Dying Light (27 page)

“
She’s partis,” Gloria
reminds me, whispering almost directly into my ear.

“
Careful what you say,”
the man says, glancing up from his device for the first time,
scowling.

“
If you’re doing your job,
Cariño, they can’t hear us.”

“
Better safe than a
dancing girl in Marrakesh, my love.”

“
Ooh, my love,” she says,
making a small motion with her hand to turn away a traffic camera
on our right. “That’s a new one.”

“
Are we almost there?”
Gloria asks, her voice pained.

“
Two more blocks,” the man
says.

Two blocks later we are at the door of
yet another apartment building. I’ve begun to feel as though I’ve
taken a tour of Chicago’s apartments and now have a great sense of
what the city has to offer. Unlike Gloria’s apartments, with their
secret exits, this apartment is marvelous.

A grand high ceiling greets us in the
lobby. A crystal chandelier worthy of the Titanic dangles from the
center of the room above marble floors. Huge columns stand
half-exposed from the walls where we push a button to call down the
elevator.

“
Whose place is this?”
Gloria asks, clearly uncomfortable with the grandeur.

“
We’re using this flat
while my friend is out of town,” the man says. “I called in a
favor.”

“
You stole it.”

“
Ms. Jackson, what a
horrible accusation. I’ve never stolen anything in my
life.”

Rachel grins, twirling girlishly in
her petticoat. “He borrowed it.”

“
He won’t be back from
Munich for another week. Trust me. It’ll be like we were never here
at all.”

I glance at Gloria.
Who are these people?

Gloria can’t see me because she’s too
busy scowling at the man.

The elevator opens and we
step out into a beautiful penthouse, not unlike the immaculate
lobby below. I feel like I’m in a 16
^th
century chateau rather than
a Chicago apartment. A chaise stretches before a huge glass window.
Dresses of every kind are strewn all over the room.

The man sees me eyeing them. “She’s
been shopping.”

“
How?” I blurt. As far as
I know, she escaped an asylum not two months ago. Where did she get
the money to go
shopping
? And these dresses do not
look cheap.

“
How have you been moving
around the city undetected?” Gloria asks.

The man offers her the device he’s
been carrying. “This little guy. He’s quite handy. He blacks out
all recording devices within a twenty foot radius.”

“
And I take care of the
ones that are a little farther away,” Rachel adds.

“
And she’s fantastic at
it.” He grins. Something in my gut churns. “As long as we carry
this little guy, we are effectively a blind spot.”

“
You and your gadgets,”
Gloria says, unamused. Now all of her attention turns to Rachel.
“You look well.”

“
So much better,” Rachel
says. “I thought escaping the asylum was the worst idea ever, but
how could I tell Brinkley no? I got lucky.”

“
I picked her up,” the man
says. “You should’ve seen her face when I pulled up in a
Ferrari.”

Gloria’s face is so red it might
explode. “A Ferrari is not low profile, Gideon.”

“
Life’s little pleasures,
Ms. Jackson. Who knows when we are going to die? Who would take the
bus to hell when one can drive a beautiful car?”

Gideon. The name rings a
bell.
Gideon
. A
line from Brinkley’s journal springs to mind.
Idolizing an Iranian smuggler should have been my first
hint.

“
You’re Gideon?” I ask.
“Brinkley’s Gideon?”

Gideon grins. “One and the same, my
lady. And you’re Alice Gallagher, are you not?”

“
You wanted to be the most
powerful man in the world,” I say, recalling the entry from
Brinkley’s journal where Gideon—first taken from his family in
Afghanistan—tells Brinkley what he wants to be when he grows up. So
he can’t be more than twenty now.

“
Working on it, darling,”
he says with a mischievous grin. “This vixen is quite the
accessory.”

Rachel preens.

“
So you all know each
other,” I say. “You’re all tied to Brinkley.”

A silence settles on the room. “May he
rest in peace,” Gideon says in a serious tone.

“
I want to see his grave,”
Rachel adds, equally somber. “Once we leave the city.”

“
He’s in Nashville,”
Gloria says.

“
With all due respect,” I
begin, and both Gideon and Rachel bite back laughs.
“What?”

“
With all due respect,”
Rachel chides.

Gideon turns his eyes up at me.
“Relax, darling. We are all friends here. Just say what’s on your
mind.”

“
I’m not your darling, for
starters.”

“
I call every beautiful
woman, darling,” he says, with mock indignation. “Except Ms.
Jackson, of course.”

Rachel laughs. “Because she’ll break
your arm again.”

“
She broke my hand,
actually,” Gideon says, with a sideways glance. “But that’s a story
for another day.”

I take a breath. “All right. You’re
Gloria’s backup, I assume. I also assume you’re here to help
because Brinkley asked you to come after he was—gone.”

“
You’re on fire,” Gideon
chides. “Don’t stop now.”

“
But what do you
do
?” I ask. “You’re
probably not even old enough to buy alcohol, and last I heard, she
was in an asylum half-insane.”

Rachel grins. “Oh, I see why Jesse
likes her. She’s feisty.”

Gideon frowns. “I didn’t realize we
were producing resumes for this little meeting, so you’ll have to
forgive me for not having anything prepared.”

“
I—” I begin an apology
but he doesn’t let me finish.

He pulls a device from his pocket and
pushes a button. The walls begin to clink and clatter, and I worry
that I’ll regret chiding him. Panels flip. The ornate walls are
false, revealing cabinets beneath. Some have weapons—a lot of
weapons—almost as well stocked as Jeremiah’s tenth floor armory,
but other cases have devices. Strange electronic things that I’ve
never laid eyes on. A few look extremely complicated, with buttons
covering their faces. Others have only one, large, menacing
button.

