Vicious Grace bsd-3 Page 7

  They settled on three hundred dollars a day with a one-month cap, payable when the inconvenient data stopped appearing in his study. Any longer than a month, and he wouldn’t have time to get enough fresh data, and he’d have to push back publication of his reports. We’d build a list of questions. He’d record the interviews, and if we needed follow-ups, they could go through him. Oonishi got to keep us his dirty little secret, and none of us had to go back to the hospital. Except Kim.

  We got back to the condo in the last gloom of twilight. Lake Michigan spread out before us. With the storm clouds blown off, it was a darkness scattered with the lights from boats still on the water. Ex threw himself onto the couch. Chogyi Jake shrugged out of his jacket and went to the kitchen, followed quickly by the beep of the microwave and the smell of green tea. Aubrey and Kim and I sat at the dining room table, our chairs turned so that we could see Ex in the next room. When Chogyi Jake returned, cup of too-hot tea held gingerly before him, he was shaking his head.

  “This place still feels small.”

  “All right,” Ex said. “Thoughts and opinions?”

  Aubrey was the first to speak.

  “I don’t think he has much to tell. Apart from the data we’ve already gotten, he doesn’t know much. He’s resistant to actually working with us. I think he’s going to do as little as possible.”

  “He did call us in,” I said. “That’s something.”

  “It may have been a desperation move,” Chogyi Jake said. “And I think he’s regretting it.”

  “Exactly,” Aubrey said. “That’s exactly the feeling I get.”

  Kim cleared her throat, a small sound.

  “I think you’re all being too harsh,” she said. “And what’s more, you’re missing the point.”

  Aubrey stiffened like he’d been slapped.

  “Well, you are,” Kim said. “Oonishi’s a scientist, but he’s also human. He’s stumbled into something outside his frame of reference. It throws everything he’s ever done into question, so of course he’s frightened and trying to make it all go away. As I recall, your first experience with Eric wasn’t all that different.”

  “Mine?” Aubrey said.

  “You babbled for a week,” Kim said. “You did everything you could to convince yourself it was all some kind of elaborate joke. At least he’s not doing that. If you give him a year or two to get his head around the idea, he could be very useful. But, as I said, that isn’t the point. Even if he’s totally recalcitrant, something is happening at the hospital. And as of today, something with the potential for real violence. That makes it our responsibility.”

  “Does it?” Aubrey said. “I mean, does it really?”

  “Yes,” Kim said.

  Aubrey’s laugh was short and exasperated. A vague unease grew in my gut, like I was six again and listening to my father chiding Mom: an intimate disagreement between people who knew each other very, very well. For the first time, I wondered how Kim had felt about Oonishi’s joking suggestion of sexual impropriety. And whether Aubrey might be jealous.

  “We do have some access to the dreamers,” Chogyi Jake said, and sipped his tea. “And the sooner we get our questions together, the sooner we’ll know what they said. It may be that nothing comes of it, or we might get lucky.”

  “I’d like him to replay the dream for them,” Ex said. “Before any of the questions are asked, I want to see how they react physically when they see the thing.”

  For a long moment, Aubrey seemed caught between two conversations: the argument with Kim and the planning session that Chogyi Jake and Ex were offering up to redirect it. Kim looked away, out the wide, dark windows. The angles of light and shadow made her look old. When Aubrey spoke, the effort in it showed.

  “What kinds of questions do we want him to ask?”

  For the next two hours, we built up a rough questionnaire and speculated on different kinds of riders, different flavors of magic. Kim and Aubrey relaxed slowly into the conversation, and my own unease faded even if it didn’t go completely away. Ex and Aubrey went on a long side track about the causes of shared dreams, including one particularly unpleasant one we’d all had once when something very powerful was looking for us. Kim suggested taking Oonishi’s dream data to someone who could do image enhancement, maybe put together the six versions of the dream to find more detail than we had in the raw feed. I had my laptop out and was typing up the instructions to my lawyer almost before Kim was done pitching the idea. It was nearly ten o’clock when, between one breath and the next, my BLT wore off. We hadn’t done anything sensible like grocery shop, but I found a late-night sushi bar that delivered.

