Poisoned Pearls (8 page)

“Greetings, Val-Father,” Loki called as he gracefully slid
off his horse. He wore a skeletal mask made of black iron, the mouth twisted
into a chilling grin. His armor showed the glory of the battle, spattered with
blood and gore.

He looked like death come calling.

“Maybe I should call you that, this day,” Odin said, his
back stiffening. “Father of the slain.”

Loki shrugged. “We both have many slain today,” he pointed
out.

“True. But you have not as many as I,” Odin said formally.

“I will not ask for more acknowledgment than that,” Loki
said with a grin. “Though I would love to hear you eat more crow, calling me
the better warrior.”

“Never,” Odin said. “Even at the end of things, we both
fail.” Why was he thinking so much of the twilight? It wasn’t imminent. They
hadn’t had three winters without the sun, three summers of failing crops.

“We shall see,” Loki said. “When the time comes for the
world to renew itself, maybe we’ll both be left standing at the end.”

Odin shook his head. No, fate could not be changed. He’d be
swallowed by the great wolf, then avenged by his son, who would live on past
the twilight.

Sleipnir
came up from behind Odin.
He pushed his soft snout against Odin’s shoulder, saying hello. Today, the
great eight-legged steed took on Loki’s colors, with a soot-black coat and
red-tinged hooves, his eyes as white as if covered by cataracts.

Was the great horse not happy to see his parent? Or did he
blind himself so he wouldn’t see the deeds Loki got up to while riding him?

Odin wouldn’t break this oath, however, and told
Sleipnir
, “Go with Loki. Do as he bids, for the next
fortnight.”

“Oh, I won’t actually need that long,” Loki said casually.
“I need only three days.”

“What do you intend to do?” Odin asked. Was he better off
not knowing?

“Going to visit my other children,” Loki admitted as
Sleipnir
nuzzled at his shoulder. “The great serpent. The
frost giants. Others.”

Was Loki trying to start the great war? To bring the giants
in to the fight? It was one of the signs.

Odin would have to consult with the other gods. See if they
knew what Loki was up to.

“Feel free to use my steed in exchange,” Loki said,
graciously calling the animal closer.

Odin shuddered. The horse stank of Loki’s witchcraft, of
blood and the musk of sex. “Your generosity knows no bounds,” Odin said dryly.

What was the trickster up to?
Sleipnir
bounded away even before the dead could be raised from the great field. They
would gather later in Loki’s hall, to carouse and drink and celebrate their
victory.

Tonight, there would be no celebrating in Odin’s hall. There
needed to be talk, and analysis, and strategies set instead.

Loki was up to something. Something not good. Something
worse than usual. Odin just knew it.

If only he could figure out what it was before it was too
late and the Twilight Battle had begun.

***

The VA hospital looked the same on the outside as it always
did: cold white walls four stories high, sterile, full of
order
. The flags out front were at half-mast, though Hunter
couldn’t remember a time when they weren’t. Too many died, all the time. The
concrete sidewalk looked brown and wet. It had been swept clean with military
precision, a gently curving ribbon cutting through the snow piled on either
side, leading to dark glass doors.

Hunter still stood on the sidewalk outside, examining the
building minutely, seeking changes. Was it safe? Or, at least, safe enough for
him to go in?

No snipers rested on the roof. No individuals lay patient
and buried under the snow, waiting to tackle him when he got close enough. No
guard hid behind the sharp corners of the building.

Hunter took another deep breath of the biting cold and
marched into the lion’s den.

The receptionist was professional yet friendly, taking
Hunter’s information and assigning him a number. If it had been a little less
frigid outside, Hunter would have waited there, rather than the cheesy lounge.

However, today, Hunter needed to
pass
. While he could have waited in the cold without it affecting
him too much, it would have been commented on. Noted.

A large aquarium with blue-tinted water and black-and-white striped
fish made up the third wall of the lounge. Hunter supposed it was there to be
soothing. The walls were painted an orange-brown, like oak leaves just as they
turned. The chairs had smooth, blocky, light wood arms and fabric that matched
the walls. They lined the walls as well, with nothing in the center, no place
where a soldier had to sit with his back unprotected.

