Technomancer (12 page)

“That’s all real,” I said. “You told me yourself that your husband vanished. Where did it happen?”

She pointed toward the bathroom. “In there, just last night. He was wearing his tux still. We’d just gotten back from the wedding. No family. I wish now we’d flown out my mom, but we didn’t. She’s a pain—it just comes naturally to her. So we got married in private, and dressed up all the way for the pictures. I wanted to send them home and make it look real to everyone back there.”

I thought about asking her where “back there” was, but it didn’t really matter. Besides, she was gushing now, telling me her story all at once. I didn’t want to interrupt and slow her down. I wanted to hear it all.

Jenna stood up and headed with halting steps toward the bathroom. I followed her discreetly. It was as if she
didn’t even see me. “Right here, see this scorch mark on the floor?” she asked. “That’s the spot where it touched down.”

“Touched down?”

“Yeah. A weird thing—a small, quiet tornado. But it wasn’t windy, really. It was as if part of the room itself was twisting—as if the colors and shapes were all bending and blending. I don’t know. It was like this spot touched some other spot in another place. Two places blurred together. The air moved and rippled like water going down a drain.”

“OK,” I said, trying to envision it. “Did something come through, or go out?”

“Just Robert. He was here one second, and then the room shifted around him and warped as that tornado shape began to form around him. I was sitting on the bed, adjusting my shoes. I was still in my wedding dress. We were going to make love in these rentals—you know, for a memory.”

“Sure,” I said, thinking that Robert had been thoroughly ripped off. I wasn’t sure if he was dead or not, but he certainly hadn’t gotten the chance to bed his bride, just as I had suspected. The thought made me angry for some reason, even though I’d never met the guy.

“He had the strangest look on his face. It hurts me, just to think about it. He tried to shout something at me, I think, but the sound was muffled, as if he was already behind a door or a wall. Then he was sucked away as if that quiet tornado had
inhaled
him.”

“Was anything left behind? Besides the scorch mark?”

“Yeah. This one shoe.”

She showed it to me. It was black, shiny. Polished with that permanent glossy surface that never seems to fade. The shoe was size eleven and would have fit my left foot, should I have been inclined to try it. I turned it this way and that, but didn’t see anything on it that indicated exposure to heat
or stress. The laces weren’t twisted. The heel wasn’t melted. Nothing.

Jenna kept talking, telling me about her panic, her tears, and the police. They’d thought she was crazy. A jilted bride with a wild, made-up story aimed at getting them to chase down her man who had obviously changed his mind and taken off on her. She claimed the hotel staff had been less dismissive. They’d looked worried, rather than embarrassed.

“I could tell they knew something,” she said. “I could tell they had seen this before, or something like it. That’s when I changed.”

“Changed?”

“From crying and scared to angry.”

I nodded. “So you went down to the casino and set out to screw them.”

“Right.”

I stared at her for a moment. The emotion in her face was obvious and I’d seen enough over the last day or two. I bought her story.

“Well,” I said. “For what it’s worth, I believe you.”

I then proceeded to tell her about my house, and the freaky thing that had burned it down. I mentioned McKesson along the way.

“McKesson?” she asked.

“Yeah, that was his name.”

She walked over to the dresser drawers and picked up a card. She handed it to me. It was Detective Jay McKesson’s card. Las Vegas Metro.

I stared at it. “Same guy.”

“He knows more than he’s letting on. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“I’m not sure what his game is,” I said, “but I do think he’s trying to figure out what is going on here, just as we are.”

“You told me you had information on my husband. What have you got?”

“I said it might be related. Now, I think it is. We have two strange events in different places. The same detective was investigating both, and he sent me here, to you, connecting the two.”

“That’s not much,” she complained.

“I know,” I said. Then I told her about Tony. I told her how he’d died in the car with me, and how I’d ended up in the hospital.

She stared, and I realized there were tears welling up in her eyes.

“Robert’s dead,” she said with certainty. “I know it now, with all these horrible things happening. I’d hoped he would just turn up somewhere, wandering the streets or the desert highways. I don’t think it’s going to happen that way.”

“We really can’t know for sure,” I said. I wanted to tell her not to give up hope, but I didn’t think I should. I’d calculated the odds and figured she was probably right.

Her head went down, her hands came up. She was racked with quiet sobs. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t really know her. I didn’t want to touch her and have her get the wrong idea. So I stood there awkwardly and muttered soothing things.

Jenna surprised me by stepping close and putting her cheek against my chest. I waited until her hands touched my sides before I gently reached up and patted her back. I stroked her hair once, then stopped myself. The scent of her perfumed body was in my face, and I felt myself attracted to her, and I began to feel protective.

“We’ll figure this out,” I said. “I promise.”

And I meant it.

Jenna pulled herself together after a few minutes. She went back to the small table and chairs and sat down. I called room service and ordered cola, coffee, and beer. I wasn’t sure which one she would want, but I figured I would drink whatever she rejected.

She was a tough young woman. Instead of falling apart, she’d taken action and tried to get back at the casino and find out what she could about her husband’s odd disappearance. I just had one question left: how had she won over and over again at cards?

Normally, I would have just assumed it was all luck. But she’d gone down to that casino on a mission, full of rage. That indicated she
knew
she was going to win. I had a suspicion how that could be true, but I sat in the chair next to her waiting for her to compose herself. Jenna’s blonde hair circled her face, which was red with emotion.

“What are you thinking?” she demanded suddenly. “Do I look silly to you?”

“Not at all.”

“Do you do this kind of thing often? Comfort grieving widows after they watch the bridal suite swallow their husbands? Does it help your blogging somehow, is that it?”

