at the next appearance at any location on the list, we could put an end to Charles once and for all.”
“I know you meant ‘set him free,’ not the asshole thing you actually uttered,” I said flatly. I didn’t like the way Thackery talked about Charlie. I knew Hector had to like it even less. I didn’t believe we’d be setting Charlie free to a better place, but I did believe we could let him dissolve into nonexistence. That had to be better than what he was going through now.
Lost.
Everyone had to remember when they were little, and I mean really little, that being lost was the worst feeling in the world. Pure terror. I wouldn’t want to sentence anyone to an eternity of that, certainly not someone who’d once forced his friendship on me when I denied that I wanted it. I’d lied, and he’d known it. I owed Charlie, and I was committed to paying that debt.
“I’ll stick with scientific terminology and ending what fragments of the failed experiment that was Charles and now happens to be killing people fit better than-”
He didn’t get a chance to finish his fancy scientific sentence before a fist hit his nose, which flattened in an explosion of blood.
Thackery was knocked onto his back and was now coughing up both blood and water. Hector unballed his fist and said calmly, “See? No steroids, or I would’ve killed him instead of only breaking his nose.”
“You know, Hector,” I commented, “you’re beginning to grow on me. Now, let me kick him in the ribs, and let’s call this fucked-up day over.”
I didn’t get to kick Thackery. Hector wouldn’t let me, which was pretty unfair, considering he’d given the man the nose of a twenty-year veteran prizefighter. We all ended up in the infirmary. Some for near drownings, some from being knocked unconscious with a blow from an illegal sap glove in the back of the neck or in the jaw, one with a broken nose, and one from good old-fashioned near hysteria.
Hector hadn’t gotten hurt or swallowed any quarry water, but he hung around at Meleah’s order. She called it a request, but I knew an order when I heard one. He leaned against a wall, arms folded, bored with Thackery’s blood-bubbled threats of getting him thrown off the project. Fujiwara was the opposite. He had gone from babbling to silently shaking like a Chihuahua in a meat freezer. The natural nurturer Eden clucked over him, rubbed his back, and promised that Thackery would understand that he hadn’t tried to drown him on purpose
… not his purpose, anyway. I thought they were going to have to give in finally and sedate the guy, but he eventually calmed down enough to wrap a blanket around himself and shuffle out of the infirmary to head back to his room.
I was waiting in line for an X-ray. Meleah wouldn’t take my word that I hadn’t inhaled any fluid when I’d been struggling with the soldier underwater. Aside from Thackery’s fury and Eden’s reassurances, delivered personally to each patient in the room, no one was doing much talking. The soldiers were as pale and shadow-eyed as they’d been at the quarry. I remembered the feeling from long ago, when I first started seeing into the past: if you don’t talk about it, if you don’t think about it, it won’t be true.
Too bad it didn’t work.
Hector was either nursing a satisfaction over taking Thackery down or contemplating Thackery’s theory. As for me? I’d like to claim that what had happened at the quarry was the same old same old. Nothing new. I’d been in my natural environment, unfazed as a pig in shit. A good old Georgia psychic boy who went through this every day-minus the actual hands-on violence.
Yeah, I could claim it all I wanted, but it would be bullshit. It was Tess. Long-dead Mary Bevins hadn’t been my sister, but she’d done a good job of stirring up memories out of a murky past I’d done my best to bury.
After my X-ray, read and approved, I went the way of Fujiwara and the soldiers and walked out the door. I was the third-to-last to go. Thackery was staying to have his nose set, and Hector stayed to tell Meleah what had happened; at least, that was my guess. He’d promised to keep her up to date on Charlie. A strong woman like her wasn’t about to let him off the hook.
“You all right, Jackson?”
I didn’t pause at Hector’s question as I passed him. “I’m always all right, Allgood. Haven’t you seen that yet?” I kept walking, and he was polite enough not to call me a liar. He did call me a liar later and one cursed son of a bitch when my room exploded. I didn’t blame him.
