by Linda Grimes
One of Santa’s elves—a short, middle-aged lady with bright red lips stretched wide, bleached hair, and way too much jingle in her bells—handed us each a candy cane. We were getting close to the front of the line, thank God.
“So, how big should I smile?” I asked Molly out of the side of my mouth.
Molly weighed the matter. “You know how you look when Auntie Ro makes you go shopping and you don’t want to hurt her feelings? Like that.”
“Gotcha. Martyred it is,” I said with a wink. The look came naturally to me, perfected during the many times during my adolescence Mom had decided my wardrobe needed updating. Shouldn’t be a problem transferring it to Olivia’s face.
As soon as the kid in front of us was off Santa’s lap, Molly shoved me toward the chair. “I’ll wait for you in the shoe department,” she said, fleeing.
“But it’s almost your turn,” I hollered after her.
“Me? No way. Santa is for babies!” And then she was gone.
Great. I took a deep breath, plastered on my martyred half-smile, and climbed onto the red velvet pants. Santa looked at me, glassy-eyed, and let loose with a fragrant “Ho! Ho! Ho!” Whew. As I suspected. Whiskey fumes.
“So, little girl, what do you want Santa to bring you for Christmas?”
“Nothing. Really, I already have everything I want. Let’s get the picture, okay?”
He joggled his leg, bouncing me up and down until my teeth rattled. “Come now, there must be something you have a hankering for. A great big package, maybe? Heh-heh-heh.”
What the hell?
I looked up at the jolly face. Was there a leer hidden behind those gold-frame spectacles? There was. Why, the old perv! But I was determined to go through with it. A job is a job, paid or not. Besides, if I didn’t get the picture here, we’d have to hunt down another Santa, and I’d already wasted too much of my day in line.
“The picture, fat guy,” I said through gritted teeth. “Now. Or you’ll lose your package before you can give it away.”
His eyes sparkled like a naughty boy. “Somebody might be getting a lump of coal in her stocking this year,” he said. But at least he signaled the photographer. The camera flashed at the same time I yanked—hard—on his very real beard. That should provide an interesting addition to the family Christmas album.
Before I slipped off his lap I said, “Just so you know, I’ll be reporting your disgusting comments to security. I expect you’ll be unemployed by the end of your shift.”
Santa leaned forward, rubbing his jaw, and whispered, “Jesus, cuz, can’t you take a joke?”
* * *
Billy met us in front of girls’ shoes, back in his own clothes and projecting his own mischievous self. The real fake Santa was back on duty after his unexpected—and, according to Billy, very welcome—break, which he’d spent knocking back a few tall ones at the Cellar Bar. Guess he really was a self-medicator. But apparently not a pedophile, so I didn’t feel obligated to get him fired. He’d been under the impression Santaland had been temporarily closed due to a behind-the-scenes problem with a robotic reindeer. Fortunately, he wasn’t the sort to question his luck.
I’d ducked into a stall in a ladies’ room and switched back to myself, now carrying Olivia’s clothes in a shopping bag. My own jeans and sweater weren’t much bigger than hers, but I refused to parade around the store as myself wearing a Justin Bieber sweatshirt.
“You are such an ass,” I said to Billy first thing. I’d like to say I kept my voice low enough that Molly couldn’t hear, but her giggle told me otherwise.
Besides, it wasn’t as though she’d never heard me call her brother that—and worse—before, practically from her birth onward. Growing up with Billy had, at times, been a frustrating proposition. His teasing at family gatherings had more often than not culminated with him standing in a handy corner and me with a bar of soap in my mouth.
“What? Can’t I have a little holiday fun with my favorite girls?” He tugged Molly’s braid.
“If I’d known it was you, I would have stayed,” Molly said. “You should have told me you were coming.”
“That goes double for me,” I said, giving him the evil eye. “You said you had something important planned for today.”
