Vessel, Book I: The Advent

by Tominda Adkins

I knew precisely where the first aid kit was. I had used it many times. Gravity didn't treat Jesse kindly when he was drunk, which was often. And life in general hadn't treated me kindly ever since I'd started working for him.

  I bypassed the sleeping berth where the kit was known to be buried beneath a mound of promotional materials, however, and pushed Jesse into the rear room of the bus. His room, with its heaps of new clothes, flat screen TV, karaoke machine, and of course, the custom circular bed, installed at his request.

  I backed him into its cushy, curved edge.

  "Jesse, what are we doing here?" I asked in hissed tones. My instinct to take control of a situation wasn't going to go quietly. "We can't do this. This can't continue, it can't. Those things, those guys―"

  "Oh, I know." Jesse grabbed my shoulders, his eyes wide and affirming. "That tall one is too weird." He shuddered to emphasize his point. "And can you believe that Jackson guy? Huh? Who does he think he is? Did you hear what he said about my neck?"

  There. Right there. Something inside me screamed, popped, shriveled up, and died.

  "Jesse!" I backed away and threw my arms in a downward motion, the universal sign of grief and despair, for my patience had just breathed its last. "We almost get eaten alive by teenage girls, a known murderer is out there breathing fire, and you're upset because some jerk said you had a fat neck?"

  Jesse cringed. "Do I?"

  This time, I went for the throat.

  "And you!" Jesse gasped, palming my forehead and holding me at arm's length while I swung and clawed uselessly. With his free hand, he prodded the bruise beneath his eye, which was beginning to darken to a greenish purple. "You hit me! What's gotten into you?"

  "What's gotten into me? What's gotten into me!? You dragged me into this, you prick, that's what." I wriggled away and poked him in the chest. "I can't believe you paid me to get involved in this. Didn't you care? If you would've told me all that stuff was really going to happen―"

  "Uh ... hello? I did so tell you."

  I stomped my foot. "Yeah, but you didn't tell me it was real. Like, for real-for real."

  Jesse's eyebrows arched cattily and he looked from side to side, jutting his chin out. "Uh ... yeah. I did. Maybe you should take me seriously once in awhile."

  He had me there. I was still trying to think of a counter statement when Jesse's phone began to buzz and proudly sing the chorus of "It's Raining Men", startling both of us. He grabbed it from a cluttered nightstand and together we stared at the name on the screen with identical horror.

  Our eyes met.

  "Margot."

  Margot. Jesse's agent. Who, according to the caller ID information, had already tried calling eleven times.

  The phone turned into a singing hot potato. Jesse dropped it. I saved it and flung it back to him. He tried to push it on me, but I threw my hands up, glowering vehemently and backing away.

  "No. N-O. I'm not here anymore. Ever."

  "Fine," Jesse spat, lifting the phone to his face, his voice melting to sugar at once. "Go-Go, hello!"

  The angry string of sounds that jumped from the phone to his ear confirmed what I already knew. After releasing any initial wrath, Margot would get straight to business as usual, first by assessing any possible damage incurred to her six-foot-six golden-haired money machine.

  "No, no. I'm fine," Jesse said brightly, at the same time shrugging hopelessly at me. "Why wouldn't I be?"

  More garbled yelling. When I caught myself straining to hear, I made it a point to walk back out to the sleeping berths. Margot had undoubtedly heard about the fire by now, and there were a million for Jesse to screw this up for everyone, but none of it was my problem anymore. As soon as we got far enough from Chicago, I'd decided, I was getting on another bus. One that would get me as far away as possible from Jesse Cannon, from convicted arsonists and amnesiac terrorists and burning buildings and baloney sandwiches and flesh-eating demons.

  I pulled aside the curtain. The berth was filled with tour shirts and giveaway "Confession" cologne samples. No first aid kit. I started digging.

  "You're kidding," Jesse gasped into the phone, feigning shock. "A fire? It started where? From my room?" He put a hand to his mouth for good measure, and I actually wondered for a moment if this was his real reaction, if his attention span was truly so remarkably small.

