Blue Diablo

“And you?” I asked. “What about you, Booke?”

“I don’t know. We can’t see ourselves as we are, can we?”

I wondered about him, this man who seemed to live for broken moments on the computer and perhaps spent the rest of his time lost in esoteric study. Was I actually communicating with him? Or creating the scene out of some subconscious desire? Our predicament meant I couldn’t afford to dismiss assistance, but until I checked the information he’d given, I couldn’t be sure this wasn’t a supervivid dream.

“Does that mean you’ve never looked?”

“There are a great number of things I’ve never done,” he said quietly.

A moment ago, he’d said: I can’t leave Stoke. The word can’t offered a wide variety of perplexing possibilities. In what manner was he bound? And why would our problems, half a world away, interest him so?

“There’re a lot of things I wish I hadn’t done,” I said.

“Such as?”

“Leaving my mother to die.” It slipped out before I could stem the candid response.

Booke regarded me with a somber expression for a moment. “We don’t have power over that. We don’t get to pick and choose.”

“Do you think it’s wrong to want revenge on the people who took her from me?”

He gave an odd smile. “What do I know? I’m just a voice, someone who doesn’t seem half-real to you.”

“You do that on purpose,” I accused. “Are you trying to will yourself out of existence?”

The mouth that didn’t belong to him twisted. “Perhaps. If it would work.”

I reached for him, intending to see if contact cut through the unreality of our dream selves. For just a moment, I wanted to see him as he was.

“No, you mustn’t. If we touch, you—”

Wake.

I found myself alone on the couch, still feeling Booke’s fingers beneath mine. When I touched him, in that instant, I saw a desolate pebble beach bounded by an endless gray sea. I didn’t know what it meant, but the loneliness of it made me ache.

In the silver predawn light I lay reflecting on the ocean between us and the secrets people keep.

A Little Butch

Eventually I managed to go back to sleep for a few hours.

By the time everyone else woke, I wondered if I’d dreamed the whole thing, as in a dream that didn’t mean anything, not a lucid dream or an out-of-body experience. Whatever. In the end I decided to share it because the symbol might mean something. We also needed to do something about the wards, if I wasn’t crazy.

Over breakfast, I said, “So, I talked to Booke last night...”

“Dios.” Chuch looked worse for wear. I didn’t think he’d be crawling under cars anytime soon. “Does he ever sleep?”

“Well, I’m not sure on that.” I outlined what we’d talked about without mentioning how I knew.

Chance shot me a strange look while I spoke, but he didn’t interrupt.

When I was done, Eva cursed, soft and virulent, in two languages. “This is my fault, my stupid idea. I’ll redo the wards, mi vida. You just rest, okay? I’ll fix it. I can do this. I’ve seen you do it a hundred times.”

As she went off muttering about sea salt and wormwood, Chuch gave us a grin. “It’s not all bad, no? I get to sit on my ass for two or three days until she stops feeling guilty and figures out I’m milking it.” He got up from the breakfast table and rubbed his belly. “Time for some quality morning TV. I hope Jerry Springer’s on.”

The mechanic’s expression made me laugh as I went to refill my coffee cup. I hovered at Chance’s elbow with the pot. “Want some more?”

“No thanks. I would like to know how you spoke to Booke last night, though.” He regarded me with brow raised. “I couldn’t sleep, so I spent the night researching the sex trade. You never came into the office, Corine. It’s not like you to lie, so what’s going on?”

Oh. “It wasn’t what you’d call a conventional conversation...”

“I’m listening.”

I swallowed my ambiguity as I told him the rest. By the time I finished I couldn’t interpret his expression; he gave no hint how he felt about my dreaming about some stranger. Maybe I wished for a hint of jealousy, but that was purely selfish. He never indulged in such displays. In fact, the only time I could remember him showing even a flicker of it was when I first met Jesse Saldana.

“But you’re sure you spoke to him?” he asked, neutral.

“As positive as I can be. We can call him up to confirm, if you want.” Although it would be embarrassing as hell for Booke to learn I’d been having incredibly vivid dreams about him, if I was wrong about the experience. I wasn’t eager to talk to the Englishman anytime soon. The whole thing had just been too strange.

Chance shook his head. “I trust you. Let’s see what we can dig up on that symbol.”

His casual acceptance warmed me. No matter how crazy the stuff I brought him, he always believed me. Smiling, I went back to the living room for my last clean outfit; we’d been away almost a week and I needed to do laundry. From inside my purse, my phone vibrated silently but insistently.

That meant I had a new message.

Huh. I brought it to my ear, input the code, and listened. “Hi, this is Lenny. Lenny Marlowe? You said not to help, but they laid me off at Delta and I got to thinking. You know in them movies how bad guys always return to the scene of the crime? So I got some doughnuts and went over to the warehouse. Sure enough, around two, they came back. They cleared stuff out of there, put crates in a white sanitation truck, but it wasn’t no trash they took out. Well, I was real careful and I followed them. They went to 6874 Hal—hey!” An explosive burst assaulted my ear, and then the call devolved into sobs and whimpers.

Oh, shit. The call was time stamped three hours ago. “Chance.” He didn’t respond right away, so I shouted, “Chance! Come on, we have to go.”

“What’s the matter?” He came out into the hall half-dressed, but for once I didn’t pause to appreciate his bare chest.

“We need to go see Lenny Marlowe.”

“Why?”

I understood his confusion but we didn’t have time for it. “He might be in trouble.”

Understatement. I dressed in record time and sprinted for the Mustang. Chance joined me and put the car in gear. To simplify matters, I gave him my phone and let him listen to the message himself as he drove.

“Shit. Call Saldana and have him meet us there.”

That sounded great. It made a nice change to have a cop on our side for once, instead of being in the crappy position of trying to explain the wildly improbable. I still wasn’t sure I trusted him, but he was the one who had given us Lenny as a lead. Would he have done that if he intended to watch and kill him for showing a little initiative? Would he really go to that much trouble to confuse us?

I was starting to think... No. I hadn’t tossed out the dirty cop idea entirely; maybe somebody in the station was sneaking around his office, listening to his personal conversations? But then again, except for Saldana, I hated cops, so it made me happy to blame one.

Our pet policeman answered on the second ring. “Saldana.”

“I may have a problem that requires your assistance,” I said in lieu of hello.

He sighed. “You know, Corine, there’s a picture of you next to the definition of high maintenance. What is it now?”

Because I did need his help, I ignored the insult. “Our mutual friend Lenny Marlowe called me in the middle of the night. I was asleep and I missed it, but the message struck me as alarming, to say the least. We’re headed over there to check on him, but I’d appreciate your official presence on scene.”