ground me, or something.
Those kids. Some of them are so sweet and brave it breaks my heart that we can’t do more for them. But we’re always in a running battle with their parents or the people from the child-services office.
Everybody knows what’s best for them. Everybody’s got advice. Everybody’s got a solution. I say let the kid decide, but nobody wants to hear that.
* *
I finally figured out that I’m solitary by nature, but at the same time I know so many people; so many people think they own a piece of me. They shift and move under my skin, like a parade of memories that simply won’t go away. It doesn’t matter where I am, or how alone—I always have such a crowded head.
When I told Dr. Jane about it, she asked me how long I’d felt that way. I didn’t even have to think about it.
“I’ve always felt that way,” I told her.
* *
I wish I could foresee a better ending for the story of my life. The whole reason for telling stories, even like this when I’m telling one to myself, is to insist that there’s some kind of meaning, or at least shape, to the messy collage of incidents that make up our lives. Most of us have to believe that we’re floundering through the confusion for some particular reason or we simply can’t bear the thought of existence.
I’d like to live for the moment, for the right now. I’d like to always be in the present and not have to carry around the baggage of everything that’s gone before. I’d like to not feel disappointed because all the pieces of my life don’t add up to a story with a coherent plotline and a satisfactory ending.
If I were ever to kill myself, it wouldn’t be to end my life. It would be for a far simpler reason: amnesia.
tertium quid
WHAT THE CROW SAID
Though friendly to magic
I am not a man disguised as a crow
I am night eating the sun
—Michael Hannon, from Fables
Roger Davis sat at his desk in the Crowsea police precinct and studied his partner’s features as Thompson spoke on the phone. The Mully murder case had led them up one dead end into another, but they’d finally gotten a break. An earlier call from the woman’s husband had had them out looking for Alan Grant again. Mully’s daughter claimed to have seen Grant in the hotel at the right time for him to have done it, all his protestations to the contrary.
He looked good for it. He had the right motive and now they had someone to put in the right place at the right time, but something didn’t feel right to Davis. The man they’d interviewed earlier today had been scared, sure, but not guilty scared. More like, how’d-I-get-mixed-up-in-this/what-am-I-gonna-do-to-get-them-to-believe-me scared. Still, they had the girl’s testimony and Davis had been wrong before. He figured he’d just let the DA’s office sort it all out. Until this call came in, it had only been a matter of picking Grant up and booking him.
When Thompson finally got off the phone, he gave Davis a weary look. “That was the daughter,” he said.
“I figured as much.”
“She says it wasn’t Grant she saw in the hallway.”
Davis sighed. So much for getting a break in the case. “She’s changing her story?”
“Changing her mind, sounds like. Said she was sick of lying.”
“Would it help if we brought Grant in for a lineup?” Davis asked.
“She says she knows what he looks like well enough, thank you very fucking much, and it wasn’t him.”
Tired as he was, Davis had to smile as he imagined the Mully girl saying “thank you very fucking much” to his partner.
“Was that a direct quote?” he asked.
“Fuck you, too,” Thompson told him.
It was the father who’d had them come back to the hotel and made Susan Mully tell them who she’d seen in the hallway. Of course this was after they’d already cut Grant loose. But now the kid was having an attack of conscience and calling it off. He wondered if the father knew.
Davis rose to his feet. “I’ll cancel the APB on Grant.”
Thompson nodded. “Now all we’ve got left is the Indian the desk clerk saw.”
Taking the elevator up to the same floor as the Mullys were on at just about the same time as the coroner’s estimated time of death. Right. His description fit just about every fifth person on the skids in that part of the city and of course he’d have all kinds of motive, wouldn’t he?
The case, Davis realized, was dead in the water and he doubted that it’d ever get resolved. And the thing of it was, it wouldn’t exactly break his heart. He’d never much cared for Margaret Mully—or at least not for the woman he’d seen on the news or read about in the paper. So far as Davis was concerned, the Newford Children’s Foundation was doing a bang-up job and anybody trying to screw them the way she was doing deserved what she’d got. But that wasn’t an opinion he’d share with anyone—not even to his partner.
“Just let me deal with the APB, Mike,” he told Thompson, “and then we’ll talk about where we go from here.”
John crouched outside the window, balancing easily on the narrow ledge, and watched the drama as it unfolded before him. He could have applauded when Isabelle stood up to Rushkin, unwilling to admit even to himself that he hadn’t been sure how she’d respond to his offer. He waited patiently as Bitterweed led Isabelle away, watched his doppelganger return alone, listened as Rushkin sent Bitterweed and Scara away to hunt.
When Rushkin’s numena left the room, he was caught in a dilemma then. Follow them and protect Cosette and the others? How long would it take the creatures to track down their source paintings? Or should he leave them to fend for themselves while he attempted to deal with Rushkin?
“I’m sorry, Cosette,” he whispered as he edged away from the window and squeezed around the squat bulk of the gargoyle that shared his ledge. Dealing with Rushkin’s creatures was only a temporary solution. The only way to stop them for good was to cut off the evil at its source, and god help him if he failed, for then he would have still more deaths on his conscience.
Once the numena’s vehicle pulled away from the curb, Scara behind the wheel once more, John scrambled down a drainpipe until he could drop to the ground. He entered the building through a ground-floor window by the simple expediency of kicking out the sheet of plywood that had been nailed across it. He made no effort to be quiet. Rushkin wasn’t going anywhere.
He had no trouble finding his way up to the room where Rushkin’s pallet lay. The monster was sitting up, waiting for him, when John stepped into the room. John paused at the doorway and their gazes locked.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Rushkin said.
“Then you know why I’m here.”
Rushkin smiled. “You can’t hurt me. You had your chance—long ago on that winter’s night—but you tarried too long. We’re not in one of your maker’s dreams now and I won’t make the mistake of entering them again. Give it up, John Sweetgrass. Accept your fate.”
“No,” John told him, but he clenched his fists in frustration as he realized that, this time, Rushkin spoke the truth. Every part of him wanted to take that scrawny neck in his hands and wring the life from it, but he could no more make a move against Rushkin than he could against Isabelle.
