Pain Management

themselves up so they can sleep at all.

But Gem always amazed me. When she was a child, every time she closed her eyes there was the chance of waking up to death—if the class-cleansers Pol Pot had unleashed were merciful enough to make it quick. But she always slept as deep and as trusting as if she’d been raised by wolves.

She’d tried to explain it to me, once. Something about casting her lot and . . . whatever happens. Not quite fatalism. Something about choices. Even if you’re on the roof of a burning building, it’s still up to you to decide which direction to jump off.

Gem had never been anything but good to me. I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t feel guilty about Ann.

Once, that was what I wanted. No conscience. How I envied the sociopaths around me. Without moral and ethical baggage weighing them down, without the boundaries that restrain the rest of the world, they’re the most efficient human beings on earth. You can kill them, but you can’t hurt them.

I was a kid then. What I wanted more than anything was not to be afraid all the time. So I tried to go in the other direction—not to be afraid ever.

I never got there. Wesley did. And what he got was dead. By his own hand, when there was nothing left to play for.

I still remember what he told me about fear. “I’m not afraid of anything,” he said back then. “And it’s not worth it.”

What happened to me was I . . . split. There’s a part of me that would pass every test for “sociopath.” I meet all the criteria . . . when it comes to strangers. I can watch people die and not give a damn. I can make them dead, if it comes to that. Nothing goes off inside me—I don’t feel a thing.

Stealing, lying, cheating . . . it’s not just something I can do, it’s what I do. I’m a man for hire. And, with a few exceptions, there isn’t much you can’t pay me to do.

But there’s another piece of me. The part that’s with my family. The family I chose; the family that chose me. I feel everything that hurts them, or makes them sad. I wouldn’t just kill for them; I’d die for them. They’re all I have. They’re everything I have. And what they give me is . . . that piece of myself that’s clean.

Not the part that worships revenge; I came stock from the factory with that.

I mean the part that told Joel the truth when I said I’d never give Rosebud up.

I looked at Gem sleeping next to me. Wondering if she’d already let me go.

“What shall you do now?” Gem asked me the next morning.

“I have to go to the library.”

“Because . . . ?”

“Because, when I was . . . thinking last night, I got an answer. Maybe not the right one, but . . . something I have to check out, anyway.”

“In the library?”

“A newspaper morgue would be better. Or even the AP wire. I’m looking for a—”

“—pattern?” Gem asked, maybe remembering my search for the humans who had tried to kill me. A search that took me all the way back to my childhood stretch in an institution for the insane. To a crazy, god-faced genius who makes a living finding patterns in chaos. And spends his life in a futile quest for the answer all Children of the Secret seek: Why did they do that to me?

Lune had unraveled the failed murder plot’s tapestry for me. And I’d made a noose out of the threads.

“Yeah,” I told Gem. “If I’m right, it won’t be that hard to pick up. Just take a long time.”

“I could help.”

“You’ve already helped. A ton. And I know you want to . . .”

“What?” she asked, sharply.

“I don’t know,” I finished lamely. “Go back home.”

“Burke, it is you who wants to go back home.”

“This place, it isn’t for me.”

“I know.”

“But I don’t know how things are back home anymore. I don’t know how I’d . . . make a living. I was working off a . . . reputation, I guess. But the street thinks I’m dead. Been gone for a while. I wouldn’t want people thinking I’m a goddamned ghost. I’ve been through that one already—when that maniac I told you about decided to bring Wesley back.”

“Home is not a place.”

“That sounds better than it plays, little girl. My family, they’re rooted there, understand? That’s where they’re . . . safe. Where they know how things work. There’s things you just can’t . . . relocate, I guess.”

“So—what, then? You go back and . . .”

“. . . and maybe put them all in a jackpot. Don’t you get it, Gem? Word gets out that I’m . . . back, I guess, and who knows what that kicks off? My family, they’d be right in the middle of it.”

“That would be their choice.”

“No. You don’t get it. They wouldn’t see it that way. If I was in it, they’d be in it. I’m the one who has to decide. Nibble around the edges, maybe. Test the waters. . . .”

“So why have you not, then?”

“I want to finish this thing here.”

“The missing girl?”

“Yeah.”

“And that is all?” she asked, her dark, fathoms-deep eyes empty of accusation.

“That’s right.”

She got up, left the room. In a few minutes, I heard the shower going.

“If you are going to search newspapers,” she said later, “there is a database.”

“Like NEXIS?”

“Yes. Or one could check Reuters and the AP and even various international services easily enough.”

“You mean with the computer?”

“With the Internet, yes.”

“It’s probably not that simple.”

“I am not simple, either,” she said, a trace of annoyance showing in her voice.

The cell phone in my pocket made its noise. Gem stalked off. Maybe to give me some privacy, maybe to underscore how little I was pleasing her.

“What?” I answered.

“It’s Madison. Ann vouched for you. And I have the proverbial good news and bad news.”

“Can you say it on the phone?”

“Sure. The person you were asking about got in touch.”

“And . . . ?”

“And she says someone she trusts is going to set up a meeting between you and her.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“The bad news is, you were right. There was a connection between my work and what she was looking for. But it doesn’t have anything to do with her. Not with herself, see?”

“Not exactly.”

“That’s the bad news. I can’t tell you what she told me. I promised not to. But it is very, very serious.”

“You wouldn’t have called me if you couldn’t tell me something,” I said.

“Do you know what ‘empathy’ means?” she asked.

“It’s when you feel someone else’s pain.”

“Close enough. That’s her problem. And that’s all I can tell you,” Madison said.