Текст книги "Irregulars "
Автор книги: Astrid Amara
Соавторы: Nicole Kimberling,Ginn Hale,Josh lanyon
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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 32 страниц)
Because they aren’t there. They aren’t real.
Jason managed to push back from the other man and turn to face his pursuers. He wanted to see nothing, or barring that, two normal human beings—but they remained monsters. Scarlet nostrils flared to deep pits, eyes narrowed to red crescents. An unlit cigarette hung from the ugly mouth of the one nearest Jason.
Jason started back, but the man behind him caught him and stilled him once more. And Jason wasn’t sure if it was just a trick of the light or his imagination, but the vagrant suddenly seemed strangely luminous. With his free hand the vagrant flipped an ornate pocket watch from his coat and held it open as if he were displaying a badge. The two creatures pulled to a halt.
“Henry Falk. Shipped in from the field,” the man identified himself. “I’ve got this one.”
“Yeah, thanks for that.” One of the creatures nodded while the other flipped his cigarette into the toothy chasm of his mouth and swallowed it.
“Henry? My God, it’s good to see you again. It’s been ages.” It shook its ugly head. “The commander didn’t mention you were the one they sent out to us. Nice work on the door earlier.”
“Gunther?” The vagrant’s tone warmed. “I didn’t know you were on this operation.” The blond man offered an easy smile.
“Yeah, all part of the recent promotion,” replied the creature, Gunther—though Jason could hardly reconcile the monstrosity in front of him to such a normal name.
“Good for you.” The blond man glanced to Jason and Jason felt suddenly aware that he was gaping. He closed his mouth and the blond man returned his attention to the two creatures in front of them. “How are things in there?”
“Pretty hairy for a while, but the first floor is secured. It seems like the strike force is getting control of the second.”
“Good,” the blond man responded. “Could one of you tell Commander Carerra that I’ve closed the mist and all the wards are in place?”
“Will do.” Gunther’s companion gave a sharp salute with a heavily taloned hand. Then the creature headed back towards the door. Gunther turned his attention to the spill of wheels and spokes that Jason’s bicycle had become.
Jason watched the monsters move while his brain seemed to lurch in his skull. He took in his fallen bicycle and the smear of blood where the alley gravel had ground up his forearm. It was starting to hurt badly now. The pain, at least, felt real.
Then he stole a glance to the tall blond man behind him. The man cocked his head, watching Jason in return and giving him a crooked smile, like he was thinking of a joke.
“There’s more here than meets the eye, isn’t there?” The man’s low voice rumbled through Jason and this time Jason saw the silver flames dancing inside the man’s mouth. He felt a surge of heat flood him and then his muscles and mind went limp and empty.
Chapter Two
Henry considered the unconscious young man. His pallid face shifted between pretty and plain under the flickering florescent security lights. His body felt too lean for comfort, but he wasn’t so slight that lifting him came easily. Henry was glad to flop him down on an absurdly lavish divan. The young man sprawled in his oversized brown suit with the grace of fallen lumber.
Gunther followed them, walking the battered bicycle into the antiques shop. Green trails of spent dampening dust powdered the wood floor. Strips of red exorcism tape closed off the foot of the nearest staircase, and from the noise Henry guessed that Commander Carerra and her agents were still fighting through the balconies that made up the second floor. As if hearing his thoughts, Carerra appeared and peered over the wrought-iron railing. She regarded Henry and his unconscious acquisition with suspicion, then returned her attention to something dark and snarling just beyond Henry’s line of sight. A moment later, a deafening staccato of gunfire muted the bestial roars to a whimper and then quiet.
Henry turned his attention back to the young man spilled across the red silk cushions of the Indian divan.
“Who is he?” Gunther leaned the bicycle against the abandoned sale counter and stepped closer to Henry’s side.
“Not sure,” Henry admitted.
“When he was looking at me…” Gunther tilted his head so that a lock of his black hair shadowed his eyes. He frowned as he studied the unconscious man but said nothing more.
Henry simply nodded. He’d met Gunther’s parents when they had just emigrated from goblin lands and were still uneasy in their new human forms. They’d worked as translators in the old San Francisco office where Henry had often crashed between his assignments. Over the years Henry had become a regular at their holiday dinners.
That had been decades before Gunther had been born, and as far as Henry knew, Gunther had never worn the flesh of his ancestors. He’d been made tall, dark, and handsome while still a toothy embryo in his mother’s womb. The only hint of his unearthly heritage remaining was his taste for tobacco laced with straight butane, but otherwise not even Henry could discern a flaw in his human appearance.
