Devil’s Bargain

by Rachel Caine (mobi)

  She stopped. Just…stopped.

  This is stupid, she told herself. Move. Get on the damn plane.

  Borden had heard the same things she had. He wasn’t hesitating.

  She took a deep breath and edged past the tired smiles of the flight attendants to her seat. Borden eased in next to her with a sigh and buckled in tight.

  “Borden,” she said again. “Listen, what he said—”

  “About the crash?” He sounded utterly calm. “You weren’t listening, Jazz. There’s an eighty-two-percent chance it won’t happen. Believe me, the longer you’re around Simms, the more you’ll trust his odds.”

  “But—” There’s a woman named Kelley Walters back there. And that guy over there, he’s named Qualls.

  Borden went back to the sports section. “Just stay buckled in,” he said. “Trust me. You’ll either believe soon, or you won’t. And there’s an eighty-two-percent chance it’ll actually still matter in the end.”

  The engine blew out, by Jazz’s watch, at 10:03 p.m., California time. She was next to the window and had a view of the sudden flare of fire. She hadn’t gone to sleep, though the plane was nearly silent and most of her fellow passengers—including Borden—had nodded off.

  They all woke up fast when the loud bang shuddered through the aircraft, and the plane lurched sharply to starboard. Jazz gasped and punched fingernails into the armrests, wishing the damn plane came with crash harnesses instead of ridiculously inadequate lap belts; next to her, Borden snapped awake and grabbed for support, too. “Hold on,” he said.

  She stared out the window at the whipping fire and smoke pouring from the ruined engine. The plane hit rough air and tilted again, waking screams from the back cabin. The engines growled, shaking the airframe, and Jazz felt her ears pop.

  She grabbed for Borden’s hand.

  “Eighty-two percent,” he said. It sounded like a prayer, or a chant. “Eighty-two percent. We’ll be okay.”

  It didn’t feel like that. It felt like her stomach had dropped somewhere out of the cargo bay and was falling, weightless, to earth. About to crash into a row of sleeping suburban houses. He didn’t say how many of them it would kill, she thought, how many more innocent victims. Maybe, to Simms, nobody was innocent.

  She felt her fingers twine tight with Borden’s. His were shaking. A whine built up at the back of her throat, and she felt the plane falling, falling, tilting…

  And then, suddenly, there was a surge of power, and it leveled out. They were saved.

  She let out a startled gasp and heard the cries behind her fade out. Borden was still holding her hand, but he wasn’t crushing it anymore, and she could hear him breathing again. Deep, deliberately slow breaths.

  “See?” he said. His voice sounded an octave higher than normal. “Eighty-two percent. We’re going to be fine.”

  She turned toward him in the dimness as the Fasten Seat Belts sign flashed on with a belated ding, and the captain announced in a businesslike voice that no, they were not going to die.

  “He’s not bullshit, is he?” she asked. “Simms. He really can do these things.”

  “Well,” Borden answered, “the alternative is that he has enough power sitting in a maximum-security prison to have arranged for a commercial airliner to be sabotaged just to convince you. Which one would you rather believe?”

  She managed a pale, shaky smile. His fingers wrapped around hers, warm and comforting, and she let them stay there all the way to the terminal.

  It was nearly five in the morning by the time Jazz flipped on the lights in her office and dropped bonelessly onto the couch. She let her head drift back against the cushions and stared at the ceiling, blank and drained, and saw Borden’s long, sharp-chinned face bend over her.

  “Okay?” he asked. He hadn’t ever put his tie back on, she realized. His suit jacket was off and tossed over the arm of a chair, drooping just the way she felt, and his once finely pressed shirt was a mass of wrinkles. Unbuttoned about one too many fastenings to qualify as businesslike.

  “Yeah,” she said. “For somebody whose head exploded several hours ago.”

  “Believe me, I understand.” He sank down on the couch next to her. “Remember the night I walked into the bar with your letter?”

  She wasn’t likely to forget it. “You looked like an idiot.”

  “I felt like one.”

