by T. K. Thorne
“I’ll do it and I’m on my way. Sit tight.”
I sit at Alice’s kitchen table late into the night, trying to think. This is not the first shooting incident I’ve been involved in, nor the first time someone has tried to kill me, but the boldness of it has unnerved me. After I called Tracey, police cars descended on the YMCA. Tracey was there almost as fast and insisted on leading them inside, only to find the pool deserted. No one recalled anything unusual except a wet woman running through the lobby and the fact that the alarm for the emergency exit went off. Angola, no doubt.
Any blood from our encounter had dispersed in the pool. Angola apparently recovered his gun before he fled, but bullets and shell casings were found.
Since I didn’t fire my weapon, I’m not subjected to being on Administrative Leave pending an investigation, though Faraday has ordered me home, but I’m afraid she will send me back to the department shrink. And maybe I should go. . .
I’m not sure if the man sitting on our front porch helps or if he is just marked as another future victim. Jamal is House of Stone. He is African American—not as imposing as Tracey, a leopard to Tracey’s bear, but I have no doubt of his competence. He’s only come inside the house to use the bathroom. Tonight, he will sleep on the couch.
Alice walks into the kitchen and hands me an official-looking envelope. “This came earlier.”
I open it and read it. “It’s from the court. The judge has declined our request for custody of Daniel. He’s to remain in foster care. We have visitation rights, but he’s not to step foot in this house.”
I hand her the paper.
She drops into the chair beside me, her shoulders slumping. All three of her cats—Alexander, Boo and Charlie—have followed her into the kitchen. Boo and Charlie are weaving under her chair legs. Alexander, the cat that hates me, inexplicably is sitting by mine, probably planning an ambush. Angel is not in sight, sulking somewhere. She is not terribly happy sharing a house and me with three other cats.
“I’m sorry,” Alice says. “Poor Daniel.” She wraps her arms around herself. “Maybe you were right. Maybe it’s better for him to have a fresh start.”
“Maybe, but what about Becca? Without Daniel, I don’t know that she can come back, even as far as she had.”
I pick up the cup of tea and put it down quickly to hide the shaking. I was not going to worry Alice about what happened, but I need her to know how serious this is.
“Angola tried to kill me today.”
She looks up, startled. “Angola? The man you think left the cell phone here? The one who is holding that child with cancer hostage?”
I nod.
“What happened?”
I tell her. She sits silently throughout, then her eyes fill with tears. “I have failed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I tried to protect you, but I can’t.”
“Alice,” I say, “I’m not a child anymore.”
“You’re terribly young.”
“That may be, but my safety isn’t your responsibility, and you’re not a failure. You protected me when I needed you to. If you hadn’t faked my death and sent me away, I wouldn’t be here.”
“But I feel helpless.”
I know the feeling.
“Dances with Wolves” interrupts us. It’s Tracey.
“Tell me some good news,” I say into my cell phone.
“I would if I had any. Got a district attorney and a judge out of bed and they gave me an arrest warrant for Angola for attempted murder of a police officer and a search warrant for him and any info related to the kidnapping, but he’s not at the mansion. We turned the whole place upside down. No Angola and again, no Kaleshia. Confiscated a couple of computers and that was it. Angola probably gave them a heads up.”
“That must have taken hours.”
“It did, because I had to check every room myself even after officers swept it, in case someone got ‘swayed.’ Damn complicated.”
“The tunnel too?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’m sorry about before.”
“What do you mean?”
“When we were searching that . . . room in the tunnels for Kaleshia, and I chickened out.”
“Rose, awful things happened in there. I can’t imagine what it was like. Forget it. You would have come in if I’d needed you.”
Would I?
“What about the tracker?” I ask.
“The tech guys found it in a dumpster.”
“He’s always a step ahead, isn’t he?”
“Almost. He obviously wasn’t counting on you surviving the swimming pool encounter. Now he is having to lay low.”
“And no word from Segal?”
“Not yet. Angola hasn’t made any attempt to get in contact with him. We have no idea where his sister is or . . . if she’s even alive.”
I close my eyes, my stomach twisting. If she is dead or like Becca, how would I ever live with the guilt of that?
I can’t just wait around. I have to do something. But what?
Alexander puts two paws on my thigh, butting his head into my elbow. I pet him with my free hand, the one that bears a scar from his claws. Cats are complicated.
“I’m going back to see Segal and relieve Hobart,” Tracey says.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No, you sit tight and get some real rest. You can take a shift with Segal later. He refuses to leave until he’s finished.”
“How is he staying awake?”
“Lots of coffee and some stimulants. Hobart says Segal sleeps in snatches with his head on his arms at the desk.”
“He loves his little sister.”
“Yeah.”
Tracey doesn’t say anything more, but even with that one word I can hear the tightness in his throat.
We disconnect.
Alice is blotting the tears from her face.
“I want to tell you something else,” I say.
