Twisted Miracles (28 page)

The question was how.

I couldn’t do it in the city. Too many people, too many chances I’d hurt someone. I was nervous enough about having Shane and Lionel around. A block full of normals was out of the question. We had to find a way to get him out of New Orleans.

“What about Geary?” I said. “We could make him call, say he needs to meet.”

“Risky,” Shane said. “He slips out of control for a second, and we end up tipping Ryan off.” We’d managed to keep Geary quiet with threats and duct tape so far, but I was looking forward to getting rid of him.

“I don’t want to wait until Friday.” That was when Ryan planned to drop off his next “source.”

“We may not have a choice,” Shane said. “Come on, let’s try this again.”

I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck. We were in the old kitchen out back, and I was practicing. If I was going to drain Ryan, I needed to be sure I could block his powers, and Shane had volunteered to be my guinea pig.

“Ready?” he said.

“You’re not supposed to tip me off. Just do it.”

He shrugged, and a blast of telekinetic force hit me in the chest and flung me to the ground. I levered myself up on my elbows and glared. “Try that again.”

He grinned, but this time I was ready for him. I dove into his mind just as he reached out to mindmove. The impulses surging through his brain shifted as he prepared to use his shadowmind, and some instinctive part of my power knew how to stop it. I was a moment away from doing it when I faltered. What if I hurt him, did something permanent? Shane stopped himself before he struck.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

I sat up and leaned on my knees. “Maybe you aren’t the best person for me to practice on.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He came and sat on the floor in front of me, bracketing my body with his legs. “Not so long ago you might have wanted him to attack you.”

I could do it, I realized. I could corner him and let him pull my powers out of me. I’d never have to worry again about hurting someone by accident. I could live like a normal. It was what I’d wanted ever since I’d killed Andrew.

“I wouldn’t let him,” I said. “I know I said that’s what I wanted, but...”

“Things have changed?”

“Yeah.” Things had changed a lot.

“You know—” Shane began, but he stopped short. We both heard it. A keening, directionless, mental wail. Lionel.

We were both up in the next moment, running and fumbling through the crooked, creaking door. Bruce met us on the patio, out of breath.

“Bruce, what happened, where’s Lionel?”

“It’s Mac. It’s Mac.” He paused, breathing hard. “He’s dead.”

Cold washed over me. I felt my fist clench as if it wasn’t a part of my body. “Where is he?”

Bruce rubbed his face. “Janine’s got him at Maywood Funeral Home down on Canal. “Wake’ll be tomorrow.”

“Not him,” I said. “Ryan.”

* * *

Shane wouldn’t let me go alone, not even when I told him it was more dangerous with him than without him.

“Telekinesis isn’t the only weapon he has,” Shane said, and took Lionel’s handgun out of the locked cabinet.

He might as well have brought a spatula. Ryan was gone. Not at the Tooleys, not at his own place in Metairie. I reached out for him, but if he was in the city, he was blocking me somehow. After exhaustively searching, we went back to the B&B. We found Lionel in the old detached kitchen, dumping boxes of newspapers into a garbage bin. We could both feel the unbearable pressure of his guilt. I wanted to tell him if it was anyone’s fault, it was mine. I should’ve had enough control to take Ryan out at the bar. But I knew Lionel. That would only make him take it on himself even more.

“It’s not your fault,” Shane said before I could stop him.

Lionel looked up, eyes fierce. “Go make sure the guests are all right.” He dumped another load of newspapers. The newsprint crumbled and exploded up in a puff of moldy dust.

“Uncle Lionel—”

“I said go.”

I took Shane’s hand and tugged until he moved. When we got to the main kitchen, he slumped against the wall. “Let me go back out to him. He’s hurting.”

I shook my head. “He needs to be alone right now.” I took his hand and pressed my thumb into his palm. “Trust me.”

Shane put his hand on the back of my neck and rested his forehead against mine. “Okay. Okay.”

Shane and I went to the wake alone. We made Lionel’s excuses, saying he was too grief-stricken to leave the house, that Bruce was with him. It was true, but we could’ve said anything to Janine. She was past caring, accepting our hugs like an overwashed stuffed animal, limp and lifeless.

