Biting the Bullet (29 page)

I stood, more than ready to rescue her. “We have to go anyway. I have quite a few preparations to make myself.” She wanted to hug me goodbye, but I told her with a smile that I try to make it a practice not to touch Seers. She understood, and made a sign over my head that ended with her blowing me a kiss.

“What was that?” I asked.

Zarsa said, “The blessings of Aranhya, the Great Mother Spirit.”

“Cool. And for you . . . ” I did a succession of quick-march moves followed by a complicated salute. “My brother, sister, and I made it up. We always did it for our dad before he left the country, usually to fight in some conflict or another. And he always came back in one piece, so it’s gained a sort of mystical good-luck quality in our family over the years.” Which was why Dave and I did it for Evie right before she and Tim got married. I guess we might’ve chosen a more appropriate setting than the altar. But it did crack everybody up, and set the tone for a really fun wedding. Plus their marriage was still going strong. So what the hell.

Zarsa seemed to like it as well. We left her smiling, something I wouldn’t have bet a penny on at the beginning of our visit.

“The sun is beginning to set,” Asha noted as we paused outside Anvari’s so I could do up my last button. Zarsa had lent me clothes to allow for a hassle-free walk back to the house. But I wasn’t looking forward to it. Vayl would be up soon.

“Yeah. I’d better get going,” I said.

“Is there anything more I can do?” Asha asked.

“Just stick to the plan and make sure Zarsa doesn’t get hurt for taking part in it,” I replied. She ought to be okay as long as the Wizard thought we were still going to kill FarjAd Daei. But just in case . . .

He nodded. I watched him walk away with a sinking heart. If everything went according to that plan, General Danfer would be so pissed off that he’d probably find a way to pressure Pete into firing me by morning.

When I got back to the house, Dave and his crew had commandeered the living room, taking up all the furniture and most of the floor, prepping their weapons for the night’s “raid.” Looking at him as he sat with his back to the fireplace wall, his M4 in pieces on a sheet of plastic he’d found in the garage, I felt a horrible ache press against my chest. Because if this all went to shit, I’d never see him again. And we still didn’t have our past straight between us.

“Um, Dave? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure.” He jumped to his feet and headed toward the kitchen, so I joined him there, sitting next to him on a stool that I wished had a back. It was suddenly taking all my energy just to sit up straight.

“I was just thinking, this assignment’s going to be over soon,” I said, choosing my words carefully so I wouldn’t betray myself.

“And then we’ll go our separate ways again.”

He nodded, tracing a random pattern with his forefinger onto the countertop of the little island we shared. I looked down at my own hands as I said, “I was just . . . you know, people shoot at us all the time. Eventually somebody’s going to have good aim.

And one of us won’t come back. Which was why, now, I wanted to explain about Jessie.” Though I wasn’t looking at him, I felt him stiffen. He didn’t raise his hands to stop me. Didn’t even shake his head in vehement denial. But I felt a wave of don’t-go-there come off him and very nearly caved. I didn’t, only because I thought I’d never be able to muster the nerve to talk about it again, even if I got the chance.

“You know, she believed deeply in heaven. And she wanted to go there. But she didn’t think she’d be able to if she became a vampire. She also understood the lure earthly immortality would have for her, especially after she married you. She knew you’d never agree to smoke her if she turned. So she made me promise. And she did the same for me.”

“Promises were made to be broken,” he said, his voice hoarse with suppressed emotion.

I looked at him then. “I wish you could forgive me. Jessie said you might not be able to.”

“She . . . she thought it that far through?”

“We were battling vampires almost nightly. I’m surprised you didn’t do the same.” He shrugged. “I never figured on losing.”

I spread my hands out on the countertop. The left one now bare. The right sporting a glittering reminder of how many battles I’d won. “I didn’t think about it much myself until Jessie brought it up. And then what she said made a lot of sense. She was just doing what she thought she needed to in order to save her soul, Dave.”

As I spoke, his lips drew back farther and farther, as if he’d bitten into something rancid. “She was my wife. And yet she didn’t trust something that sacred to me. If only she’d explained —”

“Could you have let her go?” I whispered. “Could you have stuck a crossbow in your wife’s chest and released an arrow into her heart, knowing the alternative was eternal life, right here on earth, with you at her side? Come on now. I could barely bring myself to do it, and I was only her sister-in-law.”

