Borderline (14 page)

24

By the time we got on the road, traffic had mysteriously quadrupled in the way that it often does in L.A. I glanced at the clock—2:13—and tried to take calming breaths. Teo, on the other hand, was not even trying for calm and was driving like an asshole.

“Teo, if we get pulled over, we are going to miss the train. The Mythbusters proved that weaving in and out of lanes doesn't get you there any faster.”

“You're welcome to walk.”

“Right. Sorry, I keep thinking I'm talking to an adult.”

To minimize suffering, according to Dr. Davis, you must apply something called “radical acceptance.” Basically, this means ceasing to fight things that are beyond your control. As both Teo and Los Angeles traffic fell firmly into that category, I did my breathing exercises and pulled my face into an imitation of a serene smile. Strangely, it helped. It was possible, my Wise Mind reasoned, that I had guessed wrong about the three o'clock train, in which case all this stress and hurry would be for nothing.

We pulled up to Union Station at 2:43. “Get out and I'll find a place to park,” said Teo.

There were about eight things wrong with that plan, but I had no time to argue. I got out of the car as fast as I could and shut the shrieking passenger door behind me.

Union Station is the sort of place that looks like it ought to have ghosts. And it does, if you count the dead-eyed ­people shuffling through the cavernous main terminal or perched in uncomfortable chairs, watching rows of demonic red ­numbers. I checked the boards to remind myself which track the viscount's train was leaving from and then started down the fluorescent-­lit tunnel of doom.

Picture one of those endless corridors in an airport, but take out any windows, moving sidewalks, ads, artwork, or other relief. Make it all concrete and aging tile instead of carpet and plaster. Now add in creepy dungeonlike stairways every twenty feet or so that lead tantalizingly upward, teasing promises of sunlight and air that only make the endless slog to your platform all the more unbearable.

The tired-looking kid trying to sell me candy was probably the least depressing thing in the place, and that's saying something. I would have stopped and bought some off-brand peanut butter cups for Rivenholt if it hadn't already been 2:49. I climbed the stairs to track twelve, ignoring aches and pains and a stitch in my side that made me wonder if I hadn't torn a brand-new hole in something.

Passengers were boarding. Shit, I could have already missed him. I scanned the crowd frantically for blonds, then addressed a friendly looking conductor lady with overprocessed hair. “I'm looking for my friend. He might be on this train.”

“Do you have a ticket?”

“I don't.”

“I'm sorry, I can't let you on board.”

“Could you at least check around, see if you see him? It's important.”

“What's his name?”

I pulled the photo from my pocket and showed her.

One of her brows lifted. “He's an actor, right? You looking for an autograph?”

“No! There's kind of a family emergency.”

She looked at me skeptically. “If he were on the train,” she said, “I'd have noticed him.”

“Can you please just check? And if you find him, tell him Aaron put David in the hospital.” Even if that didn't make sense, it seemed a fair bet he'd want to know what the hell had gotten lost in translation.

She gave me a once-over, and her face softened. “Okay, hon. Calm down, and I'll try and find him for you.”

From 2:51 to 2:56, I repeatedly wiped clammy palms on my jeans and rehearsed a dozen different things to say. I tried to figure out how to work “don't touch me” into my greeting without seeming unfriendly. But then the conductor came back out, shouting at people to hurry and board. She spotted me and gave a sad little shrug.

“I don't think your man is on this train,” she said.

I swallowed a bitter lump of disappointment. How was it that nobody ever managed to see him at any of the places he was expected to be? Was he going to a lot of trouble to lead people astray? Or was he somehow here all along, invisible, pressing his hands against a barrier that only his drawings could cross?

I thanked the lady and made my way carefully back down
the stairs to the Corridor of Broken Dreams. Now that my adrenaline was easing off, I could feel every ache and pain in my patchwork body.

Teo came jogging up, looking out of breath and displeased. “I take it we missed him,” he said.

“I got there in time to ask a conductor to search the train, but she said he wasn't on it. I have no way of knowing for sure if that's true.”

“No biggie,” said Teo. “If he came through here, I'm sure someone noticed him. And if he got on that train, we can still beat him to the next stop.”

“Right,” I said, feeling both relieved and foolish.

It didn't take long flashing Rivenholt's picture around before we found an old man with a charming Slavic accent who remembered him. “I think this is the man who is arrested here in the terminal,” he said.