Ryan wasn’t at the wake. He wasn’t at the funeral the morning after. I heard various stories from the converters who came. He was stuck out on the rigs, the winds too high for helicopters to take off. He was out on a hunting trip and no one could get in touch with him. He was too ashamed to show his face because he and Mac had fought the day he died. I suspected a grain of truth in the last one, and my remaining reluctance to drain him evaporated.

Back at the B&B, we went through the motions of cleaning the rooms and talking to the guests, but I had to force myself to smile, remind myself to laugh at their jokes. More than half of my mind was focused totally on Ryan, convinced it would only take one slip-up, one pull for me to zero in on his location. But Friday came before he did.

* * *

I didn’t expect Lionel to come. Since the evening in the old kitchen, the only person he’d spoken to was Bruce. Shane and I gave him his space, spending most of our time guarding Geary’s room and practicing. So I was surprised when we went out to the garage on Friday evening and found Lionel waiting for us next to Shane’s Camaro.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “We’ll be fine.” I didn’t know if it was true. It seemed like the thing to say.

“Yes, I do,” Lionel said, and he got into the back seat.

We made it to Briny Point just before sunset. Shane parked his car on a dirt road a mile away from the church, and we walked the rest of the way, keeping off the main road when we could. The church was surrounded by woods on the southern side, and we hid as well as we could in the underbrush.

Plenty of trucks passed by between sunset and midnight, but we all knew right away when it was him. I could feel his presence—that was easy enough—but it was the jolt of fear from his passenger that really tipped me off. He’d kidnapped a replacement for Annabeth, and whomever he had was freaking out in the covered truck bed.

Ryan drove around behind the church and backed up to the door we’d gone through with Maryanne. He got out, slammed the door and spit dip onto the ground.

“Now?” Shane whispered.

“Not yet.”

Ryan lifted the truck bed cover wide, and a man bound hand and foot rose out of the back. He struggled and twisted in midair, eyes rolling with fear. His mouth was sealed with duct tape just like Annabeth’s had been.

Ryan let him fall to the ground in a heap. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t have a choice.”

His captive kicked troughs in the dirt while Ryan unlocked the back door.

“It won’t do any good. You’re better off saving your strength.”

“Now?” Shane whispered again.

“Now.”

We all three stood up, but I waved the men back. This first part was for me to do alone, if it could be done. I walked forward and stood in the glow of the yellow streetlight. It took a few heartbeats for Ryan to see me.

“Cass?” He was genuinely shocked. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He stepped forward, more curious than alarmed.

“Hi, Ryan.” I couldn’t keep the regret out of my voice. I already knew how this was going to end.

He glanced down at the bound man and back at me, and I knew he’d decided to kill me. That he thought it would be easy. “Why are you here—did you follow me?”

“I knew you were coming.” I stepped forward. “I waited for you.”

His features darkened as he figured it out. “That night at the bar. That’s what you were doing in my head?”

I didn’t have time to prepare before his power hit me in the chest and knocked me back. It was an instinctive response, barely conscious. His tied-up captive groaned through the duct tape.

“Fucking cocktease.” He advanced on me. “How long have you known?”

I stood my ground, panting. “Does it matter?”

“I guess not.” He stopped a foot away from me. “You should’ve stayed out of it.” Regret flashed briefly through him. “I’m sorry, Cass,” he said, and closed his eyes. If I had any hope of saving him, I had to stop him now.

“I know what you’re about to do.”

He raised his head to stare at me, eyes narrowed.

“I can do it, too.”

For a moment, he looked astonished. Then he spat on the ground. Brown tobacco. “You’re lying.” But his shadowmind stayed quiet.

I only had a moment before he acted. There was nothing I could say that would convince him—I had to demonstrate. I had to show him it could be different.

Shane and Lionel. The man on the ground. Ryan. I had plenty of sources to pull from, and even thinking about it, my shadowmind strained for them. There was no raging campfire for me to draw from, no rush of wind or current. The air was still and the lake was a mile away. I cast out with my powers and found the stand of oaks on the far side of the church. A few hundred years old, those trees. I pulled.

