My saliva went sour and my stomach lurched. I felt the tears beginning to pool behind my eyes, but I wouldn't give Ophelia the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I breathed deeply, blinked away the tears.
Face it, Sophie. You're second best. Again. First Daddy, and now Alex. Sorry, sis. Stings a little bit, I bet, huh? Poor thing. Really, it would be easier for everyone if you just ...
“No.” I gritted my teeth.
Ophelia started to hum softly, an eerie unnatural lullaby running through my mind.
“Sophie, don't let her get to you. Alex, we have to do something. Sophie's going crazy.”
Alex's voice was even. “Ophelia is dangerous and as long as she can get into your head, Lawson, we're at her mercy. You've got to try to block her out.”
“Great. So now we have to get Ophelia out of my head and the Vessel out from my ... wherever it is. Geez. What else is in me?” I had an image of my empty skin, heaped on the floor in front of me.
Alex took my hand. “Okay, Sophie, I need you to think. There is always something that we think about, sometimes when we concentrate hard enough or go somewhere where we can't let anything else into our mind.”
“Like ... having a one-track mind?”
“I guess. Is there something you can think about that is all consuming?”
Nina raised her hand, grinning salaciously. “I've got mine.”
I clamped my eyes shut and was pleasantly surprised when my mind rolled out a blank, black canvas. But little by little, at the edge of my periphery, images rolled in. There was Ophelia, and when I saw her in my mind's eye I felt myself stiffen sharply. I worked to push her out and focus on something else when I felt a tightness at my throat, a deep pressure ringing my neck. I coughed, feeling the prick of the individual hairs of rope as they scratched my skin, tightening, making it hard to breathe. I felt the rope as it rolled upward as though someone wereâwereâhanging it? Tears sprang to my eyes and I opened them, clawing at the imaginary rope around my neck, gasping. I blinked, feeling the stolid air in the car, Nina and Alex's eyes on me, swimming with concern.
“Sophie?” Nina asked.
“I'm okay,” I lied, opening the back window and relishing the cool wind crashing over me. “I'm okay.”
Alex took my hand when we got back to the apartment. He squeezed it gently. “Are you sure you're okay? In the car you wereâ”
“It was just a lot to take in,” I said with a calculated sigh. “I'm okay, really.”
Alex's eyes were intent on mine and I could tell he wasn't convinced. I threw in a smile filled with forced happiness. “Really.”
“Do you need me to stay? We could talk about thisâmake some coffee, figure out some sort of plan?”
“That's very Dr. Oz of you, but, to be honest, I just want to go to sleep. Besides, the fate of the world might hang in the balance, but polyester pants wait for no one. I just want to go to sleep for a little whileâjust for a little whileâbefore I have to face my new job.” And before I had to face my new family.
Chapter Nineteen
My new position at People's Pants may not have offered a 401(k), but it did offer hour upon hour of mind-numbing, repetitive duty. I worked to keep my mind focused on the People's Pantsâapproved tri-fold technique and not on the events of last nightâparticularly, that my family tree seemed to be getting bogged down with more and more rotten fruit. I had slunk into my bedroom last night feeling betrayed and alone. Ophelia had known about me, but I hadn't known about her. Who else did?
I folded another pair of pants and the silver button fly caught my eye. Four shiny buttons. My mouth went dry and I quickly glanced around, then hunched closer to the pants. “Grandma?”
I heard the snap of gum behind me and a burst of grape-scented air. I whirled, and Avery was behind me, her lips dyed to match her gum, her eyebrows raised. “Were you talking to the pants?”
I wagged my head furiously. “Of course not.”
She gave me a look of skepticism and disbelief and turned on the platform heels of her black plastic boots, popping another bubble as she went.
My cell phone chirped and I gasped, clasping my hand over my heart. “Geez!” I slid it out of my People's Pant blue smock pocket.
“'Lo?” I answered, dropping my voice and dipping my head behind a mammoth stack of painter's pants.
“I'm taking you to lunch,” Alex said.
I dropped the pair of pants I was folding and peeked around, periscope style. I watched Avery unwrap another chunk of gum and stick it into her mouth, then settle at the register with a rock magazine. Aside from the two of us, the store was empty.
“Okay, but I only get a half hour. I wouldn't want to upset my teenybop supervisor.”
I clicked my cell phone shut and hurried for the break room, peeling off my smock and fluffing my hair as I went. I yanked out my shoulder bagâexcessively heavy due to my new Taserâand dumped the black plastic case back into my locker. No need for a stun gun with Officer Angel by my side. By the time I made it out to the main floor Alex was leaning against the front counter, examining a pair of god-awful one-off chinos while Avery swooned behind him.
