I started to edge backward, watching him, unsure of what he was going to do. Mia bounded past him onto the porch.
"Kill him!" she screamed. "Try to leave the glasses undamaged!"
It may be a teenager's voice, but it carried the same bloodthirsty quality as if spoken by her alter ego. The twin grinned at her and took a step off the porch, his muscle-bound body even bigger and bulkier than I remembered, all those muscles rippling under his tight black turtleneck. She started to open the screen door, then turned to watch, apparently unable to pass up the opportunity to witness my demise.
I had no gun. I was at his mercy if I stood there, or if I ran and gave him my back as a target, but I didn't want to be at his mercy.
If he was going to shoot me, it wouldn't be in the back.
As he approached the sidewalk, rounding the corner of the fence so he had a clearer shot, I charged toward him. He wasn't expecting it. In his haste, he fumbled the Ruger, giving me a precious few seconds to close the gap. It wasn't going to be enough. Maybe in the movies everything would work out just right, he'd fire and miss, he'd drop the gun, but his momentary lapse was just that: momentary. This was point-blank range. Maybe a neophyte would miss at point-blank range, but he was no neophyte. I'd need a miracle.
He cleared the fence, giving him no obstructions.
Having overcome his surprise, back in control, he raised the Ruger and aimed. I was ten yards away.
I figured this was it. Shot in the heart and lights out forever. I felt the cold wind on my face. I was conscious of a truck passing us on Center Street, a wall of wind pushing against my back. I heard approaching police sirens, blocks away from the other direction. He obviously didn't care if they saw him. He didn't care if anyone saw him. It was about beating me now, not about getting away. Even the sun was against me; he had it at his back while I got it in the face, the glare of the snow making my eyes water.
Perhaps it was smugness on his part, but he took his time aiming. A second passed and he still hadn't pulled the trigger.
It was in that second that I got my miracle.
The silver minivan approaching from behind him, what I'd assumed was just another random passerby, suddenly veered across the other lane. Not only did it approach, but it accelerated, the engine roaring like a tiger.
It was coming right for him.
And right for me, since I was only a few steps from him. The only difference was that I saw it coming in enough time to dodge into the street, praying nobody was coming from that direction. The twin wasn't so fortunate. He turned to face this new threat just as the minivan plowed into him.
No chance to see the driver. The glint of the sunlight made that impossible. There was no time for the twin to dodge. There was no time to even squeeze off a shot. His body went flying, smashing against the front grille and bouncing off the fence. Even as the van screeched to a halt, the twin's body spun and twisted before landing with a sickening thunk on the asphalt. The Ruger spiraled out of his hand and skidded along the road.
I heard the screech of brakes, and I spun around, fearing the worst. A city bus, its front end dipping as it skidded to a halt, its pasty-faced driver gritting his teeth and staring at me, panic-stricken, as if I was the one who was going to kill him. The bus stopped close enough that it actually came to rest against my outstretched palms, close enough that I could no longer look up and see the driver's face, though I could certainly feel the warmth of the engine and smell the diesel exhaust in the air.
My heart banged away in my ears and I got a good gulp of the cold, slightly metallic taste of fear bubbling up from my stomach. At first, I assumed this whole thing was Olivia expanding her abilities, taking control of the van driver's mind, or maybe even some kind of telekinesis—until I heard a familiar voice shout at me.
"Well?" Jak said. "What are you waiting for? Get his gun and let's go!"
I turned and saw her getting out of the van. She wore black sunglasses and a heavy black vest over a Minnie Mouse T-shirt, like some Disneyfied version of an FBI agent on vacation. I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. She was supposed to be in Barnacle Bluffs. She surveyed her handiwork, the pooling blood around the twin's head, his arm bent under him at an angle no one would tolerate if they were even semiconscious, and frowned.
"Jak?" I said.
With an irritable groan, she grabbed the Ruger herself from the slushy snow at the base of the curb, then seized me by the scruff of the jacket and pulled me toward the house where Mia had just disappeared.
"Come on, come on!" she pleaded.