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Tracey knows who you are.”
“You told him?”
“No, he figured it out.”
“How?” She’s indignant now.
“He’s House of Stone and a good detective.”
“Oh, dear.”
“He understands why it’s important to keep you ‘dead.’ I think we can trust him.”
“Think?”
“How do you ever know for certain you can trust anyone?” That is why I have kept my life simple. Or why I’ve tried to. It isn’t working out.
“Do you think I should get a gun?” Alice asks.
“No.”
“Oh, good. I don’t know that I could shoot anyone.”
“Just keep your umbrella handy.”
She nods. I meant it as a joke, but she is dead serious.
“Meanwhile,” I say, “there is something else I can do or at least try to do.”
She lays a soft hand on my arm. “I hope not something by yourself.”
“I’m afraid so.” I don’t tell her it’s the scariest thing I have ever done in my life.
Chapter Fifty-Six
“What are you going to do?” Alice asks, her elbows propped on the kitchen table, hands on her cheeks and worry lines pleating her forehead.
“Heal Becca, or try to.”
She looks confused. “I’ve tried.”
“There are some things I haven’t told you.”
She picks up Boo and strokes him, waiting.
“When I was held captive by Theophalus Blackwell, I discovered how to channel the power of Iron. That’s how I escaped.” I swallow. “How I killed him. I mixed the powers of Iron and the living-green.”
Her eyes widen. “And—?”
“And it killed Blackwell and Paul
and nearly killed Daniel. That’s how he got burned.”
Her face softens. “It wasn’t your fault. From the shape you were in, I imagine you had no choice.”
“I try not to think about it.”
“What would have happened to Daniel,” Alice asks quietly, “if you had not done that?”
I shudder. “Theophalus would have killed Daniel. I would have died, and Becca would have died, although she is little better than dead now.”
“Before Nora killed herself in that horrid way, Becca was improving daily.”
“But it wasn’t really Becca,” I say. “Becca is locked away inside her mind.”
“Becca laughed,” Alice says stubbornly. “She enjoyed things. She learned. She will again.”
“She did, but it wasn’t Becca. And she’s not doing any of those things now.”
“We don’t know that time won’t bring her back again.”
“It won’t,” I say. “She was never ‘back.’” I search for a way to make Alice understand. “It was her mind rebuilding a personality from scratch.”
“How do you know such a thing?”
“A friend looked it up for me.”
She frowns. “That man from House of Iron?”
“He has a name, Alice. Jason Blackwell.” I don’t know why I keep trying to make her call him by his name.
She sniffs. “Iron is Iron.”
“Maybe, but he went to a good bit of trouble to find this information.”
She purses her lips. “What exactly did he ‘find’?” Her tone says anything from him is suspect, and I agree, though I feel what he told me is true . . . or maybe I just want it to be true.
“What happened to Becca is not unknown. Jason had someone find mention of it in an ancient book. It’s a condition brought on by a person highly skilled in the Iron arts, someone like Theophalus Blackwell, and it’s called a tabula rasa.”
“That’s Latin for a blank slate,” she says, her frown now more thoughtful than disapproving.
“He said a tabula rasa inhibits access to a part of the brain.” I try to remember the exact phrase he used, knowing with Alice’s medical background, she will grasp the significance better than I. “The frontoparietal network.”
She nods, as if to herself. “That is the lobe of the brain believed to compile the elements of personality.”
I let her think about it. After a moment, she says, “If you are correct, if that region remains blocked, the brain’s plasticity might try to work around not having access to her personality by—”
“By creating a new personality,” I finish. “But Becca, the person I know, would be lost forever.”
Our eyes meet for long heartbeats. I want her understanding. She is all the family I have left. My adoptive parents were good people, a kind mother, and a father who was demanding, but wanted the best for me. Until they died, I didn’t even know I was adopted. I learned it at the reading of their will. I was eighteen. There was money for college. I thought it was from them, but I later learned it was a trust fund that Alice set up when she sent me into foster care. Strangely, I felt closer to my father than my mother, but it was her death that devastated me, though I could not find tears. Both their deaths were hard, storms shaking the tethers of my life. When I learned I was not their real child, the mooring broke. I was alone. For the next four years, while I attended college, I drifted emotionally. And then I found family again.
Alice is my home.
“Is there anything to be done?” she asks finally.
“Jason said there is a possibility of unlocking the sealed area, but it takes the power of Iron. That jives with what Theophalus Blackwell told me, that only he could ‘give her back,’ but at the time, I assumed he was lying to get the rose-stone from me.”
“Yes, you mentioned that was the reason he tortured you.” Her eyes gleam. “I am so very sorry you had to endure—I don’t even know what you endured. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, not now. But does this information help you in any way to heal Becca?”
“I can’t imagine how. I hope you are not considering letting anyone from House of Iron touch her again?”
“Never. But . . . I am.”
