“You will never drop this again.” He clipped it to her shirt. “You will carry it with you at all times. After you almost died sneaking out on us to visit your father, we will track you.”
He deposited a sandwich into her hands. “Now eat. You’ll need strength.”
Aliyah hated herself for following orders, but she was starving. Rainbird sat as content as a cat across from her, taking gentle puffs on his cigar.
“I’m going to need my Nintendo if you want me to find anyone,” she said through a mouthful of turkey.
Rainbird gave her a wan smile. “I need no help to find our target. You could find him yourself if I gave you his name.”
“His name?”
“Finish your sandwich. Some tasks call for full bellies.”
Now she wasn’t hungry. But she ate. When she finished, he took the wrapper, lit it, then set fire to the wall.
Sweat prickled across Aliyah’s face – well, some of it anyway. Her skin grafts didn’t sweat. Aliyah remembered lying helpless on the carpet, feeling the heat roast her cheeks….
She’d never had that fear as a ’mancer. ’Mancers played with fire.
But without her Nintendo DS, she wasn’t a ’mancer. She was a little girl.
Little girls got burned.
Rainbird swept his hands across the flames, spreading them further, pushing them open. “This won’t hurt you,” he said, seeming a little wounded. “You are a girl of fire. Remember, Aliyah – you came to us. Seeking to shed your remorse. You brought the ’mancers together – made them a community.”
He drew back blistered stumps, the fire devouring the wall – and then kneeled before Aliyah, almost in genuflection.
“Payne is old,” Rainbird told her. “Payne will pass. But His empire will not fall. You, Aliyah – you will keep the Peregrine Institute going.”
“But I don’t want–”
“This isn’t about what you want any more, Aliyah.” Fresh bones squirmed from his wrists, unfolding like snakes, raw new skin embracing them. “You’re poisoned by your father’s weakness. But soon, you will have no more regrets.”
He breathed onto the wall of fire, and it puffed inwards in an ashen skirl, blossoming into a portal. A cool black dot danced among myriad sparks, a shimmering pathway snaking through the inferno.
Aliyah held her own breath; despite all her fears, the flames beckoned her, urging her towards some great mystery on the other side.
“Step inside, and find the place where all regrets wither.”
Aliyah took a step towards the wall, feeling the high buzz she associated with painkillers. A luxurious rapture waited beyond, if she could brave the flames. The hair on her arms sizzled as she stepped in, knowing to place a foot wrong on this path meant tumbling into a never-ending inferno…
And she emerged from a conflagration, stumbling into her bedroom.
Her ceiling was aflame. But her bed was still made, her toy chest pushed against the wall, the shelves holding Mommy’s comforting books.
David was tied to Mommy’s good kitchen chair.
David’s face oozed with blisters, his scalp streaked with burnt hair. He struggled against the ropes, making pathetic whimpering noises through the handkerchief duct-taped into his mouth, begging help from whoever had come through the flames – then saw Aliyah, and froze.
“He knows,” said Rainbird, emerging from the flames.
“What is this?”
Rainbird turned David’s chair to face Aliyah, showing him off. “A stupid politician.”
David made angry noises. Rainbird poked a hole through his cheek.
“Stop that!” Aliyah screamed. Rainbird ignored her, grabbing David’s hair, sneering at him.
“Someone stole the files from the Task Force before he left the office, didn’t he?” Rainbird purred. “Someone didn’t want SMASH getting credit for the bust he’d tried so hard to make – wanted it so badly he committed a federal crime. And then he called in a favor from someone else he very much didn’t want to owe favors to, to fetch the records from SMASH – why not, he was washed up anyway – and found the ’mancer behind Galuschak Garage.”
“…Daddy?”
“Mr Paul Tsabo.” Rainbird smirked. “And then Mr Giabatta here recognized your videogame obsessions, understanding how you snuck out of a room with no windows…”
“He knows.” Aliyah flattened herself against the wall, imagining what would come next: SMASH hauling her off to the brainwashing camp in Arizona, scrubbing her memories to make her a weapon…
“Don’t worry.” Rainbird smacked David’s head. “He didn’t tell anybody.”
