Undercurrents.
People with Power, people with the Blood, usually didn't fit in. They heard voices others couldn't, saw things no one else could see, touched and smelled and tasted and thought and acted outside the fences. Society pasted labels on them. Jo's face said Maureen wore a label. Jo's face said she was fed up with living with a label.
Jo's face still held worry.
"Maureen, I can't fucking believe you're moving in with a man."
Jo wanted her sister gone. She did not want her sister hurt. Brian must look like a very dubious case, judging by her frown.
"Take the money," he said, "find two apartments. There's enough."
"One apartment, two bedrooms."
The tone said, "Don't get any ideas. I'm your nurse, not your goddamned whore."
Maureen disappeared into the bathroom and returned, dumping his cash and keys on the kitchen table. David stared at the bloodstained roll of bills.
"You're a drug dealer." He edged towards the phone and Maureen's jacket--Maureen's jacket with the gun in the pocket.
The static charge in the room jumped a coulomb or ten. That man was going to get crisped if he didn't watch out.
"No. Swear it. I'm clean."
"The scars you've got, you've been carved up like a Christmas turkey. Street fights. Nobody but a drug-runner carries his bank in his hip-pocket."
Brian wished the debate club straight to hell. His fuddled thoughts weren't up to it.
"Drug-runners and wetbacks. Can't use a bank. No plastic, no checks. That's my room and board for the next year, until I get home again. Think I'm going to leave it in a cheap hotel?"
Jo waved David back from the phone. At least she had the power to sense dangerous territory.
"Little Sister, what do you really know about this man? There's something screwy here. I've got some questions that need answering before I'd trust him behind my back."
The Sergeant-Major was back, offering advice. Don't get into what you really are, me laddie. Some of Jo's questions don't have answers they'd want to hear. Some of them cross the line into Maureen's territory--label territory. Maureen's already over there; she understands. The other two won't. Not unless they have their noses rubbed in it.
Brian groaned. If Jo or David poked at Maureen one more time, that bomb was going to explode. His head hurt too much to deal with it. "Maureen, let David take the gun. Lock me in your room tonight. You've got those old locks that use a key from either side."
He tried getting vertical. The walls turned into sponges under his hands, and the floor tilted to a twenty-degree list. Moving wasn't a good idea. It did get them off the topic, though. Pain spoke across a lot of gaps.
Hands and faces and shoulders and doorways and darkness and the blessed soft warmness of a bed. A bed that smelled of Maureen, the sweet musk of a woman with the Blood, overpowering and seductive. To sleep, perchance to dream--perchance to lust. Or heal. He set his body to concentrate on the bones first. They carried the rest.
The lock rattled and clicked. Taking no chances. They didn't know he could step around into the half-worlds and be gone in two seconds. He'd have done that in the alley if he hadn't been sure Fiona was waiting for him to try, waiting under the Sidhe hill with her webs all woven. Traps within traps within traps. Now he didn't dare move until he had his strength back.
Thought I saw Dougal out on the street: watching, waiting. Nobody else would be carrying a hawk around at midnight. He knows where Maureen lives. It'll be a hell of a problem if he comes here now.
Darkness.
Chapter Twelve
Six-pack of Diet Coke, half-dozen donuts, two packs of Slims: Maureen recited the Catechism of Commerce. Her fingers danced over the register keys--product codes and prices in the eyes and out the fingers without transiting the brain. Quick Shop. Mindless fucking job.
She gave the kids back by the magazines the hairy eyeball; keep your under-eighteen hands off the Penthouse rack, you little twerps. The number three monitor showed a potential shoplifter. That was her real job, the only one a bar-code scanner with a price database couldn't handle.
Just watch out for trouble. Never trust anybody. Never relax. It was a good job description for a paranoid.
"Miss, I'm going to have to ask you for ID on the Slims."
The girl looked older than what Maureen saw in the mirror every morning, but that was the law. A kid could go down to the corner of First and Division and buy crack or grass or heroin any hour of the day or night. However, a beer or a pack of cigarettes under-age brought down the full weight of the law.
The world was schizoid.
Just like Maureen.
Jo's right, she thought. We had a little schizoid episode there the other night, didn't we? Maybe time to go in for a quick evaluation, get the medication adjusted? Somebody's not behaving normally here. Not even normal for Crazy Maureen.
Odd thing a lot of people believe, that nut-cases don't think they're crazy. We know better, don't we? Knowing the definition of paranoid schizophrenia doesn't change its effect.
The woman in monitor three started to slip a half-buck can of cat-food into her pocket and then stared straight into the video camera. She put the can back on the shelf. Maureen slid her hand away from the call button and counted out change.
"Have a nice day."
Maureen switched her attention from the monitor to the real shoplifter. The woman wore a dirty brown coat down to her ankles, grease-spots, tangled hair, worn army boots, a look to the eyes that said they saw into a different universe--probably "de-institutionalized," homeless, planned to eat the cat-food herself. Maureen looked at the woman and saw herself in another twenty years.
Tough shit. The woman could eat and stay warm in jail.
Quick Shop had security testers who came