And yet it had seemed that this inert young man on the divan had looked directly through the strongest and deepest spells of transformation. More than that, he’d broken through the Lost Mists and breached Henry’s wards to reach this place.
“A witch, you think?” Gunther asked. “Maybe he’s disguised. They haven’t found Phipps yet. Could be him.”
Henry scowled at that. Back in his day a dealer like Phipps would have been their first target. Securing the treasury of talismans and stolen magics that Phipps had hoarded here in this shop would have come last. But the Irregulars were all about re-appropriating and neutralizing trinkets these days. With so many wars of sovereignty raging across the unearthly realms, every nixie prince and kelpie queen was looking for the symbols of power and legitimacy to prop up their claims to the ancient thrones.
“Could he be extra-human?” Gunther’s expression conveyed his skepticism of even his own suggestion.
“He certainly doesn’t look the part. Doesn’t feel eldritch either, but maybe.” Henry held out the black nylon wallet he’d lifted off the young man in the alley. It contained three dollars, a cracked BART pass, and a forlorn-looking identification card.
“ID says he’s Jason Shamir. This home address mean anything to you?” Henry handed the wallet to Gunther.
“Just off the Tenderloin.” Gunther arched a dark brow. “Skid row. Could be a junkie? Maybe that’s why he freaked out when he saw me and Tim.”
“It’s possible,” Henry conceded. Clearly Gunther had been shaken by Jason’s reaction to him. “That still wouldn’t explain how he got through the mists.”
Gunther scowled but said nothing.
Henry crouched beside the divan and leaned very close. He studied the fine skin and simple, clean features. Too simple, really. Natural skin bore freckles and moles, tiny imperfections that made individuals so very singular. Jason’s skin was smooth as a newborn’s and devoid of anything that might serve as a distinguishing feature. At a glance he could have passed for anyone and no one.
“Something’s not quite right about him, that’s certain.” Henry watched the rhythm of Jason’s steady breath and slowed his own. As Jason exhaled, Henry drew in all that he gave up.
Dark coffee and hints of cinnamon toothpaste rolled over Henry’s tongue. He tasted exhaustion and hunger. As he held the breath in his lungs he felt the electric crackle of longing and the suffocating cold of fear. But nothing more. None of a faerie blood’s violet perfume nor even the faint dank of black cat bones that clung to most young witches. Not even so much magic as a lucky rabbit’s foot was on the boy.
Absolutely average—less than average, in fact, since most young people still carried those tiny charms of a mother’s kiss on their cheeks or a father’s best wish upon their brows. But this youth lay devoid of even the smallest blessing to protect him.
Only when Henry released the breath did he hear the faintest whisper of something unearthly. For an instant the sweetest, saddest melody drifted from his lips like a whisper. Wordlessly, it promised Henry something gentle as salvation and stronger than hope. It felt like sure hands stroking his weathered cheek as if he were handsome again. It warmed him like sunshine and for just a moment it made him believe that Frank was still alive, standing just behind him.
But he knew it couldn’t be Frank’s hand brushing the ragged collar of his coat just now, because most of Frank’s finger bones lay like shrapnel beneath Henry’s skin.
Henry recoiled at once, bounding up and away from the prone young man. He nearly collided with Gunther, who’d moved closer and stared at Jason with rapt fascination.
“Shake it off, Gunther!” Henry elbowed Gunther’s chest and Gunther suddenly snapped upright as if he’d just woken.
“Henry…Where am—” Gunther looked around in confusion and then his gaze settled back on Henry. “What the hell was that?”
“Not sure, but I think—” Henry stopped short as he realized that at least a dozen agents had been drawn to the balcony railing above them and were now staring down in varying states of confusion. Only a few feet from Gunther, two winged snakes that had previously camouflaged themselves on a carved bedpost hovered in the air, their gilded wings beating softly as they stretched toward the divan. They crooned like hungry doves and circled, as if searching for something that they had suddenly lost.
A dirty-looking brownie, standing no more than two feet tall and wearing only a pair of black dress socks, also seemed to have been drawn out from where it had been hiding in the dark corners of the shop. Now the gaunt, leathery creature swayed less than a yard from Henry and stared at Jason with its bony hands lifted like it was about to receive a precious gift.
Just as awareness lit the brownie’s expression, Henry bounded forward and snatched hold of it.
“NATO Irregular Affairs Division,” Henry informed the brownie before it decided to bite.
