away. This wasn’t about her. This was about me. Glory might not be completely human, but I was.
Thackery opened his desk drawer. Hector’s shoulder shifted, and his hand moved inside his coat to rest on the grip of his gun.
“It’s not a weapon. It’s a list,” Thackery said stiffly. “Of everyone I believe to have the scientific and mental capacity to sabotage the transplanar with a method we can’t detect.”
“Be careful,” I warned dryly. “Better put on some gloves. The paper’s probably coated with poison. No, wait. He’s touching it with bare skin. You should be fine.”
Hector took it, and I scanned it along with him. Not that it did me any good. The only name out of the eight that I recognized on it was Sloane, who I remembered thinking looked like a dick when I met him. A dick and a protege of Thackery’s. I’d looked into Sloane’s eyes as he stood behind Thackery like a faithful lackey and seen nothing but science, not a hint of a soul.
“No Fuji?”
“The man urinates himself during performance reviews. He lacks, to put it bluntly, the balls to even entertain the idea of jaywalking, much less killing.” Thackery was scornful. Lacking the ability to murder to improve your career path wasn’t a quality he admired.
“Too bad those ghost balls at the quarry didn’t last a little longer. Cyanotic blue is a good look for you,” I drawled. I flat-out gave up on not saying “ghosts.” They weren’t ghosts, yeah, but the phrase “reenacted episodes of ether-recorded violence” was straining my tongue. “Hector, point out the other seven geeks on the list, and I’ll give you a lesson in picking pockets. Thanks to reading Thackery, I won’t be able to read anyone else today, but I should be able to read them tomorrow.”
“That was an inexcusable breach of my privacy,” he accused.
“But letting Charlie die when you might’ve been able to save him, that’s nothing, is it? No big deal. I know what you are, Thackery. A mistake of nature. A walking, talking brain full of bad wiring. So guess what? I don’t give a shit about your privacy. Hell, I should be compensated for having to wade through the filth that’s in your mind.” Hector had his hand on my shoulder and was easing me back.
Once we were across the room and out of earshot, I said quietly, “He’s a killer, Hector. He didn’t use his own hands this time, but he has the taste now. He’s seen how easy it can be. Sooner or later, there’ll be another Charlie, and that time he’ll be personally responsible.”
“No, he won’t. I’ll make certain of that.” Hector didn’t say how he’d make certain, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t care. Thackery was a copperhead, poisonous as they came. There was one thing to do when it came to those.
My only thoughts were that I hoped that Hector didn’t get caught and that if he needed it, I had a brand-new shovel at my house.
• • •
I’d successfully obtained personal objects from six people on the list with none of them the wiser. I hadn’t been able to get to Sloane, who regarded me as the equivalent of a homeless vampire. Whenever I drifted close with a made-up question about the project, his face tightened as if he’d smelled an entire Dumpster full of garbage, and he hurried off as quickly as possible. He did his best not to make it appear that I was the issue, always implying there was an “urgent” matter for him to take care of, but I thought another word for this was “convenient.” Then there was a Dr. Kessler, who hadn’t shown up for work today. He’d called in sick. Also “convenient.” I wondered if he’d spent the night before stealing a refrigerated meat truck.
Fujiwara, on the other hand, kept trailing me around, apologizing in a guilt-laden tone for his actions at Job’s Quarry. I had no idea why. It wasn’t me he’d tried to drown. Finally, I told him the only apology I wanted was for his not finishing the job of sending Thackery’s sopping-wet ass on to the glory of God and to leave me alone already. He did, more morose than ever. I was glad he wasn’t on the list and I didn’t have to read him. I’d need to grab a phone book and dial the first six numbers of the suicide hotline first. That was one depressed, pathetic guy.
Once again, I was back in the cafeteria. It was beginning to feel like my vacation home. Hector, with all of my stolen trinkets stuffed into a plastic bag inside his lab coat, was eating lunch with Meleah. I’d practically had to boot his ass over to her. They could use some quality alone time, and Hector couldn’t see her ass under her lab coat, making it a good chance that he wouldn’t screw up this pseudo-date or get smacked on the nose with a plastic spoon.