He rammed both fists onto the counter. “Why are you bringing this up now? I have to be sharp for tonight and you’re tearing my damn heart out!”

Why did I suddenly remember all those afternoons we’d spent pounding Play-Doh into pancakes in Granny May’s kitchen? Evie had wanted to play house, which was hilarious in retrospect, since not one of us knew how a normal family functioned. I’d reluctantly agreed, but Dave had taken one look at our yellow, blue, and red clay breakfast and decided to transform it into a sport.

Five minutes later we’d transformed the pancakes into Frisbees and set up a course with Granny May’s Tupperware bowls that would’ve impressed an Olympic committee.

I said slowly, “In case something goes wrong at the takedown, I wanted things to be straight between us.”

“Are you asking me to forgive you?” Dave asked. I thought he sounded more grieved than aggravated. But when he scratched his neck, I was reminded I still couldn’t speak freely.

“No,” I said, surprising myself just as much as him. “I just needed to explain how it went down. And to tell you I’m sorry.”

“Why?” He didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in his voice. “Jessie knew you’d keep your promise and you did.” I bowed my head. “You gotta have a big streak of ice running through your heart to follow through on a vow like that,” I told him.

“I’m apologizing for being that cold.”

Dave nodded. “You did what Jessie wanted. And if she was right, I should be down on my knees, thanking you. I know I should . .

. ”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m just glad you’re still talking to me.”

“Well, you did have to travel six thousand miles to have this conversation,” he reminded me. We both managed a smile. The very same one, in fact. One of those things that makes it weirdly wonderful to be a twin. “Then again,” he went on, “you did bring Cassandra with you. That in itself deserves high praise.”

“So you guys are getting along pretty well, huh?” My gut twisted slightly at the thought, but I realized it wasn’t for him; it was for me. For him I wanted only happiness.

“She’s . . . amazing. I think I could spend my whole life talking to her and never get bored. I haven’t gotten to see her much today though. We’ve been really busy running through the scenario. Getting prepped. Lots of last-minute stuff I probably should’ve taken care of yesterday. I’d like to see her before we go though. Maybe I’ll go check on her now.”
Holy crap! Dave’s about to crash the we-know-you’re-the-mole party. May Day! May Day!
In my mind I could hear jets crashing and ships exploding. This was not going to be pretty if I couldn’t think of a good distraction. And my mind was a sudden and total blank!

I followed Dave out the kitchen door, my jaw working like I’d just bitten into a caramel, but nothing came out. No brilliant delay tactic. Not even a bad joke to give me five seconds to pray for a miracle. As we went past the living room I caught Cam’s eye and began to do wild charades. I jumped up and down. Made last-chance-motel faces. Pointed at Dave and then at the closed door toward which he headed. The one behind which Cassandra and Bergman had been laboring all day to develop a device that could remove the Wizard’s control from him.

“Yo, boss,” Cam called. “Question for you.”

“Hold that thought,” Dave called. “I’ve got business.”

Jet dropped something. Broke something else. Said, “Shit!” as loud as he could manage. The din would’ve brought an entire fire-house down the poles to investigate. Dave kept walking. I’ll say this for my brother: He’s got focus.

I was seriously considering grabbing a bust of Iran’s latest president, which was sitting on a pedestal between the bedrooms, and clubbing him over the head with it when Cassandra emerged from the girl’s room.

Part of my Sensitivity opens me up to very strong feelings among my fellow humans. Boy was she ever glad to see him. And likewise with my twin. In fact, if the house had been empty, I was pretty sure they’d have greeted each other in an entirely different manner.

“Where have you been all day?” Dave asked, his voice low and, for the first time in a long time, excited.

She smiled. “A little project for Jaz. She’s not very pleased with this Seer Vayl has taken up with.” Dave glanced over his shoulder, but I’d already sidled around him. He still managed to catch my eye before I entered the bedroom.

“Everything okay with the vamp there, Jazzy?” he asked.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” I assured him. I shut the door before I could catch a glimpse of them making googly eyes at each other.

Yuck.

“Bergman!” I whispered, tiptoeing up to him like Dave might have just thrown Cassandra out of his way and pressed his ear against the door. Hey, I’ve seen weirder things. Sad. But true.