Hunter sat in his seat, carefully at attention. He dialed up
the range on his senses, keeping track of everyone coming through the door,
walking through the halls behind him, relying on his ears and nose instead of
his eyes. Hearing the conversations, the footsteps, smelling the sharp
chemicals and bleach. He couldn’t look around, over his shoulder. Had to
pass
.

Two other vets waited as well. One seemed in better shape
than Hunter, in a clean shirt and trousers, his hands resting on a cane. The
other seemed in worse shape, his hair hanging long and greasy across his
forehead, his eyes bugged out. Twitchy.

But he wasn’t a threat—Hunter knew he could take him.
The guy wasn’t in shape, not like Hunter.

Before the other two were called back, a nurse called
Hunter’s name. She introduced herself as Trisha—a short, overweight black
woman with hair tightly braided to show the curve of her skull. Her scrubs had
a white background with Hawaiian palm trees, pineapples, and ukuleles on them.

Hunter stood patiently while she weighed him in the hallway
(same weight as always) then followed her back to an examination room.
 

The room looked like the hundreds of others Hunter had been
in: examination table with paper sheet, two chairs in the corner, sink and
counter in the other. Instruments hung on the walls—all ordinary, nothing
new. The standing lamp looked a little bigger, but it was within the normal
parameters. The standing desk Trisha used wasn’t standard in all the rooms,
however, Hunter had seen them enough times to not be spooked.

“So what brings you in today?” Trisha asked as she logged
into her laptop.

“Usual monthly checkup,” Hunter told her. He gave her a
smile, as he knew he should.

“Very good,” Trisha said. “You’ve come in regularly now for
the last five months. Good job.”

Really? Hunter hadn’t tracked that it had been so regular
recently.

He’d have to change his pattern soon.

Trisha took his temperature and blood pressure, then asked
for a drop of blood.

Hunter examined the lancing device Trisha handed him. It was
still in its sterile wrapper, smaller than his pinky finger, but that didn’t
mean anything. It could still be laced with something. It only smelled of
paper, though, crackled under his finger when he pressed against it. His area
of knowing didn’t show him anything untoward happening, but even he knew that
his powers weren’t always reliable.

“All right,” Hunter said, handing the lancing device back to
Trish. At least she’d asked. He supposed it was in his chart that they needed
to ask permission, and not just come at him, like that one nurse had.

‘Thank you,” Trisha said, pricking him quickly and gathering
up two drops.

“You’ll find traces of PHS-370,” Hunter told her. “Or the
street equivalent.”

Trisha merely nodded.

This one was well trained, not to react to that.

“But you already knew that, right? Because of the spy you
have, following me?” Hunter asked, aiming for innocent.

He knew this wasn’t
passing
.
But this was the reason he’d come in. To find out information about Josh.

Trisha gave Hunter a hard look. “There’s nobody following
you. No spy.”

“Of course,” Hunter said, nodding, his tone indicating just
how much he believed her.

Trisha gave a great sigh. “I’m not supposed to do this. But
you’ve been a decent guy. Let me show you.” She pulled over her computer laptop
and showed Hunter his file.

Did he really look like that? So skinny, so white, with blue
eyes looking so scared?

“Now, you see that?” Trisha asked, pointing to a large DNR
in one corner. “That doesn’t just mean
do
not resuscitate.
It’s also a huge warning to not engage.”

Hunter nodded. It was brilliantly done, hiding in plain sight.
The letters must be in a different font or something to let the nursing staff
know.

“So no one is following you. No one is engaging you,” Trisha
reassured him. “And if you think someone is, you should talk to one of the
doctors.”

“No, nurse, I was just testing you,” Hunter said, reassuring
her. “There’s no one following me. No one spying on me. I live a regular life
these days. I just miss the excitement sometimes, you know?”

Trisha chuckled. “Oh, I hear you. Now, let me run these
results and I’ll get you out of here.”

“Thank you,” Hunter said sincerely.