“Why?”
“This is the fun part: he recommended your Daddy for the Task Force.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It does if you think like a mundane, Aliyah! If David outed your father as a ’mancer, to admit his own stepdaughter was a ’mancer and he just... didn’t... know, then David would be the laughingstock of New York! If he’d called the mayor right away, we’d have been outed in a heartbeat – but no. He thought about it. Long enough for Mr Payne to be alerted someone had accessed the files he owned in SMASH’s system. Long enough for me to kidnap him.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because, Aliyah, to kill people properly you must first understand how they come to deserve their own deaths.” Rainbird patted David, like a pet.
She remembered K-Dash, Quaysean, curling up in the flames, their bones cooking. “No.”
“You killed once, in self-defense.” Rainbird moved towards her, the flames above them growing hotter. “Now it’s time you murdered.”
“No!” she yelled, but her hair caught fire and she batted it out and it was all she could do not to scream like a stupid little girl.
“We need him dead. And we need it to look like Valentine killed him. Then it looks like Valentine assassinated the Task Force executives. Then SMASH kills Valentine and her movie-star lover, and everyone’s questions are answered – and we are safe, Aliyah.”
“I won’t let anyone kill Valentine!” Aliyah yelled, and the fire portal above her whooshed, billowing the smell of burning carpet and oh God she was six years old again and back at her daddy’s place and everything was on fire.
“This is the way of things, Aliyah. My soldiers made me slit my friend’s throat. You have it so much easier. All you must do is kill a man you despise.”
“Just let him g–” She coughed, the smoke peppery in her lungs.
“If you free him, he will turn you in – and we’ll kill you before that happens, Aliyah.”
“I’m going to take over!” Her tears steamed on her cheeks. “You can’t hurt me!”
“Every piece must be sacrificed to save the King,” Rainbird said sorrowfully.
“Daddy won’t kill! So I won’t–” Another fire blast, this one hot enough to scald her skin, and Aliyah remembered the pain of the nurses pulling the dead flesh off the roots of her muscles, and even though they’d knocked her out with painkillers she still woke up and screamed–
“Your father would not kill, and he was useless. The only power one has comes from killing. And you will kill David, Aliyah, or I will fry you.”
He thrust the Nintendo DS into her hands. “Raise one hand against me,” he whispered, “And I will incinerate you one limb at a time. I have killed hundreds of ’mancers for Mr Payne. Do not throw yourself on that pyre.”
Aliyah grasped the Nintendo. The room burned around her, so hot it sucked the moisture from her eyes.
David pleaded for his life, his words muffled.
When she’d dreamed of the best thing that could happen to Mommy, that thing was David disappearing. David yelled at Mommy. David didn’t love anyone. David wanted to brainwash them…
Maybe we do need to kill them.
Do you want to be the person who does that?
And oh God, now Daddy was gone she realized she did not want to be the person who did that, that kil
ling Anathema had been almost more than she could bear and it wasn’t Daddy’s fault the world made people kill, he’d tried to protect her from men like Rainbird.
I don’t want to do grown-up magic any more, she thought. I want my childhood magic back…
“Choose, Aliyah.” And the flames ate her hair and she gripped the Nintendo and summoned her biggest magic and hurled bright blue fire straight at David.
Unseen forces hauled him into the air, chair still dangling from his legs; the air crumpled around him. David was pulled inwards, into a black hole, folded into pieces, the wood splintering…
David screamed.
And when the flames lifted, all that was left of David was a small pile of ropes.
Aliyah fell to her knees, sobbing, begging forgiveness.
“I am glad you showed your loyalty.” Rainbird knelt next to her, stroking the singed remnants of her hair. “You asked me how to have no regret, Aliyah. The answer is simple: you do terrible things over and over again, until the regret falls away.”
