Broken Shadows (6 page)

Simon took me seriously. “Twice the minimum wage isn’t enough?”

I saw an opening, a wider crack in the door out of Jackson’s awkward condo, and I took it. “If I’m going to be your illegal CPA, I should be paid like one.” I named an hourly rate at the low end of current scale—but much higher than what he paid for bartending.

“Illegal CPAs get paid under the table. Strictly cash—tax free.” He fired back with a figure in the middle.

“Strictly cash means no health insurance, no benefits. Not to mention the risk of arrest.” He laughed at that. I named another figure, halfway again toward my original.

Simon rolled his beer bottle back and forth on the bar. There was a glint in his dark eyes, and the barest of smiles on his full lips. He was enjoying this. “Bar wages when you bartend, CPA wages when you work on the books.”

“Done,” I said.

“Good.” He picked up his helmet and walked to the back. “Might as well open up,” he called over his shoulder. “You’re both here, aren’t you?” His footsteps faded into the maze behind the bar.

“Wow,” Malik said. “I’m sending you in next time I ask him for a raise.”

“You’re just lucky I didn’t negotiate with you.”

“Damn straight.” He wiped his hands on a bar towel. I gasped as every candle in the place ignited.

“Whoa.” I stepped back. “Nice.” The gold glow of candlelight was softer than the electric lights we’d been using to prep. It was harder to make out some of the graffiti on the walls, but that only added to the mysterious feel of the place, as though you could keep looking for years and never discover every detail.

“How did this even start?” I looked at the sketch of a butterfly on the wall beside the fold-out.

“I don’t know. Before my time.”

“I think that’s my favorite.” I pointed to the huge black-and-red angel above the bar.

“Yeah. That’s been there the longest, I think.” He flipped a switch behind the bar. Nothing happened. I cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Lights up the neon sparrow upstairs. Lets people know we’re open.”

“Huh.” I’d never noticed it before, but other people must’ve, because it only took five minutes for the sounds of lock-picking to start as the first of them filtered in.

I turned my back and slid on the gloves. They were thin enough that they didn’t make handling glasses too difficult. I poured the beers and let Malik handle the cosmos and martinis. More people showed up, and the tip jar on the bar started filling with bills and coins. I was starting to feel hopeful about my chances for moving out of Jackson’s place sooner than I’d calculated.

To my surprise, when business picked up, Simon came back and pitched in. He bussed tables, took orders and added tips to the jar as if he didn’t own the place. And he was efficient. He wove in and out of the crowd without making a wake in it, catching bottles before they hit the ground, refilling waters seamlessly, replacing guttering candles and wiping up spilled drinks. I was impressed.

My hands were sweating in the leather gloves, but I didn’t dare take them off. The skin between my wrist and my shirt sleeve had already brushed half a dozen people. I expected to pick up little charges from those contacts, but it didn’t happen. I had to assume that grounding Paulie earlier had somehow neutralized them, but it couldn’t be for long. During a brief lull, I yanked off the gloves and splayed my palms against the metal bar, feeling how cool it was despite the close, warm air in the bunker. No static charge, no spark.

A guy at the end of the bar snapped his fingers at me. I considered telling him he was being rude, but settled for thinking it as loudly as I could while I asked him what he wanted. He only looked more unpleasant as he ordered a gin and tonic. I gave him my best don’t-fuck-with-me glare as I delivered it and took his cash. No tip. Asshole.

“Mina.” It was Simon, just come back from the floor with a tray of empty beer bottles floating in front of him. “Let me see you in the back?”

Great. First week on the job and I was already in danger of losing it. “Uh, sure.”

I followed him through the archway behind the bar and into his storeroom-slash office.

“Look, if this is about that guy, I’m sorry. He snapped his fingers at me.”

“What? Next time tell him to fuck off.”

I stared.

“I’m serious. I don’t take patrons disrespecting my staff.”

“I’ll...remember that.”

“Right. I only wanted to see how you’re handling this. Have your new powers been a problem at all?”

I explained to him about meeting Paulie before my shift. “I think I’m...sort of neutralized for now. I haven’t picked up any more charges.”

“Do you think you could? Have you given it a try?”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “No. Why?”

“Here.” Simon held out his hand. “See what you can do.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” I’d brushed at least a dozen customers without any effects, but that didn’t mean holding hands with Simon was going to have similar results.

