Broken Shadows (13 page)

Simon cocked his head at me. “Here.” He held out his hand. “Practice on me.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can. Go on.”

I looked at his hand, fingers spread, palm up on the bar. I didn’t want to explain to him why I wasn’t at full capacity, but maybe he wouldn’t notice. Plus, I had a shift coming up, dozens of shadowminds about to brush my hand or arms as they got their drinks. Grounding Simon would mean I wouldn’t have to wear the gloves.

“See if you can stop it,” he added.

I reached out and placed my palm on his. He closed his fingers lightly over the back of my hand.

“Here’s your chance,” he said. “Before it starts.” His dark eyes caught mine, and I tried to focus on the place where our skin touched. Tiny starbursts of energy bloomed there, the beginnings of the transfer.

“I feel them,” Simon said. “You can shut them down—concentrate.”

The starbursts only increased in number and intensity. As they rose, so did the panic that always came with a transfer. I didn’t want that to guide me. I seized on the first image I could think of—cold honey, slow and thick.

I imagined my skin was covered in it. A protective layer between me and Simon. The starbursts began to fade.

“That’s it!” Simon sounded more excited than I’d allowed myself to be. “You’ve got it—keep at it.”

His voice distracted me, and the transfer reignited. I had to will it back down again. But for the first time since I’d discovered what I could do, it seemed possible.

I pulled my hands away from Simon’s breathing hard. “Are you okay?”

“Your thoughts are a little muddy, but I’ll recover. You?”

I couldn’t be sorry about that. If he glanced past my surface thoughts, I was certain all he’d see was my memory of me and Jackson in the elevator. “I need to ground out.”

“Go ahead.”

I searched for something safe to touch and settled on the plastic scoop for the ice machine. I put my hands on it and willed the power out, trying to keep it slow, controlled. The plastic handle warmed in my hands, but it didn’t spark—and then it melted.

Simon laughed. “I’ve got a spare in the back.” He disappeared and came back a moment later with a replacement. “You’re getting better at this.”

I wasn’t sure I should reveal my practice sessions with Paulie. “Still not good enough.”

“You’ll get there.” He winked at me. “I have faith. Might as well go ahead and open up, if you want.” He began heading toward his office.

“Sure,” I said. “And...thanks.”

“Anytime.”

I had to light the candles by hand, but it was soothing work. I dragged a ladder from one of the storerooms and placed it under the chandelier, using a long match to reach the candles in the middle. The wax smelled rich and smoky, and the warm glow made me feel almost calm. I did the sconces next, walking the perimeter of all three rooms and standing on tiptoe to reach. When I was done, I turned off the electric lights and flipped on the sparrow.

It was a slow night. Surprising for a Friday, and not so good for my state of mind. Without any patrons to distract Malik with fancy drink orders, he was going to read me like a book when he came in. Sure enough, at seven, he walked into the empty bar and said, “I heard you moved out of your boy’s place.”

“
Why
do you insist on calling him that?”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you. If he ain’t your boy, he sure as shit wants to be.” He poured me a gin. “Here. For the pain.”

I glared at him and downed it in one gulp.

“Hey! That was top shelf stuff!”

I ignored him. “It’s complicated. And anyway, I can’t be in a relationship with a shadowmind. It would be a disaster.” We were the least suitable couple ever. “And it doesn’t matter, because there’s nothing going on between us.”
Except for that kiss.

Malik smirked. “If that’s nothing, I’d like to see what you call something.”

Fucking telepaths. Malik and I stared at each other, and I tried my best to come up with a believable lie. It was no good. His mouth twisted into a little half grin, and I groaned and put my head down. I heard him pour another drink. The clink of the glass on the metal was extra-loud with my face pressed to the bar.

“What are you gonna do about it?” Malik said.

“About what?” I said, not looking up. “It was just a kiss.”

“Sweetheart, I’ve seen just a kiss, and that is not just a kiss.” He pointed to my glass. “You usually polish off a fifth after your one-night stands?”

“I have not polished off a fifth. And it wasn’t a one-night stand. It was just—” Okay, so it was almost a one-night stand. It certainly could’ve been. So why did saying it make my stomach twist? Maybe it was the gin.

“Tell him,” Malik said.

