Authors: A.J. Larrieu
At least it wasn’t jewelry.
“I’m not sure if this will fit me,” I said.
“Have you ever held a gun before?”
I had to laugh. “A couple of times.” I thought of the hunting trips with Bruce in high school. “I know my way around.”
Jackson freed the gun from its packaging with a screeching sound of metal on foam. It wasn’t a typical handgun.
“It’s a modified tranq gun,” Jackson said, handing it to me grip-first. “Shoots darts loaded with Telazol.”
“That stuff in your first aid kit?”
He nodded. “I don’t use it often, because it would be hard to explain if it got picked up by police, but I think you can keep it in your purse without worrying. I’ll take you to the shooting range this weekend to practice, if you want.”
“You’re so romantic.” I hefted it, getting a feel for the weight. It was compact, but heavier than the handguns I’d held in the past. I’d have to see how difficult it was to load. “Where’re the darts?”
Jackson reached into the box again and pulled out a black plastic case. “There are ten of them. They should be stable for a while, but I’ll replace them every so often, just to be sure.”
I picked one up and examined it. “Show me how to load it.”
He demonstrated, and I decided I’d better keep it loaded. There was no way I’d be able to do it under duress.
“What happens if I hit a normal?” I was thinking of everyday burglars.
“It’s probably enough to knock them out, but I admit, I’ve never tried.” He grinned. “You could wander around the Tenderloin and try to get into trouble.”
“That’s okay.” I settled the gun back in its box. “Thanks for this.”
“I’ll sleep better knowing you have it.”
“You sound like you’re planning on letting me sleep alone.”
His mouth curved. “That’s just a figure of speech.” He reached across the bar and didn’t quite touch my hand. “Am I forgiven for being an overprotective jerk?”
I smiled. “Maybe.” I stashed the gun in my purse and came around the bar with the box under my arm.
“Mmm.” His hand stole around my waist and traced my vertebrae through my shirt. Then his phone buzzed. When he saw who was calling, he groaned. “Better get this. Hello? Yeah, hang on. Reception’s shit down here.” He looked to make sure I was followed before he jogged up the back stairs to the alley entrance. I trailed after him, locking up behind me as I went.
When I got to the alley Jackson was pacing back and forth.
“Everything okay?”
“That was Sebastian. He finished going through Conner’s SIM card.”
“And?”
“We’ve got a lead.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sebastian thought he’d identified another dealer. It was Erica.
Conner hadn’t deleted a single text message from his phone. He was like a detective’s wet dream. There were hundreds of them, mostly from what looked like customers. Most of the texts were intersections followed by numbers, some kind of code for a drop-off. But there was one set that was interesting. Jackson showed me the exchange from a few weeks ago.
E: Hey, can you spot me a bag? Got a customer wants to stock up & I’m low.
Conner: Sure, meet me at 25th & Capp.
E: Sounds good.
Then again, a week afterward:
E: Hey, didn’t see you at the last re-up. What’s up?
E: Where are you? Bridget’s been asking questions.
E: Text me back and tell me you got this, okay?
There were no more texts after that. Seb had called in a favor and gotten the number traced. It was registered to Erica Campbell, the lead singer of Malik’s band. She was the last person I would’ve suspected, but there was no arguing with the evidence.
We both spent the night in Jackson’s condo. He’d absolutely refused to let me sleep alone in my apartment, and I hadn’t taken that much convincing. I didn’t agree that he needed to sleep on the couch while I took the guest room, but he’d done it anyway. Actually, I wasn’t sure he slept at all. The light was still on when I went to sleep, and when I woke up at nine, the living room had turned into a council of war.
James and Jackson were on the couch, and Sebastian was pacing in front of the marble fireplace. I could smell coffee so I ignored them all and went into the kitchen to get some. When I came back out, they were discussing Erica. James had apparently spent the morning lurking in the hallway outside the graphic design firm where she worked, trying to dive into her head without being noticed. A challenge, I knew.
“She’s defended,” James said. “I couldn’t get anything.”