“And so I do. Ladies, if you’ll follow me…”
He led off with long strides, not looking back. After a quick glance at each other, Molly and I followed, walking double time to keep up with him. Molly held on to multiple copies of a picture of Olivia with Santa, a happily malevolent smile on her face. The look on Santa’s face—mouth wide open, eyes squished shut in a major wince—might leave a little to be desired, but, hey, those were the breaks. At least Olivia’s hand was hidden. I’d taken care to pull his beard from the underside, so Molly’s buddy wouldn’t be blamed for spoiling the picture. I was sure Olivia herself would love it. Her mother? Possibly not so much.
* * *
Molly could barely contain herself as we stood in front of the g-force simulator at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Me? I was starting to wish the taxi ride hadn’t been so short.
We’d swung by Olivia’s house first. Molly had snuck around back to the tree house with the clothes I’d worn, so Olivia could change, and then we made a big show of dropping her off after our supposed shopping-slash-Santa expedition. Olivia’s mother thanked me profusely for ensuring the tradition lived on, despite the pained look on Santa’s face in the photo. Olivia and Molly had giggled conspiratorially at each other, garnering nothing more than an indulgent look from Mrs. Hawkins. Job completed without a hitch.
Until now.
I gave Billy a dirty look. “This? This is the surprise? Like I haven’t had enough g-forces lately?” I whispered.
“I promised Molly I’d take her this year. There isn’t much of this year left, so…” He shrugged. “Anyway, it’s all part of your ongoing desensitization process. Two birds, one stone. At the rate you’re coming along, you’ll be begging to fly everywhere before long—don’t look at me like that. Come on, cuz. If you can handle the Vomit Comet, this will be a piece of cake.”
“Yeah, well, I got paid a crap-ton of money for the Vomit Comet, thank you very much.”
He pulled out his wallet and started peeling off bills.
I rolled my eyes. “Put your money away, idiot.”
“Hey, if you don’t want it, I’ll take it,” Molly said, reaching.
I had to grin. Molly was exactly like her big brother, opportunistic to her Doyle core. Not a mean bone in her body, but definitely willing and able to turn situations to her financial advantage.
Billy snatched his hand away. Molly batted her eyelashes at him. “I’ll be able to afford a better Christmas present for you.”
Billy twisted his mouth, making a big show of weighing the matter, and finally handed her a twenty. “No more Christmas ties,” he said, his voice laced with threat.
Molly stuffed the bill into her pocket, a wicked gleam in her eye. I was pretty sure I knew exactly what she’d be getting for Billy. And he’d wear it, too, grumbling the whole time.
I cleared my throat. “Oh, look. There are only two seats on it. Guess I’ll wait out here and watch your charming Doyle faces on that handy-dandy screen,” I said, pointing at the monitor next to the ride. The current occupants seemed to be enjoying themselves, if in a rather terrified way.
“No!” Molly said, grabbing my hand. “I want to ride it with you, Ciel. Today is supposed to be girl time. Billy won’t mind riding with a stranger. Pleeeease…”
She employed the Doyle eyes, full force. I could feel myself weakening.
“You heard the kid, cuz. She wants you.” Billy tried to disguise the I’m-getting-my-way gleam in his eye, but I could still detect it.
“But your motion sickness…” I said, as delicately as I could. Molly couldn’t even go on a merry-go-round without plastic bags. I shuddered to think what being tossed around inside a small capsule on the end of a giant robotic arm would do to her delicate con
stitution.
“I’m getting better! I didn’t even feel a bit sick in the taxi on the way here. Besides, Billy says you have to keep stretching your limits if you want to get over something.”
Yeah, I was familiar with Billy’s line of thinking on stretching your limits. I even agreed with it, in theory. But I wasn’t fond of being barfed on, and neither was Billy. Which, I was sure, was why he’d arranged to keep his promise to Molly while staying safely out of the splash zone.
“Fine,” I said with a final glare at her brother, and allowed myself to be loaded into the machine. “But I’m warning you—if you hurl on me, I will hurl back on you.” It was only as the words came out of my mouth that it occurred to me if I was pregnant (please, please, please no), this might not be the best activity to participate in.
I was about to signal the ride controller to let me out when Molly said, “Deal! This is going to be awesome!”
