Child, page 23
part #6 of Sam and Sam Series
“It’s what I do. Good luck.”
She shook his hand then turned and walked on, slower now, watching as the doctors and the patients spilled uncertainly toward the cars. Argo came up to meet her.
“Making my life difficult, as always. I am not your lap dog, to come when you raise a finger.”
Samantha rubbed her face.
“Argo, I haven’t slept in… I don’t remember. I’m not in the mood. They were setting up a hellfactory on your territory and I wiped it out. All you had to do was turn up to drive some people a few miles into a city. Complain to me and I will snap your neck, because I’m too tired to fight.”
Something about her tone made him take a step back. Samantha looked at Ashley.
“You have two choices, right now. Me. Or him. Okay? You come with me, I will get you to someone who can help you. You choose not to, he will have someone follow you around until something goes wrong again and then…”
Argo narrowed his eyes.
“She’s…?”
Samantha nodded. He pursed thick lips and shook his head
“I put a bullet in her now.”
“Spare me the drama,” Samantha said. “Carter would put your skin on his wall for decoration.”
Argo shrugged.
“Then I wait until you’re gone to do it.”
Samantha looked at Ashley again.
“He wouldn’t, but you would be stuck with him until you were ready to accept help, and then you’d get what he would give you.”
Argo sniffed, dark eyes darting from Ashley to Samantha and back.
“We done?”
Samantha nodded.
“Tell Carter,” he said. She sighed.
“I will.”
He moved away, and Samantha turned to face Ashley. The woman stared off into the distance. Samantha took her shoulders and pulled her around.
“Ashley. I’m sorry. Life isn’t fair, but I’m doing the best I can for you. You have to decide, now. I can’t force you. But if you don’t get help, what happened is going to happen again. They know about you now.”
“Why me?” Ashley asked, her voice small. Samantha pressed her lips together sympathetically.
“You’re going to let me help you?”
Ashley nodded, a tiny motion, eyes boring into Samantha’s.
“It’s because you’re psychic.”
<><><>
They stood next to the bus, Ashley hugging her arms against her body and Samantha straining to be on her way.
“Abby, I hope you can still see. She’s on her way. She should be inoculated for a few days, or else I would take her myself but… I need to go. Don’t let Carter be mean to her.”
Ashley kept her face away.
“If no one is at the bus station in New York to meet you, call this number. I’ll make it right,” Samantha said, giving her Doris’ number.
“I don’t want this,” Ashley said.
“I know,” Samantha answered as Ashley took the number and slid it away without looking at it.
“I was good at what I did.”
“I know.”
“I want to go home.”
“A lot of the people you were with are going to talk to the police. Most of them are going to say it was all your fault. They don’t understand what happened and they need to blame someone. There are going to be warrants out. This is the best I can do for you.”
Silent tears broke from Ashley’s eyes and rolled down beautiful, smooth skin. It was going to be a hard life for her. It was a hard life for all of them.
“It isn’t good enough.”
Samantha searched for a response, but found none. Ashley hugged her arms tighter around herself and turned to go get on the bus. Samantha watched after her for a moment, then shook her head and turned to walk away, going back to the car to start the long drive to Kansas City.
<><><>
The last miles were the worst. At first, she was able to put the thoughts away and just let the car eat the road, mile after mile. As she got close, though, and started seeing the road signs for Kansas City, counting down closer and closer, she lost her steely grip on everything. Her heart rate rose until she could feel it in her wrists, and her mind wandered, now in denial, now pleading that everything would be okay.
“Not again,” she whispered. “Please not again.”
She had flashbacks to Justin, driving up to the house for Thanksgiving, everyone in his family there, the cars parked outside.
She’d known. He hadn’t called when she’d expected him to, and Abby had hugged her too hard when she’d left the city.
She’d known.
Her life had fallen to pieces. Carter had followed her around, watching her kill things for a few months until the rage finally burned off, and then she’d been empty. Alone. Hopeless and directionless and empty.
She’d left. Gone wandering, trying not to brush up against anything that made her feel, for a while, and then growing cold to the point that she didn’t think she still did feel. She’d prayed for death. A convenient one that wouldn’t make her feel guilty for throwing her life away. With the paradise in her head burnt down, it had been months before she’d even been able to pray normally, again.
She’d known.
The roadsigns counted down the distance to Kansas City, and she wanted to slow down. To stop. To hold on to the not knowing. Not knowing, she could believe that there was nothing wrong. That there was a perfectly good reason Sam had just disappeared that had nothing to do with his mind and his body being disconnected from each other.
A perfectly good reason that she was alone in her head.
She kept reaching up to pull the hair pin, but it was never there.
Sam was just gone.
And then she was off the interstate, her mouth tasting of the urge to be sick, driving on larger streets and then smaller streets, and then down the last lane to the long driveway up to the house Doris had shared with her husband Arthur until he had died, a few years prior. Another casualty of the violent life they led.
She felt cold.
Doris came out the door and down off of the porch, walking quickly and with alarm.
She knew.
Doris had been waiting for her.
Samantha knew.