Aliyah never stopped crying as Rainbird plucked the Nintendo from her hands and brought her home.
Forty-Six
The Kindly Ones
Imani couldn’t believe Paul was dead, even as she attended his funeral.
The sheer size of Paul’s funeral seemed designed to impress upon Imani how her ex-husband was gone; she’d had to change the church location once she realized how many people would be attending. She’d switched from a small funeral home to a massive cathedral with high-vaulted walls and dark wood benches and a place for reporters to sit as long as they promised not to take photos.
She organized the service, because no one was left to do it. Reporters had asked for a morning funeral, so they could make the evening news. Officers had asked to do a three-volley salute in tribute to Paul, which required permits to be filed. And during the whole complicated process, she kept thinking oh, I should get Paul to help, Paul would love setting all this up, then remembered Paul was dead.
OK. She was no slouch at organizing things herself.
That was, she supposed, one of many reasons they’d fallen in love.
Crowds parted as she approached the casket, teeming well-wishers who’d never known Paul – they knew THE MAN WHO’D KILLED THREE ’MANCERS from the headlines. They recognized her as his ex-wife, reaching out to touch her, as though she were a reliquary for Paul’s legend.
She shrugged them off. They’d been quick enough to pillory him, back when Paul had led the Task Force. But now the anarchomancers had shown how toothless David’s Task Force was. Now that the mayor had closed up shop to cede power to SMASH, people thought better of old Paul. Paul had never said a bad word about David in public, never tried to hog the limelight, had merely retreated to live a quiet life to protect his daughter.
And then a ’mancer had murdered him.
She strode up to the coffin to say her goodbyes, the first in a long line. The former Task Force had turned out to pay Paul their respects, as had the cops, as had a surprising amount of people who Paul had helped at Samaritan. Strangers pulled her aside, explaining how Paul had pulled strings to get their claims through.
Imani smiled; Paul had always tried to do right by people. One more reason she’d fallen in love with him.
He couldn’t be dead.
But here she was, kneeling before the black shiny casket. It had been a closed-casket ceremony; the mortician, a wispy blonde with a cane and tastefully purple eyebrows, had informed Imani that Paul’s face could not be reconstructed for the open-casket funeral she’d wanted. The mortician hadn’t wanted to be so blunt about the extent of Paul’s damage, but Imani wasn’t one for dodging hard truths, and so had gotten it out of her.
Imani felt a mad urge to fling open the casket; she half expected to find it stuffed full of Samaritan Mutual forms. But she didn’t. She had to play the grieving ex-wife today, and while she longed to go mad she had always excelled at playing to expectations.
She did run her fingers along the lid, though.
She did not cry. She would not cry in front of strangers.
After Imani had said what goodbyes she could muster, she went back to take her place in the reception line. She was the reception line. She longed to hold Aliyah’s hand, to feel her daughter’s warmth – but even though Aliyah had begged to come to the funeral, the therapists at The LisAnna Foundation For Children’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder had advised against it. Aliyah had been having serious regressions, they told her; new environments might cause a breakdown.
Looking around, Imani regretted the decision. Why should Paul’s daughter, the one thing he lived for the most in all his life, not see how many people had loved him? Imani didn’t trust the therapists there; she’d questioned too many “expert witnesses” bought and sold by corporate masters. There was something oily in the way those men agreed with whatever she said, yet found some jargon-laden way to explain why her instincts were wrong.
But Paul had chosen the LisAnna Foundation personally, and countermanding his last decision seemed disrespectful. Imani had researched the alternatives, of course, but the LisAnna Foundation had by far the best reviews; Paul would not have settled for anything but the most sterling treatment for their daughter.
And Aliyah was in deep trouble, Imani knew; she’d upped her visits to three times a week even before Paul had passed on, trying to figure out why Aliyah grew cold and violent.
“Do you ever think the good ones lost?” said an officer, sliding into place next to her.