“Aw shit,” the brownie mumbled.
“Do we have a situation down there?” Carerra’s voice carried down from the second floor. She shouldered between two of her stunned agents and glowered down at Henry from the wrought-iron railing.
“It’s under control, Commander,” Henry assured her.
Carerra turned on her own agents, ordering them back to their positions. Just as she began to move away, the brownie let out a howl and jerked against Henry’s grip. It kicked at Henry’s crotch, landing a hard punt into his thigh. Henry swung it up off its feet and dangled it by its wrists at arm’s length.
“Put me down, you hog twat!” the brownie shouted. “Criminal brutality, that’s what this is! Not one of you dirty badges has got goods on me! I was here square and legal to do proper business for my master. I got rights!”
“I suppose you’ve got a passport and the sales documents to back you up?” Henry asked, and despite himself, he smiled at the savage little brownie. There weren’t many of this kind left. Nowadays most dolled themselves up like little butlers and played hurt or obsequious when they were collared with counterfeit bills or sacks of severed hands. It had been decades since Henry’d encountered a filthy, cussing brownie, swinging its withered little prick around like it could piss acid.
“I got that an’ more for you, dick wadcutters. It’s in my fine boot!”
“Dick wadcutters?” Gunther repeated the words as if they were from a foreign language. “What does that even mean?”
The brownie simply thrust out its stocking foot. Henry kept his right hand firmly clamped around the brownie’s tiny wrists and used his mutilated left hand to peel down the brownie’s sock and pull out a wad of reeking papers.
He tossed them to Gunther, who made a face at the dank fungal aroma but quickly flipped through them.
“Well?” Carerra called down. She sounded tired of the matter already.
“The passport’s legal,” Gunther announced. “The bill of sale looks shady, though.”
The brownie shrieked an obscene protest.
“Them papers are clean as a unicorn’s snatch, you screw! My master paid for that boy half up front, a troll’s skull of gold dust!” The brownie kicked its foot toward the divan where Jason lay. “I just came to collect the property. But seeing how you dirty badges banged the boy up, I want a discount!”
“This just gets weirder and weirder,” Gunther commented softly. He frowned at the young man.
“So, we can add human trafficking to Phipps’s crimes,” Carerra pronounced from the balcony. “We’ll need the paperwork on this filed before I get back to the station.”
A brief burst of gunfire sounded, followed by the voices of alarmed agents. Carerra glanced over her shoulder and obviously did not like what she saw among the antique canopy beds and exotic gilded statues. A smoky serpentine shadow swayed against the high ceiling, growing steadily more solid by the moment.
“Right now we’ve got bigger fish to fry up here.” Carerra turned her attention to Henry. “You handle this, Falk. Figure out what the hell is going on with that boy.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Henry saluted, though Carerra had already turned away.
Chapter Three
Jason woke to the awareness that he lay prone atop a firm surface. His feet dangled slightly and his right forearm throbbed with a dull ache. For just an instant he thought he’d fallen asleep on his narrow futon and dreamed something terrible.
But he knew instinctively that this wasn’t his home and he hadn’t been dreaming. His memory roiled with images of pale monsters in dark uniforms and a strangely luminous vagrant with a silver flame flickering in his mouth.
Crazy stuff, he thought in frustration. The kind of crazy that had gotten him locked up before and could get him locked up again…maybe already had.
He flexed his wrists, testing for the resistance of restraints. He encountered none and opened his eyes to take in the small beige room and the two other occupants seated at a cheap looking table. One of them took a swig from a metal flask while the other held a white paper coffee cup to the bloody gash of his gaping mouth.
Jason closed his eyes again immediately.
“Back among the conscious, Mr. Shamir?” He heard the rustle of clothes as the big blond vagrant moved closer to the white vinyl couch where he lay.
“He’s awake?” The second voice was smoother, younger. He sounded so calm, so human. Jason recalled him answering to the unremarkable name of Gunther. Still, Jason kept his eyes closed. He didn’t think he could bear to look at that gaping mouth again.
“Yes, I’m awake.” For a moment Jason tried to imagine what the other two men made of him, of the entire situation. He probably seemed insane. Jason didn’t allow himself to consider that they might be right to think as much. “I crashed my bike…”
“Yes, you did,” the vagrant said. “Banged up your arm too.”
“We had a medic clean it up for you,” Gunther told him. “It’s scraped up, but nothing’s broken.”
“Thanks,” Jason replied, but then he didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to demand to know where he was and who these two thought they were, holding him here.
