by Lynn Red
Rex looked back and forth between them and then let a grin betray his feelings. “I’m impressed,” he said. “I know how hard it can be to find people when they don’t want to be found.”
“Hum,” Daniels grunted. “Or when they want to be found, but someone else wants them to stay hidden.”
“Or,” Clayton said. “When both they and someone else want to stay hidden, but someone else entirely wants them to be found. Although those cases are usually relegated to runaway boyfriend-girlfriend things, and it’s the parents who want them found.”
He shot a glance in my direction, but before doing so he got my head swimming, as I tried to follow the circling logic. “Right,” I said. “Well I don’t think whoever this is,” I tilted my head toward the phone, “is with her boyfriend.”
Rex pulled me aside as the two police kept working. As he turned to me and began to whisper, a low humming sound emanated from their device. Clayton clapped Daniels on the shoulder. “Won’t be a minute,” he said. “We’ll have at least a general location and direction of travel.”
“I want you to be ready for whatever they find,” Rex said. “You said something bad was happening with your sister and her friends?”
The realization – or well, I had already been thinking the same thing, but hearing someone else vocalize it made it feel more real – hit me square in the chest. I felt like my lungs were constricting, like I couldn’t breathe.
“Oh God,” I whispered. “What if...?”
He shook his head. “Whoever is on that phone is still breathing, Lilah,” he said. His voice was all business, but had a little bit of raggedness and edginess that excited me in spite of myself. “As long as they’re breathing, we’ll find them.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked, letting my nerves momentarily get the best of me. “I just wish I could get ahold of Dezzy.”
“Have you tried calling?” he was distracted, but at least he was talking instead of pacing.
“Yeah,” I said, chewing my lip. “No answer. Then again, it is before noon on a Saturday.”
He chuckled softly. “I remember those days. Sort of. There’s plenty of drinking on military bases, but not a whole lot of waking up past noon.” He looked at the hyenas and then handed me the neighbor’s borrowed phone. “Give her a call and see what she has to say.”
*
“Come on,” I said into the phone, “pick up. This time, pick up. You gotta be there, you’re just asleep.”
Rex’s hand was warm on my shoulder. Every time he squeezed, the soft cotton rubbing against my shoulder felt good for a few seconds before panic struck again. “Keep calling,” he said. “She’s a college student after all, right?” Somehow he managed a weak smile that raised my spirits briefly.
Another straight to voicemail, another sinking feeling in my chest.
“This is pointless,” I said, exhaling slowly. Even with the conscious effort pointed at making myself even, my breath rattled. “Something happened to her,” I said. “I can feel it. Like, feel it in that sister-bond way. You know?”
“I don’t have any sisters,” Rex said, smiling sadly. He shook his head. “Keep calling. I’m going to go see if they’re coming up with anything.”
The second he left my side, the gentle breeze from my overhead fan cooled my skin where he’d had his hand. I put one of mine right on that spot, and dialed again. When once again I got nothing but voicemail, I squeezed my arm, just like Rex had done.
I needed him.
Not in an ‘I need a boyfriend’ sort of way; in a way much deeper and more intimate. He made me feel safe, yeah, and he made me feel good about myself in ways no one else ever had, ever, but it was more than that.
I chewed my lip, trying to give myself a moment’s distraction. I just needed a second, I told myself. Just needed to center, to breathe, to let the energy coursing through my body and prickling my skin subside.
Closing my eyes tight, I imagined Rex holding me. I imagined how his arm felt around my shoulders, warming me and keeping me safe. I let my thoughts drift to the way it felt to have him hold me close, and how safe I felt, how I felt like I was with...
My stomach clenched when I realized when it was, exactly, I was feeling.
Family.
The word echoed in my brain, rolling around like dice in a backgammon cup before they plopped out onto the board. When Rex and I were together, I didn’t get boyfriend feelings. I mean, I did, but that wasn’t all. I didn’t just get the sexy-time butterflies or the breath-taken-away feeling you get when someone plants fluttery kisses on the backs of your knees.
I felt like it was... lasting? Long and secure and... and yeah, family.
Just like my sister made me feel, of course, but with her I always seemed to be looking out for her, mothering her, more than we were peers getting through the world together.
I felt someone watching me and turned to see Rex focused on me. The look he had made me think he was going through the same brief period of mental discovery that I was going through. I looked at him longingly for a second before he turned his face.
The warmth I felt surging through me when those worried eyes turned my way.
Absentmindedly, I dialed my sister again. My hands were moving in a familiar way, I guess because they were trying to give me something to focus on that wasn’t the imminent collapse of my entire world, and the fact that I was about to have a full on breakdown in front of two cops and the guy I had fallen in love with.
Somehow, he figured it out and came to my side just as the gadgets the police set up made a strange sound. The breathing, and the rumbling and the rushing wind were interrupted by two heart-stopping beeps.
“She’s... my sister,” I said. The hitch in my throat got so that I couldn’t swallow or talk.
Rex put one hand on either of my shoulders.
I knew what it was. I’d know that sound anywhere. That goddamn incoming call noise that meant... it meant...