Imani frowned; the man had a wispy, ill-fitting mustache, and his skin exuded the cinnamon reek of Axe body spray. But he’d slicked his hair down for the funeral, and his expectant gaze told her she’d met him somewhere before… Lenny. Lenny Pirrazzini was the man’s name. One of Paul’s officers.
“What do you mean the ‘good ones’ lost?”
“The ’mancers.” His breath was hot with booze.
“There are no good ’mancers,” she shot back.
Lenny shook his head. “That’s not what Paul thought.”
Imani stiffened. That didn’t sound like Paul. Paul had been hell-bent on hunting down ’mancers; he’d gone after that stupid illustromancer alone because he wanted the bust, which had damn near killed him. Even hobbled, he took a job at Samaritan Mutual so he could turn ’mancers over to SMASH.
Some days, Imani had wondered if all that was left of Paul was hatred for ’mancers. He never talked about them.
“’Mancers burned my child.” She kept her voice even; she was very good at keeping her voice even. “They crushed my husband’s leg. They cost us our marriage. And now…” She gestured towards the casket, that damned sleek capsule, so shiny there couldn’t be a body inside.
“And a ’mancer saved me from burning. Twice.” Lenny bobbed his head. “I don’t mean to offend you, Ms Dawson, it’s just... it felt to me like there was a war between two kinds of ’mancers in this town. One was on Paul’s side. And the other…”
He shook his head, realizing his foolishness. “Shit, I’m sorry Ms Dawson. Sorry about Paul. And, well, your husband.”
Oh, yes. That.
Imani felt a guilty shock; she supposed she should be frantic at David’s disappearance. But her relationship with David had crumbled ever since he’d carried her across the honeymoon suite. She’d gone seeking Paul’s opposite, someone handsome and physically strong and ambitious – and she had found his mirror image, in a way. Paul’s love was accepting but diffuse, trusting in Imani’s ability to find her own happiness: even during the best days of their marriage, sometimes she felt like Paul wasn’t standing by her side but instead was watching coolly from a distance. Whereas David carried a deeply combative love, treating anything that affected Imani’s moods like it was an enemy to be destroyed. And after years of patiently enduring Paul’s post-traumatic withdrawal, having someone tell her fuck that guy, let’s go dance until you’re happy, well…
…she would have loved
anyone who told her it was OK to care for herself.
But Paul would have never called Aliyah an ungrateful bitch. Paul never would have told Imani how she’d raised that damn kid all wrong, that Aliyah needed to learn how to show respect, that they could get back to normal by clamping down on Aliyah.
Yet when things had started to go sour on the Task Force, David had treated Aliyah like she was responsible for all his troubles. “Everything was great until that damn kid got burned,” he’d said. Like Aliyah had asked to almost die. She’d never forgiven David for that.
She worried for David, but realistically she’d been about to kick him out anyway. It had been exhausting, listening to his anger at everything that got in his way. She wanted him to be safe, but… in that abstract sense.
In truth, him being gone was a relief, and if that made her a bad person, so be it. She didn’t want him dead – which, to be honest, he likely was, because if a ’mancer had killed Paul Tsabo and now David Giabatta had vanished, then someone was targeting the Task Force to send a message.
What message? Who knew? SMASH would find out. And after bobbling the ball on Anathema – after Paul had shown them up – the federal forces were hell-bent on taking down Psycho Mantis. Army ’mancer troops rolled in in massive numbers, ready to destroy.
It felt to me like there was a war between two kinds of ’mancers in this town, Lenny had said. One was on Paul’s side.
She frowned.
But New York had grown a little darker since Paul had stepped down. Everyone knew someone who’d been in a car accident, or broken their leg; even the stock market had collapsed. The very clouds rained bad luck down onto New York.
Imani shook those thoughts away to greet people, thanking them for sharing their stories of Paul. She was unflaggingly polite, calling upon all her charm-school lessons.
But she looked at that casket in between each visitor. Wondering.
* * *
“Yes,” Imani said, after the crowds had gone. “I need to see him.”
The Flux Page 30