"But how—"
"Think I was going to let you do this alone? I rented that van right after I got off the phone with you. Now, let's go!"
So we did. I didn't even bother arguing that she needed to stay outside, since I knew she'd never listen. Mia was already ahead of us and there was no time for a debate. What would she do to Olivia? I didn't even want to imagine it. I did manage to grab the Ruger from Jak, already cold and damp from its brief resting place in the slush, and checked to ensure that the magazine was loaded and ready to go. That was it. That was all I could do before I was barging through the open door.
I got a glimpse of a tiny sign on the door, white stenciled letters on black plastic: M.I. WORLD INVESTMENTS. Cute. A narrow staircase led up, a narrow staircase led down, both scuffed hardwood. Cobwebs hung around an exposed bulb, lots of shadows and weak yellow light. Where had she gone? I got a glimpse of a kitchen to the right, a big room full of cardboard boxes to the left, but then I heard the creak of footsteps on the floor above us, and that was all the encouragement I needed to plow up the stairs.
"Careful," Jak said behind me.
There was careful and there was fast, and usually you couldn't do both. I tried to be as cautious as I could be rounding the corner and double-stepping it up to the next floor, but I had visions of Mia doing to Olivia what she'd done to Felicity. What she may have done to Alesha. My version of being careful was that I would shoot first and ask questions later. I didn't know if I could actually do it if Mia's childlike face was staring back at me, but that was the plan if it looked like she was going to hurt Olivia. The alternative was to use the glasses to rob her of her power, then figure out what to do with her. That was more complicated, and I doubted I would have time for complicated.
The glasses. I'd forgotten I was still wearing the glasses. I debated taking them off, but it didn't seem like a good idea. If there were ghosts in the house, I didn't want to know about them. They'd only distract me.
And yet Mia, at least as Gath, had proven she could see ghosts, too. That might give her information that could give her an advantage somehow, and I couldn't let that happen. I took off the glasses and slipped them into my inside pocket.
I saw no ghosts, so far, in the house. I thought I heard the skitter of a mouse down the hall, but I couldn't be sure. I passed a broom closet without a door, a bedroom with an open door and nothing in it but yellow daisy-print blinds over a cracked window, and finally came to another door, this one swinging closed even as I approached. The heavy door had multiple deadbolt locks on the outside, meant to keep someone in rather than other people out.
Ruger in front of me, I tossed open the door—and saw that I was too late.
Olivia was there. I'd found her at last. Mia was there, too, right behind Olivia, eyes closed, her fingers draped over Olivia's curly brown hair. The problem was that there was another pair of hands also cradling Olivia's skull, much larger, more serpentine hands that curled almost down to Olivia's chin and neck. Victoria Gath's hands. Her wolfish grin, attached to that narrow, blade-like face, loomed out of Mia's back like a grotesque version of the Cheshire Cat.
"Drop the gun," Gath warned.
Olivia stared right at me, but didn't seem to see me, eyes glassy and flat, mouth drooping and open. The look of a druggie. It made her seem much older than nine. In jeans and a sleeveless white T-shirt, both ripped and stained, she knelt on a thin purple mat, the kind o
ften used in exercise classes. Her thin arms and legs were chained, to each other, and to the radiator ticking away in the corner. She was barefoot. I saw deep red gashes where the chains had dug into her ankles. The same was true around her wrists.
She may have only been missing a few days, but she looked like somebody who'd been a prisoner for a month. I saw empty syringes piled in the corner, confirming what I suspected. They'd been keeping her medicated in an attempt to stop her from using her special abilities.
There were two other people in the room, too. I didn't see them at first because they huddled together along the side wall, in the deep shadows of one of the window alcoves. John and Laura Ray. They were dressed exactly as they'd dressed when they'd walked into my office the first time: John in a wrinkled green polo and tan chinos, Laura in her green trench coat and matching beret. If Olivia looked drugged, John and Laura looked even worse: blank-faced, eyes staring at me but showing no recognition, not just ghosts, but shadows of ghosts, faint apparitions of what they once were. The saddest part of the change was Laura's eyes. They'd been so stunning before, one in a million, and now they were as dull as scuffed doorknobs.