“Arrested?”
said Teo.

A sudden dread seized me, and I tore open my bag, rifling through it. The e-mail I'd printed out, the one telling Berenbaum what train Rivenholt was boarding, was gone.

“Work emergency, huh?” I muttered bitterly as Teo continued questioning the old man. I pulled out my phone and the napkin from the coffee shop and dialed Clay's number. No one answered. He could forget about a date.

The old man stroked a thumb thoughtfully over his moustache as he regarded Teo. “The blond man is standing over there, looking around,” he was saying. “Then the policeman, darker, comes to him and shows a badge,” he was saying. “They have serious conversation which I do not hear. Then they walk together to track two. As they pass me, I try to tell them that
train has left already, but I get a little afraid. Policeman has his hand on the back of the other's neck, tight, like holding a dog.”

Before I could even respond, Teo had bolted toward the stairway in question. I thanked the old guy, slipped him a twenty, and went after Teo with a sigh.

When I finally limped my way to the top of the platform, I found Teo standing with his hands buried in his hair, looking down at the deserted train tracks. His sunglasses served to partially hide his expression, but the way he'd squished his mouth into a tiny line strongly suggested he was freaking out. I moved closer to his side and looked down.

“What is that?” I said, looking at the dark splash marks and streaks on the tracks.

“Blood,” said Teo. “Fey blood.”

I did a double take. The stains and the track were both too dark for me to be sure, and any telltale scent was covered by other metallic odors.

“That's bad, right?”

“You have no idea.”

“Because no one will tell me. Are you sure it's blood?”

“Put on your glasses.”

Feeling a qualm, I did as he asked—and made a strangled sound. The faint stains shimmered with golden light. It was brightest on the track where the liquid looked to have pooled; then the stains made a wide, smeary trail from the tracks to the platform.

“Oh, shit,” I said. I remembered the coldly simmering anger in Brian Clay's eyes and shuddered.

Teo nodded grimly. “The cop must have held him down on the tracks and—I don't know, shot him? Bashed his head in?
Then I guess dragged him over there—” Teo looked blankly at where the blood trail disappeared. “Picked him up, maybe?”

“How did no one see this?” I hated how high-pitched my voice suddenly sounded. “I get that the platform was empty, but Clay had to take him somewhere after he— How is this place not swarming with cops and EMTs right now?”

“I don't know,” said Teo, hands in his hair again. “I don't know. This is
fucked
.”

While Teo panicked, I kept my glasses on and tried to see if there was more blood anywhere. I noticed a few drips near the top of the stairs.

“Teo, is it possible that Rivenholt is still alive?”

“Could be. Fey anatomy is different from ours, so blood loss doesn't stop them. Fey essence isn't even really blood, it's . . . more a kind of liquid energy, like fuel, for their spells.”

“So maybe he just walked out?”

Teo considered it, then shook his head grimly. “Here's the thing,” he said. “Being held against iron like that, plus having essence literally pouring out of him, it would drain his fuel tank, right? He can't refill without going back to Arcadia. He wouldn't be able to hold his facade anymore. That means there's no way he's just walking out of here.”

“So why is there more blood at the bottom of the steps?” I pointed to a faint glimmer, barely visible from where I was standing. Teo moved past me jackrabbit quick, bounding down the stairs in a way that made me green with envy. He knelt to look.

“This isn't blood,” he said. He bent down, picking up a piece of paper and unfolding it. He stood there for a long moment, then slowly took off his glasses. He turned his head and looked
up at me with the kind of look people give you when the burning house on the news is yours.

“What?” I said, when he didn't speak. “Is it another of Rivenholt's drawings?” I pushed my own glasses up to the top of my head and made my way down the stairs.

Teo nodded and turned the paper around toward me. When I was close enough, I laced my hands together behind my back and looked. The air collapsed out of me with a
whoosh
.

The woman in the drawing wasn't beautiful in the way Hollywood stars are beautiful. More like a rock face worn away by wind and water. Her short hair left every scarred line of her face exposed, a lean face dominated by intelligent eyes. She stood with the careful straightness of someone who took pain for granted. Her cane gleamed like wet ice, as did the sleek mechanical construction that stood in for her left leg.