I almost laughed, but I knew it was the wrong move. “You are the first,” I said.

“Where do we go from here then?”

I frowned slightly, trying to figure an easy way to ask her about her luck at cards without seeming greedy and crass. I was saved by a knock on the door. I got up to let the bellhop in.

He looked surprised, and eyed me with a wide stare that lingered about a second too long. Maybe he thought I was the amazing Mr. Robert Townsend returned from the void. Then he noticed the tears still streaking Jenna’s face and hurried to put a silver tray loaded with drinks on the dresser. I gave him a few bucks and let the door slam behind him.

“That’s just great,” Jenna said after he’d left.

“What?”

“I’m sure he’s hurrying off to tell someone there is some guy in the crazy lady’s room.”

I shrugged. “They don’t matter. They aren’t going to find him in the lobby.”

Jenna winced at my words. I realized instantly that saying anything about not finding Robert wasn’t going to improve her mood.

“If he does turn up as suddenly and mysteriously as he vanished,” I said, “he’ll find his way back to you.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Well, if you were my wife, I’d find my way home.”

She frowned and took the coffee. I took the cue and drank the Pepsi.

“Look, there’s something I’d like to ask you about—if you are willing.”

“No promises—but name it.”

“How did you get so lucky at cards?”

Her expression changed. Her eyes closed halfway. It was a guarded look. She didn’t answer right away. “I’ll tell you, if you tell me first.”

“Tell you what?”

“Come on. Tell me again, how did you wreck that big slot machine?”

“Oh, that,” I said. “I turned the metal gears inside to rubber, then I twisted up its guts when I pulled the handle all the way down.”

She stared at me. “What did you use?”

Right then, I knew she had an object. She would have asked
how
I’d done it otherwise. She knew these effects were managed with the help of a focusing object.

“I played this game as a kid,” I said. “You show me yours first.”

She smiled despite herself. In a flash of my true memory, I recalled a girlfriend once telling me I was so funny I could make a corpse laugh. I wasn’t sure at this point whether that was a compliment or not. I couldn’t recall the girlfriend’s face, but I could hear her voice.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“I was just remembering something,” I said. She was leaning on the table with her elbows now. The tears were gone, but her face was a little puffy and her makeup had run. I saw she was looking down at her hands, toying with her wedding ring.

“It’s the ring, isn’t it?” I asked quietly.

“Dammit,” she said, slipping her hand under the table.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to take it or tell anyone.”

“Robert told me never to let anyone know about it. No one. And he told me never to abuse it the way I did at the casino. I’m an idiot. These places have lists, you know. They won’t let me walk in the door if I get on those lists.”

I nodded slowly. They did have lists. Once you were marked as a card-counter or some other kind of cheat, they hustled you back out the second you walked in—whether they knew how you did it or not.

“How does it work?” I asked.

“He told me not to tell anyone anything.”

“I understand, but I already know most of it, and we’re supposed to be exchanging information.”

She chewed her lip. Her hand and the ring were under the table. “You know what I’ve got. You show me yours now.”

I held back the funny responses that bubbled into my mind. I slowly reached into my pocket and took out Tony Montoro’s sunglasses. I laid them on the table.

Jenna scoffed, looking at them. “They’re plastic,” she said. “That can’t be one of the objects.”

“Why not?”

She leaned back and crossed her arms under her breasts. She frowned at me. “You’ve been full of crap this entire time, haven’t you? You don’t really know anything, do you? You had me going.”

“Look,” I said. “These are Tony’s glasses, the guy I told you about. His object.”

Her head tilted suspiciously. Her eyes were narrow, calculating. “You are supposed to run that blog—but you don’t know crap about what you’re writing about, do you?”

“I suppose not. Now, clue me in.”

She shook her head and lifted the ring back into my sight. “See this?” she said, showing me the thin gold loop with a single marquis-cut diamond in the setting. “You can’t break this. You can’t break any of the objects.”

I blinked at her, then looked down toward my pathetic plastic sunglasses. “Can you mark them up?” I asked.

“No. Not according to Robert.”

“Hmm,” I said. I got up and went into her bathroom.

“What are you doing?” she called after me.

I came back in a moment with a pair of gold-plated nail clippers.

“Those are mine,” she snapped.

“I’m not selling them online,” I said. “I’m going to conduct an experiment.”

“Oh,” she said, catching on.

I sat at the table, took the sunglasses, and tried to snip the tip off one of the arms. I clipped at the final hockey-stick-shaped hook that went over the ear. I couldn’t do it, however. It was as if I were trying to cut into a sheet of steel. After a bit of grunting and squeezing, I gave up.

“Not a mark,” I said.

“Let me try,” she said. After I handed over the sunglasses and the clippers, I felt a twinge of worry as she went at them. She couldn’t mark them either. Not even a crease.

“I didn’t think plastic could be unbreakable,” she said, staring at them in defeat.

“Talk to me about the process. Why do these things exist?”

Jenna shook her head. “I don’t know much—just what Robert told me. At some point—back in the sixties, I think, these objects were made. Some say they are still being made today, but less often. This one looks newer than most. Once they become objects, they can’t be damaged.”

“What if you put them into acid or a volcano?”

“According to Robert,” she said, shaking her head, “nothing happens.”

I retrieved my sunglasses and tucked them away. She slid her hand back off the table, hiding her ring again. So much for building trust.

“OK,” I said, “how does yours work?”

“I don’t know that. I only know what the ring does.”

“Can you give me a hint, then?”

“Well, it just makes you lucky. Whatever you want tends to happen.”