Following my gaze, Gath smiled thinly. "I'll do the same to you. But I'm going to start with Olivia."
"What's happening?" Jak said, coming around behind me, giving her a first, unobstructed view of Gath. "Holy shit … She's got—she's got two heads."
"A form of astral projection," I said. "And she's got Olivia's parents, there by the window. Their ghosts, anyway, or what's left of them. She obviously wiped their minds." Feeling bad that I talked about Olivia's parents this way in front of her, I spoke to her next. "Olivia, can you hear me? We're going to get you out of this."
Olivia blinked a few times, but that was it. I wasn't even sure the blinking was in response to me. Gath snickered.
"You're quite clever, Myron," she said. "You figured out my little secret. I thought it was the perfect hiding place. Who would expect a twenty-something girl in a mental institution could also be the powerful Victoria Gath? I was going to take over the world! And this girl, once I fully controlled her, was going to help me. You ruined it! You! And unless you want me to make it a family of zombies, you'll drop that gun right now."
"You need her," I said. "You don't want to hurt her."
"I need to live more than I need her. I know what you plan to do with those glasses. Now, let's start with my employee's Ruger. Put it on the floor."
I hesitated. What could I do? I didn't want to give up my advantage. Sirens blared from a few blocks over, heading toward the hospital. How long before they came in here? A dead body, a rental van smashed into the fence … We might have two minutes at most. Two minutes was nothing. Two minutes was also a lifetime, when it was two more minutes that Victoria Gath had her long fingers wrapped around Olivia's skull.
Gath must have sensed that her time was waning, because she pressed her fingers tighter—or at least Mia's fingers did. They were the ones that could physically touch things. Gath's hands appeared to hover an inch above Olivia's skin.
"Last chance," she said.
"I have another idea," I said. "Why don't you—"
Before I could finish, Olivia started to shake, her eyes rolling back in her head, the convulsions of an epileptic. She rocked back and forth, keening like a wounded animal.
"Wait!" I cried.
The convulsions ceased, the drugged Olivia returning to herself, though she was panting and sweat slicked her brow.
"Just a taste of what I can do," Gath said. "I took a small memory from her, something to do with her climbing up a tree to get a cat. Next, I think I'll take away her memory of her first day of school. It's actually a nice one, with both her parents. But she won't miss it. Or do you think she will? Hard to say."
She moved in closer, Gath's head floating up like a balloon with a sinister smile, and I shouted for her to stop. I set the Ruger on the floor. Nothing else to do right now. She barked at me to kick it toward her, which I did. The Gath head vanished, and Mia, grinning the same grin, stooped down and picked up the gun. Training the weapon on me, she jerked Olivia to her feet.
"We're leaving now," she said. "We're leaving, and you're not going to do anything to stop us, do you hear me? If you do, I'll shoot you. Don't think I don't know how to use this."
"Go," I said, "but leave Olivia."
"Not a chance. Now move over to the window with her pathetic parents. Now! Both of you!"
I started toward the alcove, Jak following just behind me. John and Laura didn't even glance up. They might as well have been painted on the wall. Where were the cops? Gath might be able to erase a mind or two, but not if lots of people were coming at her at once. She'd already proven she couldn't project and stay present as Mia at the same time. That meant my best chance was to create some pandemonium myself. She had the Ruger now, but she couldn't use the Ruger and project as Gath at the same time.
She was either Mia or Gath. One or the other. If I had to take my chances with one of them, it would be Mia. The way she was holding the gun, so tightly her knuckles turned white, I didn't think she was quite as experienced with firearms as she boasted. She was also going to have to contend with a drugged-up Olivia as she made her way to the door. I could rush her and hope for the best. It was probably my best chance.
Or maybe the cops would stop her outside. How far could she get, anyway? The safest course was probably to do nothing. Play the long game. She couldn't get far.
No.
With her ability, Mia Irving could get far. It had to end here.