The government wasn’t tracking him.

Which meant that Josh was something much, much worse.

A corporate spy.

Maybe my luck was changing. I actually got to sleep all the
way through to my alarm. Of course it rang too damned early—I could have
really used another few hours of shut-eye.

Didn’t take me long, though, to get my feet back under me.
My stomach was sore to the touch and bruised—was going to have to lay off
the crunches for a while. Not like I exercised regularly. Or at all. But it
didn’t really hurt to breathe anymore, and as long as I was careful, I wouldn’t
feel it at all.

Of course, after standing all day at the shop I might be
singing a different tune. For now, I told myself to suck it up.

I wasn’t normally the cautious type.
Jump in with both feet
was generally my motto. However, that
afternoon, I sent a text to Sam, with the single word, “Safe.” Then I promptly
blocked her number so she couldn’t call or text back.

What can I say? Sometimes I was a bitch like that.

My luck continued, and I made it to work without being
hassled by the cops, angry drug dealers, or crazy-ass vets. I knew it was going
to run out sooner or later, I was just thankful for every minute that it seemed
to stick with me.

Amy was working the shift before mine. She wasn’t my
favorite person, though she was generous with her smokes.

I’d always wondered what her deal was. She seemed to be
playing a part. She had a horsey laugh, round cheeks, freaky pale gray eyes,
and if she’d dressed better, could have been mistaken for someone’s cool
grandma.

Instead, she wore leggings that were ten years too young for
her, a red curly wig that would have fit well in a hooker’s closet, and always
tried too hard to be hip.

Customers loved her, though. The shy girls who came into the
shop would ask her for advice, the tough guys would lose their bluster and
laugh with her. Stupid jocks who tried to shock her (or me, for that matter)
would generally find themselves blushing from her bluntness.

“¿
Que
pasa
,
alamasa
?
” Amy said when she saw me come in.

I mean, who said those kinds of things?

The store hadn’t changed since the previous night: light
classic rock played in the background instead of some stupid Christmas songs,
the condoms waved from where they were tied to the table like floppy hands, the
damned lights still buzzed overhead, and the linoleum floor was still that
dingy gray.

But I was feeling all kinds of sentimental that afternoon,
and thought it looked kind of homey.

I figured Amy would say something about the orders that had
piled up from the previous night, but she scooted on out of the store pretty
damned quickly.

So I had the place to myself, some peace and quiet.

Of course, it couldn’t last.

Not ten minutes after Amy left, Sam came in, her heels
clicking on the floor. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t happy to see her,
though I sure as hell didn’t smile or light up or some stupid shit like that. I
scowled, instead.

Particularly when Ferguson came in directly after her.

But at least it was only the pair of them, no uniforms with
them. I figured that meant my civil liberties weren’t about to be violated,
that they weren’t there to arrest me.

Yet.

“Ms. Lewis,” Ferguson said as he pushed past Sam and came up
to the counter. “Good to see you’re safe.”

“Thank you for your concern,” I told him brightly. “I was
afraid for my life when that crazy vet grabbed me and forced me into that car,”
I added.

Might as well lay it on as thick as I could.

“What happened?” Sam asked. She at least sounded concerned.

“Ms. Lewis was evading questioning,” Ferguson supplied.

I snorted. “Yeah, right. By being kidnapped by a strung-out
junkie who I’d never met before.”

“Are you all right?” Sam asked, looking at me, then glaring
at Ferguson.

“I’m fine, thank you for asking,” I added, also glaring at
Ferguson.

Two women could always naturally, automatically, form an
alliance against a single male. Most men just never seemed to appreciate just
how much shit they were actually in.

Ferguson looked from Sam to myself, then proceeded to drill
me. “So what were you doing last night in northern Minneapolis?”

“Decided to go for a long walk,” I told him. “Clear my head.
Grieve for my friend.”

“Don’t start. We followed you. You were driving Kyle
Magnusson’s car,” Ferguson growled.

“Did you see me get in or out of his car?” I asked. “Or did
you just have a tracker in Kyle’s car, that someone happened to drive up
there?”