But, God, he didn’t even know if he was really here with them. All of his senses told him that he was in the grip of reality: the slight tack of the vinyl against the bare skin of his arm, the smell of stale coffee, and the noise of an overhead fan.
And yet when he cracked his eyes just enough to glimpse the two men, horror gripped him and everything became unreal. It wasn’t just the toothy, slit-eyed monstrosity of Gunther. The other man, too, grew stranger and stranger the longer Jason studied him.
He flickered slightly like a florescent light that hadn’t come up to its full burn. A haze like the tracers of taillights built around his eyes until they seemed to blaze beneath the dark shadows of his lashes.
As he shifted, his rumpled coat fell open, and steadily, strange luminous symbols began to glow up through the threadbare material of his undershirt. The rubber bands ringing his long fingers twitched like reviving centipedes. And something in his coat pocket pulsed with the rhythm of a beating heart.
Jason clenched his eyes closed. He hated this uncertainty, despised the sense of reality slipping out from under him like quicksand. He didn’t want to be afraid to just open his eyes. Why couldn’t his mind just work? Why couldn’t he stop seeing monsters and weird creatures all around him? Why couldn’t he just be normal?
“I imagine you have a lot of questions for us.” The vagrant’s voice was soft, but somehow Jason thought he could feel the warmth of the man’s breath against his ear, whispering other words.
You haven’t gone mad, Jason. Just hear me out.
“I’m Agent Henry Falk and the striking gentleman with me is Agent Gunther Heartman. We work for the NATO Irregular Affairs Division and we’re hoping that you might be able to help us in apprehending a criminal.”
None of this was anything Jason had expected. Reflexively he sat up, staring at the two.
“What did you say?”
“We’d like you to help us out, if you can.” Agent Falk offered him another of his easy, crooked smiles and his whole body seemed to throw off a radiant light. He didn’t look anything like a government agent, but Jason didn’t feel certain enough of his senses to point that out.
“According to your W2 you’d been employed by Mr. Phipps for close to two months.” Gunther set his paper coffee cup aside and as he did so Jason noticed that his taloned, bony hand cast a weirdly human shadow. Jason wondered if it was a little glimpse of reality. The rest of Gunther’s shadow fell in a pool at his feet but seemed smooth and benign in comparison to his jagged white body.
“Mr. Shamir?” Gunther prompted.
“Uhm…yes, that’s right. Seven weeks, come Wednesday.” Belatedly, Jason realized where this might be leading. “Has something happened to him? Is Mr. Phipps hurt?”
“As far as we know, he’s fine.” Annoyance sounded through Agent Falk’s gravely voice. “You’re the one that nearly disappeared.”
“What?”
“Phipps brokered a deal with a foreign entity to sell you,” Agent Falk told him. He took a quick swig from his flask and the blaze of his eyes seemed to dim.
“To sell me…That—that’s got to be some kind of a joke.”
“It’s not,” Gunther informed him. “If our agency hadn’t raided Phipps’s shop when we did, you would have been handed over this morning.”
“No…That’s crazy,” Jason said, though he felt weird, looking at these two and calling anything crazy. Still he went on, “Who on earth would want to buy me?”
“Someone who knew what you could do,” Falk replied.
“What I can do?” Now this really did have to be some kind of elaborate joke, didn’t it? “The only remarkable thing I can do is survive for two years on nothing but dry breakfast cereal. That and collect loose change from parking lots—”
“You can see through transformations, through spells and even glamours, straight to the truth,” Agent Falk cut him off. “That’s what you’re doing right now, as you’re looking at me and at Agent Heartman. You’re seeing what no one else does. The truth at the core of us.”
Jason went very still, though his heart pounded frantically in his chest. No one had ever suggested anything like this to him before and it had to be madness…and yet it felt like a revelation, like an assurance, at last, that he wasn’t insane. He wanted to believe it so badly that it terrified him, because it was just the kind of delusion that would lead him to a complete break from reality.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jason said carefully.
“Yes, you do,” Falk replied softly and with certainty.
“I don’t.” Jason could hardly force the words out of his clenching throat.
“All right.” Falk shrugged. “Tell you what, I’ll drop the whole thing if you just tell me what color Agent Heartman’s eyes are.” Falk flashed a wide, wicked smile and Jason glimpsed the silver fire dancing behind his teeth. “Just tell me the color. Easy peasy, yeah?”
Jason gave a stiff nod.