“How you doing, sweetie? They treating you with more respect now? Treating you like a person and not one of their little mechanical toys?” Eden placed her tray opposite mine and sat down. Today she had tiny sea horses dangling from her lobes. Each one had a rhinestone so minute that when it glittered, they winked at me.
“Hector’s come around. He’s not as bad as I thought.” I quickly added, “But don’t tell him I said that. He’s too used to being an alpha dog. Having something to hang over his head is good for keeping his ego in check.”
She gave a smile that was all dimples and a very slight overbite. On her, it worked. It gave her an elfin air, not that I believed in elves any more than I did in ghosts. “He’s a puppy dog. He has a big bark, but he’d much rather cuddle in your lap and get a good scratching behind his ear.”
I tried to picture Hector curled in anyone’s lap-except mine-his six-foot-plus tall body in a ball with his head tilted to reveal the soft spot behind the ear for a nice rub. A few of my brain cells imploded, and I buried that image in my mental box of things never to be remembered again, adding a few extra loops of subconscious chain around it. “I’ll take your word for it, Ms…”
“Eden. I told you to call me Eden, and I meant it.” She reached over and pinched my sleeved arm precisely as Abby would’ve done. “Now I’m going to say grace before I eat. You don’t have to say it with me.”
“Good,” I drawled. “I wasn’t planning on it.” Praying to an empty sky was time wasted that I could use for shoveling food into my mouth.
She pinched me again. “Though you could at least stop eating for two seconds out of respect for my beliefs.”
“You could not pray to someone every bit as fake as Santa Claus out of respect for my beliefs, too, but I don’t see you doing that.” I took another bite, but I couldn’t help a small grin as I chewed. She was bubbly, feisty, smart, and protective. Teasing her made me nostalgic. If I lived through this, I’d have to tell Abby all about her long-lost twin.
She frowned. “I hope Saint Peter paddles your sassy butt when you get to the gates. You deserve at least that.” Then she zipped through grace at a record speed before I could insert any more taunts. She picked up her fork, then put it back down with a sigh of exasperation. “Lord love a duck. I almost forgot.”
Lord love a duck. I hadn’t heard that one since before my grandma died, and I’d not yet learned why the Lord loved ducks more than the rest of his so-called children, but what’s life without mystery? As I watched, she pulled a clear plastic bag out of her lab-coat pocket, using her napkin to lift it. “I didn’t think me handling it for a few minutes would hurt you much, but I didn’t want to take a chance. Not like these other vultures with no care for anything but their own tail feathers.” She glared at Thackery, who was far across the room, eating his own lunch. A Japanese bento box. No cafeteria swill for his refined palate.
“Take two a day,” she ordered, pushing the bag full of giant red pills over to me before putting the napkin in her lap and starting on her macaroni casserole.
I picked them up with a gloved hand, although she was right. She wouldn’t have touched the bag long enough to leave a land mine of memories behind. It was safe. “What are these? Suppositories for elephants? They’re bigger than my pinkie.”
“Vitamins. And they are not bigger than your pinkie, you baby, but I’ll bet they’re bigger than something else.” She lifted both delicate eyebrows in challenge, birds taking flight. Laughing birds. “And I take them every day without fail. You need to as well.” Laughter gone, the order was given with all the solemnity and stern demeanor of the entire medical field behind her.
“I’ve been eating this food for months,” she continued, “and I was weak as a day-old kitten until I started taking them. Without these vitamins, I’d have died of scurvy or malnutrition a long time ago.” She used the fork to stretch the cheese from the macaroni high in the air-a good seven inches before it snapped. “Jackson, sugar, do you think that came out of a real live cow? It’s probably glue that the Chinese had left over from a factory or two. They mixed in some food coloring, and when it turns us into mutant lactose-loving zombies, the FDA will say how awfully sorry they are they didn’t catch it sooner.” She sniffed suspiciously but took a bite anyway.
“Mutant lactose-loving zombies?” There I was, smiling again. “You watch a lot of horror movies, I’m guessing.”