  “Did Simms tell you what to wear?”

  He didn’t answer. He reached out and smoothed a stray lock of hair back from her face. She turned toward him, cheek resting on soft cushions, and met his eyes.

  They both froze.

  His hand was still brushing her skin, fingers light and warm, but there was nothing casual about the look on his face. Dangerous, that look. Especially here, in the dark, after adrenaline and a hard day and the destruction of the universe as she knew it, with a comfortable couch to lie back on.

  Really, really dangerous.

  Jazz moved away a little. Just enough to put space between his hand and her skin. He took the hint and leaned away, elbow on the back of the couch, staring at her but not quite as nakedly hungering. “I should call Lucia,” she said.

  “This early?”

  He had a point, and the couch felt far too comfortable. “I should go home,” she said. “Then again, I should be here in three hours.”

  “Sleep,” he advised her, and pulled her legs into his lap. She couldn’t honestly remember when it was she’d allowed him to get that close to her, allowed herself to be touched with that much freedom. His hands felt huge and burning hot through her clothes, points of fire on her skin. She closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath and concentrated on the sensation of his palms moving lightly across the backs of her calves, massaging. He stripped off her shoes and let them drop to the floor.

  She didn’t mean to fall asleep, but there was something so achingly soothing about the warmth of his body near hers that she dropped into a field of black behind her eyelids, and was gone.

  Jazz woke up alone, to the blaze of overhead lights. She blinked, coughed and dragged herself upright, wishing for hair-trigger reflexes and managing more like a blunt object.

  Lucia was framed in the door, paused in the act of walking into the room, staring at her with an expression of utter surprise.

  “Hey,” Jazz muttered, and ran both hands through her hair. She didn’t even want to think about how she looked. There were bag ladies going through Dumpsters who probably looked better.

  “Hey,” Lucia said cautiously, and closed the door behind her. “Ah…were you supposed to be back today?”

  “No. Change of plans.” I’m marked for death, Jazz started to say, and decided to hold that back for later, after coffee. “Where’s Borden?”

  “Was he here?” Lucia set her purse down and swung dark hair back over her shoulder with a practiced swing of her head, smiling like the Mona Lisa. “And is there something I should know about this?”

  “Nothing interesting.”

  Lucia pulled a chair up and sat down, elbows on her knees in a pose Jazz realized was a mirror of her own. Only, of course, Lucia was dressed in an olive-green pantsuit with a peach silk blouse, flawless makeup, and didn’t look as if she’d ever in her life had a black eye, a chipped nail, or a short night’s sleep on the office couch.

  “What happened?”

  Jazz didn’t intend to tell her all of it, but that’s what came out. All of it. From the saving of Santoro’s life—which, if one believed Simms, wasn’t the greatest of all possible good deeds—to the creepy prison conversation, to her own newfound status as Eidolon’s Most Wanted, which by extension endangered all of them. She dug out the letter and handed it over. There was a lipstick smudge on it that baffled her until she remembered the lip print on the Plexiglas in the visitor’s cubicle. She’d forgotten about it when she slapped the paper to the surface. It looked now as if somebody at Eidolon had given her a sloppy, openmouthed kiss as a parting gift.

  Lucia took it in without
comment or question, until Jazz finished, and then looked up. “Do you believe it? Any of it at all?”

  That was a tough question. At five in the morning, she’d believed a hell of a lot more than she did sitting in the office, with morning light streaming in through the blinds and the smell of coffee beginning to percolate through the air-conditioning system.

  “Some,” she finally said. “Look, one thing’s for sure—he didn’t arrange that demonstration last night with the plane, and the chances of it being a lucky guess? Zero. Well, probably so close to zero that you couldn’t see them without a microscope.”

  “And the thing about trying to prevent the end of life as we know it?”

  “I have no idea,” Jazz admitted. “Combine delusions with an actual weird ability, what do you get?”

  “Something scary. Something very scary.”

  “No shit.” Jazz mussed her hair again, and saw Lucia grimace. “What? Don’t I just look like the hottie of the month?”

