“Well, there is that smoldering sense that she could blow you away by thinking hard.”
“Yes. There is that.” She swiveled around in her desk chair so she faced away from him, knowing full well that would give him free rein to enjoy her luminescent butt while she enjoyed the luminescent Malibu coast. Waves crashed against the shore, white foam spreading its tendrils toward the mediocre beach housing that was now some of the most expensive real estate in the country.
This world had no sense of priorities. Perhaps that old bastard Estes was right. Perhaps the world was due for a change. One involving fewer people of no value burning up our limited resources.
“For accelerants such as Aura,” she explained, “usage tends to stimulate ability. Continued usage might lead her to…well, who knows?”
Mark cleared his throat. “I will say, I don’t detect any deep-seated malice in her. No underlying personality disorder.”
The setting sun shone down on the now placid sea, causing infinite glints and sparkles. So much majesty. And yet all they ever wanted to do was drag her back to the quotidian task, the mundane present. The secret plan. Phase Five. And she could do nothing to prevent it. Not if she wanted to keep the only thing that mattered to her. “What Aura did was extraordinary.”
“Yes, but the sad truth is that extraordinary events occur with such regularity these days that the extraordinary has almost become commonplace.”
She pressed the tip of her finger against her lips. She could hardly deny it. Especially after what they’d seen in Santa Monica. “You know, this treatment center was founded on the premise that addictive problems are caused by underlying issues or personality disorders. You understood that when you were hired. We don’t need therapists challenging our operational premises.”
“I know. But this is different. Shines are not your typical addict. This may be something genetic.”
“Isn’t there a genetic component to alcoholism?”
“Yes.”
“Drug addiction?”
“Studies have shown that many people have a genetic susceptibility to certain drugs. We both know that.”
“So the genetic component is always present. But that doesn’t negate the existence of deep-seated problems that allow the addiction to take hold of a personality.” She decided to keep Dr. Estes’s theory about electromagnetic pulses to herself.
Shine: Season One (Shine Season Book 1) Page 7