She had flesh, somewhere, past the metal and the loosely draped clothes that had once flattered a less gaunt frame. I wondered if her skin was warm, if by reaching it, by fitting the curve of a naked hip into the hollow of my palm, I could change the grim expression in her eyes. But she was as off limits as though she were surrounded by barbed wire. Written at the bottom of the paper were two words: COLD IRON.

Rivenholt had drawn
me
.

After a moment Teo folded up the drawing, leaving me staring blankly at his T-shirt, and tucked the paper into his back pocket. I didn't notice there were tears on my cheeks until he wiped them away with the back of his hand.

And then he was holding me and murmuring in my ear—
no llores, mija
—and I wanted to explain that I wasn't sad, I was happy. But then I couldn't explain because he was kissing me.

He was terrible at it and tasted like cigarettes (the bastard had sneaked a smoke while parking the car, maybe while Rivenholt was bleeding out on a railroad track), but I kissed him back anyway because I couldn't kiss the man who had drawn me. We stood clinging to each other like a soldier and his wife at the bottom of the stairs, and I shook like a cheap washing machine and he shhh-shhhh-ed me between kisses. His hands were careful, but mine were reckless; they found soft cotton T-shirt and rough jeans and then—paper, because while I was groping him I accidentally touched the drawing, goddamn it.

25

Teo didn't talk in the car; he just lit a cigarette. I opened my window but didn't say anything. I let him finish his smoke and stab it out in the ashtray between us before I broke the silence.

“It's not a big deal,” I said.

“It was the drawing.”

“I know.” I did know. I'd been there.

He fumbled with his pack of cigarettes but didn't light another one, setting it aside. “I feel like I cheated on her.”

“Who?”

“My Echo.”

I twisted around to look at him, ignoring the protest from my spine. “That's who you're saving yourself for? It's a she?”

“I don't know. I think it is. I don't care. It isn't always like that with Echoes, but it is with us. I don't even know who it is, I just know I don't want anybody else. And I know that she—or he, or whatever—feels the same way. I don't know how I know; I just know.”

“That's the dumbest and sweetest thing I've ever heard.” I looked down at the drawing in my hands. Now that I'd destroyed it, I was allowed to keep it.

What preoccupied me most about this particular piece was a nagging, inchoate sense of familiarity. Even more than his others, this particular sketch gave me an urgent sense that there was a clue in it I should be able to place, an element that I should recognize—besides myself, of course.

I should have been disturbed to know that Rivenholt had somehow managed to observe me without my seeing him, but I wasn't. I had no room to question his motives; I'd
felt
them. He respected and cared about me on a level that didn't make any sense, given that I had no memory of meeting him. I put the drawing away and stared at Rivenholt's photo instead. It was starting to seem familiar too, but was that just because I'd seen
Accolade
? Or did I have some preexisting relationship with the man that was now lost to my head injury?

“Is it possible Rivenholt isn't really Berenbaum's Echo?” I asked Teo.

“You're thinking he's yours? He doesn't have to be your Echo to have feelings for you.”

“But we've never met.”

“I dunno. Maybe his connection to Berenbaum gives him some way of observing you. Hell, maybe he's been hiding nearby every time you and Berenbaum talked.”

I frowned. “Clay said something like that. That he thought Berenbaum knew where Rivenholt was. I just don't want to think Berenbaum would lie to me.”

“Who is Clay again?”

“The cop who just arrested him, I'm pretty sure.” On that note, I dialed Clay's number for the eighth time. Still nothing. Finally I gave up and dialed ASK-LAPD, choosing dispatch from the menu options.

“Hey,” I said to the woman who answered the phone. “I've been working with Brian Clay on a missing persons thing, and he's not answering his phone. I wondered if you have some way to get in touch with him? It's urgent.”

“Can you give me the name again?” Her tone was crisp and competent, and there was a trace of Mexico in her accent.

“Brian Clay.” I spelled it for her.

For a moment I heard nothing but background chatter. Then, “We have no officer by that name. Did this person specifi­cally claim to be with the LAPD?”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “He did.” Too many paradigm shifts in one hour; I was getting queasy.

“Was he in uniform?”

“No, but his badge looked legit.”

“Did he stop your vehicle or act as a police officer in any capacity?”