“Tell him
what?
”

“That you didn’t lead him on like that.” He gave me a serious look. I opened my mouth to say again that it wasn’t like that, that there was nothing between us. But the lie wouldn’t come. It had been coming on so slowly, I hadn’t noticed it at first, but there was no denying it now.

“Uh-huh,” Malik said. “You see?”

“But I can’t—I shouldn’t—”

While I waited for my brain to clunk into gear, the front door of the bar banged open like a gunshot.

“Malik!” Erica ran up to us, wet from the rain and breathing hard. Her short hair was slicked to her face, making her seem even smaller. “Where’s Simon?” Even I could pick up the panic. Both of us froze.

“In back—what happened?”

We watched as she took a deep breath, her hands on her knees.

“They found Greg. He’s dead.”

Chapter Thirteen

I stood in the hall outside Jackson’s apartment and listened to the piano music coming from inside. Loud piano music.

I almost knocked, then stopped myself. He was playing Rachmaninoff. Of course he was. And he was banging the hell out of the keys. He was pretty good, or he would be if he wasn’t so pissed off. I knew the sound of it. I’d done it myself.

He got to a stopping point, and I imagined the little upright bracing itself for the next attack. I knocked on the door.

It took him a minute to answer, and when he did, he didn’t look surprised to see me. Telepaths: they’re hard to sneak up on. He stood in the doorway with his arm braced on the jamb, looking at me. He was wearing a dress shirt unbuttoned over a white undershirt, and he’d taken off his tie. My keys were still on the table in the hall. I could see them over his shoulder.

“You took your stuff,” he said.

“That guy you threw across the speakeasy is dead.”

He stepped back, and I walked in.

* * *

Ten minutes later, I was on his couch with a cup of peppermint tea. I told Jackson the story as I’d heard it from Erica, how Greg had turned up dead in an alleyway, no marks on his body, as though he’d spontaneously dropped dead.

“It was the same way they found Mary Ellen,” I said, remembering how the man who’d drained my powers had killed another New Orleans converter, leaving her body in the street. His ability had been different, but I barely understood my new powers. No one knew what I was capable of.

“It couldn’t have been your fault,” Jackson said. “I’m still fine. Paulie is too.”

“But he was the first one. And when I grounded him, I was so angry...What if it has to do with my emotional state?”

There was a pause where I remembered my emotional state when I’d had my hands on Jackson. I hoped he wasn’t remembering too. He cleared his throat.

“I don’t think that’s the issue,” he said.

So much for that hope. I flushed and decided not to look at him.

“Look, Greg was a fuck-up. Everybody knew it. And we knew he was involved with these pills. My guess is he OD’ed. Besides, you did the same thing to Turner, and he’s fine.”

“Oh. Right.” I put my head in my hands. Jackson was making sense. But what if Greg had tried to use his powers and failed—what if he’d thought it was permanent? Would he have done something to himself...killed himself? Jackson laid his hand on the base of my neck and rubbed. The simple contact made me sigh, before I realized what would happen. I sat up fast and pushed him away.

“Don’t do that.”

“Mina, I don’t mind.”

“I do.”

“Look,” Jackson said, “it wasn’t you. But if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll take you to see Turner.”

“What do you mean? Where is he?”

“He’s in jail.”

* * *

The speakeasy had more secrets than I’d known.

Jackson led me to the back door, the one Malik had given me a key for. He had one, too, unsurprisingly, and he led me down the same steps I used to get to the speakeasy storeroom. He led me past the speakeasy entrance and into the narrow hallway, well past any point I’d yet explored. The lightbulbs were fewer the farther we went. Jackson stopped below one of them.

The walls here were cinderblock, and dusty, but the spot where Jackson stood was cleaner, as though it had been brushed off.

“Step back a bit,” he said, and when I did, a three-foot-square chunk of cinderblock came scraping out of the wall like some sort of Indiana Jones booby trap.

“Holy shit!”

Jackson was sweating. He smiled at me. “Security,” he said, and stepped through the opening.

The passageway was much like the one we’d just left, but dirtier and darker. There were no lights, so Jackson conjured up a light ball to hover in front of us. Like the speakeasy entrances, this one had a second door to go through, but at least it wasn’t a huge block of concrete. Jackson opened it easily, and suddenly we were in a different place entirely.

