“What are you saying?” Hector’s voice was hoarse, but his hand retained firm pressure on my forehead.
Despite his efforts, I still could feel the blood trickling back into my hair. He had known but couldn’t resist one last test. Never mind if he and the others genuinely, if stupidly, had assumed that Charlie had gone easily into that good night. Hector had played his game without thinking that he hadn’t known, couldn’t know what Charlie had actually felt, and I was the one who’d gotten burned.
He also didn’t know the worst. Charlie hadn’t known exactly how it had been done, but he’d known what had been done.
He’d been murdered.
“Nothing. I’m not saying a damn thing.”
And I didn’t. From that moment on, I didn’t say another word. Charlie had known that someone had killed him, but he didn’t know who, and then he didn’t know anything but pain. That meant I didn’t know, either, and I wasn’t about to let a murderer catch on and put me next on his list. I’d say things had gone from sugar to shit in no time, but there hadn’t been any sugar to begin with. From the frying pan into the fire, maybe. Charlie, damn it, what the hell did you get your old roommate into?
Meleah Guerrera showed up with a couple of medical technicians, and I was put into a cervical collar, strapped to a backboard, and lifted to be whisked off to medical. The gurney, liberally covered with fresh sheets that no one had died on, bounced out of the building and over mud that had dried to uncomfortable peaks and gullies. The sky was that unlikely Georgia summer blue, scorched to a pale denim by the blazing sun, and I watched it with unblinking eyes until we entered the comparative cool gloom of the building I’d left only ten minutes before. Allgood and Thackery followed, engaged in a low-voiced, heated exchange. If I’d tried, I might have made out what they were saying. I didn’t try. I had enough to think about.
Charlie was the kind of person who, if given the opportunity, would have changed the world. Unfortunately, his opportunity ran out too soon, but he had been well on his way. He had big plans, great plans, and those plans had killed him. But if they hadn’t, what he would’ve accomplished… Charlie always was a dreamer. Eminently practical, blazingly intelligent, but he’d never been content to keep his eyes fixed on the ground. Charlie wanted to fly-in ways man had yet to accomplish. He’d apparently had a bigger budget than Icarus, though he’d ended up the same damn way… even if someone had helped him out with a big shove.
I’d missed him before. Yeah, I’d deny it to anyone, including myself, but I had. And now… I knew him. Knew every moment of Charlie’s life as if I’d lived it with him, side by side. His twin, his constant shadow. I saw myself through his eyes-sullen, smart-assed, and so transparently vulnerable it made a young, bighearted Charlie ache. I saw Hector as a child-responsible, straitlaced, and with braces so bright they could strike you blind. I celebrated every birthday and holiday. I was there when Charlie proposed to Meleah and she gently, wisely turned him down. When he got drunk with his brother over it, I tasted the beer on my tongue. And when he finally admitted to himself with a rueful laugh that it was for the best, that he was already married to his work, I felt his relief and acceptance. I thought I’d missed Charlie before, now and again. God, I hadn’t had a clue.
I tried to push it aside to focus on the fact that not once did he have an enemy that he knew of. Everyone liked Charlie.
So who had killed him?
“Jackson, I need you to answer my questions. I need to evaluate you.”
I blinked and opened my eyes. I hadn’t realized that I’d closed them, lost in Charlie’s memories. Meleah was leaning over me, concern in her now wholly familiar gray eyes. Around her neck on a chain hung a ring. Silver, it was inscribed with a simple flowing pattern. I lifted a hand to capture it, the metal bright against the black silk. “You told Charlie you lost it.”
Her mouth opened and closed before she took the ring carefully from my hand. “I did. I found it a month after he died. It was in my car under the seat.”
“Smells like lemons.” I closed my eyes again. Her car had smelled like lemons every time Charlie rode in it. And although he hadn’t much liked lemony things-hated lemon meringue pie, found lemonade too tart-he’d liked the smell. Liked it because it was a Meleah smell. I found myself liking it for the same reason, which wasn’t good. I needed a little distance in time and space from all the “Charlie” whirling around in me. His death/murder had been enough to sear the details of his life into me with more force than usual. It had happened before, and there was only one cure for it.
“I need to sleep.” I crossed my arms across my chest and tucked my hands protectively into my armpits. “Now.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Eye, but you’ve had a seizure, struck your head. We need to do X-rays and an EEG at the very least.” She said more, but I missed it. I didn’t need permission to sleep; I was only giving fair warning. I couldn’t have stayed awake if I’d wanted to. The only way to deal with such an abrupt and bruising onslaught of knowledge was to shut down temporarily. I’d learned that the hard way over the years. My body was calling the shots here, not me. I closed my eyes, and less than a second later, I was gone. Gone but not alone.
Charlie was with me.
9
When I woke up, it was to blue skies, green trees, and mellow sunlight drifting through a window. I blinked blurry eyes, and the warm image resolved itself into a mural painted on the wall. What a ripoff. Of course, classified was classified, but on the other hand, we wouldn’t want bed-bound patients to go stark raving mad, either. So let’s paint a window on the wall with a happy little outdoors scene. That’s as good, right?
Yeah, I was all sorts of cheered. I shifted my gaze from a fat blue butterfly and a positively obese puff- chested robin to look at the room around me. I was still in the infirmary. A curtain pulled around my bed gave me the illusion of privacy without the actual benefits. There was the pull and tug of sticky pads and wires on my bare chest; apparently, I was hooked up to a heart monitor. In case I tried checking out of life early before they’d wrung me dry of whatever made me useful to them, the doc could pop in with a shot of adrenaline to get the old pump going. How’d that old Eagles song go? “ You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave”? Hell, I couldn’t do either.
I sat up a few inches and took in more. The bedrails were padded with blankets and tape. I wasn’t sure if that was to protect my mind or my skull. A stray touch or seizures. Or both. I was covered with a sheet, and when I peered under it, I could see scrub pants and socked feet. At least I didn’t see the ultimate indignity: a catheter. It would have been hard to look into those calm gray eyes of Meleah again after that. I stripped the glove off my hand and raised it to touch a sore spot at my hairline. I could feel a low ridge of stitches. Didn’t seem like many. My hand moved to the back of my head, and I winced as I traced a large bump. Sighing, I combed a hand through tangled hair. Not a good day for yours truly. If it was still day. I looked back at the “window.” With that as the only thing to go by, who knew?
“You’re awake, Mr. Eye.”
A face peered around the curtain, and a smile bloomed across it as if I was Christmas and Easter and every birthday combined into one. It was Abby-nurse Eden. She came in and took my hand, the one that was still covered with a glove, as naturally as if she were my mother or sister sitting a bedside vigil. “You can’t read people through gloves, right? I’m not hurting you, am I?”
I shook my head slightly, not trusting my dry throat for speech yet.
“I’m so relieved you’re all right.” She tightened her grip reassuringly. “Some people here…” She scowled- Florence Nightingale outraged. “They aren’t careful with people. Only their precious things. Scientific bullshit.” Coloring as she said “bullshit.” Judging by the tiny cross hanging around her neck, she was a good Christian or Catholic girl, and cursing wasn’t her thing. “As if any machine could be worth a human being. They make me ashamed to be the smallest part of this stupid project and ashamed of the people in it. They honestly do.”
Her green eyes solemn, she squeezed my hand again. “I thought being a psychic was like a miracle. So amazing and wonderful. A gift from God. But I think I was wrong. It’s not, is it?”
“A gift?” This time I answered, my voice as hoarse as I expected. I wished for some water. “Not so much.”
I tried to ease my hand back. Except for Abby and Houdini, I wasn’t used to all this touching. Sincere and well
