“Then why do you try? Why do you care?”
I inhaled and exhaled a few times, with the effort of trying to put how I felt into words. “Because someone has to. Someone who really exists.” I crossed my arms on top of my breasts. “And also they pay me.”
Ti laughed. He reached out to grab me, and I let him. He pulled me near and held me close. “Not enough,” he said softly, after a time.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Definitely not enough.”
We lay there, thoughtful and quiet, the outside world forgotten, for a full thirty seconds. And then his phone rang. Neither of us moved for a second, because the sound felt so foreign and unfamiliar—it had no meaning in the new space we’d created. Then he sat up beside me and reached for his cast-off jeans.
“Hello? Yes. The address. Yes. Yes. I’ll bring cash.” He flipped the phone closed.
“Does that mean what I think it means?”
Ti looked at me, at all of me, naked atop the comforter on my bed, his expression bittersweet. “Get dressed.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
As an afterthought, I grabbed Grandfather on my way out of the house, and shoved him inside my coat. Ti drove us to a bank first. I asked why we couldn’t use the ATM, but ATMs had limits, and the amount of cash Ti was drawing out required a teller. I was going to fight him on this, but he pointed out he’d saved a lot of money because he didn’t need to eat.
And then we drove. Fear and adrenaline and the magic of good sex could only last so long. I found myself drowsing against the door of his car. We were going to buy information, and then we’d see what came next. I hoped that some plan eventually included me sleeping in it, or me getting a prescription for modafinil.
We parked in a warehouse district that didn’t look so bad. There was no trash on the sidewalks, and the streets had been recently swept clean of snow. He reached under the passenger seat between my legs and pulled out a thin case. Opening this revealed a Glock 23 with a clip of .40 S&W rounds—I’d shot both of them before at the range.
“You didn’t say there’d be guns.”
Ti gave me a half smile. “I’m undead, not stupid.” He leaned forward and tucked it into the rear waistband of his pants, then hid it with his coat. I reached for the door.
“You’re not coming, Edie.” He clicked the button on his door, locking mine. “Just stay here.”
“You think it’s a trap?” I peered out of my window and scanned the surrounding area with one eye. What distance was my crazy vision good for? All I could see glowing nearby was my own hand, and when I looked normally, just my breath fogging the glass.
“It could be. But I’m a zombie, remember?” He leaned over and kissed me on my lips. I remembered the heat we’d just had, and parts of me flared again, hungry. He unlocked his own door before I could protest, got out, and then clicked the door lock button again behind himself, trapping me in. Grandfather muttered something I was sure was unkind.
“Shush, you,” I said, putting one hand over my eye and watching Ti go into the front of the building. The side of it looked like a garage. His nimbus went through the glass door and faded—there was an aftervision of it, a ghost in my eyeball, perhaps—but not even odd shadow-vision could help me see through distant walls.
“Be safe,” I whispered. I concentrated harder and harder. Time passed—long enough for any true arrangement to have been made. I heard the sharp report of a gun—and then two more shots.
“Shit.” I tried for the door, and found it locked. This was a nineteen-seventies El Camino, for crying out loud—but when I looked closer, none of it was actually stock. The door-lock tabs were receded completely into the door—all the better to eat you with, my dear. Ti’s door wouldn’t open either.
Creepy-ass serial-killer-style fucking car. I pulled Grandfather out of my coat. “Can you—” I said, waving him at the door. More gunshots, and Grandfather growled something I couldn’t understand. Dropping the CD player, I scooted back to sit in the middle of the car and kicked the passenger side window with both my feet as hard as I could. No good—I only hurt both my heels. I cussed at myself and the door before opening up his glove box. Under years of registration papers, I found paydirt. A black metal flashlight.
I didn’t know what adrenaline I had left to dredge up at that point, or if my feelings for Ti had blossomed into a manic kind of love. But I scrunched my eyes closed and hit the window as hard as I could, and it shattered on my third try. I ran the flashlight against the window’s rim, knocking any loose pieces down, before carefully shimmying myself out. Then, clutching Grandfather, as he was the closest thing to a weapon that I had, I ran to the front door in the open, me and my winter coat bright against the snow, not thinking a second thought about how stupid I was being until I was nearly inside.
“Ti!” I shouted as I went in. There was a reception area here, with cheap desks and thinly upholstered chairs. “Ti!”