The small room held a desk and a collection of fancy black rolling chairs. The space was bright white, lit with fluorescent bulbs, clean. Filing cabinets lined one wall, and a bay of lockers lined the other. Jackson gestured toward a door opposite our entry point. I walked up to it and peered through the glass.

The space was the size of a two-car garage, but lined with four small rooms. Each one had a barred window on the door. Cells. Three of them were occupied.

“So this is where you put telekinetic muggers?”

“They wouldn’t stay in a regular prison for long.”

“How long do you keep them here?”

Jackson shrugged. “A few weeks. Long enough.”

“But who takes care of them?”

“Volunteers come by every couple of hours to check on things. Everybody chips in to pay a stipend. We elect a sheriff every four years to organize everything.”

“Your father,” I said.

Jackson sighed. “I told him he was too old for it. Big mistake.” He gave me a sideways smile, but it faded fast. He punched an eight-digit code into a pad by the doorknob, and I heard the snick of a magnetic lock uncoupling.

“Can’t use keys,” Jackson said, and I nodded in understanding. Converters would pick the locks in an instant.

“When you gonna let me outta here?” someone said, presumably to Jackson, who ignored him.

“Is that guy who attacked Simon still down here?” I whispered. It didn’t seem like a good idea for me to run into him.

Jackson nodded. “My father hunted through his head this morning. Sounds like he was some junkie trying to rip Simon off.”

“But he’s all right?”

“His powers are back. We’re keeping him sedated.” He led me forward. “Turner is there.” He gestured to a room on the right. I went to the barred window, and Jackson sat in the edge of a desk in the middle of the room. Standing on tiptoe, I could barely see over the sill.

Turner was reading a book, holding it with his powers every time he turned a page. As I watched, he set it down and blew out a deep breath. He looked up to the door. He saw me.

“You fucking bitch!” He slammed against the door in the next instant. I danced back, but he was already on me telekinetically. Fingers of pressure tunneled into my chest, banded around my heart, my lungs. I tried to take a breath and wheezed, clutching at my throat.

“Mina!” Jackson took less than a second to realize what was happening. He didn’t reach for me as I fell to my knees on the concrete floor. Instead, he ran for a locker along the wall in the next room. As blackness encroached on my vision, I watched him pound out a code, open the door and pull out something that looked like a gun on steroids.

He pointed it at Turner through the bars of the window and shot him directly in the neck with what turned out to be a dart. Turner slumped to his knees and fell over.

The pressure in my chest released instantly. Jackson knelt in front of me and slipped his hands under my arms to lift me to a sitting position. He touched my cheek, and I jerked away before the transfer could start.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think he’d try to retaliate. You okay?”

I rubbed my chest. “Yeah. I think so. What did you do to him?”

“Telazol. CNS depressant. He’ll be out for a good eight hours.”

“Well, I guess I believe he’s fine.”

Jackson smiled. “Do you see now why I wanted you to be careful?”

“I could say the same thing to you.” There had to be more people in the city who wanted him dead than had even heard my name. And he was so careless of his own safety. It was a wonder he was still alive. The thought sent a bolt of fear right through me, one that had nothing to do with the grazing contact we’d made.

“I can take care of myself,” he said, and the slight tilt of his mouth told me he knew he was echoing my words.

“Oh, shut up,” I said.

He helped me to my feet, and we left through the Indiana Jones door.

“Thanks for showing me,” I said, then added, “and for...you know.”

“No problem.” He led me back up to the street, but instead of turning back toward his car, he gestured toward Featherweight’s. “I have to meet up with Caleb anyway. Wanna come?”

“I guess. So how come you didn’t run for sheriff, if you didn’t want your dad doing it?”

“Because then,” Jackson said, holding the alley door for me, “I would have been running against him. And for that, he
never
would have forgiven me.”

“I understand.” I gave him a sympathetic smile. “My uncle used to be the same way. Didn’t want us helping out with repairs and stuff.” The thought of Lionel opened a hole in my chest as it always did. I breathed until I felt it close, not healed but covered.

“You used to help out at the B&B?”

“All my life. Shane and I used to do the serving for breakfast, and Lionel would cook.”

“Didn’t you want to get a place of your own?”