  By the time the five boxes of nigiri sushi and assorted hand rolls appeared, Kim and Ex were sitting on the floor together, going over the wording on our final list of questions, while Chogyi Jake and Aubrey and I watched the data files from Oonishi for what must have been the hundredth time.

  It was like the air we were breathing had changed. Working together, all of us prodding at the same problem, exploring the same terra incognita, took all the history and baggage and awkwardness away, and left me with this small family I’d made for myself. We fought some; we pushed each other’s buttons sometimes. That was what family meant.

  There was a moment just before Kim left at midnight when I stood back and let myself watch us all like we were on television. The way Ex sat, leaning forward, pushing back the lock of hair that had escaped his ponytail. Kim’s pinched, serious expression, and the dark circles under her eyes. The windows behind us all, night making them into mirrors so that the boat lights seemed to blink and shift through Chogyi Jake’s shoulder and past Aubrey’s head. It was a moment of real peace.

  My high-water mark.

  SEVEN

  Morning shouldered its way past the thick curtains, pressing in around the edges. Aubrey, on the other side of my bed, muttered and pulled the pillow over his eyes. I tried to convince myself that the muzzy feeling in my head meant I could still fall back asleep. Ex coughed once in the kitchen. His feet shifted softly on the tile. Sunlight streaked the ceiling above me. I was awake.

  My brothers aside, I’d seen only four men naked, and one of those had been a wholly awkward fifteen seconds with my dorm mate and her boyfriend. Aubrey, half under our shared sheet, was the oldest man I’d ever slept with. I’d always thought he was beautiful. Sure, he had a little belly, and his hair stood up like a metalhead’s from the eighties until he washed it down. I pulled on my robe quietly, watching him sleep. There were scars on his body, some of them the result of skirmishes against the possessed. There was damage I couldn’t see too. Spells that Uncle Eric had taught him that had taken a toll. And maybe other things.

  I pulled my hair back with one hand so it wouldn’t brush against him, kissed the small of his back, and slipped out the door. The flood of sunlight didn’t wake him. I walked into the kitchen and the smell of fresh coffee.

  “You’re looking thoughtful,” Ex said. “Anything wrong?”

  “No,” I said with a yawn. “Just booting up. Where’s Chogyi Jake?”

  “Meditating. As always.”

  “I probably should do that too. I’m feeling . . . I don’t know. Restless,” I said, sitting at the small kitchen table. The view of Lake Michigan in daylight was astounding. It was the kind of thing you paid an extra million for. I wondered idly how much the condo had actually cost. The clock said it was almost nine o’clock, and I wasn’t sure if that felt too late or too early.

  “You probably should,” Ex said. “Good news is he went shopping first. Bacon and eggs?”

  “Oh, Jesus, please,” I said. “And tell me that’s not just coffee incense or something sadistic like that.”

  Ex grinned and found a cup, rinsing the dust out of it before he poured. My laptop was still in the living room. I’d left it turned on, and the battery was empty. I strung the power cord to an outlet in the kitchen and waited for the operating system to finish bitching at me while I drank my coffee
. After a year together, we all knew one another’s taste, and Ex made my coffee with just enough sugar and no milk.

  “No word from Kim yet,” he said. I felt a wash of confused emotion: pleasure that Kim wasn’t there, shame at being pleased, and resentment for being made to feel shame. I knew I was being petty and stupid, but that didn’t stop it from happening. I covered by taking another drink of coffee before I answered.

  “Were we expecting her?” I asked.

  “Not particularly. I’m a little concerned about her going back into the hospital alone, though. After what happened.”

  “Whatever it was, I don’t think it was after her,” I said.

  “Yesterday, it wasn’t. Today’s a whole new ball game.”

  “Always is, feels like. She’ll do the right thing. She’s a big girl.”

