UnSouled (21 page)

“It’s boys like that who give the rest of us teenagers a bad name.”

The woman waves her hand at the suggestion. “Bottom-feeders come in all ages,” she says. “I should know. I’ve dated my share of them. You can’t just unwind the young ones, ’cause once they’re gone, others’ll sink down to take their place.”

Risa carefully gauges the woman, but she’s not all that easy to read. “So you’re against unwinding?”

“I’m against solutions that are worse than the problem. Like old women who want their hair dyed the color of shoe polish to hide the gray.”

Risa finally takes a moment to look around and quickly understands why the woman made the comparison she did. They’re in the back room of a salon—a retro kind of place with big hair dryers and notched black sinks. The woman introduces herself as Audrey, the proprietor of Locks and Beagles—an establishment specializing in salon services for people who absolutely, positively must bring their dog with them everywhere.

“You’d be surprised how much some of these ladies will pay for a shampoo and cut if their Chihuahua can sit in their lap.”

Audrey looks Risa over, like a prospective client. “Of course, we’re closed now, but I wouldn’t be disagreeable to an after-hours makeover.”

“Thank you, but I’m good,” Risa says.

Audrey frowns. “Come now. I thought you’d have better survival instincts than that!”

Risa bristles. “Excuse me?”

“What, do you think hiding under a hood is doing you any good?”

“I’ve done fine until now, thank you very much.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Audrey says. “Smarts and instinct go a long way—but when you get too proud of how very clever you are at outwitting the powers that be, bad things are bound to happen.”

Risa begins to subconsciously rub her wrist. She had thought she was too good to fall for a trap—which is why she ended up getting caught. Changing her look would play to her advantage, so why is she so resistant?

Because you want to look the same for Connor
.

She almost gasps at the realization. He’s been on her mind more and more, clouding her judgment in ways she never even considered. She can’t let her feelings for him get in the way of self-preservation.

“What kind of makeover?” Risa asks.

Audrey smiles. “Trust me, hon. When I’m done, it’ll be a whole new you!”

•   •   •

The makeover takes about two hours. Risa thinks Audrey must be bleaching her hair blond, but instead she gives Risa just a lighter shade of brown with highlights and a light perm.

“Most people think it’s hair color that changes a person’s looks—but it’s not. It’s all about texture,” Audrey tells Risa. “And hair’s not even the most important thing. The eyes are. Most people don’t realize how much of recognition is in the eyes.”

Which is why she suggests a pigment injection.

“Don’t worry. I’m a licensed ocular pigmentologist. I do it every day and never had complaints, except from the people who’d complain no matter what I did.”

Audrey goes on to talk about all her high-society patrons and their bizarre requests, from phosphorescent eye colors that match their nails, to midnight-black pigment injections that make it look like the pupil has swallowed the iris altogether. Her voice is soothing and as anesthetic as the drops she puts into Risa’s eyes. Risa lets her guard down and doesn’t notice until it is too late that Audrey has clamped her arms against the arms of the chair and has secured her head in place against the headrest. Risa begins to panic. “What are you doing? Let me go.”

Audrey just smiles. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, hon.” And she turns to reach for something Risa can’t see.

Now Risa realizes that Audrey’s agenda has nothing to do with helping her. She wants the reward after all! A single call and the police will be here. How stupid Risa was to trust her! How could she have been so blind!

Audrey comes back with a nasty-looking device in her hand. A syringe with a dozen tiny needles at the tip, forming a small circle.

“If you’re not immobilized, you might move during the process—even grab the device reflexively, and that could damage your cornea. Locking you down is for your own protection.”

Risa releases a shuddering breath of relief. Audrey takes it as anxiety from the sight of the injection needles. “Don’t you worry, hon. Those eye drops I gave you are like magic. I promise you won’t feel a thing.”

And Risa finds her eyes welling with tears. This woman truly does mean to help her. Risa feels guilty for her burst of paranoia, even though Audrey never knew. “Why are you doing this for me?”

Audrey doesn’t answer at first. She focuses on the task at hand, injecting Risa’s irises with a surprise shade that Audrey promised Risa would like. Risa believed her because the woman was so overwhelmingly confident about it. For a moment Risa feels as if she’s being unwound, but wills the feeling away. There is compassion here, not professional detachment.