“Go on. I’m not afraid of you.” He quirked his wide mouth and left his hand where it was, fingers spread, relaxed.

“Okay...” I took his hand. It was warm and spare, a piano player’s hands. He wrapped his fingers around my palm as I grasped his, all but enclosing my hand.

“Anything?” The focus on his gaze was intense. He might have been scanning my mind, I couldn’t tell.

“Nothing.”

“But you still have a bit of a charge from Paulie.”

“You can tell?”

He nodded. “Your head is spinning, girl.”

“I tried to ground it, but...”

He was right. There I could feel the residual power pulsing irregularly through my blood, each tiny surge like a miniature static shock.

“Let me help you.”

“I’m not sure you can.” I was just going to have to wait until it bled away.

“Come on. You were a converter, right? You know how this works.”

I had to laugh. “No, I don’t. No one does.” I frowned and looked at my hands. “I’m ‘unprecedented.’”

Simon shook his head. “There’s always a way. Go on. Focus like you would if you were trying to listen to me.”

I looked at him skeptically. “I’m not even sure I remember how.”

“Pretend I have vital information you absolutely have to have. Like the location of your missing socks.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “I don’t have any missing socks.” But I tried it anyway.

Every telepath learned how to mindspeak on a tight line. When you grew up in a family full of them, it was the only way to have a private conversation. It required a tight focus, a single-mindedness about your object before you initiated contact. A year ago, I would have slipped into that mental mode without even thinking. The ability to concentrate like that was a tool I’d taken for granted. Without my abilities, I was out of practice.

“Don’t worry. It’s like riding a bicycle.”

Nosy telepath. I glared at him, but he only nodded, a go-ahead gesture.

I looked at him while I focused, and he met my gaze without flinching. He had very dark eyes, almost black, and he seemed totally unembarrassed by our situation, staring at each other in a dim storeroom with our hands clasped like lovers.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked him. I hadn’t meant to speak at all.

He smiled a little. “It’s a terrible thing, not being able to control your gifts. Maybe I can relate.” I wondered whether it was too soon to press him for details, but he continued. “Go on. Remember the socks.”

And just like that, I found the place I’d been searching for, that mode of concentration that had once been so natural to me. I couldn’t hear Simon, not at all, but energy sparked between our palms, a compressed pad of lightning zapping my skin and his. I yelped and dropped his hand.

“Well, that was a rush,” he said.

“Are you okay?”

“Just fine.” He flexed his fingers. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah, actually.” The low-level anxiety that had been plaguing me all night was gone. “But maybe I should try it on something inanimate next time.”

Simon shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just don’t shock the customers.” He got up. “Unless they snap at you, of course.”

I laughed. “Thanks, boss.”

“Well, I’m off. See you tomorrow.” He turned down the dim hallway, going to God only knew what exit I hadn’t discovered yet. I went back up front and rejoined Malik.

“Nice chat with the boss?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“He was just checking on me.”

“And here I thought he was already firing you.”

“Liar.” I snapped a bar towel at him, and he danced out of the way.

Business had slowed to a trickle, and at midnight, we decided to close up early. Malik got a pair of brooms from the back, and I started sweeping behind the bar while he telekinetically stacked chairs on tables in the main room. I watched them soar up and settle, barely making a sound when they landed.

“So, we’ve got a gig coming up.”

“Oh, yeah?” I didn’t look up. “I had no idea.”

“Place called Henry’s. Downtown. We’re still short a keyboardist, you know.”

I paused in mid-sweep. “Come on, Malik. I know I’m not the only out-of-work musician in this city.”

Malik walked around to face me, wrapping a dish towel around his arm from palm to elbow. “Yeah, but you know our little secret. No need to come up with lies. I can’t bring any old normal down here to practice.” He gestured around the bar.

“I haven’t played in months.”

He must have sensed me weakening. “We could keep it simple. Nothing too complicated. And you’d get a quarter of the take.”

“How much is that? Ten bucks in sweaty bills?”

“More like a hundred, plus door money. It’s a paying gig.”

I swept a collection of dust, glass shards and fragments of beer labels into the trash. “I’ll think about it.”

It wasn’t until much later that I realized I’d meant it.