  "My god. We must've left right before it happened. Is everyone okay?"

  Jesse paused and sank down into the bed, adding a "Seriously?" or an "Omigod" wherever necessary. When he stood up again with wide-eyed shock, I felt alarmed in spite of myself.

  "Oh, the driver?" Jesse looked to me with a pleading stare of sheer panic, to which I shook my head callously.

  "Jordan fired him and called in someone else," he said flatly. His eyes flicked to me and narrowed to malicious slits. "No, she's not here. She's slutting around somewhere with that bodyguard from the Dave Matthews Band."

  I shot him an open-mouthed look of pure poison and turned away. My fingers had finally closed around the handle of the first aid kit. I yanked it viciously from beneath the heap of shirts, jerking it open.

  "Well good," Jesse prattled on. "As long as no one was hurt. Hey, I've got another call coming in. Right, yes, okay ...."

  I flipped furiously through the kit, making sure there was plenty of antiseptic and ace wrap and―

  My fingers froze on a tube of burn ointment.

  As long as no one was hurt ...

  I slammed the kit shut and whirled around at Jesse.

  "No one was hurt?"

  Jesse arched his eyebrows at me, still babbling through whatever closing words Margot was trying to get out. I made a move to grab the phone, but he held it out of reach as he hung up.

  "Jesse!"

  "What?"

  "No one was hurt!" I wailed. "No one was hurt?"

  "That's what Margot said," he affirmed, giving me a cautious look. "The fire did some damage to the dressing rooms, that's all, and they already suspect Khan. Did you know he hijacked some poor lady's car? And―oh, get this, Jordan―they think he's obsessed with―"

  "Jesse!"

  "What?"

  I rushed over and sat down beside him, setting the kit aside while my mind played a horrifying game of leapfrog with itself. I didn't know that the Luna Latum had cleaned up after us. I just knew that Margot should have had more news, more than the fire and Khan, more than the confusion over drivers and the deathblow possibility of being sued by Odette.

  Suddenly the prospect of staying on the tour bus forever didn't seem so bad. From beneath my dread rose an absurd note of giddiness, born of the notion that I would never again have to talk to Margot. I was pretty certain at that point that something would kill me by morning.

  "Think about it," I said, piecing it together for Jesse. "She said nobody was hurt. Don't you think she should have mentioned some severely burnt groupies?"

  Jesse paused to consider this, and I got to witness his face blanching as the image sank in, maybe the same one I was envisioning: the charred Hollows rising from the highway and slithering off into the night to regroup, to put themselves back together. To finish what they'd started.

  His eyes met mine. "Oh."

  I pushed the first aid kit into his hands and nodded toward the front of the bus. "Let's go tell them."

  We moved dazedly out of his room. I paused again by the sleeping berths as an afterthought, pilfering there until I found an extra-large tour shirt. Jesse was about to slide open the privacy door and saunter to the front of the bus when I stood up straight and turned around.

  "Wait."

  If I was going to be on this bus for even one more second, then I had to know. Everything that I'd seen so far had confirmed it, but I hadn't given myself a moment to decide what I believed. Or where I stood.

  I took a step back so that I didn't have to crane my neck to see his face. The black eye, the supermodel lips, all of it. And suddenly it was difficult to speak. I found that I could hardly do more than gr
imace.

  "You know I can't help you, Jesse." The words just fell out, and they were strangely terrifying words to hear myself say. "I can't. Not with ... whatever this is."

  Jesse listened with rare patience, not smiling, not frowning.

  "But I want to know," I blurted, bracing myself as the bus accelerated. "I want to at least understand what this means for you. So are you really ...? Some kind of ...?" I shook my head and smiled helplessly, stealing Jackson's words. "What are you?"

  To that, Jesse's face assumed a sly, camera-ready grin.

  "Oh, the rest of the world has known that all along, honey," he said, tapping a finger under my chin as he turned again toward the door.

  "I'm a god, that's what."