“I’m helping you because I can,” Audrey says, as she works on her other eye. “And because of my son.”

“Your son . . .” Risa thinks she gets it. “Did you—”

“Unwind him? No. Nothing like that. From the moment he arrived on my doorstep, I loved him. I would never dream of unwinding him.”

“He was a stork?”

“Yep. Left at my door in the dead of winter. Premature, too. He was lucky to survive.” She pauses as she checks how the
pigments are taking, then goes for a second layer of injections. “Then, when he was fourteen, he was diagnosed with cancer. Stomach cancer that had spread to his liver and pancreas.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Audrey leans back, looking Risa in the eyes, but not to gauge her own handiwork. “Honey, I’d never take an unwound part for myself. But when they told me the only way to save my boy’s life was to basically gut him and replace all his internal organs with someone else’s, I didn’t even hesitate. ‘Do it!’ I said. ‘Do it the second you can get him in that operating room.’ ”

Risa says nothing, realizing this woman needs to give her confession.

“You want to know the real reason unwinding keeps going strong, Miss Risa Ward? It isn’t because of the parts we want for ourselves—it’s because of the things we’re willing to do to save our children.” She thinks about that and laughs ruefully. “Imagine that. We’re willing to sacrifice the children we don’t love for the ones we do. And we call ourselves civilized!”

“It’s not your fault that unwinding exists,” Risa tells her.

“Isn’t it?”

“You had no other way to save your son. You had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” Audrey says. “But no other choice would have kept my son alive. If there were any another option, I would have taken it. But there wasn’t.”

She releases Risa’s bonds, then turns away to clean up her injection tray. “Anyway, my son’s alive and in college, and he calls me at least once a week—usually for money—but the fact that I can even get that call is a miracle to me. So my conscience will ache for the rest of my life, but that’s a small price to pay for having my son still on this earth.”

Risa offers her a nod of acceptance, no more, no less. Can Risa blame her for using every means at her disposal to save her son’s life?

“Here you go, hon,” Audrey says, turning her around to face the mirror. “What do you think?”

Risa can hardly believe the girl in the mirror is her. The perm was gentle enough that her hair, rather than being wide and poofy, falls in a gentle cascade of auburn ringlets, lightly highlighted. And her eyes! Audrey did not give her the obnoxious sort of pigmentation so many girls go for these days. Instead she boosted Risa’s eyes from brown to a very natural, very realistic green. She’s beautiful.

“What did I tell you?” Audrey said, clearly proud of her handiwork. “Texture for hair, color for eyes. A winning combination!”

“It’s wonderful! How can I ever thank you?”

“You already did,” Audrey told her. “Just by letting me do it.”

Risa admires herself in a way she’s never taken the time to do before. A makeover. That’s something this misguided world is long overdue for as well. If only Risa knew how to make that happen. Her mind goes back to Audrey’s heartfelt tale about her son. It used to be that medicine was about curing the world’s ills. Research money went into finding solutions. Now it seems medical research does nothing but find increasingly bizarre ways to use Unwinds’ various and sundry parts. NeuroWeaves instead of education. Muscle refits instead of exercise. And then there’s Cam. Could it be true what Roberta said—that Cam is the wave of the future? How soon until people start wanting multiple parts of multiple people because it’s the latest thing? Yes, perhaps unwinding is kept alive by parents desperate to save their children, but it’s the vanity trade that allows it to thrive with such gusto.

If there were any other option . . .
It’s the first time Risa truly begins to wonder why there isn’t.

23 • Nelson

J. T. Nelson, formerly of the Ohio Juvenile Authority, but now a free agent, considers himself an honest man making due in a dishonest world. Nelson came by his current van legitimately. He bought it in cash from a used-car dealer in Tucson the day after he was so unceremoniously tranq’d by a fourteen-year-old. The tithe-turned-clapper who left him unconscious by the side of the road to be gnawed on by scavengers and, come morning, to fry in the Arizona sun, hadn’t thought to relieve Nelson of his wallet. Thank heaven for small miracles. It allowed Nelson the luxury of remaining an honest man.