Then it was too late. The last view I had of Billy’s face as the door closed over us was dominated by his dimples. Naturally. It was to be expected—his evil plan had worked. The disturbing thing was what I glimpsed several yards behind him: Alec Loughlin.
“Crap,” I said, evoking Molly giggles. The slim possibility of pregnancy fled my mind in an instant.
“Don’t worry, Ciel. Even if the ride makes us feel sick, we probably won’t barf until after we get off.”
Comforting as that thought was, it didn’t help with my dilemma. How could I warn Billy without frightening Molly? Had that even been Loughlin? The glimpse had been so brief, and I was extra sensitive about him since the funeral. Maybe I was seeing things.
Then I remembered the monitors. Surely Billy was watching us. I searched the cabin. There. There was the camera. I gestured madly at it, trying to get across “look behind you” with hand motions.
“Ciel! It’s starting—quick, take the controls! You don’t want us to crash, do you?”
“Um, yeah. I mean, no.” I grabbed the stick beside me and tried to hold it steady with one hand while mouthing “Behind you!” at the camera. Only there was a big swoop, and it felt like the seat was falling out from under me, so if Billy was reading my lips, he might possibly have deciphered it as “Oh, shit!” followed by “Fuuuuck!” My mouth tends to have a mind of its own in certain situations.
Molly was whooping wildly next to me, having the time of her life. Which didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t going to get sick, only that the “I’m having fun” part of her brain was temporarily overriding the “I’m turning green and am gonna puke” part. But I had more important things to worry about.
Crap. Now I was glued to my seat, experiencing the g-forces for which the ride was named. Huh. Not as bad as the Vomit Comet—Billy was right about that—but still not my preferred way to spend six minutes of my life.
During a brief period of relative calm, when I was almost certain we were right-side up, I once again attempted to tell Billy to turn around, this time using a spinning hand gesture. Bad move. The cockpit—whether coincidentally or by human intervention—seemed to take it as a signal to ramp up the rocking and rolling.
Forget warning Billy. If Loughlin didn’t kill him, I would.
* * *
Molly and I exited the ladies’ room on legs a lot steadier than when we’d stumbled in after the ride. Neither one of us had actually tossed our cookies, thanks to the judicious application of cold water to our necks and wrists, but it was close.
I hadn’t noticed Billy—or Loughlin either—between the ride and the restroom. Then again, finding either of them hadn’t exactly been paramount in my mind right then. Or Molly’s. But now our stomachs were settled, and I had a thing or two I wanted to say to my significant other.
Which would be a lot easier to do if he hadn’t disappeared.
“Man, I can’t wait to tell Sinead and Siobhan we did it without puking,” Molly said, her natural ebullience returning along with the color in her face. Kids. They bounce back fast. “Now maybe they’ll take me on the Cyclone next time we go to Coney Island!”
Better them than me. “Let me know if you need me to back up your story. Say, do you see your brother anywhere?”
She craned her neck, searching every direction. “No. Huh. Wonder where he went. Hey, I know—he’s probably in the other simulator.” She ran back, ducking between tourists. I stuck to her heels, an uneasy feeling building inside me, one that had nothing to do with motion sickness and everything to do with sudden, overwhelming worry.
Both g-force simulators were in full swing; neither monitor showed Billy in a cockpit. Had he picked up on my warning about Loughlin? Was he following him right now?
I dug my phone out of pocket and called him, leading Molly by the hand toward the nearest exit, and heard the nearby strains of Randy Newman’s “Short People”—Billy’s special ringtone for me. He’d teased me with that annoying song for years when we were growing up, and claimed he was sentimentally attached to it. He had to be close. I twirled in place, dragging Molly around in circles with me. Still no sign of Billy.
“There!” Molly said, pointing down. On the floor, near the Plexiglas barrier to the simulators, was Billy’s phone, faceup, with a picture of my smiling, lightly freckled face on the screen, playing the opening notes of the Newman song over and over.
A cold fear slithered down my spine. Where was Billy?