“Maybe you’re slipping,” Sebastian said. James rewarded him with a glare.
“It’s these goddamn enhancers.” He was pacing again, but Jackson’s living room wasn’t really big enough for it. He kept knocking over books and picture frames.
Everyone was quiet for a moment, and then Jackson’s doorbell rang. It was Malik, wearing pajama pants and holding a box of doughnuts. Sebastian had decided it was worth putting him on the “trust” list to see if we could find out more.
“Don’t think I’m putting on pants before ten for you assholes,” he said. “Here, gorgeous, you get first pick.” He held out the box to me, and I chose a plain glazed. “So. Erica.” His face was grave. He’d known her for a decade—this couldn’t be easy for him.
“Looks that way,” James said. “We don’t know for sure.”
“She did just buy a new guitar,” Malik said, rubbing his shaved head. “Shit.”
“We can follow her,” James said. “Take shifts...she’s got to pick up more product at some point.”
“Look, the last time we tried to bring in somebody even low-level, he got bent and Mina was almost killed. We have to assume that whoever’s on the top of this food chain knows we’re closing in.”
“They could be watching the speakeasy—maybe they notice when Mina’s not working.”
“So we leave her out of it,” Jackson said. “Pick up Erica, get her out of town, and bring Mina to her once Erica’s secure.”
Sebastian shook his head. “Whoever this is, he’s already killed Conner and tried to kill Mina and Jackson. If one of his dealers disappears, he’ll know something’s wrong.”
“I agree,” James said. “If we pull her in, we risk tipping off her boss, whoever he is.”
Sebastian sat down on the floor. Everyone looked at him.
“So we don’t bring her in,” he said.
We all waited.
“Get Mina to run into her somewhere public. Neutralize her before she knows what’s going on. Jackson can get at her memories, and we leave before she even knows. We cut the head off of this thing and leave the tentacles for later.”
James and Malik nodded, and even Jackson looked convinced.
“Great plan,” I said, “but how? It’s not like we’re buddies. I’ve only ever seen her at practice. I can’t call her up for a lunch date or something.”
“You have any gigs coming up?” Sebastian asked Malik.
“Nothing for a month. And Charlie’ll be back by then, so we don’t need a backup keyboardist.”
Everyone was quiet. Sebastian ate an entire jelly doughnut in one bite.
“Open mic night,” Malik said. “She always does open mic night at The Standing Room down on Mission and 18th. You could go.”
“But I don’t sing.”
“You don’t have to sing. They take all types. I saw a girl get up and recite poetry once.”
“I don’t recite poetry, either.”
“It’s this, or we have to find a way to get you into the band. Maybe we could cover Dylan’s Budokan album, that’s got a violin part...” He started pacing. James started talking about private parties and charity concerts and calling in favors, and Malik said something about making up a record deal.
Jackson met my eyes. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I knew the stakes. The longer it took for us to get to the top of this drug chain, the longer I’d be camping out in his spare room, and it was only a matter of time before we slipped up.
“I’ll do it.” No one heard me at first, so I repeated myself. Malik stopped pacing.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” The minor key composition I’d been working on needed a piano, some simple chord progressions laid under the fiddle, but I could make it work alone.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Sebastian said. “It won’t really matter.”
I caught Jackson’s eyes, and I knew I didn’t have to explain. “It matters to me.”
* * *
I spent the day trying to practice.
I couldn’t bear to play the piece in front of anyone, so I made Jackson leave. He refused to go farther than the hallway, but at least I could pretend he couldn’t hear me. Even after the door closed behind him, it took half an hour for my hands to stop shaking. I tightened my bow, rosined the horsehair, cleaned my fiddle. I paced around the apartment like Sebastian had. I ate the rest of the doughnuts.
The first note was a wavering, screeching disaster, a novice’s sound. I almost put the bow back down again but the image of blood dripping from the bullet wound in Jackson’s arm blazed in my head, and I resettled my chin on the chin rest.
Like Sebastian said, it didn’t have to be perfect.
Yeah, right.