The used-car dealer was, by definition, a swindler and was happy to part Nelson from more money than the ten-year-old blue whale of a van was worth—but Nelson didn’t have time to dicker. All the money he had made from his last two Unwind sales went into the purchase, but stealing a set of wheels was out of the question, for when one is involved in such an illicit business as parts pirateering, it’s best to keep oneself legit in other ways. Crimes will compound. At least now he doesn’t have to look over his shoulder for the highway patrol.

When Nelson saw the picture on the news—the one that Argent Skinner had so obliviously posted—it was treated as a farce. Something to laugh at—because it had already been dismissed by the Juvenile Authority and the FBI as a hoax. Nelson, however, knew that it wasn’t. Not just because he knew Connor was still alive—but because in the picture he was still wearing the same ridiculous blue camouflage pants he had worn at the Graveyard. He did his research on Argent before paying him that fateful visit. A dim bulb with a menial
job and a pathetic little criminal record of drunk driving and bar-room brawling. Still, he could be of use to Nelson—and in the shape he’s currently in, Nelson could use someone on his side. Although he tries not to show it, those hours unconscious in the Arizona wild have taken a toll that goes deeper than the painful molting burns on his face. There are the animal bites. Infected, some of them are. And who knows what diseases those animals carried. But he can’t let himself be sidetracked by that now. Not until he has his prize.

24 • Argent

He must be smart. Smarter than anyone gives him credit for. Smarter than even he believes himself to be. He must rise to the occasion . . . because if he doesn’t, he may end up dead.

“Talk to me, Argent,” Nelson says. “Tell me everything Lassiter said while you had him in your basement.”

It’s day one: They’ve just left Heartsdale not half an hour ago, heading north. This man behind the wheel—this parts pirate—is intelligent and knows his business. But there’s something about his eyes that hints that he’s lingering near the edge of the world. Balancing on the brink of sanity. Driven there, perhaps, by Connor Lassiter. If Nelson has truly lost his edge, perhaps he and Argent are on even footing.

“Tell me anything you remember. Even if you think it’s insignificant, I want to know.”

So Argent starts talking and doesn’t stop much. He goes on and on about the things Connor said and a whole lot of things he didn’t say.

“Yeah, we got to be tight,” Argent brags. “He told me all this crap about his life before. Like how his parents changed the locks on him during his last stint at juvey, before they
signed the unwind order. Like how he resented his kid brother for being such a goody-goody all the time.” These are things Argent had read about the Akron AWOL long before he turned up to buy sandwiches at Argent’s register. But Nelson doesn’t need to know that.

“You were so tight that he cut up your face, huh?” Nelson says.

Argent touches the stitches on the left side of his face—bare now that the gauze has been removed. They itch something terrible, but they ache only when he touches them too hard. “He’s a mean son of a bitch,” Argent says. “He don’t treat his friends right. Anyway, he had places to go, and I wouldn’t let him unless he promised to take me with him. So he cut me, took my sister hostage, and left.”

“Left where?”

Now comes the part Argent has to sell. “Never talked much about it except, of course, when we were high on tranq.”

Nelson looks over at him. “The two of you smoked tranq?”

“Oh yeah, all the time. It was our favorite thing to do together. And the good stuff too. High grade, prime tranq.”

Nelson eyes him doubtfully, so Argent decides to pull back on his story a little bit. “Well, I mean, as prime as you can get in Heartsdale.”

“So he talked when he was high. What did he say?”

“Ya gotta remember, I was buzzing up there too, so it’s all kind of fuzzy. I mean, it’s still up in my noggin, I’m sure, but I gotta tease it out.”

“Dredge is more like it,” Nelson says.

Argent lets the insult slide. “There was this girl he talked about,” Argent offers. “ ‘Gotta get there; gotta get there,’ he said. She was gonna give him stuff. Not sure what, though.”

“Risa Ward,” Nelson says. “He was talking about Risa Ward.”

“No, not her—I would have known if he was talking about her.” Argent wrinkles his brow. It hurts to do it, but he does it anyway. “It was someone else. Mary, her name was. Yeah, that’s it. Mary, something French. LeBeck. Or LaBerg. LaVeau! That’s it. Mary LaVeau. He was gonna meet with her. Drink themselves some bourbon.”