Another One Bites the Dust (21 page)

Concern poured from his eyes. “What is it, a migraine?”

“Would you stop worrying? It’s going to make you crazy!” I skirted him and went to the guys at the table. “Bergman, I need to watch the footage of Pengfei lecturing Lung and Li again.”

“Can it wait a sec? It’s my move.”

I grabbed his queen, slid her eight spaces forward, and told Cole, “Checkmate.”

He frowned at the board as Bergman pulled his laptop off the seat beside him. “Looks like my schedule just opened up,” he said with a smirk. As he powered up the computer he told me, “If you want to see it on the TV it’ll take some time to find the spot on the DVD. But if you want to watch it straight from here, I can have it up in less than a minute.”

“The sooner the better,” I said.

We all crowded into the banquette to watch the recording of Pengfei’s hissy fit. When it had played out I said, “Did anybody see it?”

Vayl began to nod, the look of dawning comprehension making him seem younger. Less burdened. He said, “When she slaps him his armor does not react.”

“Exactly!” I said. “Look! Scales don’t run up his face like they did when he was threatened last night.”

“That’s interesting,” said Cassandra. “But how does it help us?”

“That’s how we get past his defenses. By making him think I’m Pengfei. We’ll have to take her out first, but”—I shrugged—“that was going to happen anyway.”

I could tell the idea intrigued Vayl, but the risk to me took him so far out of his comfort zone that he had to think it over. He slid out of the banquette and went to retrieve his cane from the bedroom. I could hear him muttering all the way there and back, though he stopped talking before I could do any actual eavesdropping. I would’ve told him only crazy people talk to themselves, but I was in no position to judge.

Cole also got up. He went to the fridge. And as he poured himself a mug of orange soda he said, “I don’t see how we can pull that off, Jaz. You’re about two inches too tall, for one thing.”

“Plus you can’t speak Chinese,” added Bergman. “And even if you stuck with English, you couldn’t manage an accent without sounding like some idiot redneck making fun of all Asians everywhere.”

“He’s right about the accents,” I told Cassandra regretfully. “I can’t even do that nasal Chicago twang, and my dad lives there.”

“Well, I can’t help you with sounding Chinese, but looking the part could be easier than you think. What about some sort of disguise spell?” she asked.

I felt Bergman shiver, as if he’d brushed up against a low-voltage electric fence. Keeping my face turned well away from him I said, “Generally I stick with the old-school method, but I’m willing to try it. Can you do something like that?”

“Maybe. But—”

“What? No! You’re a psychic,” Bergman told her, as if she’d suddenly developed Alzheimer’s. He spoke so loudly I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears. “You have visions,” he insisted. “You don’t do spells. That’s for witches. And wizards. And, and”—he noticed we were all looking at him funny—“those other oogly boogly types.” He wiggled his fingers to emphasize his point.

I shook my head. “Bergman, I kid you not, if you don’t get your head into the twenty-first century I am going to take you out behind the woodshed and tan your hide.”

“What?”

Cassandra reached over me and flicked Bergman on the shoulder to get his attention. “A bomb is a powerful weapon, yes?”

“Of course.”

“So not just anybody can build one.”

“Well . . .”

“I could not get on the Internet, find a good plan, and by the end of the day construct myself an explosive device, could I?”

“Yeah . . . but it’s not a fair comparison.”

“Why not?”

“They’re two entirely different things.”

Cassandra leaned forward. “They’re both tools used as a means to an end.”

“The philosophy behind them is light-years apart.”

They were nearly nose to nose now, not a comfortable position for me, since I sat between them. “Bergman,” said Cassandra, “I could build a bomb if I wanted to, although it would help if I had an interest in science. And if you had a bent toward magic, which by the way you
do
, you could cast a spell.”

He recoiled so fast you’d have thought she spat in his face. I held up my hand. “Stop,” I told him. “I know you’re about to say something I’ll regret, so don’t even go there.”