My mother was Cajun. Her own mother still spoke French when she got angry, and when she got tipsy on peppermint schnapps, she’d yell about how the schoolteachers beat the language out of her when she was young. She’d had a fiddle—it had belonged to her brother, who died in World War II. My own mother never played it, and when she’d died it had come to me.
It was an inferior instrument. The first time I’d put the bow to the strings, I knew I’d had my hands on better in my middle school band room. But there was something about it that got to me, the history of it, the knowledge of how old it was, how many hands had made it sing. I’d been learning classical violin pieces up to that point. When I’d inherited that old fiddle—that was when I first tried fiddling.
It felt natural to start with the old Acadian stuff, as though that was what the instrument was used to, as though that would be respectful. I moved on to Zydeco, then Irish reels, then country bluegrass. After my mother died, I went through a period where all I played were blues riffs, like the part of me that came from her had never existed. I’d circled back to things that reminded me of her eventually, but right now, it felt right to play something mournful.
I played a simple scale, missed a note in the second octave. My second try was better. The third time, I stopped quivering. The instrument was out of tune, so I blew an A on my pitch pipe and turned the pegs while I bowed. After the first adjustment, my hands remembered what to do. My ears remembered the notes.
I played things I hadn’t played since I was learning, classical violin pieces like Partita in D and “La Primavera.” I moved on to traditional fiddle music, “Orange Blossom Special,”
“Toss the Feathers,”
“Jambalaya.” My fingers weren’t up for it. Soft, like a beginner’s. I missed notes and winced, started over. I took a break just long enough to call Malik and ask if he could cover my shift, and then I started my song, the one I’d written before everything had changed.
It hurt, but not as much as I’d expected.
When I played the last note and lowered my bow, I looked up and saw Jackson standing in the doorway.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“You said you were going to wait in the hallway.”
“I didn’t say which hallway.”
I glared at him. “I’m out of practice.”
“Sounded pretty good to me.” He was holding two paper cartons full of something that smelled amazing.
“How long have you been listening?”
“You know it’s almost eight o’clock, right? You should probably eat.”
“I had doughnuts.”
He ignored me and walked into the kitchen. I set my fiddle down on the couch and went to lean in the archway between the living room and the kitchen.
“How about sesame chicken?” he said.
“I can’t do this.” I’d meant to ask if he’d gotten potstickers.
His brow furrowed. “Of course you can. You’re an amazing musician.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t. This is different.”
Jackson cocked his head. “Tell me what you mean.”
“This will be my stuff. It was one thing to get up there and play songs Malik wrote—this is going to be stuff I wrote. I won’t be able to—to hear.”
He nodded. “Play for me.” He sat down on his couch and crossed one leg over the other, and settled back as if he were about to turn on the game.
“I just was playing for you.”
“You know what I mean. I want to know what it sounds like when you know I’m listening.”
“What—right now?”
“The Chinese is getting cold.”
I took a deep breath. I settled my chin on the chin rest.
I could’ve closed my eyes and pretended he wasn’t there. I wasn’t a telepath anymore—it wasn’t as though I’d be able to sense him. But I left them open. I watched him the whole time.
He was a good listener. He watched the saw of the bow, the way my body moved and followed the notes. His gaze never wavered to the door or his watch or the gorgeous San Francisco skyline two feet to my left. He just listened.
In the final bars, when I repeated the phrasing from the first, I could tell he recognized the notes. As the turnaround died and I lowered my instrument, he leaned forward on his knees.
“That was incredible,” he said.
It wasn’t the same—that wasn’t possible. But for the first time, I thought it might be something good. “It needs a piano.”
“Then why don’t you let me help.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
We only had three days.
Normally, I wouldn’t have been comfortable with anything less than a week to practice a new song with a new partner, but we had what we had.
Jackson was a decent piano player. Better than decent. I’d been worried his training would be too classical, that he wouldn’t get the rhythm right, that he’d play as loudly as I’d heard him the night I’d come back, and overpower the fiddle. None of those things happened. It took him some time to learn the chords, but they were simple, and once we’d been through a half-dozen practices, I stopped worrying we’d embarrass ourselves.