Gunther closed the distance between them in quick steps and then bent so that his face was only inches from Jason’s. Jason fought against the instinct to recoil.
He could smell the tobacco on Gunther’s breath and see the fine striations in the hundreds of jagged teeth protruding from his deathly white jaws. His scarlet eyes gleamed like fresh wounds.
Jason forced himself to stare hard into those red slits, searching for any sign of human eyes. A faint reflection of his own strained face floated up to him but nothing else. A cold sweat beaded his brow.
“Brown…” Jason guessed at last, because brown was the most common color of human eyes—the color of his own eyes.
Gunther drew back, stole a quick glance at Falk, then returned his attention to Jason.
“You really can’t see me, can you?” Gunther sounded both puzzled and awed.
“His eyes are blue,” Falk supplied. “Bright blue.”
Somehow that was the last straw. Jason just didn’t have the strength to fight anymore. He stared down at the shadows on the floor. “I couldn’t see them.”
“Not at all?” Gunther asked.
“Not the way other people do…” Jason admitted.
Gunther cocked his grotesque head. “What do I look like to you?” he asked in a tone of idle curiosity.
Like a monster, Jason thought. Like the things that murdered my father. But he didn’t want to say as much.
“I’ll bet he sees the snow goblin you would have been if you hadn’t been transformed,” Falk stated as if anyone would draw such a conclusion.
Gunther scowled like he’d just stepped in dog shit. Falk fished through one of the deep pockets of his trench coat and brought out a small black book, which he tossed to Gunther.
“Page twenty,” Falk instructed. “See if I’m not right.”
Up close Jason could see that the book cover was badly scuffed and the binding had split in several places. Gunther turned through the pages and then stopped.
“Talk about your old-school goblins,” Gunther commented.
He turned the book to Jason, exposing a page of tightly packed print and a hand-colored illustration. Jason instantly recognized the gaping creature depicted with a human skull gripped in its talons.
He stared at the picture with the same kind of wonder that he’d felt the first time he’d read a stanza of his favorite music and had realized that many people had known this melody before him.
“That’s it exactly,” Jason admitted.
“I don’t look anything like this woman,” Gunther muttered. He took the book and scowled at the open pages before handing the book back to Falk.
To Jason’s surprise, Falk laughed.
“The truth hurts, Gunther. But on the bright side, if this job ever goes south, you could make a killing performing drag with that pretty goblin face of yours.”
“Yeah, that’s great to hear. Remind me to thank my parents for choosing such a sensitive man to be my godfather.”
Falk simply shrugged, then plucked a pair of cheap plastic glasses from his breast pocket and spat on the lenses. His saliva gleamed like mercury as he smeared it across the lenses with his thumbs. Then he stepped to Jason’s side and thrust the plastic glasses out at him. “Try these on and tell me what you think.”
Jason accepted the black-framed glasses gingerly. The plastic radiated heat against his fingers.
“Go on,” Falk told him. “They can’t make Gunther look worse than he already does.”
Gunther shot Falk a sinister look, but then Jason thought that any expression would appear sinister on such a face.
“They’ll allow you to see the world in all its illusions, just like the rest of us do,” Falk told him.
“Some kind of reverse spell projectors?” Gunther asked.
“Something like that.” Falk nodded.
Jason slid the glasses on and for a moment he simply stared around himself in wonder. The room changed only slightly—one of two doors evaporating beneath the bare surface of a beige wall—but both Falk and Gunther were considerably altered.
Jason gaped at the tall, tan man Gunther had become. With his strong build, handsome face, glossy black hair, and brilliant blue eyes he looked more like a film star than a government employee. He offered Jason a dashing smile and Jason felt a flush spreading across his cheeks. He was beautiful.
Embarrassed, Jason turned his attention to Falk.
His transformation was more subtle but in a way stranger, because Jason had grown almost used to the luminous quality of the man. Now his eyes and mouth looked like dull shadows beneath the harsh angles of his sharp brow and crooked nose. Blond stubble mottled his jaw and his pale hair jutted out as if it hadn’t been brushed or washed in days. He stood several inches taller than Gunther, but where Gunther looked toned and healthy, Falk seemed rangy and hungry.
Above all else Jason noticed that, devoid of his radiance, Falk seemed worn—not gray haired or wrinkled—but weathered and scarred like the rundown rooms of the flophouse where Jason slept these days.
Jason took a few more moments, allowing himself to accept the full impact of these plastic glasses and the new world he viewed through them.
I’m not crazy. It’s just the way I see…
It seemed almost too relieving to believe.