“Listen,” Rex said. “I know this is bad. I know it’s really bad. But—”
“Tell me it’s going to be okay,” I said. My lips were shaking, and when I reached up to put my hands on top of his, I had to hold on. “Tell me she’s in trouble now but that something is going to happen and she’s going to be okay.”
He held on for a second, steadying my trembles. “Lilah,” he whispered. “This looks bad, but there’s something I haven’t told you. I might have a way to find him, if this is what I think it is... and from the tingling in the back of my mind, I’m almost sure.”
“What is it?” I couldn’t think. I could hardly feel. Unconsciously, I dealt with the stress the only way I knew how – by adjusting my bandana.
“Whenever this guy, Graves, you called him, whenever I started having my dreams, I started to have something else. Some... visions or hallucinations or something. I think whenever he tried to take my shifting power, he screwed something up and gave me some kind of vision through his eyes.”
I shook my head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It sounds crazy even to me. But every now and then I get these images, and I think I’m seeing the world through his eyes. It’s like he put himself into me instead of the other way around. Anyway,” he started talking faster, like he was getting excited. “Anyway, I think if I can figure out some way to channel the thoughts, or, uh, I don’t know, read them somehow, that we’ll be able to find him.”
“Wait,” I said. “What about the triangulation? Why not just go with that? I don’t want you getting hurt. I can’t bear the thought of you running out there like a crazy person to save my sister, and getting yourself hurt.”
Rex shook his huge head. “I can take care of myself,” he said. “The only thing is that I’m not sure how to do anything with the visions.”
I leaned back, letting my head thump helplessly against my rough, textured wall. For a second, I turned my head back and forth, letting the peaks on the wall tug at m
y hair.
“Wait,” I said. “Do you think... just to be clear here, you’re being serious, right?”
“Well yeah, of course,” Rex said. “What the hell would I be making up bullshit about at a time like this?”
“Bullshit,” I said thoughtfully, nodding.
It’s hard to explain why I was thinking rationally, but it was like a few seconds after I realized what was going on, my brain panicked, and then after that I realized there was no more time for that. It was like a rationality switch flipped inside my head and I wasn’t going to let anything happen to my sister without giving it every shred of my effort to do something about.
“Why did you just say bullshit?” Rex asked. He was looking at me a little sideways. “You have an idea, don’t you?”
“Sort of,” I said. “Do you have a second helmet for your bike?”
“Second?” he asked. “That would indicate I have a first.”
I stared at him for a second. “You ride that thing around and don’t wear a helmet?”
Rex looked down at the floor. “I, uh... I guess I just never got in the habit.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s the first thing that’s going to change. If you’re going to be with me, you have to start acting like a grownup.”
Teasing him let me relax a little more. When I relax, my brain starts to turn. When I panic? No good. I start spinning and swirling and thinking worst-case scenarios. But if I can relax even a little, tiny bit, in the face of something horrible, I can focus.
“I, uh...” Rex brushed the hair back out of his face. “I might have a couple helmets that I put on whenever Leena rides with me, and I pretend I always wear them.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. “At least you do that sometimes. I’d hate to think she’d have to worry over her daddy having a wreck.”
He grabbed my shoulders and kissed me hard, pushing my head back against the wall. I braced myself against it by pressing backwards with my palms. “What was that for?” I asked as soon as he pulled away, sucking the end of his kiss on my bottom lip.
“For making me want to be a better person,” Rex said. “For making me want to be brave and never give up. I was on the brink of a very, very, dark place. Then I saw you. You came to me like an angel out of time, Lilah. I was serious earlier about you saving me.”
I cleared my throat to keep from tearing up. “You did too,” I said. “Me, I mean. I... yeah. You know what I mean. But right now, we have someone else to save.”
-24-
Lilah
“I,” Rex said, then looked sidelong at Atlas. “Er, what’s he doing?”
Jenga shook his head. “He’s pinin’, I’m afraid. Last time your friend was here, he was petting at her so hard I was afraid he’d take her arm off.”
With a glance in my direction, and a brief snort of laughter, Rex started shaking his head. “Why don’t you make him a girlfriend? That’s something you can do, right?”
“Well,” Jenga said. “I’d need a personality to put in. Know anyone who doesn’t need theirs?”
“I can think of a few people,” I said, out loud on accident.
“Oh? Oh! If you can give me their name and address, I can go see if they’d like to sell—”
“I’m pretty sure she was joking,” Rex said, patting Jenga on the shoulder. “But look, we’ve got a problem.”
The old witch doctor coughed. Atlas handed him a coconut, from which the old man drank through a straw. Rex looked in my direction and we both shook our heads. “Does this have anything to do with that soul-sucking professor you were telling me about, Lilah?”
“He has my sister,” I blurted out without really processing what I was saying. “At least we think it’s him.”
“It’s him,” Rex growled. “He’s got his mark on me.”
“Meant in more ways than one?” Jenga said. “Come here, son, let me look at this.”
Wincing as the old man touched his neck, Rex watched him run the tips of his fingers along the scars. “Happened in Baghdad,” he said softly.
“I know,” Jenga said. “It’s all right here.”
Without taking his eyes off my bear, Jenga patted an orb he had sitting on the table beside him.