  “You look like you could use a bath,” Lucia said, with brutal honesty. “And another haircut. I’ve never seen anyone who can grow out of one as quickly as you.”

  But Jazz could tell that Lucia’s mind wasn’t on fashion and hair, not anymore. She looked stone-cold serious behind the frivolous words, and her mind was racing a million miles an hour. This was the Lucia Jazz knew and liked.

  The one who could shoot the eye out of an ant at a hundred feet.

  “Precautions,” Lucia said. “First things first, you don’t go anywhere without Kevlar. They’ve taken shots at you before, they will again. Also, we start with standard risk-assessment protocol. You never get into a car without it being checked for explosives or sabotage—”

  “Lucia, come on. Seriously.”

  “I’m being perfectly serious. You never get into a car with anyone you don’t know. We upgrade security on your apartment…no, scratch that, we abandon your apartment and move you someplace safe. No forwarding address.”

  “Safe? Like where?”

  Lucia’s smile flared impossibly white and gorgeous. Whatever she’d been about to say was interrupted by the arrival of Pansy, who poked her head around the door and waved a good-natured hello, then opened it wider as she said, “Guess who’s here?” She looked like a canary-fed cat. A well-satisfied canary-fed cat.

  Standing with her, shuffling his feet uncomfortably and looking desperately as if he wanted to be anywhere else on earth, was Manny Glickman.

  “Manny?” Jazz got up so fast she felt her throbbing head swim. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled, raised his muddy green eyes to hers for a bare second, and then looked down. “I, um, was just—on my way to—”

  “Manny,” Lucia said slowly, and got up, too. She took a couple of steps in his direction, and stopped when he backed up a little in alarm. He liked her well enough, Jazz knew, but Manny didn’t like anything coming at him that quickly. “Sorry. Listen, maybe you can help. You know something about security.”

  “Pretty much everything,” he agreed, without any arrogance. “Why?”

  “Jazz needs secure accommodations.”

  Manny looked up sharply, and fastened a laser stare on Lucia. “What’s going on?”

  Careful, Jazz thought, wishing she was telepathic. If she was going to be so god-awful special, she ought to at least have some particular power beyond getting thumped on and kind of enjoying it.

  “Jazz has somebody after her,” Lucia said. “I don’t think she’ll be safe in her home as it is right now.”

  Manny’s stare transferred to Jazz. “After you?”

  She sighed. “Yeah.” Any second now, there would be a cloud of dust and an end to her relationship with Manny Glickman. Danger was something Manny just didn’t do. Not that he’d ever been Adventure Man, but his turn under the ground had stripped away whatever bravery he’d once pretended to own. Not that she blamed him. She knew she wouldn’t have survived it at all. “Never mind, Manny, don’t worry about it. You go on and—”

  “You can stay with me,” he said. A simple, declarative statement. No shifting, no stuttering, no nervous flutters. He was rock still, his eyes steady and his face set. “There’s no place safer in this city than mine.”

  Oh, God, Jazz thought, and a wave of hilarity cascaded over her. She saw Lucia bite her lip, eyes wide. Manny Glickman as a roommate….

  “I won’t let you down,” he said, and suddenly all of the funny stuff fell away, and she was looking not at the screwed-up Manny she’d known for years, but at an entirely different person. Somebody who might have been able to pass the FBI’s stringent tests and personality profiles and background checks. Somebody who had strength and dignity and courage.

  Somebody who’d always been there, underneath all of the panic and worry and tics.

  “I won’t,” he repeated, and took a step toward her. “Jazz, let me do this. I want to help you.”

  She had no idea why he was offering. “Manny, look, you don’t understand. People may be trying to hurt me. Kill me. This isn’t a game.”

  He swallowed hard. She saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down convulsively, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He was trembling a little, but only a little, and he jammed hands into the pockets of his tan raincoat to hide it. “Fine,” he said. “Just, you know, leave it outside. Don’t bring it in.”

  Lucia stepped smoothly into the silence. “You set the time and method for us to move her,” she said. “Just let us know.”