We spent the weekend working, only breaking for meals. Malik would have covered my shifts at the speakeasy, but we didn’t want my absence to arouse suspicion, so I went in as planned. Jackson refused to let me take the Muni alone—he dropped me off and picked me up every night. I kept the tranq gun in my purse.
The night before the event, Paulie came into the speakeasy. He was looking even paler and more strung out than usual. For the first time, I wondered if he’d been on the enhancers. He asked for a scotch and I poured him a double.
“For the pain,” I said.
He scruffed his hands through his hair. “Thanks, Mina.”
“Roommates still whining?”
“It’s not that. It’s
everyone.
It’s
everywhere.
I think...I think it’s getting worse. I can’t even go out anymore. I tried to go downtown to get a new pair of sticks, and I had to get off the train before I lost it.” He looked at me with such hope in his eyes it floored me. “Do you think...?”
I thought about it. Open mic night was the next night. If I drained Paulie, there might be enough time for it to wear off before I had to drain Erica, but I couldn’t risk it. This might be our last chance to get to her without her suspecting something was up.
“I’m sorry,” I told Paulie. “I can’t.”
“I know. You’re with Jackson now. You must...sorry. It’s none of my business.”
I hadn’t touched Jackson in days. We’d both been walking around the apartment as if we were electrified, trying to preserve Jackson’s powers and keep me fresh. It was maddening. But it was probably better to have Paulie think Jackson and I couldn’t keep our hands off each other than to let him suspect the truth.
“Maybe later this week,” I told him. “Stop by Wednesday night.” Hopefully by then whatever I’d gotten off of Erica would’ve worn off. Then again, if he was going through withdrawal, that might be too late. “Paulie, is everything okay? I mean, do you need anything...else?” He wasn’t on our Trust List—I couldn’t ask him anything specific. It was the safest way I could think of to approach the subject.
He hadn’t been listening to me. “What? Oh. Fine. I’m fine.”
“Well...see you Wednesday?” I remembered what Malik had said, about making Paulie control himself, but I couldn’t bear to see him so desperate, and he was about as dangerous as a baby rabbit.
“Yeah.” He downed the rest of his double in one shot. “See you, Mina.” He slouched out. I hoped he would find somewhere quiet to give himself a break.
The next morning, I let myself sleep in. I always let myself out of practicing the day of a gig—if I didn’t have it down by now, there wasn’t much point. It didn’t help my nerves. I spent the day in an anxious haze until Jackson told me it was time to go.
My palms started sweating the minute I walked into The Standing Room. Jackson put his hand on my shoulder, and I was too distracted to stop the connection. My skin warmed and buzzed where he touched me.
“Be careful,” I told him.
“You’re going to do great.”
I grumbled and tugged at my shirt. I’d gone back to the shop where I’d gotten the red silk dress. The same girl was at the register, and she recognized me right away. The picture Jackson had taken of me was up on the wall behind her next to a glossy magazine spread from
7X7
and a set of shots of a couple wearing white linen in what looked like an automotive junkyard.
“I need something sparkly,” I’d told her.
I’d walked out with a fitted cream-colored shirt with fine gold thread embroidered in lines down the bodice. It was almost like a corset it fit so snugly. It was also sleeveless. The better to steal Erica’s powers. Jackson took one look at it, bit his knuckle and said, “This is killing me.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m going to throw it away after this.”
“Thank God.”
It had seemed easy, talking about this in Jackson’s pristine living room, but now that I was in the close, warm bar surrounded by people with guitars, I was questioning the wisdom of our plan. Erica was nowhere in sight.
Jackson put his hand on my lower back and propelled me toward the sign-up table.
The guy manning it gave me a once-over and stared at my fiddle. “That’s different.”
“Is that a problem?”
“’Course not.” He smiled. “What’re you gonna play, Mozart?”