“All he did was ask me some questions about a friend of mine, but I'm pretty sure he just, ah, arrested someone at Union Station and hurt the man pretty badly in the process.”

“We'll send someone to investigate. If he contacts you again, please call us right away. You can even use 911 for this. Authentic-looking badges are not hard to come by, so in future if you have doubt,s it's always okay to call us and confirm identity before giving an officer any information.”

But I hadn't had doubts. That was the part that bothered me most. I'd been so distracted with magic and fairies that it hadn't even occurred to me to apply a healthy dose of skepticism to the mundane stuff.

I described Clay in as much detail as I could and gave the nice lady my contact information in a kind of shame-haze. I'd
sent this guy after Rivenholt; I might as well have spilled the blood on the tracks with my own hand.

“Was that what I think it was?” Teo said when I hung up.

“If you think I found out Brian Clay is a lying, thieving piece of shit with a fake badge, then yes.”

I called Berenbaum's mobile, but he wasn't answering. I tried his office number, but Araceli didn't answer either, and with so much up in the air, leaving a message seemed pointless.

“Teo, give me Caryl's number,” I said.

“Only Caryl is authorized to do that.”

“For God's sake, Teo, this is a disaster of epic proportions. Exceptions can be made.”

“No. She can't have just anyone calling her when she might not have Elliott out. But more importantly, it's the rules. Once you sign the contract, you don't ever break the Project rules, Millie. Instant termination.”

“I hope you mean firing.”

“Usually.”

I let that one slide. “Fine, then, you call her and hand me the phone.”

“I'm driving, Millie. We'll be at the Residence in, like, ten minutes.”

“Do it, Teo, or I'll tell her you kissed me. That's against the rules, right?”

“No, dumbass,” he said. “Remember Phil and Gloria?”

“I keep trying to forget.”

He was already groping in his pocket for his phone, eyes still on the road as he tilted his hips up off the seat. I idly painted a mental picture of myself straddling him—my old self, of course; I doubted I was nimble enough to do that anymore.

He held the phone up in his line of sight, flicking his eyes over to it as he drove. “If a cop drives by and pulls me over right now, you are paying the fucking fine.”

“Just make sure it's a real cop first.”

He held the phone to his ear and listened. I studied his face, trying to feel something other than embarrassed amusement at what had happened between us at the station. He was sexy in theory, but not really in practice. It wouldn't take much tweaking to make him dangerously crush-worthy, but I'd been in the dating pool long enough to know that what you see is what you get.

“Caryl,” Teo said, “call Lisa.” A pause as Teo lost a shade of color. “What? I didn't—did I not say Millie? Sorry. Just call her, all right? Same damn phone.”

I watched the unintentionally erotic display he made trying to put his phone back in his pocket. “Were you and Lisa close?” I said.

“Not really. Learned my lesson after Amir. But she was all right. She and I were both
pochos
, so there was stuff I didn't have to explain.”

“What's a
pocho
?”

He winced a little, then laughed. “You don't get to say that. It means spoiled, overripe. A term Mexicans have for people like me who are more American than Mexican, you know? They say it like it's a bad thing.” He snorted another laugh, but his body was drawn and tense.

“I . . . obviously can't relate. I never had any culture to begin with.”

“Of course you do,” he snapped. “We're swimming in your culture every minute. Meanwhile, my culture thinks bipolar
disorder's my fault for not going to church. My culture can go fuck itself.”

“Teo, your mom was an asshole. You can't judge a culture by its assholes.”

He fumbled for the cigarette pack again, shaky. I laid a hand on his arm, and it seemed to calm him, or at least change his mind about smoking.

“I hope you realize,” I said, “ that I'm not going anywhere. Everything I've seen about the aftermath of what I did—” But now my phone was ringing. Of course.

“Hello?”

“What has Teo so upset?” said Caryl's voice.

“It's Rivenholt,” I said. “It seems he was abducted from the train station, most likely by this guy who's been posing as a cop and trying to track him down.”

“I don't like ‘seems' and ‘most likely.' What are the facts?”

“The facts are, it turns out the cop I'd been talking to about Rivenholt is not really a cop, and the train departure info went missing from my bag when I left it with him. Afterward someone flashed a badge at Rivenholt at the station and took him to an isolated area. When we went there, we found a bucketload of spilled fairy blood and nothing else.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

“Spilled fairy blood is bad, right?” I said. “Epically bad, Teo said. What's the deal with that, anyway?”