Chapter 7
My phone buzzed in my hand, quickly followed by the James Bond theme song. Billy (of course) had programmed it into my phone as a ringtone for Mark, whom I could only hope was calling to tell me he’d had to pull Billy away suddenly, and was now looking to retrieve his dropped cell phone for him.
“Tell Billy I found it,” I said. “You know, if I were inclined to take a page from Mom’s handbook, I’d mention losing his phone was God’s punishment for setting me up on that god-awful ride.”
“Howdy, what are you talking about? I’m calling because I couldn’t get through to Billy, and I knew he had planned to spend time with you and Molly today. Are you telling me he’s not with you?”
Cue the return of the cold fear. “He was. But when Molly and I got off the ride, he was gone. We found his phone on the floor—oh, Jesus, Mark. Loughlin was here! At least I think he was. I caught a glimpse of someone who looked like him from the window of the ride.”
“Ciel, stay where you are. Don’t turn off your phone.”
“What’s going on? Damn it, Mark, tell me! Is Billy okay?”
There was a pause. I could almost hear Mark’s thoughts as he tried to decide what to tell me.
“Look, if ever anyone needed to know something, I do now. Tell me.”
I could hear the sound of a car door closing in the background. Wherever Mark was, he was already moving. “There’s been another killing. Mason Pickering. He was stabbed as he was leaving his apartment.”
Shit. Mason was a friend of Auntie Mo’s, the man she’d been dating when she met Uncle Liam, in fact. They’d remained cordial after that, though not close. He was an adaptor.
“Was he stunned first?” I asked, mouth dry. Very quietly, so Molly wouldn’t hear.
“We don’t know yet. Howdy, I’m on my way.”
“Okay. We’re at the—”
“The Intrepid. I’m tracking you now. Keep Molly where there are plenty of people around. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
* * *
Molly and I waited for Mark at the food court, sipping on sodas, pretending we weren’t worried about Billy. I sure wasn’t going to tell her about Mason—that would only add to her worries.
I coped by focusing my thoughts on Mason instead of Billy as I listened to Molly babble about what she was getting everyone for Christmas. I was trying to think of the last time I’d seen him myself when it hit me. He’d been at the funeral. Everyone in the nearby adaptor community had been. Aunt Helen had been universally loved among all those who knew her.
Crap. Was that why Loughlin had been at the funeral? To
get close to adaptors so he could kill them?
As soon as Mark got there, Molly ran to him and hugged him tight. Honestly? I wanted to do the same thing, but I was trying to exercise my grown-up muscles.
He nodded at me over Molly’s head, hugging her back before gently disengaging her from his waist. He dropped a kiss on top of my head and gave my arm a reassuring squeeze. “You have it?”
I handed him the phone. He checked the call log. Maybe he’d be able to make more sense of it than I could—I didn’t recognize three-quarters of the numbers I’d seen there. Which didn’t mean anything, really. Billy had a complex encryption system on his phone for dealing with his less savory clients.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Nothing unusual,” he said. “Why don’t you show me where you found it.”
Molly took the lead, speed-walking all the way back to the simulators.
Billy was there, talking to one of the simulator operators, pointing at the floor. His dimples were out full-force, as if he could charm the young lady into making his phone reappear.
“Billy!” Molly ran the last thirty feet to him and jumped up into his arms, practically choking him in her glee at finding him. Again, I wished I could do the same thing. Especially the choking part.
“Where’d you go?” Molly said. “We looked everywhere. And then we found your phone—”
“You have my phone? Thank goodness for you, monkey girl. I thought I’d lost it for sure,” Billy said, tugging her braid as he put her down, deftly not answering her question.
Mark handed him the phone. I gave him a more sedate hug than his sister had. Well, if you don’t count slugging his shoulder. (What? He’d scared the crap out of me. I needed to release a little tension.)
“Do we need to find somewhere quieter to talk?” Mark said.
“Might be a good idea,” Billy said, with a significant glance at Molly. “But first we better get the munchkin home.”
“But—”
“No buts, Molls,” I said. “I promised your mom I’d get you back in time to do your homework before dinner.”
“Homework sucks. Anyway, I already did it. It was stupid easy.”