I bit down on my tongue so I wouldn’t launch into my lecture about how composers didn’t cease to exist after 1791. Behind me, Jackson gave a cough that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
The guy gave me a slip of red paper with the number seven on it. “You get five minutes. Come around back when number six goes up.”
“Come on,” Jackson said. “I’ll buy you a drink. Take the edge off.”
“What edge?” I wiped my palms on my jeans.
Jackson steered me to the bar. He ordered me something I didn’t catch the name of, and when it came, I discovered it was some kind of mixed drink involving cranberry juice. I could taste the vodka through the sweetness. There must’ve been a lot of it.
“I do have to be able to play without staggering.”
“This’ll just loosen you up.” He was scanning the crowd, looking for Erica. I was starting to worry she wouldn’t show. If I’d gone through all of this for nothing, I was going to be really angry at someone. I wasn’t sure who, but someone.
They called the first performer. A blonde with a twelve-string and a slim, reedy voice that somehow still worked for the bluesy love song she was singing. She was followed by a guy who tried—and failed—to cover “Come Together,” then a duo who sang an off-key version of something I didn’t recognize but didn’t play well with close harmony. Three to go. Still no Erica.
“What if she doesn’t come?”
“She’ll come.”
The next two performers blurred by. I watched the door for Erica, thinking maybe, if she didn’t show, I could get out of here. Maybe I wouldn’t have to play after all. It shouldn’t have made me feel so empty to think of it. Then, as number six—a guy with an Ovation six string that looked as though it had been through the entirety of the sixties—took the stage, she came striding through the door.
She didn’t see us. She walked up to the sign-up guy and they shared a complicated handshake and a smile.
Number Six was finishing up to anemic applause. Time. I turned to Jackson.
“You haven’t tried to talk me out of this.” I’d only just realized it, now, when I was about to step onto the stage. We’d been practicing for days, discussing the plan, the pitfalls. He’d never tried to stop me. “Not even once.”
“Maybe I finally figured out you can take care of yourself.”
The applause for Number Six died down. The guy at the signup table was waving frantically at me.
“You did?”
The sign-up guy had gotten up and started in my direction.
“I think we’d better get up there,” Jackson said.
“Thank you.” I wasn’t sure what for, maybe it was for more than I could put into words. But there wasn’t time to figure out how to say it. The sign-up guy reached me and tugged me forward up the rickety steps to the platform.
“Too late for stage fright now,” he said, and he propelled me into the spotlight.
Jackson followed. I spared a glance at him as he sat down behind The Standing Room’s barely adequate resident keyboard. Then I looked out at the crowd.
The room wasn’t big, but it was packed. Half the people there were waiting for their turn onstage, and I was betting the other half were waiting to watch the friend they’d come to support, but I didn’t care. I settled my fiddle under my chin and looked back at Jackson.
He smiled at me, and he was the only person in the room. I forgot about Erica and the drugs and the men who’d tried to kidnap me. I forgot there was a crowd of bored people dividing their attention between their drinks and their conversations and me. I smiled back, tapped my foot three times, and we began.
The opening bars were slow. As I played my way through the first verse, the bar got quiet. Jackson played his unfamiliar instrument softly, laying the chords down like the velvety strokes I’d wanted them to be. I knew he was in my head and I was thrilled by it. Second verse. I repeated the phrasing from the first, but faster. My body moved without me telling it to, my fingers found the strings like they were magnetized. Someone started clapping, and a few more people picked it up. Most of them were on tempo; some of them weren’t. I didn’t care. I raced through the final bar to the turnaround and dropped my bow to the sound of applause.
Somebody slapped me on the back as I stumbled down the stairs on autopilot. “Damn, girl, you make me wanna like the violin!” yelled a man, drunk and happy about it. I only had eyes for Jackson. He joined me at the foot of the stairs, put his hands on either side of my face, and kissed me.
It was one of those rare kisses that feels like a first kiss, a tentative beginning with a fast learning curve up to mouth-on-mouth, body-to-body fusion, nothing else in the room but the hot places where our skin touched. I nearly dropped my instrument. It took me a good fifteen seconds to remember what a bad idea this was, to lay down a mental barrier to slow the transfer.
