Broken Shadows (9 page)

He left. It wasn’t until half an hour later I noticed he hadn’t taken his briefcase.

* * *

Jackson was gone all day. I hadn’t quite worked out why he’d lied to me, but I was betting he’d gone off looking for another rogue converter. He probably didn’t want me coming along and “endangering myself.” He should’ve been more worried about my shift at the speakeasy. I was afraid I was going to be crushed.

There was barely room to turn around out there, and every few minutes, the lock snicked open and another group tumbled in. Some of them were clearly coming from elsewhere, already drunk. People were adding to the graffiti on the ceiling, telekinetically levitating permanent markers and paint pens. Somebody had a pretty good skull and crossbones going over the door to the bathrooms. The only open space was a circle under the cast-iron chandelier where the wax dripped from the candles.

I had hoped that grounding Tucker for James would keep my own powers in check, but the effects seemed to have worn off. I wore my gloves, but after a couple of hours I’d still picked up a charge from a dozen tiny contacts. I almost wished Paulie would come in wanting another ground, but he was nowhere to be found. At one table, someone lit a floating shot glass full of vodka on fire, and the tumbledown drunk crowd surrounding him burst out into applause.

“Should we stop that, do you think?” A small part of me hoped he’d say yes, like Simon had suggested.

Malik glanced up from slicing a kiwi into rounds. “Nah. Not unless they catch the table on fire. Here.” He tossed me a bottle of gin. “Mix a martini for table six.”

I barely caught it in time. “Right.” I was getting better at this. I’d just added the olive when the door jingled and a twenty-something man with dark hair and uneven teeth came in. He looked around nervously and walked straight for Malik.

“What can I get you?” Malik asked the man.

“Hey, yeah,” he said, and leaned in a little more. “I’m looking for Conner.”

“Haven’t seen him. Who’s asking? I can let him know when he turns up.”

“You mean he hasn’t been here?”

Malik shook his head.

“I just figured...nobody’s seen him for a while...” The man looked around. “Look, maybe you can, you know...help me out.” He was sweating, and his pale skin was gray and pasty.

Malik cocked an eyebrow. “Help you out...with what?” To me the guy looked as though he needed a doctor.

“Never mind,” said the man, leaning back. “I guess not.” He ordered a vodka on the rocks and one of those energy drinks that are supposed to be like supercharged coffee and took them both to a table in the side room. I started working on a margarita—where was the blender? In pieces under the bar, of course, wonderful—then someone in the side room screamed.

Silence spread through the crowd in a wave. It reached the flaming vodka table last. Low, urgent voices came from the far side of the bar, and then someone yelled, “Help! Somebody help!”

I didn’t think. I vaulted over the bar on one hand and pushed through the crowd.

It was the guy who’d come looking for Conner. His vodka glass had been knocked over, dripping ice and alcohol onto the floor, and he was slumped sideways in his chair. At first I thought he’d just passed out, but then his legs twitched, jerked, and the crowd skittered back and gasped. His head snapped back and forth, and I saw foam gathered in his mouth.

“Shit—somebody call 911!” I lunged forward and grabbed him before he could hit the floor. He probably weighed twice as much as I did, and I staggered.

“EMTs can’t get down here!” somebody yelled. “We gotta get him upstairs!”

But I looked down and knew it was too late. His jaw had gone slack, and his eyes were open and staring. He was gone.

* * *

Apparently James and Jackson weren’t just the supernatural police. They were the coroners too. Malik called James from his cell phone and the two of them showed up half an hour later with a body bag.

I was convinced it was a drug overdose. I explained the guy’s behavior to Jackson, how he’d been looking for Conner, how he’d seemed shaky. Jackson went through his clothes and found his wallet and his cell phone but nothing else. If he’d had any pills on him, he’d taken them. The two of them wrapped up the body and levitated it through the back of the bar, going through some passageway I didn’t want to know about, no doubt.

“How will they explain this?” I asked. “Are they just going to dump him at a hospital or something?” Wondering what would happen next was easier than thinking about what I’d just seen.

“My fiancé’s a doctor,” Malik said. “She has contacts at St. Anne’s. She’ll handle it.”

