Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3) (26 page)

“Time to make the magic happen,” Wooly said. He popped open a brown pill bottle, then dumped out a pair of pink tablets and a few little squares of paper into the palm of his hand. “Open your mouth and get ready to flip some candy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“One tab of Ex.” Wooly pointed to one of the pink pills. Then his finger moved toward the squares of paper. “One or two hits of Captain Syd.”

“What's that?”

“You know, like Syd Barrett, dog,” Wooly said. “Why are you so slow?”

“Acid?” Seth asked.

“Just take it. Acid plus ecstasy equals a candyflip, the best night of your life.”

“I don't think so,” Seth said.

“Come
on
, S-dog!”

“I'm good, Wooly.”

Wooly shook his head, then popped one of the pink pills. Then he placed a square of paper on his tongue. “Your loss, hombre. I'll save the rest for my bitches.” Wooly returned the drugs to the pill bottle and sealed it. “Let's go inside and flip the motherfucking switches!”

“Do you always have to talk like that?” Seth asked.

“Talk like what, S-dog?” Wooly clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Let's go find some slut puppies to Hoover our hot dogs. This place is like the QuikTrip snack bar of pussy.”

***

Later, Seth wandered drunkenly through the parking deck on Meeting Street. He'd had a few more beers than he intended, mostly to help him talk, since he didn't really feel like saying a word to anyone. Seth had last seen Wooly leaving in the company of a few freshmen girls, whom Wooly had variously described to Seth as “frat groupies” and “easy meat.” Seth managed to refuse Wooly's hundred insistent invitations to come back to the girls' apartment with him. Ultimately, Wooly had called Seth “a total sack-licker” and left without him.

Now, Seth was having trouble remembering where he'd parked, so he walked up every level of the graffiti-spattered concrete garage, looking from row to row for his blue Audi.

Then he saw another car he recognized: a reddish-brown 1975 Lincoln Continental, with a daisy-colored passenger door. His heart nearly stopped. It looked just like Jenny's car.

He looked closer. Shag carpet, cheetah-spotted seat covers. He even recognized the empty glass Red Rock soda bottle in the floor of the backseat. This was definitely Jenny's car.

Seth leaned against it, looking around, as if Jenny was going to pop up from behind one of the other cars at any moment. If her car was here, that meant she was back in Charleston. All he had to do was wait for her to come back. He smiled.

After a minute, he thought of another, more chilling possibility: maybe her car had been sitting here, in the back corner of the fourth level of this parking deck, ever since the night of the riot. Which would mean she had definitely been kidnapped.

He tugged on each of the door handles, but the car was locked up. He wouldn't get inside without smashing a window, or acquiring some car-thief skills.

Seth looked into the driver-side window and cupped his hands around his eyes to block the fluorescent glare from the overhead lights. On the driver's seat, he could see the narrow paper coupon printed out by the machine at the parking deck entrance, the one that told the attendant when you'd arrived and, consequently, how much you owed. The print was tiny and faint.

Seth squinted his eyes and tried hard to focus, but the printout was just too small to read. Seth banged his fist on the roof of the car. He needed to see that piece of paper.

He looked for security cameras, but didn't see any. Security couldn't be that great in a place that let an abandoned car sit this long, he thought.

Seth balled up his fist, closed his eyes, and punched through the driver-side window, slashing open all of his fingers. He reached his bloody hand into the car and pulled up the knob for the door lock.

Seth opened the door and grabbed the printout with his non-bleeding hand. He squinted. It had been printed in June, almost three months ago, the same day as the riot. The car had been sitting here since then.

Jenny was definitely in trouble.

He hurried along, still trying to find his car. Splinters of glass dripped from his injured hand as the sinew and skin regrew, pushing out the foreign objects. By the time he found his car, the hand was completely healed, though still slick with blood.

Seth drove as fast as he dared through the city. The secure phone that Hale had issued him was back at his apartment, and he would need to call them with this new information so they would know they were looking at a kidnapping. Maybe they could use forensics and find some clues in Jenny's car.

Seth's apartment was actually a rented condo in a French Quarter building, near the waterfront. The building was brick, four stories high, and had begun its life as a dock warehouse in the 1920s. Seth's father had wanted him to live in a dorm his freshman year, but Seth insisted on an apartment. He still clung to the idea that Jenny would one day come and live with him, so he needed a place for the two of them. If he'd moved into a dorm, that would have meant he'd given up hope.

Seth parked in the building's underground garage, then took the elevator up to his floor, pacing back and forth the whole trip. The elevator opened on a hallway that he shared with the floor's other tenant. Seth hurried to his apartment door.

The place had vaulted ceilings and sculpted masonry, with the occasional wall left bare brick for character. His mother had taken the initiative in furnishing and decorating his apartment, before his parents went back to their usual extended retreat in Florida.

Seth found the Hale phone in his bedroom and left a voicemail for Jerome
Breisgau, explaining that he'd found Jenny's car. He hoped his voice wasn't too slurred to make any sense.

He sat on a wingback chair in front of a huge window overlooking the harbor, drumming his fingers, half-hoping the man would call him back right away, though it was only about five in the morning. He closed his eyes and waited.

A buzzing sound startled him awake a few hours later, and he raised a hand to block the searing sunrise over the harbor. The buzz sounded again. The front gate.

Seth turned on his television and flipped it to the channel that showed the feed from the security cameras at every entrance. The person buzzing him was a woman in a car, trying to get into the parking garage. Seth recognized her right away, and he suddenly felt very cold. She was the CDC doctor who'd done so much to turn his life, and Jenny's, into sheer hell.

He walked to the security unit by the door, which also had a small video screen. He pressed the intercom button. “Who's there?”