She stares at me. “Using the power of Iron?”
“Yes.”
“You believe this is possible?”
I take a deep breath. “I’m choosing to believe it’s possible.”
Her gaze searches mine. “Iron magic is what did this to her. How can it fix it?”
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “But I have to try.”
“Why now?”
“When Angola pointed that gun at me, I realized how fragile life is and how quickly it can be taken away. If something happens to me, there will be no one to help her, and she’ll be trapped forever.”
Alice says nothing, as if she knows there is more.
“And I’ve realized that all this time I’ve been selfish.”
“Selfish?”
“I was afraid—” I take a breath. “Afraid of losing her. Even when Jason told me there was a chance to bring her back, I couldn’t do it, couldn’t even think of doing it.”
“It is dangerous.”
She doesn’t say what I am thinking—I don’t know how to use Iron magic. And I could force her deeper into darkness or inadvertently create a rasa that wipes her mind forever.
“I know,” I say. “That’s why I wouldn’t risk it.”
“I don’t understand how that is selfish.”
“Because Becca would say, do it. She would want me to take that risk, but I wouldn’t . . . I was afraid for me. I didn’t want to lose her.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“I was wrong. I thought friendship and love were about protecting someone you cared about, but it’s not just that. It’s about trust and letting go of them.”
Alice’s mouth pinches and she looks down at her hands where they have grasped mine. Then she looks back at me with gleaming eyes. “I understand.”
“I’m scared, Alice.”
“The only thing I can think to offer is that healing, in essence, is love. Yes, the energy of the living-green is involved, but it is love that guides it. I don’t know how to command cells to express chemical messages or produce proteins to heal. I simply nudge them with love. Maybe that will help you in some way.”
I nod. “Maybe. But I can’t mix the magics.”
“I understand that, but perhaps, at the core, magic is magic. Energy is energy.”
“. . . And love is love?”
“Perhaps,” she says.
I stand. “I think maybe Becca’s room is best. She feels secure there.”
Alice follows me into Becca’s bedroom.
She is sitting in the rocking chair where Alice put her this morning, facing the window, but her gaze is far away, if anywhere. A glass of water sits on a small table beside her. It’s exactly the same level as it was when I checked on her an hour earlier. She will swallow reflexively when water or baby food is in her mouth, and her body responds when we sit her on the toilet, but that is all the interaction she has with the world. Even when I try to read her favorite books—nothing.
What would it be like to have my personality, my memories, inaccessible? I can’t imagine. Is “she” in there somewhere, unable to get to the sensory information that is feeding into her brain? Does she know she is cut off? Is she screaming in the dark somewhere?
I have asked these questions over and over with no answers.
Angel has followed us into Becca’s room. I sit on the edge of the bed and pick her up. Stroking her calms me, as does her presence at night when I drift off to sleep or wake from a nightmare. The jujitsu classes are also helping. It’s not about being a badass or thinking I can handle every situation that might arise, but the training ha
s somehow restored some of the confidence I took for granted before the Ordeal. I think it’s rewiring my brain to overwrite the role of victim, a role I “earned” and played for the months I hibernated in Alice’s house.
I’m not a victim anymore. And neither is the Becca I know. Somehow, I will gather the courage to do this.
“I think I’d like to have Becca’s head in my lap,” I say, giving Angel to Alice, who puts her down outside the door and closes it. Since I don’t know how long it will take, we determine it’s best for me to sit with my back against the headboard and have Becca lie on the bed. Alice helps get her into position with her head in my lap.
Becca is compliant. She has no preferences.
Alice sits in the rocking chair. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
“Just don’t touch us,” I say. “You might reach instinctively for the living-green and that could be disastrous.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t know what kind of reaction to expect.”
She nods. “I won’t touch either of you.”
I sit for a while, trying to settle my mind, my fingers stroking Becca’s white hair from her face. She is calm, peaceful. What I’m about to do might take that from her. Stop. I’m working myself into a ball of tension. I need to be as calm as she is. I need to focus.
I take the rose-stone pendant from my neck and hold it before me. For what seems like a long time, I stare down at it, losing myself in the intricacies of the cut red diamond. Each time a fear rises, I face it and then put it aside and return my focus on the rose-stone, the layers on layers of prisms. Is there a gleam of another color deep in the facets, a hint of blue? Red diamonds are not supposed to have other elements besides carbon, but this is not just a diamond, it’s a Family stone.
Finally, I reach down into the earth, rejecting the pockets of bright coal that wish to give up the sun’s billion-year-old energy. I’m searching for an iron seam. It’s plentiful, and I connect with a dark line and pull its power into myself.
My fingers now rest lightly on Becca’s temples, and I close my eyes, guiding a tiny trickle of Iron magic into her, trying to find her.
Becca?
No answer.
I go deeper. I have no idea “where” the frontoparietal network is or how to unblock what was done.