  There was e-mail waiting from my lawyer. She had called an acquaintance who ran an image and video enhancement service for the State Department and who would be happy to spend a couple hours on my project. She gave me his e-mail address and a link he’d provided for uploading the data files to him. As I started the transfer—about twenty minutes remaining, even with the high-speed connection—the pop and sizzle of frying bacon brought me back to the room. I sighed and stretched. Ex was reading through a thick file of papers even as he cooked. I recognized the study logs Oonishi had brought us.

  “Anything interesting?” I asked.

  “Some background on the subjects. We should think about contacting them directly.”

  “If we need to,” I said.

  He looked over at me. Half silhouetted by a wide stretch of water and sky, he looked softer than usual.

  “It might upset the client,” he said.

  “That would suck,” I said casually.

  “Might upset Kim. This is her colleague we’re working for, after all.”

  “Then we won’t do it unless we need to,” I said. “But if it’s piss someone off or don’t figure this out, there’s some feelings going to get bruised.”

  Ex grinned and turned back to the bacon. I spooled through my other e-mail. Spam. A note from Trevor in Montana about processing a refund for the extra, unused training time. A note from my little brother, Curtis. I opened my brother’s e-mail. He was back for his senior year in high school, which made me feel old all by itself. He had a girlfriend that Mom and Dad were doing their best to ignore. Jay, my older brother, was living in Orlando, and had just gotten engaged. Curtis speculated irreverently about whether Jay had gotten her knocked up. I wouldn’t have said it to anyone, but that was my guess too. I started to reply to him, then dropped the message into the drafts folder. I needed to think a little before I wrote back. Maybe after I’d gotten a little more blood sugar.

  I had never told the rest of the family what happened after I’d left ASU. As far as they knew, I was still the standard college dropout, wandering the face of the earth in search of permanent employment. Or possibly whoring myself out for drug money. My parents didn’t have a good opinion of anyone’s moral character unless they went to our church. I’d always thought of them as prudish, self-righteous, and narrow. Only the stories Eric had told Aubrey about my mother’s affair gave evidence of clay feet, and I wasn’t about to tell Curtis any of that. Maybe once he was safely out of the house too. Until then, I was playing everything close to the vest with the family, even the ones I liked. I didn’t know what any of them would have made of my traveling companions, my chosen work, or my million-dollar view of the lake. If it really was a million-dollar view.

  I connected to our private wiki and looked for the list of properties. I found the condo easily. It was actually a seven-million-dollar view with an entry that read like a real estate ad: North Lake Drive, 5bdrm, 3bth, and the obscure notations Eric had made, YNTH and DC1. I lingered over the notations as Ex put a plate in front of me. The Los Angeles DC1 house had held some of the most useful, interesting documents we’d found so far. But this place was so free from occult anything, it was like a rental. There wasn’t even a copy of Fortean Times in the bathroom. I scooped up my fork and took a bite of the eggs.

  “Mmm,” I said. “Nice.”

  “Thanks,” Ex said.

  “You know,” I said around a mouthful of breakfast. “I understand in my head how much money Eric left me, but it makes me a little dizzy sometimes.”

  Ex sat down across from me with his own plate and cup of coffee. He ate with a seriousness that made it seem like a chore.

  “It surprises me too,” he said. “The things we don’t know about Eric would . . . Jayné? What’s the matter?”

  A small tapping sound caught my attention. It was me, my left hand fidgeting at the keyboard. Something shifted in the back of my head, an idea I hadn’t quite had yet. Aubrey yawned in the bedroom, and Chogyi Jake walked into the kitchen behind me with catlike near silence. The penny dropped.

  I said something obscene.

  “Did something happen?” Chogyi Jake said. Ex stared at me. The bedroom door opened, but I didn’t look back. I was pointing at the wiki page.

  “You were right,” I said. “You kept saying it, but I didn’t snap until just now. The place is too small.”

  “What’s going on?” Aubrey said behind me.

  “Eric’s condo has five bedrooms,” I said. “We’re in the wrong place.”