“A crystal ball?” I asked, incredulously. “Seriously? Aren’t these things bullshi—”
“The best thing you can do,” Jenga said with a Cheshire smile, “is convince people that you’re either stupid or a fake. “You’d be amazed what you can get away with when an entire town thinks you’re a quack.”
After a few more moments of him rubbing Rex’s scars, he finally started talking again. “Put your hand on the ball. You’ll feel a... jolt.”
“Ah!” Rex cried out when he flattened his palm on the glass globe. “What the hell was that?”
Jenga shrugged. “Never figured it out, myself. I’m pretty sure that thing runs on some kind of spiritual version of a combustion engine. So when you touch it, energy surges through you, like the fire in an engine pushing a piston. You all right? Here, relax a little.”
The jangling old man pushed a reclining office chair behind Rex. “This might take a while,” he said. “Or it might not. It’s hard to tell with these things.”
“What exactly is the goal here?” Rex asked, wincing again when the old man jabbed his long, gnarled fingers into the sides of Rex’s head. “You’re not trying to brain probe me or something, are you?”
“No,” Jenga said. His voice was distant and obviously distracted by the dials he was turning and the switches he was flipping on the front of his glass ball. “I’m brain probing you.”
“But I just...” Rex trailed off, sighing. “How long is this going to take? We need to hurry, we’ve got—”
Something shut him up, and fast. With a jolt that stiffened his entire body, Rex groaned and writhed back and forth, threatening to knock over his chair, the ball, and even Jenga if he happened to go the right way.
“Atlas!” the old man called. “Need your help! I’ve always said that only a bear can hold a bear, so... Atlas!”
The giant zombie shuffled away from me, where he’d silently crept. When I looked over to him, his hand was outstretched, and he was about to rub my arm, which seemed to be just about his favorite hobby. I stifled a laugh and then immediately felt just awful for him. The look on the greenish-hued bear’s face was so pitiful and defeated that I could hardly stand to watch.
“It... tickle...” Atlas groaned.
Jenga closed his eyes and shook his head. “Can you be serious for once? Hold him down, and stop giggling at the way the shocks feel.”
Even as Jenga was talking, Atlas was giggling to himself, though in his defense he was only drooling a little bit. “Feel... funny,” the giant grumbled. “Make... eyes jiggle.”
“Yes, yes,” Jenga said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Thank you for letting me know about your eyes wiggling. Hold him down, we’ve got serious business to attend.”
Atlas kept giggling.
“Tell you what, big guy,” Jenga said. “If you can calm yourself down and keep from laughing and carrying on until we’re finished, I’ll look into making you a girlfriend.”
“Girl... friend? Me?” The zombie’s eyes were twinkling.
It was a bit jarring, sure, but I’m not gonna lie – there’s something really endearing about a six and a half foot, lilac-smelling zombie, who pines for a girlfriend.
“Atlas... will,” he finally said. The zombie strained as hard as he could to look serious.
His googly eye came to center, and with an incredible amount of effort, he actually closed his mouth. I had to look away to keep from laughing, which I was sure was going to turn into snorting, and then any hope of Atlas concentrating would be thrown right out the window.
“Good,” Jenga finally said. “Now, let’s get going with this. I’m afraid this might hurt kind of a lot,” Jenga said.
“The shock?” Rex asked, not scared, but preparing himself.
Jenga chuckled. “No, no, the shock is just a surprise. The part where I root around in your brain with a stick and try to track where our professor friend has taken Desdemona.”
“How did you know her name?” I asked. “I didn’t ever tell you.”
“Like I said,” Jenga said with a smile. “Never let on you know anywhere near as much as you actually do. Now,” he grabbed Rex’s hand. “I’m going to put this on the ball, Atlas is going to hold you down, and then I’m going to stick my thumbs in your nose and my middle fingers on your temple. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Rex said. “Wait a minute, did you say my no—”
Before he could finish, Rex’s hand fell again on the crystal globe and he stiffened up. Without a second thought, the witch doctor did exactly as he said he was going to do, jamming his two thumbs in Rex’s nostrils, and massaging his temples with the tips of his middle fingers.
“Why?” I asked. “Why the nose? There’s got to be something less, er, gross?”
“Have you seen the things I’ve got on my shelves?” he replied. He tilted his head toward the shelves behind him.
I looked, noticing a bunch of various animals floating in formaldehyde. Nestled in among them were some vials of slime, something that looked like lava rotating back and forth in a small bowling ball, and a bullfrog who sat there, staring at me, soundlessly inflating his neck. And then, strangely, what appeared to be some sort of a Jell-O mold.
“That’s...” I trailed off. “Is that some kind of gelatin food?”
“Uh-huh,” Jenga said. “Some guy’s nose?” He shook his head with a gentle chuckle. “After having your hands all over that pimento cheese flavored Jell-O with deviled egg coating, you lose a lot of the ability most people have to properly judge whether something is gross or not.”
I shuddered. “But... but why?”
“Atlas,” he said with a shrug. “He eats very strange things.”
“That explains the Jell-O, but I was talking about the nose picking. Why do you have to do that?”