“Mr. Shamir?” Gunther prompted and then he glanced to Falk. “Did you do something really weird to him?”
“I’m fine,” Jason said quickly. “I just…This is unbelievable.”
“But true, all the same,” Falk said with a certain finality. He lifted his flask but then dropped it back into his coat pocket without drinking from it. Jason absently wondered what else he secreted in those pockets.
“Having true sight probably hasn’t been all that useful to you,” Falk said. “Most of the folks with it end up in mental institutions.”
Jason felt the color drain from his face at the memory of St. Mary’s. If either of the agents noticed, they didn’t remark on it. Falk went on speaking.
“But the ability to see the truth can be valuable when it comes to magics. It’s particularly useful in dealing with the sidhe, the fae in particular, who traffic in illusions and glamours. Even the best technology we have can’t pierce the faerie glamours that you could see past at a glance.”
“Faerie glamours? Like magical litltle faries?” Jason tried not to sound skeptical because he was wearing what appeared to be some kind of magic glasses. But still…faeries?
“Nah, not just faeries.” Falk replied. “I mean not unless you’d call a troll or a goblin a faerie.”
“We prefer to be called the Luminous Ones,” Gunther commented. Falk smirked at that.
“Yeah, and I’d like to be called Prince Charming, but it isn’t what I am.” He scratched the blond stubble of his chin. “The point is that you, Mr. Shamir, have a great talent and value. Your employer, Mr. Phipps, made it his business to trade in such things, and when you fell into his hands, he put you up for auction—”
“For auction?” Jason wished that he could stop feeling shocked and out of his depth.
“Yes. He sold you,” Falk said as if this sort of thing happened every day and warranted no more surprise than a parking ticket.
“And someone actually bought me?” Jason asked. He couldn’t imagine them paying much.
“Someone certainly tried to.” Falk nodded.
“Who?” Jason asked.
“That we don’t know,” Gunther admitted. “The buyer paid in gold dust—half up front, apparently—but we can’t reliably track it back to a source. And the brownie sent to retrieve you and make the second payment is too infected with spells to be able to tell us, even if he wanted to.”
“Which he doesn’t,” Falk added.
“No, he really doesn’t,” Gunther agreed and he looked oddly grim for a moment. Then he picked up his coffee cup and frowned into the depths of its contents.
“So, it boils down to this,” Falk went on while Gunther drank, “we’re pretty certain that Mr. Phipps made previous illegal sales to this same buyer—possibly previous employees. We need to track the buyer down before he can find a new supplier or, if the goods exchanged were human beings, before he decides to dispose of them to hide his crimes.” Falk’s shadowed gaze settled on Jason. “We’d like you to help us.”
For just an instant Jason stole a glimpse over the top of his glasses. Falk’s eyes shone like the blue flames of a gas stove.
“How?” Jason asked.
“We’re betting that Phipps will attempt to turn you over to his buyer; he’ll want the second half of his payment. We’ve shut down all of his accounts. He doesn’t have any other source of revenue open to him and he’ll need money if he hopes to relocate to another realm.”
“So…” Jason considered this as best he could without getting caught up on the idea of faeries and gold dust and brownies. “Are you asking me to let him abduct me?”
“You’d be protected the entire time,” Gunther said quickly. “We’d have agents tailing you and at least one planted with you.”
“But that’s what we’re asking,” Falk replied.
Jason scowled down at his hands. Flecks of his own dried blood pebbled his right palm.
“You’re free to refuse,” Falk told him with another of those crooked smiles, though now the expression looked dark and cynical. “But the fact remains that Phipps is likely to come after you whether we’re protecting you or not. If you were smart, you’d invite us along.”
Jason nodded, not because he agreed so much as he couldn’t disagree. He could hardly process all of this. And it felt suddenly like the first night he’d spent in St. Mary’s, half out of his mind with horror while soft-spoken doctors and nurses had told him what would be best for him and locked him in a small room where the bed was bolted to the floor.
He wondered how it could be that, in discovering that he wasn’t insane and never had been, his life had actually become more unbelievable and farther beyond his control? At least before there had been a real world where monsters didn’t exist. A real world that he could hope to one day belong to. Now that was lost to him.
Jason closed his eyes and for a moment cast his thoughts back past all this confusion to the moment he’d first woken this morning, when everything had been calm and hopeful. He thought of the melody that he’d planned to perform for Mr. Phipps’s special customer. The soothing refrain played through his memory and Jason let it calm him.