  IT TOOK me five minutes to find the manila envelope Harlan Jeffers had given me the day before; it was under the couch, and his card was still in it. An hour later, we all headed down to the building management offices. Chogyi Jake had his point-man suit on, and the rest of us were also dressed to intimidate. Walking across the lobby, I felt like the opening sequence of Reservoir Dogs, only with wider ties. Harlan stood in the office doorway, face pale and eyes a little too round. I could see white all the way around his irises.

  “S-so,” he said, as he waved us in. “Is there something—”

  “I’m having my lawyer fax you a copy of the paperwork from when my uncle bought this property,” I said. “I have some questions.”

  “I don’t think this is something that I can—” he began, then lost himself and started over. “Without having, um, counsel present, I’m not sure—”

  Chogyi Jake put a hand on the man’s arm and smiled.

  “It may be a little early to build a legal defense,” Chogyi Jake said. “Why don’t we go in and talk.”

  Harlan’s gaze shifted from him to me and back. His nod was a sharp, small movement. Tiny drops of sweat beaded his upper lip.

  The office smelled like burned coffee. A low black slate desk held the center of the room, trying to look expensive. On the walls, clean-lined modernistic frames held documents outlining Harlan’s rise through business schools and professional societies, the times he’d shaken hands with important people or famous ones. There was one with a tired-looking Stephen King letting Harlan put an arm around him. On the desk, a smaller frame showed a chubby-cheeked three-year-old of uncertain gender that couldn’t have looked more like Harlan if it had worn his clothes.

  “All right,” I said once the door was closed behind us. “Let’s just go over the problem here so we’re all on the same page. The place my uncle bought had five bedrooms. The one I’m in right now has three. So. What the fuck?”

  Harlan sat down, his chair hissing as it took his weight.

  “I understand your anger. And your confusion. We should have . . . I should have addressed this issue directly, but it was only after Mr. Heller passed that I became aware of it.”

  Ex crossed his arms, scowling down at the man like the instrument of an angry god. He was good at that.

  “Why did you put us in the wrong condominium?” Ex said. “And where is Eric’s real place?”

  “What? No, 1904 is Mr. Heller’s property. It’s the one he bought.”

  “It doesn’t match the description we have of it,” Chogyi Jake said.

  “It doesn’t,” Harlan said. “Look, I came on here three years ago. I never met Mr.
Heller. I don’t even know for certain that he ever came here. I mean, maybe he did. I don’t know. We had very strict instructions not to go into his condominium. If there was a problem, I could call him or his lawyer, and that was it. A water line broke on the floor above? We couldn’t even go in to repair the damage to his kitchen. I called, and he sent his own people. Until he died, I swear I never went in there once.”

  “But after he died, you did?” Aubrey said. I sat down. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton ticking, like I was wrestling an idea that wasn’t ready to be thought.

  “It was a tax issue.” Harlan stared at the far wall as he spoke, like he was confessing something. “We had auditors breathing down our necks. It was the IRS, you know? When those guys start thinking you’re hiding something, they get . . . It was a walkthrough. In and out, five minutes at most. No one took anything, no one touched anything. No one sat down on a chair. Nothing.”

  “And?” I said, but I knew. Harlan had freaked out. The records said it was a bigger place than was there. When he’d come back and seen what Uncle Eric had paid for, it matched the paperwork, but not the floor plan. He drew the conclusion that they’d overcharged him.

  To Harlan, it looked, at best, like a million-dollar oopsy. At worst, it was real estate fraud. Oonishi was right. People see what they expect to see.

  “The statute of limitations for a contract in Illinois is ten years,” Harlan said the same way I imagined war prisoners giving name, rank, and serial number. “I’m not saying we don’t want to make this right, I’m only saying that litigation won’t help anyone.”

  “I don’t think we need to go there,” I said.

  He was like a prisoner whose guard had just opened the gate. His gaze shifted between the four of us in quick, birdlike movements. His voice squeaked a little.

  “We don’t?”

  “Windows are on the east,” Aubrey said, already running down the same road with me. “Hallway’s on the west, so that means north or south.”

  “Bathroom and the master bedroom pretty much eat the south walls,” I said. “No place to put doors or a hallway. I’m betting north.”