Broken Shadows (20 page)

“Feeling better?” he asked me.

“Huh?”

“You know, from yesterday.” He looked at me with his brow furrowed.

It took me a moment to remember I’d told him I was sick. “Oh. Yeah, much better. Thanks. I think it was one of those twenty-four hour things.”

“Well, just don’t puke in anyone’s beer.”

I laughed a little too loud and hoped he’d bought it. Fortunately, Malik let it go and lit up the candles.

As it turned out, all my hopes for covertly gathering intel were in vain. It was a slow night, and the tip jar was depressingly light by the end of it. No one came in asking for mysterious pills; no one went into withdrawal in the back room. When Paulie came by at his usual time, there was only one other patron in the bar.

“You’ve been away,” he said. “I thought you were sick or something.”

“No—I mean, yeah, but I’m better now.” No one thought Paulie was connected to the enhancers, but it was still probably safer not to tell him.

“Everything okay? With Jackson?”

I blushed, wondering if he was picking up on my sexual frustration. “Fine. What are you having tonight?”

“Did you guys break up?”

“No. Look, it’s nothing, okay? You want a gin and tonic, or what?”

“Sure. Look, Mina...” Paulie leaned in. “I was wondering—”

“Not tonight, Paulie, okay?” I needed to stay fresh. If Jackson brought someone in, we couldn’t afford to wait half a day while I recharged. I turned around to mix Paulie’s drink, but when I looked up to hand it to him, he’d left.

By the time we closed up, I was frustrated and wired from the constant mental vigilance. It was 3 a.m. when Malik brought me home, and I should have been sleepy, but the events of the past two days had made me jittery. When I tried to pour myself a glass of milk, I spilled half of it on the floor.

Cursing, I mopped up the mess with wet paper towels. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the afterimage of Jackson’s face, the way he’d looked bracing himself over me. I turned on the light and tried to read a book, couldn’t focus, killed the light and tried to sleep again. It was hopeless. I stared at the ceiling and gave in to thinking about Jackson. How we’d yet to actually have sex. How I’d yet to even see him naked.

Part of me knew that if I really cared about him, I’d give up on that little fantasy. The rest remembered how it had felt when he’d pressed his fully clothed body to mine, and didn’t care. I rolled my eyes at myself. No way was I getting to sleep now.

I would have missed it if I’d been asleep. A tiny scraping sound, metal on metal.

It was coming from the door to my place. I could just see it from my bed with the street light coming through the crack in the curtains. The safety chain slid sideways along its rack. Converters.

I sat up, very, very slowly. The soft green sheets fell from my torso with a shushing noise that sounded like banging pots in the silence. My heart was going so fast I felt dizzy.

Carefully, as if I were approaching a wild animal, I turned and put my feet on the floor and stood up. I was sweating, and my bare soles stuck to the hardwood and made tiny squelching noises as I moved, step by painstaking step, to my closet. Some primal instinct told me I needed pants and tennis shoes. The metal-on-metal noise came again, and I heard a muffled curse.

From somewhere deep in my head came my brother’s voice, telling me to quiet my thoughts, to be still. I pulled on the first thing I found—a pair of stretchy yoga pants—and then my tennis shoes, wincing as the rubber squeaked on the floor.
Quiet.
Calm.

I heard the click of the lock turning in my front door, and a fat shaft of light spilled into the hall. I saw feet, at least two pair, and I froze.

Hinges creaked as the door swung open. There was no back door. There was only the window and a fire escape with a ten-foot drop to the street at the bottom. I was wearing yoga pants, tennis shoes with no socks, and a lime green T-shirt full of holes with a Leprechaun Fun Run! logo on the back. The feet came closer.

In another ten seconds whoever had just picked my lock would make it to the bedroom and find me out of bed, standing in the corner of the room. If it was one person, maybe I could push him down and make it to the hallway, but what then, and what if there were more than two? I didn’t have time to think about this. I went to the window and opened it.

“She’s awake!” someone yelled. I struggled with the window, trying to heave it up, but it was too late. People surged into the room, two of them, both men. Hands grabbed my waist and arms.

“Don’t let her touch you!” one of them said, and I kicked out, connected with soft flesh. There was a grunt of pain, and I scrambled away for an instant. It wasn’t long before I was grabbed again. They had rope. They had a black bag big enough for a body.

I screamed, hoping someone would hear me, but I knew better than to expect help. People screamed all the time in San Francisco, and Bridget’s sister was still out of town. I’d ignored louder disturbances myself on a regular weeknight. Desperate, I whipped around and pulled up the hooded gray sweatshirt of the man who had me.