The bar cleared out after they’d gone. There was nothing left to gawk at, and no one felt much like partying. They left an unholy mess, though, and Malik and I were there until midnight picking up glasses and wiping up spills. It gave him plenty of time to harass me about their gig and the fact that he still hadn’t found a keyboardist.

“The owner wants us to cover ‘Hallelujah.’ What are we supposed to do about that, Tanner?”

“He’ll get over it.” I carried a handful of pint glasses into the back. This wasn’t my problem. I didn’t want it to be.

“Want me to drive you home?” he asked when we were done.

Normally I would have said no, but not tonight. “Yeah. Thanks.”

He dropped me off at the front door of Jackson’s high-rise and waited in the loading zone until I got inside. I waved to the doorman—after almost a week, he’d finally stopped giving me suspicious looks.

Jackson still wasn’t back when I got to the condo. I decided I didn’t want to know where he was. It was probably better if I didn’t. The guy’s face, the way his jaw had gone slack—every time I closed my eyes, I could see it.

I took a shower hoping it would help me sleep, but when I was done I felt more awake than I had before. The way the guy’s legs had twitched, the way the foam in his mouth made his breath wheeze and hiss. I shook my head hard and fast, but the images wouldn’t blow away. I heard Jackson come in, saw the lights in the living room go on and back off again. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of twitching bodies and woke up before my alarm. Jackson was already gone.

It was Friday, the day they were going to tear down the Center. It was also Avery’s last day in the city, and I’d promised her I’d watch the demolition with her. I got there early and stood on the sidewalk across the street from the demolition site. It was wrapped with orange plastic netting, emblazoned with signs reading Hard Hat Area and Keep Out
.
The parking lot behind the building had already been smashed with jackhammers, and earthmoving equipment sat ready. A small crane with a wrecking ball was moving into position.

“Hey.”

I looked up expecting to see one of the Center volunteers. It was Jackson.

“What are you doing here?” I asked with more shock than politeness.

“I’m on my lunch break.”

“And you’re spending it watching a building get torn down? How did you even know?”

He shrugged. “Public record.”

I didn’t have time to ask him to elaborate, because Avery caught sight of me and came running up. She gave me a huge hug and stared so pointedly at Jackson that I had to introduce them. He shook her hand and asked her what she did and whether she played an instrument, but he didn’t bring up the fact that my fiddle was sitting in his apartment untouched.

Avery was, of course, utterly charmed by him. “So, how did you two meet?”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “Jackson is a friend of my brother’s girlfriend.”

“Oh, I see.” She was grinning. “So,” she said, not looking at Jackson but speaking loudly enough for him to hear, “have you found a place to stay?”

“Uh—yeah.” The backhoes started moving broken concrete around. “Kind of weird to see it like this, huh?”

“Hold up,” she hissed under the sound of the machinery. “You’re staying with
him?
” She gave Jackson an extremely unsubtle once-over. He wisely concentrated on the accumulating piles of concrete.

I flushed. Avery grinned and mouthed, “Wowza.”

“It’s
not like that.
” I was getting uncomfortable with how often I was saying things like this.

“Uh-huh.”

I looked up and saw Doc getting out of her BMW. “You know I have blackmail material on you, right?” I looked meaningfully in Doc’s direction.

Avery stopped grinning. Thank God.

Doc came over and gave each of us warm, two-handed handshakes. I introduced her to Jackson, and she narrowed her eyes a fraction.

“Reardon Engineering?” she said.

He looked surprised, and not quite pleasantly, but he nodded.

“Hmm,” Doc said.

“I’m on the commercial end of things.”

“Oh, well then.” Doc folded her arms and turned away.

The wrecking ball hit the stucco with a crunch, and Avery squeezed my hand. She was tearing up.

“Damn pregnancy hormones,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” I said, but when I looked at Doc’s grim face, I teared up a little too.

I stayed until Jackson’s lunch break was over. As we walked back to the Muni station together, I asked him, “What was that about, with Doc?”

“My firm’s responsible for designing a lot of the new developments.”

“So she’s pissed at them?”

“I’m not happy about it, either.”

“So why do you work there?”

“It didn’t start out that way. Five years ago...it was different.” We crossed the street and passed a rental office right next to a Hispanic food market.