Stop it!
I couldn’t say it, so I thought it as loud as I could. Jackson pulled back, and the world rushed back in along with the close, hot air of the bar.
“You’re amazing,” he said. “I love you.”
I stared right back at him. My brain felt like a bicycle with no chain. It wasn’t until Erica practically ran into us that I remembered why we were there.
“Mina! You were awesome up there!”
“Hey! I didn’t know you came here.”
“Every month. I’m up next—Jimmy always saves a number for me. Will you guys wait for me?”
This was almost too easy. “You bet.” I met Jackson’s eyes, and whatever had just happened fled out of them. We went to the bar.
Erica played something bluegrassy and up-tempo on her guitar with another guy backing her up on keyboard. She did great—she was a pro, no question—and there were whistles and hoots as she let the last verse fade, eyes closed, lips close to the microphone. She smiled a slow, sweet smile as she got off the stool and took a charmingly awkward bow. It was getting harder and harder for me to believe she’d been behind my attempted kidnapping.
“You rocked it!” I held up my hand for a high five, and bless her, she didn’t even pause. She slapped my palm and didn’t pull away when I held on and did an unnecessarily complex grab-and-snap thing. Thirty seconds. Just a little charge.
“Thanks.” She grinned. “This is my boyfriend, by the way. Charlie Easton. The guy you replaced.”
“Oh, hi. How’s your hand?”
“Yeah, much better, thanks.” He wouldn’t quite look at me. I’d probably be embarrassed too if I’d shut my own hand in a car door. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I assumed I must’ve seen him around the speakeasy at some point.
“Well, let’s get a drink or something. You guys usually stay for the rest?”
“Sure,” Erica said. “There’re a couple of regulars who aren’t bad.”
We found two more empty stools, and Jackson maneuvered things so I was sitting next to Erica. We ordered rum-and-colas, and I asked her about her music. She was happy enough to talk, and it kept her from noticing the way I kept accidentally brushing against her. I had to ground in little sips, or she’d notice. By the time she figured out what was going on, it needed to be too late.
I struggled to come up with ways to keep her talking and distracted. “So, do you guys play other gigs besides with Malik?”
Erica talked about other open mic nights in the city, encouraging me to come to some of them. Charlie didn’t say much to either of us; all he did was glare. Well, it wasn’t my fault I’d replaced him. I decided to ignore him. He polished off his drink and reached past me to point at one of the taps.
“I’ll take a Fat Tire,” he told the bartender, and a memory fired like a signal flare in my mind.
The night I’d been mugged.
The gun pointed at me.
The cracked skin on his knuckles. His voice, California accent, tenor.
Easton. E.
“Yeah, a pint,” Charlie said. My eyes went wide. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t push down the fear in my head. He heard it, I was sure of it, because he took the beer from the bartender and met my eyes for the first time that night.
“I—I gotta go,” I said. “I gotta get out of here.”
“Aww, come on,” Erica said, drunk and oblivious. “Stay another fifteen minutes and you can hear that drummer I was telling you about.”
Charlie’s hands tightened. His eyes were boring into me as if he was mindspeaking, but I didn’t have to hear him to know what he was saying.
Tell anyone and you’re dead.
I backed away from the bar, unwilling to turn my back on him, and started running as soon as I hit the street. I’d gone four blocks before I remembered I hadn’t dissipated the energy I’d stolen, that the panic I was feeling was amped up by the adrenaline surge I got from grounding Erica. Jackson caught up to me moments later and caught me by the shoulder.
“Look at me—you’re okay. Discharge it.”
I placed my hands against the light post next to me and dissipated the energy fast. Sparks fired between my hand and the post and left scorch marks.
“How much capacity do you have left? Are you tapped out?”
“No. No. I think I have a little more.” I wouldn’t be able to tell until I got my hands on someone.
“All right.” Jackson looked grim. “I’m going back in there to get them.”
“But Jackson, he knows. He knows that I know—”