“We have them in slate, charcoal, verbena, and cherry, too,” she cooed. “Or I can show you something in a soft-weave nylon.”
Alex's eyes met mine and I watched Avery immediately stiffen. “I'm going to lunch now, okay?”
Avery's dark eyes went from mine to Alex's; she used her thumb and index finger to rub the bridge of her nose as she let out a long, aggravated sigh. “Fine. Just make sure you're back on the floor by one. My moon is in the seventh house and I can already feel my chakras backing upâI really need to meditate. And you have that entire pile of side-zip capris to mark down.”
I pasted on a smile. “Can't wait.”
Alex ushered me out the People's Pants doorway and pointed to his white SUV, parked across the street. I looked at him, impressed. “Someone has parking karma.”
San Francisco, while loaded to the gills with gourmet restaurants, killer fashion boutiques, and the best donuts on the planet, is sadly sparse on parking spots. Last I heard there were six.
Alex grinned and opened his coat, his badge glinting in the sunlight. “This isn't just a fancy piece of jewelry.”
I gaped. “You flashed your badge to get someone to move?”
He shrugged. “I consider this official police business.”
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We pushed through the double glass doors of the diner. The V-shaped restaurant was fronted by big glass windows looking out on the city and the bay, and sported dark wood booths with tall dividers that made patrons feel cozy as the swirls of fog rolled in just beyond the glass. Inside the restaurant was slightly dark, reflecting the afternoon sky, and the homey scents of meatloaf and French fries greeted me and made my stomach growl. We stood in the foyer waiting to be seated and I hunkered back, certain that everyone was staring. As the waitress led us to our table, I stared at the ground, focusing on the toes of my shoes rather than the questioning eyes I felt boring into me. I slid in the booth and looked around nervously.
“You're paranoid,” Alex said.
“I am not.” I bit my thumbnail. “But everyone was looking at us, right? They were staring?”
“No more than usual, Lawson.”
Another waitress came by with a carafe and filled up our coffee mugs, handing us two laminated menus. We scanned our menus and she took our orderâtwo burgers, two fries. I watched her disappear behind the counter while Alex studied me.
“You're completely paranoid,” he said finally.
“Okay, if I amâwhich I am notâdon't I have the right to be?” I tried to keep my voice hissing and low, but I could feel my voice rising. “I am the Vessel, Alex. Everyone wants me!”
The diner patrons had the uncanny ability to drop into silence at the most inopportune of momentsâlike this one. All heads swung toward me, appraising. The waitress strolled back over and gave me an uninterested once-over, then sloshed coffee into Alex's mug, ignoring my own.
I hunched lower in the booth and began to whisper, spitting dirty looks at Alex, who sugared and stirred his coffee with that stupid smug grin on his face.
“I mean, everyone wants the Vessel. And it seems that a whole lot of people are onto my little secret. So excuse me if I'm just a little jumpy.”
We were silent while the waitress slid our plates in front of us. I examined my sandwich like a crime scene investigator examines a crime sceneâI checked the bread, both top and bottom, poked at all the fries, tore the burger in pieces. I waited for Alex to take a bite of his burger. He did, chewed quietly. No maggots. I took a tentative bite of my lunch. Once I felt my teeth sink into the moist meatâno squishing of maggots or crunching of rat bonesâI chewed happily, licking the caramelized-onion grease as it spilled over my fingers. “This is the best lunch ever,” I said with a mouthful.
Alex sat forward, his voice low. “The number of people who know about the Vessel of Soulsâlet alone are searching for itâis miniscule.”
I swallowed my bite. “Fabulous! So only a
small
number of people want to kill me. I feel so much better now.”
“All I'm saying is that you don't have to operate like there are snipers on every corner. I'm here.”
“For now,” I said, staring at my plate.
“And besides,” Alex continued, ignoring me, “you have your stun gun.”
I thought of the weapon in its hard plastic case, nine blocks away, casually thrown in the locker of a discount clothing chain.
“Right,” I agreed.
Alex picked up a French fry and popped it in his mouth. “How's that working out for you, anyway?”
“Excellent. I electrocuted three people on my way to work this morning and then I used it to warm up my morning coffee.”
The waitress stopped in front of our table, thought better of it, and kept walking. I gaped and Alex grinned, pointing at me with a fry.
“People might not like you, but they're not trying to kill you.”
“Be honest. You stole that from a Hallmark card, didn't you?”