She got out of the car, stiff and slow, holding on to the roof of the Mustang to keep from falling down when Doris told her.
“He’s stuck in his room,” Doris said.
“What?”
“He can’t get out of the room. And Jason needs you.”
“What?” Samantha asked again, denial and hope switching stations but not tension.
“Jason’s in trouble. Or he’s going to be.” Doris’ eyebrows knit. “I’m not quite clear on that.”
“How do you know that?”
“Abby called. She said you’re worried sick and that Jason needs help.”
“Why did she call you?” Samantha asked. Doris shook her head.
“She didn’t. She called Sam.” The woman waved an arm, prying Samantha’s hands off the car. “Come on, come on. He’s upstairs waiting.”
<><><>
She didn’t remember the stairs.
Or the door.
What she did remember was the instant she crossed into the room.
He was there.
Same as he had always been, standing in the middle of the room, waiting for her. The flurry of exchange as the layers of thought and emotion and unexpressed knowledge zipped back and forth between them was as overpowering as it had ever been. He was fine. Weary from the mental fatigue from being outside of his body and physical loss that came from being weakly nourished and bedridden for as long as he had been, but fine. Anxious to go.
“Abby called,” he said into her hair. “We need to go.”
“How did she do that?” Samantha asked. Sam laughed.
“The phone here does work.”
“But why call you?”
“Not like she could call you,” he scolded.
“Why didn’t you guys send Maryanne to me to tell me you were okay?”
“Doris hasn’t seen her in two days,” Sam said. He continued, answering the unspoken concern. “She says that’s normal. She doesn’t worry until after three.”
“I should be able to tell if she’s in trouble,” Samantha said. If someone ashed her, that is.
Samantha was still shaking with relief as Sam carefully let her go.
“Sam, I gotta get out of here.”
That’s right. That was strange.
“Why can’t you?”
He went to the door and she felt him push against the boundary there, but it turned him aside like he was pushing against the wall. He put his hands out to the side.
“Strangest thing. I can see that there’s nothing there, but I can’t go through.”
She frowned.
“I guess I made a more potent box than I thought.”
She wasn’t sure why the container had blocked the bond, either, not once Sam had recovered. She reached out with a hand, putting her hand through the boundary, feeling the strands of magic woven there. Her magic. She closed her hand around it, the symbolism of the motion transmitting enough power to alter the previous magic, twisting her wrist and pulling her arm behind her, like snapping rotten twine.
The magic held.
“Huh,” she said. There was a spike of concern from Sam, and she laughed. “You aren’t stuck in here forever, Sam. I just… Wow. I did a good job on that one.”
She took a breath and emptied her lungs slowly, all the way empty, then closed her throat and let her eyes slide closed. She put both hands into the field of magic in the doorway, wrapping her right hand several times in it, then pulled, a slow, strong motion this time, holding her left hand out to brace. The magic resisted, first stretching and then pulling taut and resisting. She drew further, not her muscles but her mind finding the point of resistance and continuing on. The boundary frayed and tore, then snapped to nothing. She shook her hand out, more of a reflex than a real need, and raised her eyebrows at Sam. He took a tentative step forward and put his hand through the doorway, then walked through easily.
“How did you get out the first time?” Samantha asked. He ducked his head back through the doorway and pointed up at the ceiling. Of course. The vent.
“There was a leak,” he said. “But once I was back in my body, I couldn’t find it any more. Did you save Ashley?”
Samantha nodded.
“She’s on her way to New York, now.”
Sam shook his head.
“The things they made her do…”
“How did she get triggered?” Samantha asked. Sam shook his head.
“I didn’t go back that far. I figured one of the demons was scouting and did it by mistake.”
Sam pulled his phone out to check the time.
“You know, I could only just barely hear Abby when she called. That’s how crazy that wall was. Tanner wanted to come in to sit with me at one point, and he couldn’t get in.”
“I was upset,” Samantha said. He kissed her cheek.
“I love it when you even surprise yourself. We need to get moving. Let’s go say goodbye to Doris.”
<><><>
They stopped for take-out in Indianapolis. Jason could taste it, he was so eager to get to Chicago. Three days of drinking, dancing, and sex with a hundred of his closest friends. Reno was great, and Little Rock was always a lot of fun, but Chicago was the event of the year, for him. That was where things always got the craziest, where the most people showed up, and where there was the most going on.
At Reno and Little Rock, they basically shut the hotels down, taking up all of the available space and driving any unfortunate tourists into their rooms or other lodging. The retired Ranger who owned the hotel in Chicago, though, had done well for himself. The place was huge, and it had a reputation, especially during this part of the season, as a rowdy place to stay, independent of the Rangers being there. There would be areas that would be off-limits to everyone but the Rangers, but the common areas, the bar, the restaurant, the lobby, hell, the streets around the hotel, these were fair game.
As he thought about it, the girl with the tutu that Sam complained about all the time might have been in Chicago.
“You do Chicago last year?” he asked Kara.
“Never miss it,” she answered, giving him a sly grin and looking back out the window. “You missed out.”
“No doubt,” he answered.