“Seth?” Dr. Reynard asked. “Seth Barrett?”

“Your name is Seth Barrett?” Seth asked.

“No. Sorry. It's been a long drive. I'm Dr. Heather Reynard with the CDC. Can you buzz me? We need to talk.”

“Oh, I remember you,” Seth said. “I'm not supposed to talk to you without a lawyer.”

“I just need to talk for one minute,” Dr. Reynard said. “Just let me in. Please? It's really important.”

“Why don't you just have your friends bash down my door?”

“I'm not here on official business. And I didn't agree with how they handled the search of your house.”

“I don't remember you complaining when they were slamming me into the floor. What do you want?”

“It's personal, Seth. Not official.”

“Personally, I think you can go fuck off,” Seth said. “Officially, too.”

“Seth, I need your help!” She looked like she was about to cry, but it could have been an act. “I know you can heal people. That's why you can be with Jenny, isn't it? She spreads disease, you heal.”

How the hell does she know?
Seth wondered. He said, “You're crazy.”

“My daughter has leukemia, Seth. She's only four. The treatments aren't working.”

Seth studied the doctor's face. This could be a trick. It probably was a trick. He didn't trust her at all.

On the other hand, she looked desperate and scared...if she was acting, she was good at it.

Against his better judgment, he said, “Okay. You can come in for five minutes. Ten if you brought coffee.” He pressed the button to open the gate.

Ashleigh stopped by Esmeralda's apartment with a few cardboard boxes to collect some more of her clothes. When she walked inside, she found Tommy sitting at the kitchen table, while Esmeralda's mother served him frijoles and rice from the stove. Esmeralda's mother looked at Ashleigh over Tommy's shoulders and mouthed
help me
in Spanish. Ashleigh just smiled. She hadn't been here in a couple of weeks, and she wondered what life was like back in Esmeralda's apartment.

“Tommy, when you're done eating, I need you to carry some boxes out for me.”

“That's it?” Tommy asked. “I don't hear from you for a month, and when you finally show up, that's all you have to say to me.”

“It hasn't been a month. Two weeks, maybe. I'll be packing.” Ashleigh carried the empty boxes toward Esmeralda's room.

“Damn it!” Tommy overturned his plate, and it shattered on the floor. Esmeralda's mother shrieked. Tommy stood up and followed Ashleigh. “Where have you been this time?”

“Oh, you know.” Ashleigh shrugged while she pulled clothes from Esmeralda's hangers and dropped them in a box. “Washington and Atlanta, mainly. Plus Sacramento, San Francisco...we have a whole state to cover, you know.”

“You and Eddie.”

“It's my job, Tommy.” She began packing shoes.

“Are we moving out?” Tommy asked. “I think Esmeralda's mom is finally starting to like me. I've listened to all her stories about Esmeralda.”

“We're not moving. I'm just picking up a few things.”

“You're taking all the clothes.”

“No, I'm not. I'm leaving those tube tops.”

Tommy grabbed her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “I want to talk to Esmeralda.”

“Tommy, not now.” Ashleigh sighed. “We're on a tight schedule. The cab's waiting for me.”

Tommy knocked the box from her hand. “I don't care about your schedule. I want to see her.”

Ashleigh sighed. “Okay. Five minutes, no more.”

“Hurry up.”

Ashleigh closed her eyes. She slowly rolled her head around on her neck, then opened her eyes again.

“Tommy,” she said. She kissed him. “I missed you so much.”

“I miss you, too.” Tommy held her close. “Don't you think it's time we find a permanent body for Ashleigh? Then you and me can be together.”

“And I want us to be together. But we have to wait until after the election, okay? Because Ashleigh knows how to do this work for the congressman, a lot better than I do. I don't want to get stuck with all her work.”

“What do you care about any of that?” Tommy asked. “You say you love me. But you don't even try to stay with me. You let Ashleigh control you all the time.”

“I love Ashleigh.”

Tommy grimaced. “What's to love?”

Ashleigh scowled at him. “Fuck you, Tommy.” She pushed away from him and reached for the box he'd knocked to the floor.

“Do you love me or not?”

“Of course I do. We're just very busy right now.”

Tommy pulled her back to him and stared into her eyes. “You don't sound like Esmeralda.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? It's me, Tommy.”

Tommy stared at her a minute longer. “Do you remember the gold coin I gave you?”

Ashleigh had no idea what he was talking about. “Of course I do, baby. It was really sweet.”

“Do you remember the year on the coin?”

“The year?” She giggled. “What are you talking about?”

“What was on the coin? Which president?”

“Tommy, just tell me what's wrong.”

“Just answer the question.”

Ashleigh sighed. “I don't remember.”

“Try.”

“Was it...Washington?”

“There wasn't a president, Ashleigh. It was an Indian chief.”

“Oh. Hey, you called me Ashleigh. Silly boy.” She tried to kiss him again, but he pushed her back.

“You are Ashleigh, aren't you?” he said. “You're trying to trick me.”

“Tommy, no, I just couldn't remember—”

“Esmeralda would remember. Has she ever been with me, since she let you take over her body?” A snarl curled his lips. “Have you been tricking me the whole time we've been here?”

“Tommy, you're crazy.”

“I am not crazy!” He slammed her back against the wall, and grasped her throat in one hand. “You are a liar. I've seen how you tricked everyone. Darcy. Jenny. You lie to everyone. And most people are stupid enough to believe you.”

“Tommy, let me go. That hurts.”

“It's supposed to hurt.” He squeezed her throat tighter. “You don't think you've hurt me, Ashleigh? Or do you just not care?”

Ashleigh couldn't breath. She slammed her knee up into Tommy's crotch, and he howled and staggered back.