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I was in a groove rhythmically folding a stack of 2XL peach terry sweatpants at the store when I felt eyes on me. I turned slowly, and Avery was behind me, her made-up eyes focused hard, the little silver hoop in her pierced eyebrow raised and angled.
“Can I help you?” I asked her.
She snapped her green-apple gum. “You've got a dark aura right now. Like danger, evil.”
I looked down at the pair of sweatpants I was folding and held them out. “I think you're catching the aura of the pants.”
Avery wagged her head. “I know you don't believe in this, but there definitely is something about you that attracts evil.”
If you only knew the half of it
, I thought.
The bells above the front door tinkled and we both turned to look as a handful of scruffy-looking teenagers loped in. They nonchalantly poked around the racks of one-off brand-name jeans and lounge pants. Their collectively unkempt hair was scraggly and served to disguise their faces as they pretended to study the merchandise, but instead kept eyeing Avery and me.
“Look at them,” I said in a low voice. “They look like they're up to something.”
Avery blew a bright green bubble and then sucked it back in and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Hooligans,” she said, wagging her head so that her royal-blue dreadlocks swung. “They just ooze misdemeanor.”
I scanned the racks of merchandise, eyeing the sea of sailor pants, capris, and walking shorts in an array of barf-worthy colors. “I can't see what anyone would want to steal from this place,” I muttered.
Avery shrugged. “Not my problem. Everything has security tags on 'em anyway.”
The bells tinkled again and I felt my mouth form an O, then a huge grin. “Lorraine! Kale!” I said, racing through a rack of acid-washed shortalls. Lorraine pressed her hands to her face in that Miss America-winning-the-crown way and Kale stood back, smiling.
Lorraine broke into a smile as she rushed toward me. We all exchanged hugs and then I stood back, appraising. I looked at Lorraine's earth-dyed crinkle skirt and at Kale's upscale business slacks. There was no way they were People's Pants shoppers out for a casual lunch-hour spree.
“Kale, I don't think I've ever seen you outside of the UDA.”
“Oh, I get out. I've even been to your house.” Kale, who looked adult in her business trousers, blushed a heavy pink and she looked like the teenager she was again, shadowing Lorraine for her witch's license. “I was hoping Vlad would be there.”
I nodded, still smiling. “What are you guys doing here?”
Lorraine looked at my smock, at my trainee name tag, and a flash of sadness marred her lovely features. “This is where you're working now?”
I flushed with embarrassment. “It's just temporary, I hope. Not even Nina knows I'm here thoughâhow did you two?”
Lorraine slung her arm around Kale proudly. Kale grinned. “My first locator spell was a success,” Kale said.
“Congrats. But, why were you looking for me?”
Lorraine frowned. “Because we miss you.”
“And because the UDA is going to Hell in a hand basket,” Kale supplied.
“It's nothing like it was when you and Sampson ran it.”
I leaned against the acid-washed jeans. “Aw, thank you. But I didn't really run the UDA and Sampson has been gone for a long time.” It still stung every time I said it. “I'm sure Dixon and his guys are doing a good job.”
Lorraine snorted. “Are you kidding? They've got Los handling transfer records now.”
“What's wrong with that?”
“Los? The goat boy? We're overloaded with demons because so far, Los has eaten sixteen files.”
“Sixteen?”
I heard a snicker from the group of hooligans who came in earlier. I looked over my shoulder at Avery, who had been watching us and then busied herself folding pink corduroy pants, effectively ignoring her customers.
“Excuse me, guys,” I said, putting my hand on Lorraine's arm.
I headed over to the gang and pasted on a smile. “Welcome to People's Pants. May I help you find something?”
One of the boysâwho seemed to be the leader of the groupâstepped forward. He towered over me by at least two feet and as I scanned the group I realized that they were all unnaturally tall. Which wasn't completely unusual, given that I am unnaturally short. They all seemed to share the same carved features, tooâupturned noses with slight angles, sharp cheekbones, skin so translucently pale it looked oddly luminous under the harsh fluorescent store lights. The five other members of the group sunk back behind the tallest, forming a narrow triangle.
The boy up front seemed to be sizing me up. His eyes were smoke grey and sharp as cut glass. His smile was cocky, bordering on menacing.
You know what we're looking for.
I staggered back when his voice reverberated through my head. His grin lost all cockiness and was fully menacingâand it mirrored the five other kids behind him.
“You must be Sophie,” he said. “I'm Adam. We've been looking for you.”
My stomach lurched. My throat was dry and my breath came in short, hot gasps. “What do you want?”
“We have something for you,” Adam continued. “A little gift from your sister.”
I dropped my voice. “Can we not do this here?”
That seemed to amuse Adam.