“Yeah, well, nothing stays the same forever.”

We came to the Muni station, and Jackson paused at the entryway. “I have to get back,” he said. “See you tonight?”

“I’ll be there.”

I spent the afternoon wandering the city and checking out rental units. Even with my under-the-table job, ninety percent of them were out of my budget. The ones that weren’t were rooms in houses with peeling paint and too many residents, people sleeping in converted living rooms and dining rooms, a dozen men and women sharing two tiny bathrooms. I held out hope I’d find something—anything—better.

That night, I ate a peanut butter sandwich in Jackson’s kitchen, brushed the crumbs into the compost, and thought again about going home. The reasons I had for staying and going tangled together, and I couldn’t follow them to a decision anymore. I’d thought I had no place among shadowminds, that I could never be around them again, but here I was, caught up in the underworld beneath the underworld. I paced back and forth through the condo and ended up in front of Jackson’s piano.

I hadn’t done it consciously. When I was still whole, music had always been the way I dealt with shit. But that was before. Now, playing felt like new shit, more difficult shit. I sat down in front of the instrument anyway.

I lifted the lid and noticed the total lack of dust. Jackson’s maid must clean the thing; I’d never seen him touch it. I sat down and settled my hands on the keys. They were cool and slick and familiar. Something in me tightened, and something in me loosened. Before I could think about it too hard and stop myself, I launched into “Hallelujah.”

I slipped up once or twice, but the piano was perfectly in tune. I sang under my breath. I played “Clocks” next, then “Holiday in Spain.” When I was done, I sat with my hands on the keys, sweating, and thought about the piece I’d been working on in the months before the attack. I’d been dating Reggie then, writing a fiddle-piano duet based on minor key twelve-bar blues. I played the first chord, and stopped short when I heard Jackson’s keys in the door.

I tried to stand up and move away from the piano before he caught me, but I ended up tripping over my feet and nearly falling backward over the stool. He was already in the doorway, loosening his tie. I straightened up and tried to look normal.

“Here.” I walked up to him and handed him two twenties. “I want you to take this.”

“Mina—”

“Just take it. I’m not living here and eating your food for free.”

“Fine.” He took only one of the bills. “Satisfied?”

I grumbled, but I let it go.

“Why did you stop playing?”

So I hadn’t stopped in time after all. Hell, for all I knew he’d been standing in the hallway listening for an hour. I decided the truth was probably the best option.

“I don’t like playing for people anymore.”

“Not since you lost your powers.”

It was the first time he’d said it. It might’ve been the first time anyone said it to my face so plainly. I was shocked for a moment—as if no one was supposed to know, as if saying it made it real when it hadn’t been before—but then my whole body relaxed around that feeling of acknowledgement. I nodded.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like,” Jackson said.

“I’m not sure I can either.” I cracked my knuckles. “It’s a nice instrument. How come you never play it?”

“Who says I never play it?” He smiled.

“Oh.”

“I’d like to listen to you. Unless you want me to leave again?”

I shook my head. He nodded and walked out of the room.

I sat back down. What was the last thing I’d played for a crowd? I couldn’t remember, not anymore. If he’d stayed in the living room, I couldn’t have done it. But he was in the kitchen, taking out pots and banging them around with—I was pretty sure—more racket than necessary.

I played a random chord. It wasn’t as scary as I’d thought it would be. I started “To Make You Feel My Love” while Jackson kept at it with the pots. After the first verse—I hummed the lyrics—I stopped hearing him. After the second, I forgot he was there. It felt as though something hard was cracking in my chest, as though a stiff plastic shell around my heart and lungs was splintering and falling away.

When I finished the song, I looked up and saw Jackson sitting on the couch with his smartphone. I hadn’t noticed him come in. The seed of some new feeling took root where the void of grief had been, and I found myself with a sense of gratitude. Jackson looked up, dark hair falling untidily after a long day, dark eyes calm. He’d said he didn’t listen to my thoughts, but I wondered if he understood them anyway in this moment.

He didn’t comment. I went into the bathroom and hunted through his medicine cabinet until I found a nail clip, and I clipped my fingernails to the quick. Then I called Malik on his cell. He picked up after one ring.