  “Hey!” Jazz said. “Don’t I get—”

  “No,” Lucia answered without looking at her. “It’s Manny’s call, not yours. Let’s face it, Jazz, you gave up the right to make the decisions when you decided to run off to L.A. and get a contract put out on your life. So from now on, you go nowhere without me. You live in Manny’s house. And you do not get a vote.”

  Jazz’s temper—never far from the surface—flared into bubbling lava. “I’m not living like a prisoner!”

  The window behind her exploded in a shower of bright, sharp-edged glass, and she felt a rush of wind that blew her hair forward violently. Lucia was heading toward her, but she was already diving for the carpet, squirming to get under the desk, twisting on her side to see if anybody else had been hit.

  Manny was still standing, staring uncomprehendingly at the shattered window and the clanking, wind-tossed blinds. Pansy screamed something unintelligible at him and tackled him; they tumbled together, off balance, back out into the reception area between the offices. Lucia hadn’t gone for cover. She’d hit the carpet, rolled gracefully, and fetched up against the far wall under the windows. By the time she made the last rotation, she had her gun out and in both hands. She shook hair out of her face, panting, and stared at Jazz. “You all right?” she shouted. Jazz made an okay gesture with one hand as she yanked open her desk drawer with the other and felt around in the depths. She found a cold metal box and pulled it out to thump on the carpet next to her head, then punched in the combination with trembling fingers. The lock snapped open.

  She took the Sig Sauer and scrambled to join Lucia at the window. They sat there together, backs to the wall, guns ready, and exchanged a look.

  “Now,” Lucia said, and rolled right, over the broken glass, coming up on one knee and aiming out the open window. Jazz angled to cover her own side. There was a second’s tight silence as they searched for targets.

  “Clear,” Lucia announced.

  “Yeah, here, too.”

  “If he’s any good, he’s already gone,” Lucia said. “Snipers don’t hang around waiting for a second chance. They take the shot and go without seeing how it came out. If it doesn’t work, they come back for another try.”

  Jazz nodded jerkily and narrowed her eyes against the glare, still looking. The morning looked bland and bright. Traffic crawled along outside without incident. Nobody seemed to have noticed a thing, so far, though there was a nice glittering spray of glass on the sidewalk below.

  “Get out,” Lu
cia said, still maintaining a rigid focus outside the window, gun at the ready. “Stay low.”

  There wasn’t any reason to argue about it. Jazz did a combat-crawl across the floor, keeping close to the wall, and when she was far enough, rose to a crouch and moved fast out into the darker area beyond. Manny and Pansy peered at her from the cover of Pansy’s desk.

  “Over here!” Pansy whispered, and gestured her urgently on. “Get down!”

  “There’s no reason to keep your voice down, they’re not stalking the halls with Uzis,” Jazz said in a normal tone, and straightened up. “Also, there’s no way they can see in here from any of the windows. We’re fine.”

  “Thanks, we’ll just—stay here,” Pansy said. “I called nine-one-one.”

  “Good idea.” Jazz realized her heart was still pounding, and she was breathing too fast, and reached up to run her hand through her hair. Something bit in a sharp hot line on her finger, and she bent over and shook her head. A rain of glass fragments came out and bounced on the carpet. “You both okay? No holes in you?”

  “Fine,” Pansy said. Manny wasn’t speaking, evidently. “Jazz? I’m thinking I might, you know, take a personal day.”

  Jazz nodded calmly, ejected the clip from the Sig Sauer and checked it before slamming it back in and ratcheting the slide to put one in the chamber. “You know,” she said, “I personally think that sounds like an excellent idea. But wait for the police.”

  “Don’t worry,” Manny said. Like Jazz, he sounded extremely calm. Unnaturally calm. “I’m not moving until there’s three-hundred-sixty degrees of Kevlar.”

  She had no doubt that was true. She expected the next time she saw Manny, he’d look like the Michelin Man, only in black body armor. “Pansy. You didn’t see Borden when you came in this morning?”

  “No, was he here?”