Ferguson didn’t reply.

“See, I just happened to be in the area. Circumstantial
evidence,” I pointed out.

“It was you,” Ferguson said.

I shrugged. “What did you want to ask me about, Detective?”

“Why were you in that neighborhood at that time of night?
Were you warning
Csaba
the drug dealer?” Ferguson
asked.

“I was just taking a long walk, clearing my head, mourning
for my friend,” I explained. “I didn’t know
Csaba
lived in that neighborhood.” I doubted my fingerprints would be found
there—I hadn’t touched anything, mainly from fear of contamination, not
because I was being smart or something.

“Do you think I was there?” I asked, turning to ask Sam.

She shook her perfect hair. She wore the same long mink
coat, and her makeup was still immaculate. I really wanted to see what it would
take to muss her, how she would look after a long night of fucking.

“I didn’t go to the scene,” she said. “Just a raid.”

“What were you looking for at this drug dealer’s house?” I
asked Ferguson.

Ferguson scowled at me. “Kyle probably died of an overdose
of some new street drug,” he said. “We haven’t identified what it is yet.”

Sam pressed her lips together. She obviously disagreed.

“I don’t know about any new drug,” I told Ferguson. “I still
think it’s a john who’s got it out for sex workers, who’s got his own private
stash. You won’t find it at some random drug dealer’s house. Probably
manufactures it on his own.”

“Really,” Ferguson said. “What else do you know about this
guy?”

I held up my hands, leaning back from the edge of the
counter. “Pure speculation on my part. But I think it’s a single guy.” I didn’t
know why I felt that way, but I was sure of it.

Call it intuition. Because I didn’t have any abilities. Pure
mundane here.

Sam nodded slowly. “What was your PADT score?”

“Don’t remember,” I lied breezily.

“You weren’t tested,” Sam said slowly.

Damn it. She wasn’t supposed to be able to figure out those
sorts of things. She was just a post-cog. I was a better liar than that. Or so
I thought.

“Doesn’t matter,” I told her.

“It is every citizen’s duty to be tested,” Ferguson said
seriously.

Shit. Did he sleep at attention?

“I’ll do it over the holidays,” I promised vaguely.

Sam narrowed her eyes at me. “You regularly tell yourself
that you have no abilities, don’t you? That you’re one-hundred-percent
mundane.”

I pulled back further from her. Those were the exact words I
used, but I’d never said them out loud. And I wasn’t about to admit that to her
as well.

“
Naw
, I do wonder, sometimes.
Think about how cool it would be.”

“No, you don’t,” Sam said. “It’s a defense mechanism that
all of the
blessed
have. The children
always deny that they have any abilities. It’s a way of fitting in, of blending
with the crowd. No one who has abilities ever admits to them at first.”

“Even if I did have abilities, which I don’t, it’s too late
for the training anyway,” I pointed out.

“You’re only twenty-three years old,” Sam said seriously.
“It isn’t too late.”

How did she know how old I was? She was with the cops, so
she did have access to my records. Still, that she knew my age so well
unsettled me.

“You know, if you got tested and had some proven abilities,
your theory of a single john might hold more water,” Ferguson pointed out. “I’d
be a lot more willing to listen to you.”

“Bullshit,” I told him. “You have your mind made up that
it’s some random street drug. There isn’t anything I can say that would change
your opinion.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Get yourself tested. Otherwise
I will find a reason to arrest you, haul your ass down to the jail, and make
you go through testing there.”

Carrie and Jacob—two of the street kids I used to hang
with—swore that they were given PA testing against their will at the
holding center. Most of us didn’t believe them. The cops couldn’t do that.

Could they?

“Your mom always thought you had abilities,” Sam told me as
she buttoned up her coat.

“What?” I asked. How did she know that? It was why my mother
had named me Cassandra, so that I’d have some sort of ability. Maybe it was
just because of my name, that Sam had guessed that.

“See you soon,” Ferguson said as he held open the door for
Sam. A moment later, he was still there, still holding open the door. Letting
another woman into the shop.