“
I have well-equipped
friends and many connections. I speak fourteen languages, know how
to fly just about every aircraft ever designed. And I’m
ridiculously rich.”

Rachel snorts. “You shouldn’t
brag.”

“
Brinkley taught me quite
a lot,” Gideon says. “Far more than he ever taught his girls, I’m
sure.”

It takes me a second to realize he
means Rachel and Jesse—they’re Brinkley’s girls.

Rachel folds her arms in mock
petulance. “Sexist, if you ask me.”

Gideon pouts his lip sympathetically,
but continues on. “And what he didn’t teach me, I either taught
myself or learned through my connections.”

“
Some less than
reputable,” Gloria adds as she sets her sketchbook on a table and
goes to inspect one of the rifles on the wall.

“
I may have gone to one of
the best boarding schools in the world, but I’m not
elitist
, Ms. Jackson,”
Gideon says, more mock indignation.

“
Sometimes it’s like
you’re the favorite child,” Rachel says. “You got the fancy
boarding school and the money, while I got the asylum.”

“
It was a very nice
asylum, love.”

His whole couch slides backwards
across the floor, bumping against the wall. Gideon rocks forward,
laughing.

“
Careful,” he says to
Rachel. “You’ll damage the furniture and this is very expensive to
replace.”

My heart hammers. “You’re
telekinetic.”

Rachel grins. “That’s one word for
it.”

Two guns lift off the wall and turn
toward Gideon.

“
Hey, now,” he says, his
voice losing its humor. “Never point a gun at someone, even in
jest. It’s dangerous.”

The guns return to their places on the
wall.

Gideon is red faced and breathing a
little heavier than before. “No wonder Brinkley never gave you a
gun. You’re a little rash.”

She gives him a warning
look.

“
In the most endearing and
adorable way,” he adds.

“
Has Caldwell been hunting
you too?” I ask her.

“
Yes, which is why I’ve
teamed up with Gideon. He’s done a good job of keeping me
hidden.”

“
I can’t even find you,”
Gloria says.

“
Good,” Rachel says. “If
he finds me, I’m sure he’ll kill me outright. I’m not
Jesse.”

“
Why do you say that?” I
ask.

Rachel wets her lips.

“
You know about the
angels, don’t you? That they talk to us?”

“
Yes,” I tell her. “Jesse
sees Gabriel.”

She nods as if she already knows this.
“Mine has tried to explain to me what’s going on and what I’m
supposed to do.”

I wait for her to go on.

She bites her lip and sinks onto the
couch that Gideon has pushed back into place. “It’s hard to
explain. When I say it out loud, it sounds crazy.”

“
It’s okay,” I tell her.
“I’ll believe you. Whatever you say.”

I’ll believe that she believes it
anyway.

This seems to be the right answer.
“The Earth’s magnetic field comes at a price. It must be recharged
every so often. It’s the price we pay for life. That’s where the
partis come in. We have to choose whether or not we want to
recharge the field, protecting the existing planet, or if we want
to blow it up and create a new universe, starting all over.
Does—does that make sense?”

I remember the television turning
itself on in Gloria’s apartment and the news story. “The ghost in
your apartment,” I say to Gloria. “Is that news story connected to
this somehow?”

Gideon and Rachel burst out laughing
as if I’ve made the funniest joke in the world.

“
You have a ghost?” Rachel
asks Gloria.

“
Oh come on,” Gideon says.
“You have to tell her.”

They laugh for a moment longer while I
stand in the center of the room. Then Rachel takes pity on me. “It
was me. I’m the ghost.”

“
You turned on the
TV?”

“
I pushed the button on
the remote, yes, from a distance. It’s how I check in with Gloria
so she knows we are okay and that things are still on track. I also
wanted her to see the science report. I thought it was very
fascinating.”

“
She watches the discovery
channel day and night, this one,” Gideon says with an arched
eyebrow. “The history channel. All that
Ancient Aliens
shit.”

“
The angels
could
be aliens. They
could be beings from higher dimensions,” Rachel says, stamping her
foot. “We don’t know. Have an open mind.”

Gideon arches his eyebrows.

“
What’s wrong with
watching educational TV? It’s good for you.”

My head spins. “A new
universe?”

Rachel shakes her head. “Right. So the
partis powers are the essential elements of the universe, and once
one person has all of them they become the apex. Then the apex
explodes, either with the intention of protecting the existing
planet, or creating a new universe.”

I collapse to my knees.

Gloria comes to my side. “Alice, are
you okay?”

I breathe, in and out. “So either
Jesse is murdered for her power or she explodes?”

I feel sick. I swallow several times
against the threat of vomiting.

“
Or
we do
my
plan,” Rachel says, straightening the lace of her petticoat
over her knees. “We kill Caldwell and the other partis, then live
long and boring lives until we’re ready to die. I’ll let Jesse kill
me and explode, saving the world—you know, when we are like a
hundred years old.”

I can’t breathe. A hand rubs my
back.

“
Through your nose,”
Gloria says. “In and out of your nose.”

“
Is she freaking out?”
Rachel asks.

“
Most people find it
difficult to accept their love is going to explode, darling,”
Gideon says.

“
There’s no rule that says
we have to recharge the shield
now
,” Rachel says. “We only have to
stop Caldwell and the partis from trying to kill us
now
. After we survive
that, we can take our sweet time.”

“
Breathe,” Gloria says. I
feel her hand on my back. “You’re not breathing.”