There was a groan of creaking metal and twisting plastic, and Ryan’s truck rose a foot off the ground. Glass shattered in one of the windows as the frame warped under the pressure of my mental grip. Ryan stared at it and stepped back, gaping. I let it fall with a crash.

“Holy fuck.” He moved toward me. “I thought...” He shook his head. The tangle of wonder in his mind was painful in its familiarity. Like me, he’d thought he was alone. Like me, he’d never had a name for what he was. He’d done terrible things, but so had I. Maybe he wasn’t past help.

“You’re not the only one.” I moved closer still. I was almost touching him. “I can help you learn to control it. You don’t have to take power from him.” My gaze darted to the man on the ground. He was listening, terrified. “You don’t have to do this anymore.”

Ryan’s eyes met mine, and I let my presence seep into his head, showing him how I’d learned to deflect my pulls to my surroundings. “
I
know how it feels
,” I said, and I thought, deliberately, of Andrew Allston. “
I
understand what you went through.
” For an instant, hope flared in his eyes. Then they went hard.

“You don’t think I tried to stop?” He looked at the man and laughed. “You’ll see—it gets into your blood.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “It gets harder. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. I can help you. Your father—”

“Man,
fuck
my father.” He clenched his hands into fists. “I did nothing but help him out—too stupid to keep his job—I’ve kept them afloat for years now. And he comes to me, accuses me of dealing drugs!” He tried to laugh, but I could feel the way tears caught in his throat. In his head he was thinking
stupid old man
,
couldn’t leave it alone
,
stupid old man
,
made me have to kill him
. “Go home, Cass. Go home to Shane and forget you saw me here.”

“It’s too late for that.” Shane and Lionel walked into view behind me.

“Ryan,” Lionel said, keeping his voice even, “son, just let that man go, and we’ll go back to my place and talk it over. We can help you get out of this.”

Ryan laughed, a dark sound, and anger washed over his features. “You’re gonna get my parents out of a hundred grand in debt? You’re gonna take care of the medical bills and the credit card bills? The goddamn shopping network bills? Fuck you.”

He held out a hand, and I knew what he was going to try next. I could hear him debating in his head, wondering who he should take out first, then deciding.
Should have killed him that night at the B&B
,
anyway.
He thrilled with the anticipation of pulling from a converter. The urge overpowered everything—guilt, friendship. Spidersilk-thin lines of power started to seep out of Shane.

“
No.
” I threw up my gift against his. He was strong, but I was stronger. It was like putting my hand against the spray of water from a garden hose. Power ricocheted off into the trees around us, too diffuse to be effective, and Ryan snatched his hand back, confused.

I let my power reach for him. The first strand connected, and I could tell when he felt it. He jerked away. “Last chance,” I said, and I felt like crying. “Let us help you.”

He stopped trying to pull from Shane, and for a moment I thought we’d gotten through to him. Then he said, “What the hell makes you think I want your help?” and there was a gun in his hand.

He pointed it at my chest. “You know how to control it? Can you stop a bullet? Without hurting your boyfriend?” He jerked the gun toward Shane and trained it back on me again.

“Ryan,” Lionel said, “you don’t want to do this.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Ryan said, and he pulled the trigger.

It felt like years passed. Some part of my brain urged me to move. It seemed like I had all the time in the world to step aside as the bullet came at me, but I couldn’t make my legs move. There was time for me to regret that I hadn’t told Shane goodbye, for me to think,
not yet
, and then I was on the ground.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I rubbed my head. There was no pain. Was this what head wounds were like? Was I going to lose vision next, or my hearing? I ran my hands over my face, waiting for something to snap me out of my body. Then I looked up and saw blood on Shane’s shirt.

For a moment I didn’t realize what I was seeing. Shane staggered backward a step and hit his knees, his hand coming up to a hole in his chest. Blood gushed through his fingers.

“I’m okay,” he said, smiling. His eyes were glazed. “Everything’s gonna be fine, Cassie.” Then he slumped sideways onto the ground.

“No!” I screamed, and I felt Lionel’s roar of grief all the way to my bones. Ryan cocked the gun.