I shrugged. It had seemed normal to stay, back when I was there. I played a gig every now and then, did some busking on the weekends in the summer. I always expected I’d move out eventually, but Lionel had needed me—I’d handled all the bookkeeping and taxes for the B&B, and staying with Lionel had given me time to figure things out. I hadn’t expected that I’d end up with a whole new set of things to figure out in my life before I managed to deal with the first set.

“What about...you know...”

I didn’t. I gave him a questioning look.

“Didn’t you ever have a boyfriend?”

I had to laugh, then I leaned in conspiratorially. “Of course not. I mean, Lionel wouldn’t let me date until I was twenty-one, and by then, I was such an old maid, all of the good ones were taken.”

He looked as though he might’ve believed me for half a second, and then he half-grinned, half-glared at me.

“I went over to their places. And, you know, the B&B’s pretty big.”

“You didn’t leave anyone behind when you came out here?”

I thought about Reggie, the guy I’d been dating before Ryan had attacked me. Well,
dating
was a generous term. He was the drummer in a band I played with every now and then. We’d gone out a couple of times, slept together a couple of times. Nothing serious. Come to think of it, I hadn’t even told him I’d left. I doubted he would notice, anyway. The only thing we’d had in common was music.

“Not really,” I said. “Nobody serious, anyway.”

“I was wondering if that was why—” he began, but we’d come to the entrance, and as soon as Caleb saw us, he motioned Jackson over.

Featherweight’s wasn’t all that busy, and Caleb led us behind the bar and into an organized office. He set a messenger bag down on the spotless desk.

“We found out what your pills are.”

“Yeah?” Jackson went to stand next to him. Caleb nodded, green eyes twinkling. He took a pile of papers out of his bag.

“John pulled out all the stops for us,” he said.

“Any trouble?” Jackson asked.

“It’s not like they guard the lab equipment. Anyway, he did some stuff I don’t know the first thing about and said he thinks he knows the structure of the chemical.”

“How does that help us?” Jackson said.

“Well, he did some searching, and he thinks he’s figured out what this is.”

“And...?”

“First of all, he says it’s probably a natural product. Something about minor contaminants and chirality. I didn’t understand half of what he said. More importantly, he says it’s similar to cocaine.” He pulled two sheets of paper from the stack and laid them side-by-side on the table. They both had line drawings of the kind I remembered from high school chemistry, but way more complicated. Little hexagons with lines and letters coming off them.

“This is cocaine,” Caleb said, pointing to the drawing on the right. “That’s what he tells me, anyway. And this is what’s in your pills.” He tapped the one on the left. They looked pretty much the same to me. “Well, it’s one of the things that’s in your pills. It took him a while to isolate it from the binding agents.”

“Binding agents?” Jackson asked.

“The white stuff that holds them together.”

“So what does this tell us?”

“It’s probably some kind of upper, but it’s definitely not FDA approved, and it doesn’t match any known street drugs. It’s something new. John thinks it probably comes from a related plant, but it doesn’t work on normals, so it’s never been cultivated the way cocaine has.”

“Something that works only on shadowminds.”

Caleb nodded. “That’s what I’m betting. It would explain why you had so much trouble restraining that guy.” He nodded to Jackson.

“It certainly would.” Jackson picked up the baggie and peered at the pills. He opened the baggie, popped a finger into his mouth, and then stuck it into the dust of pill powder collected in the corner of the bag.

“I don’t know if I’d—” Caleb began, but it was too late. Jackson sucked the pill powder off his pointer finger.

“Jackson!” I gaped at him.

“Only one way to find out what it does,” he said, shrugging. Caleb and I looked at each other and then at Jackson.

“Probably take a little while to kick in,” he said, as though he’d just popped a couple of aspirin. “I think I’ll hang out downstairs.” He headed toward the broom closet entrance.

“I guess I’ll go see if Malik needs any help,” I said. “Yell if you think you’re dying.” He only smiled. Caleb followed me out the side door.

“Idiot,” I muttered, and Caleb laughed.

“He’s always been that way—the first one to jump. You’d never know it, huh?”

“No,” I said. “He seems so...”

“Straitlaced?”

“Yes.”

Caleb nodded seriously. “It’s the ties.”