• • •
Since Hector had issued the order that I had the run of the lesser-classified areas of the base-housing, cafeteria, infirmary-I was able to go alone from one building and slog solo over the now-dried peaks and valleys of red mud to the housing unit that held my room. I wanted to shower the mineral smell of quarry water off of me and sleep for about twelve hours.
The quarry scent did stay with you, enough so that I almost missed the other smell as I pushed the door to my room open. This was a smell familiar to everyone, but in particular, it was a smell for which I had a hair trigger buried in my subconscious.
The door was already swinging open when I threw myself back and down the hall. The explosion didn’t completely blow the door off the hinges, but it drenched it and the floor and the walls outside it in flames and the reek of gasoline. The air was superheated. It felt as if it was searing my lungs as I pushed my way to crawl farther down the hall away from the fire. Alarms were blaring, help would be coming, but I’d always believed the universe helps those who help themselves, and I kept slithering along the dingy tile. I snatched a desperate look behind me as I moved faster. The fire crept after me, but not as quickly as I expected.
When I thought I was far enough away from the inferno, if not the heat, I rolled over and tried to stand. I made it, but I didn’t know I would have if a hand hadn’t helped me halfway up.
“Damn it, Jackson, you call this all right? I know you don’t believe in an afterlife, you cursed son of a bitch, but why are you in such a hurry to prove it to yourself?” Hector kept me upright while giving me hell.
“Someone tried to kill me. I know you’re not blaming me, ” I accused. “Especially when I told you this could happen. Murderers don’t like psychics. If I’m cursed, you did the cursing when you brought me here.”
A crew was trying to put out the fire, but they weren’t having any luck with their extinguishers. Instead of being put out, it was spreading like the breath of a dragon. “It’s napalm!” one guy shouted. “Goddamn napalm! Get the Halon extinguishers!”
Their voices were muffled by the masks they wore, but Hector heard enough to push me into motion. “Move it. Napalm puts out enough carbon monoxide to gas an entire kennel.” As we ran, he asked, “Not that I don’t think it a good thing, but why aren’t you dead? Napalm isn’t a natural inhabitant of Georgia. It’s not like a black widow that creeps under your door. How are you not a barbecued corpse?”
“Joyce Ann Tingle, better known as Madame Maya Eilish.” I was panting as we turned a corner into fresher air. “One of the psychics you tested. She burns down rivals’ shops, and she doesn’t care if they’re in them when she does. Any psychic in Atlanta would turn and run at the whiff of gasoline at their door, same as me.” I leaned against the wall. “They said napalm. I know this used to be a military base, but there can’t be napalm just lying around.”
“Probably homemade. Gasoline, Styrofoam, and soap, and you’re done.” He fished a ring of several keys out of his pocket. “Here. Go straight down this hall, then take a left, and it’s the fifth room on the right. Lock yourself in until I knock on the door. I’m going back to see if they’ve got it under control yet and can tell when it was put in place. Probably hopeless, but…” He shrugged. It was more of a guilty twitch, actually. He was getting good at the guilt. Good enough that I controlled a smart-ass remark, took the keys, and went.
It was nearly an hour later when there was a tired pounding at the door and Hector’s voice. I unlocked and opened the door and immediately demanded, “What’s up with the Brady Bunch room?”
The room he’d sent me to had two sets of bunk beds in it. They took up enough of the small space that two people standing at the same time was tight quarters. Very tight, and we authentic psychics liked our personal space.
“Someone tried to kill you. I thought you’d want a friend to watch your back.” Hector sat down heavily on one of the lower beds.
“I already have friends. Two. That’s enough.” I still stood, arms folded, doing my damnedest not to look defensive. Two real friends was more than most people had. People had acquaintances-other people they had little in common with and even less emotion for-but since the majority of people didn’t want to be alone, they called