Chapter Seven

I expected Jackson would already be asleep when I got back, but his bedroom was open and empty. I showered, ate one of his bananas and left a twenty on his kitchen island for my share of the groceries. I should have been exhausted, but I still needed to wind down from work. That was what I told myself. I watched bad reality television while I hunted through online apartment listings. A room in a house in the Sunset, a studio in Bernal Heights, a one bedroom in Oakland. I didn’t have enough for the security deposit on any of them, but if I sold my fiddle, I’d be close. I looked at it, propped in the corner of Jackson’s spare room. It had been months since I’d even opened the case. I went back to the apartment listings.

One o’clock in the morning, and Jackson still wasn’t back. I told myself it wasn’t my job to worry about him. He could take care of himself. I should go to sleep. One-thirty. Hell, he was probably on a date. He’d probably gone back to her place. What guy wanted to explain a random female roommate to the girl he was taking home? Still. He could have texted. Something. Maybe that was what I should do.

I had my phone in my hand when Jackson walked in. I could tell right away that something was wrong.

He had his briefcase slung over his left shoulder, and he set it down with a louder-than-normal clunk in the hallway. He was cradling one arm with the other as if he were holding a vase, as if it wasn’t part of his body. It wasn’t until he turned that I saw the blood.

“Oh my God!” I hurried to him as he sat on the couch. There was a long tear in the arm of his dress shirt, and the sleeve was soaked with blood. Jackson began to mentally undo his shirt buttons, but it was clearly difficult for him. They kept slipping out of his control.

“Let me.” I sat beside him on the couch and undid the buttons from top to bottom, my knuckles grazing the warm cotton of his undershirt, hard muscle all too apparent underneath. As I reached the last button, our eyes met. His were lowered, the long lashes curving, and for a moment, I couldn’t move. My fingers froze. Then I remembered he was bleeding. I grabbed the cuff of his sleeve and tugged a little harder than necessary.

“What happened?” I asked, trying to bury the moment. He twisted to work his left arm out of the sleeve, hissing through his teeth in pain. “We should take you to a hospital.”

“Doctors ask too many questions.”

I gave him a disbelieving look and moved on to his right sleeve, trying to figure out how to remove it without making his injury worse.

“Just cut it off.”

“Are you sure?”

He laughed. “It’s not like I’m going to wear it again. Scissors in the kitchen.”

I got up to get them and knelt in front of him. He held his arm out obligingly, taking a deep breath as he extended it. Fresh blood seeped into the pale blue fabric. I tried to keep my hand from trembling as I cut through his sleeve. It fell away, and I gasped when I saw the wound on his forearm. It was a good six inches long, and deep, the flesh gaping horribly. I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. Jackson studied the slash in a detached, grim sort of way.

“I’ve got a first aid kit in the closet at the end of the hall,” he said. “Could you grab it for me?”

I knew he was just giving me something to do, but I went anyway. It was easy to find, sitting on top of an orange toolbox on an eye-level shelf. I grabbed it and hurried back.

“Thanks. And would you mind getting a bowl from the kitchen? The big glass one on the shelf above the microwave?” As if we were baking cookies.

I nodded numbly and went to get it, setting it next to the first aid kit on the coffee table. Jackson had managed to get the cap off a bottle, and he leaned forward, holding his arm over the bowl. The bottle rose shakily off the table and tipped over the gash, blood and clear liquid mixing and dripping into the bowl. Jackson didn’t make a sound, but his lips went thin, and his skin was a little gray. I realized my mouth was hanging open and closed it. Jackson let the bottle back down to the table and focused on the first aid kit.

Most people have things like Band-Aids and rubbing alcohol in their first aid kits. Jackson had sutures. A bunch of syringes in plastic blister packs labeled
STERILE
. Vials of liquid labeled in plain black text.
Morphine. Phenobarbital.
Something that started with a T.

I looked at the kit and then at him. He didn’t comment. One of the bottles floated up and into his left hand.

“Maybe you could open one of those?” He gestured at a syringe.

I opened it, and he filled it with something clear, then injected himself near the wound.

“Lidocaine,” he said, eyes drifting shut a little. “That’s better.” One of the suture packets floated up and tore open in midair in front of him. Inside was a wicked-looking curved needle and a length of thread.

“Wait—you aren’t going to do that yourself.”

“You want to try?” He was grinning. I shook my head in horror.