As the Chicago skyline came into view, Jason pulled over to do the obligatory Chicago-ification of the car, reorganizing the back to make sure that anything that looked like or suggested a weapon was completely out of sight.
“It’s an interesting dilemma,” Kelly said as they got back onto the highway.
“What’s that?” Jason asked, turning his head toward his shoulder so he could see the angel in his peripheral vision.
“We’re doing God’s work, ridding the world of the blackest of evils, but we’re breaking men’s laws to do it.”
Jason blinked and turned to face the road again.
“I’m not sure I’d call it a dilemma,” he said.
“Just the way it is,” Kara agreed. “Always doing something someone doesn’t like. Got over that a long time ago.”
“But it’s a moral quandary,” Kelly said.
“What? Between saving people and making politicians in Chicago happy?” Jason asked. “Not really.”
Kara snorted.
“But you have to hide it,” Kelly said. “You should never have to hide the truth.”
Jason laughed.
“I don’t hide the truth. I hide the guns.”
Kelly sighed at him and Jason shrugged.
“Sorry, dude. You want to angst over degrees of right and wrong, you’re in the wrong car.”
Kara twisted in her seat.
“Does it bother you, packing a sword that’s illegal most everywhere we go?”
Jason glanced up at the rearview to see the angel’s reaction.
“I’m an angel,” Kelly answered slowly. Jason almost felt sorry for the kid. “To be unarmed is…”
“Dumb,” Jason said.
“It’s an identity thing, isn’t it?” Kara asked. Kelly sighed.
“It’s so complicated here.”
This drew real pity from Jason.
“Only when you’re dividing stuff that thin,” he said. Kelly looked at him with confusion and Jason shrugged. “Look, it isn’t that complicated. Sometimes it’s hard, but it isn’t that complicated. You do what you gotta do.”
Kara turned in her seat to face forward again.
“The world according to Jason.”
“What?” he asked. She grinned.
“Best thing about you,” she said. “You don’t get caught up on that stuff.”
“But it’s important,” Kelly said. Jason shifted to lean against the door, propping his head up with his fingers.
“So is lots of stuff.”
The buildings were getting bigger. They’d be there soon.
<><><>
“Denise,” Kara crowed as they went into the lobby. The crowd parted, as it so often did around Kara, and she was gone, charging across the hotel lobby to greet a friend. Jason smiled after her without stopping, going to the desk.
“I’m one of John’s friends,” he said to the clerk. The young woman looked bored, and under other circumstances Jason would have hit on her, if only to make her smile at him, but today there were too many things to do and people to see to get distracted that easily. “And so is he.”
He motioned to Kelly. The girl gave Kelly a small perfunctory smile and looked back at Jason.
“Do you want separate rooms?”
He caught her eye and grinned.
“He’s not my type.”
What the hell.
She pressed her lips together, not entirely hiding her smile, and scanned a pair of room keys. She slid one to Kelly without looking away from Jason.
“John has hot friends,” she said. Jason nodded.
“We’re a lot of fun, too. You should come hang out, when you get off.”
She scratched her nose and glanced away, classic flirt.
“Maybe I will.”
He tapped his key on the desk and winked at her, picking up his duffel bag again and heading for the elevators.
“I don’t understand,” Kelly said.
“What’s to understand?” Jason asked, not wanting the answer.
“You’re happy with Kara.”
“So?”
The door to their right dinged and opened and Jason stepped into the elevator.
“She seems happy with you.”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you chasing other girls?”
“You sound like Sam.”
“Sam is happy.”
“So am I.”
He really didn’t want to have this conversation. Not with the boy-child angel. Kelly persisted.
“Will you… With someone else tonight?”
Jason shrugged.
“So what?”
“Why won’t Kara be unhappy?”
“Because she’ll be nailing someone else with just as much enthusiasm as me,” Jason said. If the kid wanted it, he was going to have to earn it. Kelly was quiet for a minute as the floor counter ticked.
“What about the girl?”
Jason laughed to himself and shook his head. Fine.
“Did you see her smile, Kelly?”
“Yes.”
“Girls, women, they want to be noticed. I noticed her. I made her smile. You aren’t going to make me feel bad about that.”
“Sam wouldn’t do that.”
“You’re right. He wouldn’t.”
Kelly waited and Jason turned to him with exasperation.
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, kid. This is how I am. I don’t care if you approve or if you understand or even if you care. Okay?”
“Did you ever… notice… Sam?”
“Ew,” Jason said.
“I mean your brother’s wife.”
Mmm. He really didn’t want to have that conversation.
“No.”
It was mostly true. He’d never been attracted to her. Not like that. She really wasn’t his type.
“I don’t understand,” Kelly finally said.
“Don’t expect you to,” Jason answered. The elevator doors finally opened and Jason got off, turning to the side and pointing Kelly to his room. Kelly looked at the room key with mild amusement, then glitched. Jason sighed at him and went to his own room, dumping his bag on a bed and immediately turning around to go back downstairs. He grinned as the elevator doors opened at ground floor, letting in the boisterous crowd noises and music.