“Edie, stay back!” I heard from the inside. My heart soared. He was still alive.“Ducken!” Grandfather commanded, and finally I knew what he meant. I dropped to my knees as gunshots from the other room whizzed over my head. Of course Ti was still alive—I needed to concentrate on keeping me that way too. I crawled toward a desk and heard a sound I recognized from the range, but more clearly knew from horror movies and violent video games—a shotgun, being primed.
I pushed the nearest desk over and cowered inside of it. But to my left, if I winked just right, I found I could spot a nearby brightness, with a farther one nearing quickly. I could see through walls after all. They just had to be close ones.
“Ti, to your left!”
“Mädchen! Lauf weg!” Grandfather commanded.
Too late. There was a spattering volley of pellet shots from the next room. But Ti’s gun answered, or at least I thought it did, and the second aura dropped and faded.
“Ti?” I asked. I peered as best I could. I didn’t get an answer, but the level of visible brightness didn’t change. Another glow came into focus, on the far right-hand side.
“Ti, to your right! Far back corner!” I had no idea what the room he was in was like—but the second aura paused, and Ti’s gun went off once more. The other aura stumbled and then fell.
I wanted to crawl around the edge of the desk I was hiding behind. It was only particle board, almost worthless for protection. But the walls were even cheaper drywall; they wouldn’t be any better. “Ti?” He would answer, if he could. Reasons that he couldn’t, I tried not to think on.
I patted my coat down and found my phone. I flipped into my history and redialed Sike. It rang two times, three times—maybe I’d blown all my chances at getting her to answer—then she picked up, and I didn’t give her a chance to say hello. “Remember how you told me to call if you said I needed you? I need you!” I shouted over gunshots from the other room.
“Where are you?”
“Mädchen, raus aus diesem Zimmer! Ram!”
I gave her the address over Grandfather’s rising orders, and she hung up. How far away was she? Would she really come? I added to my desk fort by putting the chair and Grandfather’s CD player between the particle board and myself, then checked to make sure I could still see any action.
A swarm of dim clouds, converging on my brighter near one. How much ammunition did Ti have? I thought about running out for more—but how would I get it to him? Shots rang through the small room, leaving holes behind, and dear God, it was only a matter of time till one of them hit me and put me out of my misery. I curled into a tighter ball, no longer able to tell the difference between Ti’s light and those of the oncoming people, the room beyond him becoming a growing, glowing blur.
Then the door behind me burst open, literally. Shards of glass rained down, skittering off the desk I hid behind.
“Edie?” a voice I recognized asked aloud. Sike—and she sounded pissed.
“Help Ti! Please!” I rose up just far enough to see her run into the other room, her red hair streaking behind her like arterial spray.
With my other sight I could see the other lights pull back. I heard the sounds of fighting—but her light matched theirs, and so as long as the fighting continued, I couldn’t tell who was winning what. There was great speed—I assumed it was hers, and the sound of impact after impact. I imagined daytimer flesh hitting walls, tables, floors. The crunching of bone, an endless whirlwind of violence—but no guns. I crept forward, pushing Grandfather ahead of me.
Suddenly there were two smells that I could recognize. Vampire dust and rot.
I crawled faster, tucking Grandfather inside my coat. Ti was slumped in a corner down the hallway, missing his left arm. I could see the ragged stump where it had been, white bone jutting out from gobbets of pink flesh. His face was hidden in shadow.
“Oh, no,” I said, coming nearer. Looking over my shoulder I could see Sike wiping the factory floor with the last of the daytimers. Literally. She spun one around, his black coat fluttering in the brief moment before his head cracked open on a vise-gripped car frame. His skull cracked and dust poured out like piñata candy.
“Ti?” I came nearer, reaching for him. “Ti, are you all right?”
He turned his head farther away from me.
“Stop that, let me see.”
Ti pushed me back with his remaining good hand. And then he slowly bent forward, into the light.
I’d taken a few shifts at the burn ward, back at my prior job. I’d been given low-acuity patients; it was all I could be trusted with, without specialized training. But that didn’t mean you couldn’t walk by a burn victim’s room and look in, or see a burn victim’s family, crying by the nursing station. I’d kept the straightest of straight faces there, under any adversity. Under sheets of skin sloughing off, under charred clothing and hair, under people who smelled like homelessness and bacon. I tried to act like that again now.