I stared at the new figure. God
damn
it. Why had Sam overstepped her bounds that way?

Either that, or maybe she had recognized me, back in that
alley, when she’d first seen me.

I couldn’t run away. No place in the shop I could hide.

I’d rather face
Csaba
and Dusty in
a fighting mood, take my punches from them.

There was nothing I could do but greet her.

“Hello, Mom.”

***

Mom hadn’t changed much in the last seven years since I’d
seen her. She was still tall, blond, with an upswept hairdo, looking like a Nordic
ice queen. Her nose was naturally upturned; it didn’t come from her always
looking down on people. Pale blue eyes glanced around the shop with obvious
disdain. She’d been born to money. Had it been true love that had caused her to
“slum it” with Dad? Or had he been yet another path to power?

She wore a white fur, probably ermine. Her boots were at
least appropriate, though they probably cost more than what I made in a month.
Or two.

“Cassandra,” Mom said after she’d wrinkled her nose at the
display of condoms, the sexy elf costumes, and the holiday dongs. “Of course
you’d work at a sex shop.”

“Good to see you too, Mom,” I told her, stung. Did she
really believe that because I was a lesbian I was also some kind of sex addict?

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said frostily. “How are
you?” she added, determinedly chipper.

“I’m fine, Mom. Thanks for asking. How are you?” I must
admit, I was curious. I’d seen her on the news a couple of times, once for her
charity work, another time for her failed Senate run. But that had also been
four years ago.

“Staying busy. I run three charities, now, and am on the
board of several others.”

I wondered if one or more of them was to “pray kids
straight.” “That’s nice,” I told her. “Is there anything you’re looking for?
Some kind of gift for your many charities?”
We
have the best lubes. Might help you remove that stick from your ass.

“Cassandra,” Mom sighed. “I did not come here to listen to
your abuse.”

“Then why did you come, Mom?” I asked, curious. “If it
wasn’t to wish your only child well and to have a Merry Christmas?”

“Samantha contacted me,” Mom admitted.

That bitch. I was glad I’d already blocked her number from
my phone.

“She said you were in trouble with the police.”

I shrugged. “Not really. A friend of mine was killed behind
the store.” Still felt weird to say it out loud. Wasn’t about to admit that to
the ice queen, though.

“Samantha said you were involved,” Mom pointed out.

“I wasn’t,” I told her, crossing my arms over my chest. “I
swear to you. I was here, in the shop, the whole time.”

Why was I defending myself to her? I didn’t care what she
thought. My mother had lost her right to judge me when she’d kicked me out of
the house.

“I believe you,” Mom said softly. “If you’d been there, you
would have tried to stop it from happening. You were always too noble, too
brave. More interested in helping your friends than yourself.”

“I don’t think those are bad qualities,” I told her. It was
all true. I’d always had my friends’ backs, whether they had mine or not.

“I know, dear.” Mom gave me a sad smile.

The silence grew between us, somewhere between comfortable
and sticky.

“Is there anything else?” I finally asked. We’d never really
had that much to say to each other. Dad had been the go-between.

Too bad he’d been killed in a car accident about the time
I’d turned fifteen.

“You know you can always call on me if you’re in real
trouble,” Mom said.

I nodded. I never,
ever
would use that escape hatch, but if I was honest with myself, I did know,
somewhere in the back of my head, that I did have her as a kind of a
get-out-of-jail-free card.

“At least for a while,” Mom added.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Was Mom really going to
completely cut me off? Again?

“I’m moving,” she said bluntly. “The winters here are
getting to be too much. It was your father who was born here, and who wanted to
stay here. This was never my home.”

That much I knew. But Dad’s parents had died soon after he
had, his brother had moved away, and I had no other cousins in state.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Florida,” Mom said. “The heat in the summers is beastly,
but I may have another chance at office there.”

“Where they can’t easily get at your queer daughter who
works in a sex & toy shop?” I asked bitterly. I didn’t know if she blamed
me for her Senate defeat, but I had always assumed she had, that she believed
that I was part of why she hadn’t been elected.