“But—”

“Bergman, I love you like a brother and I respect your right to believe whatever you want to believe. But you can’t be on this team if you offend somebody every time you open your mouth.”

He opened his mouth. Then he shut it again. “Excellent choice,” I said. I stared at him for a second longer, trying to see how deeply this magic thing disturbed him, but he’d barred the gate. So I said, “Now, Cassandra, about this spell . . .”

“I’m not sure it would work, after all,” she told me. “It would only affect your looks. Your voice would remain the same.”

“Well, crap.”

We sat in silence for a while, all of us staring at one monitor or another, hoping for inspiration to come give us a big kiss on the forehead. Instead something cracked against the side of the RV.

Bergman ducked, as if some two-hundred-pound jock had just thrown a Frisbee at his head. “What was that?”

Cassandra swept aside the curtains. “It’s too dark outside to tell.”

“Close the curtains!” we all yelled. Her hand jerked back like the cloth had grown teeth and snapped at her.

The cracking sound came again, two, three, four more times. By now Bergman was practically under the table. He motioned for Cassandra to join him. “Get down!” he ordered Cole. “That reaver might be back for Jaz!”

“I’m checking out the bedroom monitor,” said Cole. Bergman and Cassandra, thinking that was a bright idea, followed him to the back of the RV to see what the security cameras had picked up. Vayl and I preferred the direct approach.

He’d already stepped out the door. I shadowed him, drawing Grief, activating my night vision, snapping the band on my watch to shield the sounds of my movements. Vayl motioned for me to skirt the back of the RV since he’d chosen the frontal approach. Another round of cracking sounds accompanied me, along with hurried whispering.

Though my instincts told me our attacker wasn’t a reaver, I still rounded the corner carefully. I sighted my quarry almost immediately. Just as quickly I pointed Grief at the sky and thumbed the safety. “Kids,” I muttered with disgust.

They stood about twenty feet away in the pool of light provided by the barbecue cook-off competitors. They wore jeans, plaid button-down shirts, and tennis shoes. They’d combed their short hair neatly to one side. Not the types I would expect to catch heaving eggs from the white eighteen-pack they’d set on the green picnic table between them. However, I did recognize them. They were the boys I’d picked to go AWOL from the
other
-hating picketers. But to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl till they puked. Not to plaster our pullouts with cooking essentials.

I holstered Grief and strode forward, preparing to grab them by their collars and shake them until they pleaded for mercy. Vayl had other ideas.

The bottom half of his cane shot through the air and impaled the carton. Eggs flew everywhere. I almost laughed when the boys jumped, yelped, and darted off into the night. Well, they tried.

“Stop,” Vayl ordered. So, of course, they did. “Be seated.” They parked it on the benches. “Tell me your names and ages.”

The kid on the left, who’d apparently chosen to fight his acne battles with a steady diet of donuts and Doritos said, “James Velestor. Fifteen.”

The one on the right, a brown-haired twig whose glasses kept slipping toward his braces, muttered something. “I cannot hear you!” Vayl barked.

“Aaron Spizter, fourteen.”

“Who brought you here?”

The boys looked at each other and smirked. I stepped forward. “Come on, Vayl, this would be a lot more fun if you’d let me bang their heads together a few times.”

That sobered them up. James looked up at me, both chins shaking slightly as he demanded, “Why do you hang with
others
like that psychic? She’s an abomination in the eyes of God, you know.”

Aaron piped up, speaking more to his buddy than to me. “What about
this
freak?” he said, jerking a thumb toward Vayl. “I mean, look how it’s working its mind control on us right now!”

“You sound like a couple of brainwashed little ruffians to me,” I told them in my let’s-read-a-nursery-rhyme voice. “I’m guessing Mommy and Daddy have made it clear to you that the human race is by far superior to any
other
, and therefore you should feel free to damage their property and treat them like dirt every chance you get. I’m guessing they went so far as to buy you the eggs and give you directions to our place. Am I right?” I leaned over and looked hard into the brats’ faces. They couldn’t believe how I’d figured them out on such short acquaintance.