“What the fuck?” he said, and he tried to jerk away, but not before my bare hands found the skin of his stomach.

Zap!
He was a converter, all right, and he was definitely on enhancers. I dug my fingers into his abs and hung on as if I were dangling from a cliff. The surge of power filled me up almost instantly, singing through my blood.

“No!” said the other guy. “Don’t let her ground you!” but it was too late.

It was get away now or get away never. I kept one hand on the guy’s stomach and lashed out with the other. My closed fist connected with a jaw, and I yelped in pain when it hit. I swung again and again, hitting him his gut, his kidneys. He gave a grunt, and the hands that held me let me go. One chance. I leaped, all caution gone, for the open window.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I hit the railing of the fire escape with a clang. Rusted metal slats bit my skin through my T-shirt. No time to spend checking for damage. I half-slid, half-fell down the ladder to the metal landing on the second floor. I could lower the ladder to the ground, but that would take time I didn’t have. I took a deep breath and jumped into the landscaping.

The impact went through my body like a whip. I’d aimed for a group of dark green bushes with bottle-brush purple flowers, and they’d cushioned my fall, but twigs scratched every bit of exposed skin they could reach, and the wind was still knocked from my lungs. I rolled out of the bushes and into a bed of lavender, gasping.

“Mother
FUCKER!
” yelled one of the men from my apartment. I looked up. Two faces: men, white, young.

“Get after her!” said one of them.

“I’m not making that jump—that’s fucking insane!”

Good—let them argue. I scrambled to my feet, wincing, and saw what had to be their van parked in the driveway.

The charge I’d gotten from the converter was still crackling through me. He’d been on enhancers. I recognized the feeling.

Inside the house, they were pounding down the stairs. I didn’t have long. I crouch-walked to the van, and put my hands on the hood, and let all the energy I’d stolen rush through my hands and into the car.

It was as though I’d hit it with a bolt of lightning. Something sparked, and a snapping sound was followed by a hiss and a sizzle. The faint drip of some hopefully essential fluid tap-tap-tapped under the chassis.

Excellent.

The sounds of heavy footfalls coming down the stairs sent renewed panic through me. I took off running.

I had to get a block of buildings between me and them before they got down those stairs. I rounded the first corner I got to—and ended up at the foot of an enormous hill. No way was I going to be able to sprint up the incline. I had to turn around. As I crossed back over my street, I heard them cursing as their van sputtered and died. Then one of them saw me.

“There!”

“Go, go, go!” Footsteps echoed through the quiet street.

I couldn’t stay on the road, but the houses were so close together, it was impossible to find an alley to slip through. I ran, took another turn down another hill, and kept running. My calves and quads burned from the exertion, but the pain barely reached me. I made it to a tiny playground at the crest of yet another hill—fucking San Francisco and its fucking hills—and then I saw it. A narrow gap between two peeling Victorians, blocked by a fire escape.

I sprinted for it.

Thank God I’d worn sneakers; thank God the tread was still there, still catching on the concrete. I dashed into the gap between the buildings and flattened myself against the wooden siding. Three feet in front of me was the fire escape, paint flaking off rusted metal. Slowly, slowly, I inched toward it and wrapped my hands around the reassuringly solid and cold bottom rung. I took a deep breath, crouched as much as I could, and launched myself up. Hand over hand, with only the faintest clangs from my feet on the metal, I climbed to the roof.

It was a whole universe up there, all the various slopes meeting each other in a forest of treacherous geometry. I walked as though I were on a tightrope, one careful foot in front of another until I made it to a valley between a gable and the main roof. Then I lay down flat and held my breath.

The scuff of shoes was the only sign that the men had entered the alley. I didn’t dare move. I made my mind go quiet, sinking all my thoughts beneath a black lake of nothingness. I’d drained one of them, but there was no telling how sensitive the other one was.

“Fuck it. She’s gone.”

“We’re not gonna get paid.”

“Nothing we can do about it.”

More footsteps. I counted to a hundred, three hundred, a thousand. They were gone.

I made myself wait anyway. I didn’t know how long. My whole body was stiff by the time I finally let myself move, getting up into a crouch on the edge of the roof and looking down. A cat looked up at me and jumped off the hood of an old import parked in the driveway next door.

I went slowly down the fire escape and stood in the alleyway for ten breaths. Nothing happened. I walked out, up the street, keeping to the shadows, sure any moment I would hear the sound of the running feet.