It was like watching a car accident—I couldn’t look away. Jackson used his mind to stitch up his arm, the needle soaring through the air, plunging into his severed flesh, tying off knots. He used a tiny pair of scissors to clip off the thread after each round. Every so often, a clump of stained gauze soared up from the table to soak up the blood. It was slow going.

“What happened?” Maybe he would answer me this time.

He shrugged. “I was too slow.”

“To get away from what—a rabid pigeon?” Blood dripped from his arm into the bowl.

“Not quite.”

I waited. He sighed.

“It was a converter,” he said. “I had him restrained, or I thought I did, anyway. I was working the knife out of his hand, and he just...overpowered me.”

“You got into a knife fight with a converter.” There was a pause while I stared at him. “Can I ask why?”

“Well, somebody has to deal with them.” He flexed his arm experimentally, his eyes on the sutures. Apparently there weren’t enough of them, because he stopped flexing his arm and tore open a new suture pack. “I was looking for the guy who attacked you.”

I sat down hard in his dark red wingback. “What?”

“Like I said, somebody has to deal with this stuff.”

“But I’m not even sure—”

He glanced up from his work, and the way his eyes pinned me made my words dissolve in my mouth. “He was a converter, and he hurt you. I won’t let that stand.” One last dab with the gauze, and he let it fall.

“And you’re the self-appointed supernatural police?” I didn’t like the idea of him getting hurt because of me, no matter how indirectly.

“No. I was elected. Well, my father was elected sheriff, and he deputized me.”

So it was his job to hunt down the guy who’d attacked me. I felt unexpectedly disappointed and got angry with myself for it. Jackson prodded his self-made stitches with a bloody finger and let the suture fall into the bowl, then leaned back heavily on the couch and rubbed his face with his good hand.

“You need a bandage,” I said. “Or something.”

“There’s gauze in the first aid kit.”

I dug through the box and came up with a cardboard carton
.
It was empty. “You’re out. Do you want me to tear off strips from my petticoat?”

“Now that would be worth losing blood over.”

I arched a brow at him. “Too bad I’m not the petticoat type.”

He laughed, and the humor stayed in his eyes even after the movement made him wince. “I’ve got some old dishtowels in the back of the closet. We can use one of those.”

I retrieved the softest, cleanest-looking one I could find and folded it into a precise rectangle. Jackson laid the towel over his arm, and I secured a short side with athletic tape. It caught on the hairs of his arms. It was going to hurt when he took it off. I draped it over the stiches and wrapped it back around.

“A little tighter,” he said.

I pulled harder. I had to lean forward and cover the taped part with my hand to keep it in place. My fingertips brushed his skin. The intake of his breath was close enough to sound like a gasp in my ear.

“Sorry,” I whispered. He didn’t wear cologne. He smelled like his laundry detergent. The music of his breath rasped through his lungs.

“I don’t mind.”

I laid down another line of tape, smoothing it across the makeshift bandage to his skin.

“Thank you.” His voice had gone soft. I was too close to see his face; I could only see his chest rising and falling. My heart pounded.

“No problem.” I managed a weak laugh. “Any time you need me to patch you up after a knife fight, just give me a call.”

“Is this all it takes to get you to pick up the phone? I wish I would’ve known.” He gave a soft, deep chuckle that seemed to vibrate through my whole body.

I’d grown hyper-aware of all the ways I was touching him. Too many. My knees brushed his thigh. The back of his hand rested on my calf. My fingers were still settled on the bare skin of his arm, and the pads of them felt almost hot from the contact.

Jackson’s lips parted. His eyes had gone heavy-lidded and dark. And then I felt the rush of energy zinging through my fingertips, and I remembered why I shouldn’t be touching him. I scrambled back.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you.” My heart pounded from the stolen power. That was what I told myself, hoping he’d believe it.

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” I looked at the bandage I’d just helped him create. “It’s really not.”

“Mina, I don’t—”

“I’ll let you get some rest. Let me know if you need any help.” I retreated to the spare bedroom before he could finish whatever polite apology he had planned.

I put my back against the door and took deep breaths. The contact we’d had, that slight brush of skin on skin, was making me shake. I tried to ground the power like Simon had showed me, focusing on the wooden bedpost as if I were trying to learn its secrets. It grew warm under my palm, but the hectic feeling stayed with me until I slipped into a fractured, dream-filled sleep.