“Where are they?” Vayl asked grimly. When he didn’t get an immediate reply he bellowed, “Where?”

James and Aaron both pointed shaking fingers over their shoulders. Eventually we deduced that their fathers were parked in the hate-crimes van near the marina. Vayl put his dripping sheath back where it belonged and we escorted the boys, along with their eggs, to the real scene of the crime.

Generally Vayl’s power feels like a calm arctic ocean, mystic blue with countless tiny waves on top and an icy cold current running beneath. But as we followed the boys, I decided any decent sailor with my increased Sensitivity would agree the bottom had just dropped out of the barometer and we were in for a helluva blow.

“Um, Vayl? Are you sensing how I’m feeling right now?” I murmured. Usually I want him to stay clear of my emotions. Like continents away. But at the moment . . .

“No.”

“Well, pay attention.”

I allowed myself a small sigh of relief to see not a spark of red in his eyes when they met mine. After a moment he asked, “Why are you concerned for me?”

“Because I know what I do when
I’m
too pissed off to think straight. And the aftermath is never pretty. So I’m thinking maybe you should not follow your first instincts when we speak to these boys’ fathers, because tearing their arms off and beating them over the heads with them is not going to solve the ultimate problem.”

“Huh.”

Oh God, he was even beginning to sound like me.

However, he did not pull a typical Jaz move when we arrived at the van. He walked over to the driver’s side as the boys took refuge within and stood patiently until the man rolled down his window. I took my place by the passenger—a guy with the pasty, sagging features of the perennial couch squatter.

“What do you want?” demanded the driver. Maybe he felt safe because of his size. He certainly filled out his powder-blue blazer, and if he had a neck, it was squatting behind his thin black tie.

“I want to know why you felt it appropriate to send your son to damage my property,” Vayl said in his I’m-about-to-lose-it voice. It can be deceiving to those who don’t know him because it’s so soft. Almost unassuming. But when people get next to it, and ignore it, generally they can count the remainder of their lives in breaths.

Since the driver was a stranger to Vayl’s more dangerous moods, I expected him to make up some bullshit story about how one of the boys had lost his wallet and they’d just driven them back to the festival so they could try to find it. At nearly three a.m. On a Monday morning. Maybe he knew how lame that was going to sound, though, because he said, “Our boys are doing God’s work and we are proud of them. Psychics are no more than witches, and they are an affront against God.”

“An affront,” my fella agreed.

“What’s your name, fella?” I asked him.

“George Velestor,” he said.

“You ever formed an original thought in your life, George?”

He looked at the driver.

“Apparently not.” I kept talking because Vayl’s power had spiked, and I figured if I didn’t do something quick, we’d soon be dealing with a van full of Popsicle people. “What’s your name, driver?”

His glance took in my hair, boobs, eyes, boobs, and then eyes again. I wondered how many people would miss him if he quietly disappeared. “My name’s Dale Spizter, ma’am.”

“You married, Dale?”

“Sure am.”

“Then keep your damn eyes off my chest.”

His head jerked away and I thought I heard the boys snicker. Vayl opened the door. “What are you doing?” demanded Dale.

“Get out.”

“I will not.”

Vayl’s voice rang with cold, hard power. “The four of you will exit this vehicle and precede us back to the RV.” His face might’ve resembled a mask to our guests, but I could see the muscles in his jaws working, the vein in his forehead throbbing. Not happy signs.

Like good little puppets, they jumped to it. The men, however, looked like they expected to be struck down from above at any moment. They drooped even farther when we reached our destination and mustered up a couple of bowls full of soapy water and some paper towels. Vayl set up the lawn chairs, invited Cassandra outside, and the three of us watched them clean up the mess they’d made. He’d also brought out a flashlight, so she got to point out the spots they’d missed. She found quite a few.