The Liberator

Aspen makes a phone call. Half an hour later, she announces it’s time to go. I’m already starting to feel a bit restless. When Lucille gave me my assignment to collect Charlie, there was a deadline. And Valery insinuated the same was true for this one. So far, I’ve blown two days stalling and traveling. Now that I’m finally here, I’m not sure how to proceed. This girl’s obviously got some issues, and I guess my job is to reel her in and show her how to live right. I have no idea how to do that when I can’t figure out how to do that myself.

Still, I’ll have to work something out if I want to keep my cuff and return to Charlie.

“You ready to roll?” Aspen asks. “They’re downstairs.”

I don’t know who they are, but I know for now, my best plan is to just observe Aspen. To see what’s going wrong in her life, and then somehow work through that. So I nod. “Let’s do it.”

Aspen gives a quasi-smile as Lincoln rushes forward like he’s guarding us from some unseen enemy.

When we get outside, my heart cries. It weeps. In front of me is a car so beautiful it deserves tears. It’s a black-as-death BMW 760i complete with 535 horsepower, night vision, and a TwinPower Turbo V-12 engine. Pow! I consider taking it from behind, but decide to treat her with respect just this one time.

Lincoln, Aspen, and I climb into the car as the last of the sun disappears behind the snow-capped mountains. A tall girl in the passenger seat throws us a wave, and the guy behind the steering wheel turns and grins at me. “You a friend of Miss Lockhart’s?” he asks. His teeth are bird-shit white, and his blond hair spikes up around his head like a cartoon character’s. He’s got a Miami tan and an L.A.-sized ego, and I don’t like him one bit.

“I am,” I answer. “How fast this baby pick up?”

“Zero to sixty in four-point-five.” Blond dude turns back around in his seat and pulls away from the curb.

The engine growls like a damn lion.

And I totally get wood.

…

Music bumps from all corners of the room as the party rages. For the millionth time, I check my phone. I’ve texted Charlie repeatedly since we arrived, but she hasn’t answered a single one of them. I fight the panic attack building in my chest, telling myself that Valery and Max are with her, and I have nothing to worry about.

Across the room, Aspen is drinking fast and hard. It’s not like she’s doing it to have fun. It’s like she’s doing it to lose herself. Her dark hair falls in her eyes, and she leaves it there. A hoard of guys circles around and watches her every move. In this dark room—bodies pulsing to the music—Aspen is like a firefly, capturing people’s attention, then blinking out from view. She raises a long, thin arm into the air, and those around her join in a toast. She yells something I can’t make out.

Lincoln strides over and leans against the wall nearby. “It’s those two,” he says.

I lean closer, trying to hear him over the music. “Say what?”

He nods toward Aspen. “She’s always been a little like this. But ever since those two showed up, she’s gotten even worse.”

I follow his gaze and finally see who he’s talking about—the guy who drove us here with the white smile and spiky hair, and the girl who rode along. The chick stands tall, her brunette hair pulled into a ponytail that ends just above her rear. I hadn’t paid attention to her before, but now I do. As I eye the pair, my skin buzzes with alarm. The others, they stare at Aspen because they want to know her, want a piece of her. But these two, they watch her like she’s an experiment. Like they just put beer in a dog’s water dish, and now they’re sitting back to see what happens.

My brow furrows, and I survey them closer. There’s something off about their stature. I hadn’t noticed it when I was in the car—my mind was on the Beemer’s interior—but now that I’m watching the duo, I understand why Lincoln doesn’t like them.

“How long have they been hanging around?” I ask Lincoln.

He digs his hands into the pockets of his camo jacket, jingling something. God knows what he’s got in there. “Not too long. A few days. But you see the way she is. She picks up new friends like they’re strays in an alley. Most people, she just ignores.” He tips his chin toward the group around Aspen, the ones she looks right through. “But then with others, it’s like she swallows them into herself.” When I glance back at Lincoln, he’s staring at me. “Everyone takes something from her. Money. Sex. Happiness.” His hands ball into fists. “What will you take?”

I’m thrown off guard by Lincoln’s question, and I don’t know how to answer. So I don’t. I just look back at Aspen, my thoughts of the strange pair who drove us here forgotten. Aspen crawls onto a table and raises her gloved hands into the air. All around, people push in toward her. They want to be closer. They want to touch her, to be her. Someone else watching this might think she’s a girl who has everything: beauty, cash, an industrial-strength attitude. In her eyes, there’s a lust for life. It’s what seduces her onlookers. They note the way she does what she wants, says what she wants. But I see beyond her eyes, and I know the truth. I know that behind the green irises and potent personality, there’s emptiness.

Aspen nods toward me with an even emptier smile. Then she wraps her arms around herself and lets her head fall back.

She dances on the table, high above everyone else.

Pulling in a breath, I flip on her soul light. Just as I suspected, the remaining glow is barely noticeable amidst the standard black sin seals, and even a few colored collector seals. I wonder how she got the latter. But with her resources, she’s probably traveled the world. And something tells me Aspen enjoys hitting locations where collectors do good business—places like Las Vegas and New Orleans and Miami.

Watching her, I have no idea how I will complete this assignment. What’s more, I’m afraid this girl could easily lure me into her lair. Because this life she’s living, I know it all too well.

She looks at me, and a shiver races down my spine.

How do I liberate a girl who is exactly like me?

…

As I’m walking back to my hotel room, I’m still trying to process this assignment. I expected Aspen to have some issues, but nothing this extreme. It’s like she’s gone from this world, like she’s already dead.

I could hardly get Aspen home tonight without incident, so I have no idea how I’ll get her to wake up from this self-destructive lifestyle. I wonder if Lincoln could be a comrade in this mission. He seems to care about her, which could help my cause, but he’s also wary of me.

My mind turns to the two people who drove the BMW, Gage and Lyra, when I unlock my hotel room and go inside.

Then I forget everything else. My room is trashed.

The bedside lamp is lying on the floor. The contents of my suitcase are spread across the room. Towels are hanging from the curtains. A wastebasket is upturned on the desk. And everywhere I look are tissues. My room looks like a practical joke between friends, but I don’t have any friends in Denver.

Walking into the bathroom—and stepping over my six-hundred-dollar Olga Berluti shoes—I spot something written on the mirror.

Can you hear me now, liberator?

I stumble back and nearly fall into the bathtub. Grabbing onto the towel rack, I right myself. Then starbursts of anger dance before my eyes. Someone is messing with me. I don’t sense anything now, but I know it’s a collector. How else would they know I’m a liberator?

The question is, which collector? Is it Patrick, the scrappy bastard always eager to find favor with Lucille? Or maybe Kincaid with his beady all-seeing eyes? I consider Anthony—a gorilla of a collector—and decide it couldn’t have been him. It wouldn’t be Zack, either; he doesn’t have it in him to harass me alone. There’s one other collector it could be, but even thinking his name causes my throat to tighten.

Rector, Rector, my mind taunts.

Racing from the room, I grab my cell phone and call Charlie’s number.

“Come on, pick up. Pick up,” I mutter.

Panic fires through my body when her voicemail kicks on.

As I listen to her recorded message, I pull the ivory horn from my pocket and concentrate on where she is. Not at home, but not far from there, either. I can’t get a read on her emotions and curse the horn for not giving