After twenty heart-pounding minutes, I made it out of the residential section to the fancy urban equivalent of a strip mall—an organic produce market, a next-day dry cleaners, an Italian restaurant and a bar. The bar was still open, thank God. A group of smokers stood a few yards from the door, talking in low voices, and they glanced at me and away again as I walked up. I wanted to hug them. People meant safety. An open bar meant someone had a phone.

I walked into the bar as if I weren’t wearing sneakers and a T-shirt and went right up to the bartender. She looked tired. I sympathized.

“Hey.” I leaned in. “I lost my phone somewhere tonight, and I need to call my friend to pick me up. Can I make a local call?”

She glanced around. “We’re not supposed to, but...sure.” She passed me a cordless handset from behind the bar. “Keep it short.”

I retreated to the quietest corner I could find and called Jackson.

“Wasssa...?”

“Jackson, I’m so sorry to wake you up—”

When he heard my voice, his own went crystal-clear in an instant. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

I told him as succinctly as I could about the men breaking into my apartment and how I’d jumped out of a window. He listened without interrupting until I took a breath, and then he said, “Where are you?”

“I don’t exactly know.” Looked up at the paper menu on the bar. “Some place called Canto.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” I heard keys jingling, the thump of shoes on carpet. “Stay inside.”

I hung up and stationed myself right by the door. My knees and back ached from the jump, and my feet were blistering from sprinting in sneakers without socks. Every exposed inch of skin was covered in scrapes. The smokers cast glances at me from their post at the corner, and the bartender kept looking my way.

It seemed to take hours for Jackson to show up, but when I checked the clock in the window of the dry cleaners, it had been less than five minutes. He must have run every red light between here and Market Street. I walked into the street to meet him.

“Mina!” He came racing toward me, stopping short before he came into contact. He was wearing blue sweatpants, running shoes with no socks, and a gray fleece turned inside-out. His hands hovered over my arms, then he ran his fingers through his hair. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“Just scraped up. I’m okay.”

“Come on.” Jackson shucked off his fleece and draped it over my shoulders. “I need to get you somewhere safe.” He wrapped a strong arm around me and led me to his car, practically folding me into the passenger seat. He continuously checked the street as he walked to the driver’s side, looking up at the roofs of the buildings, down the block and back again.

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe,” was all he said, and his eyes took on the distant, dilated look of a shadowmind mindspeaking.

He drove north, and I wrapped his fleece more tightly around me and tried not to look in the rearview mirror. They weren’t following. They couldn’t be.

I thought Jackson would bring me to his apartment, but he turned down Divisadero instead. We went over a few of the famous San Francisco hills, and then he pulled into a gated driveway, opening it with a remote he fished out of his center console. The gate closed automatically as he drove forward.

A four-car garage lay ahead of him, and he parked in front of the rightmost spot. Lights came on in the main house behind us. It was one of those impossibly ornate San Francisco mansions, three floors and two rooftop decks that I could see, a tiny hyper-landscaped yard, expensive millwork everywhere. I stared out the window at it.

“What is this place?” I half-expected it to be some sort of secret shadowmind headquarters.

“My parents’ house,” Jackson said, not looking at me, and he got out and came around to open the passenger door.

What?
I thought, but before I could say it, James was out on the driveway with a tall blonde woman in a green silk dressing gown.

“Jackson!” she gasped, and ran forward. She had to be his mother.

“I need you to protect her,” he said, addressing James. Then he turned to me.

“Mina,” he said, “think of their faces. The way you saw them in the window. Be as focused as you can.”

I’d never seen him so intent. He was watching my face without really looking at me, as if he were studying a painting. I called up the memory of my attackers leaning from my bedroom window. I could feel the cold air on my face, the residual pain from the impact in my knees. I saw their features distorted from the way they leaned down, blood pooling in their faces and making their cheeks abnormally flushed. A brunet. A blond. Their features grew more distinct as I concentrated. Jackson’s eyes were closed, and his mouth was thin.

“What are you—” I began, but I went silent when he opened his eyes and I saw the fury in them.

“I’ll be back,” he said, and before I could ask him where he was going, he’d gotten in his car and disappeared down Divisadero.

I stood on the driveway for a long time after he’d gone. James and the blonde woman drifted back onto a small patio with a spectacular view of the bay and waited, not talking, until I turned around. Every part of my body ached, and my feet were starting to feel cold without socks. When I stumbled toward the door, it was the woman who met me, put an arm around me, and led me along.

“Come inside,” she said. “Let’s get you out of the cold.”