Once both Jak and I had moved to the alcove, Mia took a key that must have been cupped in her hand and unlocked Olivia's chains. They fell with a crash to the hardwood. She edged toward the door, doing her best to keep Olivia in front of her and the Ruger trained on me, but it was just as I thought. She couldn't do both well. Olivia could barely stand, shuffling her feet, shoulders sagging, her legs wobbling as if any moment they would give way.
Being such a slight person herself, Mia strained to keep Olivia upright. Each time Olivia bobbled, Mia clamped Olivia's arm all the tighter. Even so, even as she hissed at Olivia to keep going, Mia kept her eyes trained on me. She was no fool.
I waited. I waited, with all of my senses heightened, every little detail of the room coming into extreme focus.
I heard sirens, some getting closer. I heard voices shouting outside on the street. I heard the floor creak beneath Mia's bare feet, the rustle of Olivia's jeans, and Jak's breathing directly behind me. I smelled mold in the plaster, a faint whiff of pine-scented cleaner used on the wood floors, and my own musky sweat.
Minor sensations. It was all about Mia. Her fingers wrapped around the handle and the trigger of the Ruger were tiny things, white, chalklike, bony twigs. I knew the barrel of the Ruger was not much more than nine millimeters across, but it seemed much bigger to me, a vast darkness as wide around as one of those old clipper ship cannons. It seemed an incredible folly to think I had any chance against it.
Yet I had to try.
An opening. All I needed was an opening, a split second that would give me an advantage. She was nearly to the door. I searched Olivia's face, wanting to apologize, wanting to tell her I didn't want this to happen, any of it, that nobody who'd already suffered as much as she had should have to suffer any more, and I didn't expect her to really see me. At first, she didn't. She gazed off to the side, eyelids drooping, a watery film pooling within the deep gouges under her eyes. Her arms and legs seemed like melted rubber, as if she was some kind of life-sized doll with no power of her own.
Then, for a split second, I saw her eyes focus on me. It was so quick I thought I might have imagined it, a trick of light, a desire to see something that wasn't really there. Then something else. A sound. Tiny feet. Tiny claws, skittering on the wood. Because I was so in the moment, I heard it first. I saw it first, too.
A mouse.
A tiny field mouse, lean and gray, hardly bigger
than my thumb. Like a slow-moving missile, it propelled across the floor with a steadiness of purpose unlike any mouse I had ever seen. Mice usually zigged and zagged; they did not zoom along the ground like an arrow, fixated on a target. Yet that was the case here, and the target was obvious enough.
Mia's bare toe.
It was going to make contact in less than a second. Olivia must be behind this, there was no doubt. Whatever part of her still conscious enough to see through the fog of drugs had made contact with this mouse, had propelled it into action. This was the opportunity I had been waiting for, and I wasn't going to let it go to waste.
When the mouse reached Mia's foot, it did exactly what I hoped it would do: it bit down hard.
Mia yelped in surprise, kicking out at it, her gaze following this unexpected attack. The mouse went flying, a tiny clump of flesh and fur. The barrel of the Ruger, that enormous, dark tunnel that had been pointed directly at me, slumped a few inches.
I charged.
Perhaps two steps separated us. I managed to take one before Mia realized what was happening.
The barrel of the gun came back up. My intention was to plow myself into Olivia and Mia, take them both down and hope that in the crush of bodies I could pry the gun away. I wasn't close enough. She was going to get off a good shot, an easy shot even for an amateur.
While I ran, Olivia made her own move. Apparently not quite as out of it as she seemed, she took advantage of the mouse's distraction to squirm out of Mia's grasp and slink to the floor. It was a good thing, but it only meant Mia was free to concentrate on aiming at me.
One more step. That was all I needed. One more big step and I'd be on top of her, but it might as well have been a million miles for all the difference it made. I was dead. All I could hope for now was that my momentum, even after I was shot, would carry me into her and give Jak and Olivia a chance at escaping. Or slow Mia down enough that the cops could get on the scene.
The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold Page 27