He looked up from the temporary work station he and Cassandra had set up at the dressing table. They’d left it against the wall so they wouldn’t have to worry about disturbing the attached mirror, and scattered their tools across it. Bergman’s computer hardware and the gear required to modify it buddied up with Cassandra’s herbs and potions, all of which surrounded the Enkyklios.

I sat at the chair beside Bergman’s that Cassandra had obviously just vacated. “Any luck?” I asked.

He nodded as he peered through a magnifying glass at an item he held with tweezers. It was about the size of a watch battery, but it glowed the red of the rubies in my ring. “We think this will do the trick,” he said.

“Okay.” I gulped down another urge to cry. This was so not going to work if I was going to blubber every five minutes. I resolved to have a huge emotional breakdown the second I stepped foot in my apartment. I’d supply myself with chocolate. A gallon of cookie-dough ice cream. Two boxes of Kleenex. And maybe a good tearjerker to get me jump-started.
The Pursuit of
Happyness
always did the trick. Yeah, that sounded like a winner.

Having planned ahead, I now felt better. At least, better able to function. “Okay. How does it work?” Bergman took a while to answer. Finally he admitted, “I’m not completely sure. Cassandra has made it able to follow the path of the ohm.”

When my eyebrows shot up he explained. “That’s what they call the item a necromancer uses to control his, uh, zombie with.” He gave me an apologetic frown. “Cassandra finally got hold of this woman she said you guys tried to talk to before the mission even started. What was her name?” He had to think a second. “Oh yeah. Sister Doshomi. She had a story on her Enkyklios that basically explained Dave to us. He was made the second way, the way Hilda — remember her, the woman whose daughter died

— who ended up as the great necromancy professor?” I nodded, feeling a jolt of sympathy for the woman who’d lost everything and still managed to reach across time to help me. “Dave was made the way Hilda suspected. The way she actually discovered before she was murdered.”

He cleared his throat. Looked at me sympathetically, like we were at a funeral, which it kind of felt like we were. “Jaz, Dave’s not just a regular zombie. He’s a zedran. Which is why there’s an ohm in the first place. You know, so the Wizard can communicate with him from a distance.” Maybe sensing that I was having a hard time digesting all his information without falling off my chair, he rushed on. “The good news is, the ohm has to be made from the Wizard’s own flesh. So once we get it out of Dave, actually once the retriever we’ve built gets it out of him, we can use it to find the Wizard.”

“How?”

“Cassandra knows a spell.”

That got my attention. I laid my hand on Bergman’s forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because only three weeks ago if I’d have said the word ‘spell’ to you, you’d have burst a blood vessel.”

He nodded slowly. “It’s why I wanted to come.” He put everything down and sat back. “I didn’t count on meeting Natchez. But I guess I was hoping to find somebody — or something — like him on this trip.” He shook his head in amazement. “The man knows how to
live
, Jaz. He’s not afraid of anything that I can tell. Not of getting sick. Or working something new into his repertoire. Or trying something totally off the wall. Did you know he once saw a woman on the street that he just loved the looks of, so he asked her out? Just like that! I mean, she could’ve been psycho. She could’ve had four different STDs.”

“And?”

“She was fine! They went out a few times. Didn’t have enough in common for a longer relationship and parted friends. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“He’s the same age as me, Jaz, and he’s lived, like, twenty lives compared to mine.”

“Do you really envy him as much as it sounds? I mean, if you’d spent all your time jumping out of airplanes and climbing mountains, you wouldn’t have come up with even half your inventions.”

He clasped his hands between his knees and slouched in his chair, like I was one of his professors reprimanding him for not handing in his paper its usual two weeks in advance. But when he looked at me it was with a new defiance in his eyes. “I hate being a wimp.

Feeling this paranoia so extreme it’s burning knots in my chest. Like the world’s going to end if I don’t protect myself well enough, if I take one step in the wrong direction. You can’t imagine how bad it sucks.” Actually I could. After I lost Matt, Jessie, my crew . . . the Agency kept a sharp eye on my sanity. Rightfully so, since I could feel the shards of it slicing against the inside of my skull every single day. And I’d developed a few bizarre habits that were tough to hide. Among them a tendency for my brain to stick on a word like a bad stutter. Also a habit of blacking out at the worst possible moment. Fortunately I’d been able to toe the line long enough to get my head on fairly straight. I said, “So what’s your next step?