“I may need to share that information, despite your tenuous status, but this is not the moment. I am . . . overwhelmed.”

“That prick just got us in deep trouble with Arcadia, didn't he?”

“Without knowing the full situation, I cannot say if we have a convincing argument against our apparent criminal negligence.”

“If we don't?”

“Let's not talk about that just yet. Was there any sign of where they went?”

“They seemed to just vanish into thin air. Could Rivenholt have cast some kind of invisibility spell?”

“No, but an Unseelie fey could have done so.”

“An Unseelie such as Vivian Chandler?”

“For example, yes. There are only four Unseelie fey in Los Angeles at present, and the other three have no connection to Rivenholt whatsoever that I'm aware of.”

“How do you know there are only four?”

“The perimeter ward counts and displays the fey population at any time within its boundaries. Seelie and Unseelie are counted separately.”

“Isn't that the thing you said was on the fritz or something, though?”

There was a brief silence. “Again, I am impressed by your attention to detail. There have been some odd readings lately, yes.”

“Do you think the odd readings have anything to do with this business with Rivenholt?”

“Correlation does not imply causation, but we should not entirely ignore the fact that Rivenholt's uncharacteristically lawless behavior is occurring at the same time as the anomaly.”

“Can you explain what the anomaly is?”

“I'm not sure you'd understand. I will show you later.”

“This is the thing you've been preoccupied with, though?”

“Yes. It's why I brought you on when I did. Once I began to spend time on this, it became apparent that we had too few people with leadership experience to keep things in order while I was distracted. You were a director; you have experience with
executive-level decision making. But then Rivenholt's disappearance complicated things, and your training has suffered accordingly.”

“I'm doing everything I can to help,” I said. “But mostly I'm stumbling around in the dark. No one tells me the rules until I break them, which seems like a horrible way to run an organi­zation.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “But now we have multiple crises on our hands. A fey abducted by a human is a serious matter for the Code of Silence, but we can contain the problem if we find the abductor. The spilled blood, on the other hand—well, no matter, it is done.”

“I'll keep trying to contact the fake cop,” I said. “For now I'll pretend I still think he's legit.”

“Meet me back at the Residence,” Caryl said, “and let's start combing through files. Perhaps we'll find some connections that will help.”

•   •   •

By the time I got there, Caryl had turned the living room into a war room. Everyone I'd seen at breakfast was sitting on a couch or a piano bench or a chair dragged in from the dining room, looking through folders and entire drawers that had simply been yanked out of their cabinets and brought to the room in their entirety. Monty was having a field day with unattended stacks of paper. There were at least three different arguments going on, but the only one I could hear was Gloria's with Caryl on the sofa, and only Gloria's side of it.

“I'm just concerned, that's all,” Gloria was saying. “She hasn't been through the whole training; she doesn't know what all they can and can't do.”

Caryl said something calmly that I couldn't hear, and at the same time I felt Elliott settle onto my shoulder. When Caryl spotted me, she grabbed some photographs and rose from the couch, moving to me without even formally breaking off her discussion with Gloria. As if Gloria really needed another ­reason to be annoyed with me.

“Do you recognize any of these people, aside from Vivian?” Caryl asked me.

I glanced over the photos and shook my head. “Not in the least.” I pointed at a lumpy-nosed old woman. “That's a weird facade for a fey to choose.”

“Thus far you've only seen the
sidhe
; they share our standards of beauty, for the most part. Commoners, especially Unseelie commoners, have a different aesthetic.”

“Who are these people?”

“These are the only four Unseelie fey who are currently in Los Angeles. Seelie magic is designed to attract attention, not divert it, so these four and myself are the only beings in the city who might have cast spells to assist in removing Rivenholt from the train station.”

“Is it safe to assume that our fake cop knows about Arcadia?”

“Not necessarily. For example, he could be conspiring with Vivian in some mundane criminal capacity and unaware of exactly how she managed to get them all safely out of the station. A spell caster of Vivian's skill can be subtle.”

“But given the amount of blood loss, Teo said Rivenholt's facade would have dropped.”

Caryl nodded. “It does seem likely that if the man was unaware of the existence of fey before, he has just had a very shocking introduction to the concept.”