Craving (26 page)

125 lbs, October 22, 2008.

“Four numbers,” he said, “one twenty-five, ten, twenty-two, and two thousand eight. Now cut ‘em in half, so the four numbers are in two separate columns.”

I kept nodding even after he’d already gone on.

“The first two,” he pointed, “one twenty-five and ten. Does ten divide evenly into one twenty-five?”

I don’t know why I even bothered.

“No. The nearest number into which ten can divide is one hundred twenty!” He smiled up at me expectantly.

I’m not a . . .

“Sorry,” he pre-plied. “So that means that in order to get a number that can be divided by ten, we have to subtract five from one twenty-five.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a notepad and a pen that looked like a syringe filled with blood. I eyed it.

“I know, right, totally cool. Get ‘em from the clinic, free like condoms but without the weird looks.” He glanced up at me. “Well,
different
weird looks, but who cares, at least they don’t wonder about my sexual activities.” He turned back to the pad and wrote something down, then presented it to me as if looking for a golden star.

125≡5mod10

I stared at it and probably would have been happier if it was Sanskrit.

He shook his head, harassed. “Mortals,” he grumbled, until I thought something at him and he blushed. “Oh yeah, sorry. Anyway, so this gives us a number, see. We take that number, five, and count down on the first page in the red books five rows, then we take the second number, four, and count that many words into the row. Bam, first word of our message from Eva.”

 Stunned, I looked at the many volumes.
This will take . . .

Jinx heaved a sigh, “Yeah, totally. I’m gonna need to take them . . .”

But Arthur had appeared in the doorway and had a pensive look on his face.

Jinx rolled backward again and stared up at Arthur like a child in his playroom. “You’re shitting me.”

Arthur crossed his arms.

“But the equipment I need is like super heavy and it’s already all set up back home!”

Arthur turned away.

“Damn, Art, so not cool,” Jinx complained, until Arthur tossed a look back at him and the boy perked up. “You mean it, right?” he shouted, smiling broadly.

“Of course,” Arthur replied, his voice drowned out by Jinx’s simultaneous mimicry.

Leaping to his feet and dancing in a happy circle, he pointed at Arthur and laughed. “Now Sam’s gotta, cuz you
owe
me!”

Wha . . .?

“Espresso! Nectar of the Gods,” he yelped and before I could think about saying anything, had disappeared out the door.

Arthur and I exchanged a look, and unable to stop myself, I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe.

“Where . . . on earth . . . did you . . . find him?” I wheezed.

Arthur shrugged. “He found me.”

“What is he, like twelve?”

He raised a finely arched eyebrow. “Two hundred, I think.”

“No . . . way.”

Chapter 18

I opened my eyes. I was lying on the couch. I sat bolt upright and looked at my wrist. It was freshly bandaged and I had not done it. My vision-quest was a success. At my feet, Jinx sat, five books out and open, at a loss without my excellent foreknowledge of the journals.

Our eyes met and I formed the thought.

In instantaneous awe, he pulled out his headphones. “Tight.”

I rolled off the sofa and reached for the green legend. Opening it, I set it down and turned to the first page of the first red book. Then I reached into his jacket pocket without any kind of greeting and retrieved his pen and paper. Hurriedly, I scrawled the formula he’d shown me and triumphantly dropped the syringe before it could creep me out even more.

He looked at the formula, grinning, then looked up at me in wonder. “Cyclic permutation code! Fucking sweet!”

Arthur’s not . . .

“Fuck, are you serious?” he whined.

I didn’t even have to nod.

“God damn it!” He got up and looked at me. “Espresso?
Yes
!”

He turned around and jogged to the door, but at the threshold, waved. “Nice meeting you . . . again, I guess.”

I bowed, because we both knew what it meant to experience things twice, but to his ten second sneak peek, I was a prophet.

“I owe you two cokes,” we both said.

“Three,” he specified gratefully, and disappeared.

Still pleased with myself, I turned and found Arthur standing in the hallway holding the beanbag chair. My smile faded.

“You passed out in the Records Office.”

“On
purpose
,” I clarified and pointed at the happy face. “What’s that doing here?”

“Jinx needs it. I’m not sure what it meant, but when he saw it in the bed of the pickup truck, he shouted something about ‘watching the watchmen’ and demanded to keep it,” he said quietly and put it on the floor. “Since you were going to throw it away, I assumed it would be fine. Is it?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I got the reference to the graphic novel, but knew that Arthur never would. “I didn’t think about it before, but since he’s such a comic fan, it’ll probably go well with his action figures.”

“So you met. Where did he go?”

“Home, to get his computer, and yeah we met.” I held up my hands, seeking recognition. “
In my head.
”

Calm as ever, Arthur blinked. “You can control it?”

I dropped my arms in frustration. “Yes! I
used
it! I
am
the
ultimate
spirit ninja!” I plopped myself down on the sofa, my chin tilted up in smugness that drew an expression from him that seemed both a frown and a smile at once. “I've also had some sort of realization.”

“Oh?”

“I think I can do what Ursula did.”

His head came up and around so quickly, I thought he'd heard some hypersonic noise I hadn't, but the look on his face was not worried, it was peaceful, as if he'd been waiting for me to say that.

“I see. How can you be sure?”

“Sam told me his life story.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Proof enough. Sam never speaks of his past, even to me. You were not hard on him?”

“No. I'm totally trained in how to be a super-
hero
,” I pledged with a nod, “not a righteously vengeful bitch. You have taught me well.”

“Taking pride in your flaw only reinforces it.” He didn’t have to say what came next. The pain in my wrist said it all.

“I learned something,” I sulked. “Given my dearth of accomplishments in life, can’t we just be pleased?”

He opened the refrigerator, hiding his face from me. “My pleasure means nothing if you are not safe.”

Annoyed and feeling bad that I might have worried them, I pulled my hair back and tied it up. “Okay, I get it. Can you tell me
why
I can do it? How is it possible?”

I wanted him to tell me that that wasn’t what happened to Eva, that she hadn't sat at Ursula’s feet, in rapt attention.

He sighed. “Your transition is unique in my experience. You are very special, my dear.”

I blushed. “But I’m not supposed to take pride in that, right?”

“The question itself implies the answer.”

After a minute, the door closed and a plastic container of food was brought to me on a tray. Inside it was a wonderful salad topped with cheese and cranberries, pasta, and a fruit tart. I suddenly realized I hadn’t eaten in a long time, and though I knew I should
want
to eat it, I didn’t. Politely, I took the food from his hands and forced it down. When I finished, Arthur took a seat and crossed his arms.

“I broke into AMRTA. It wasn’t hard. The security isn’t as tight as I thought. A number keypad, motion sensors, and a camera, but I guess if no one can read your treasure and it falls apart at a wrong look, you don’t need much security. Either that, or they just want the illusion of security. The code was my birthday, which means Eva spent her time in that room, doing whatever she was hired to do.” I chewed another bite, avoiding his face. “It was like a museum, a sealed clean room, with all these moldy, old-looking scrolls in plastic boxes. They were written in Sanskrit, I think. Did Eva know Sanskrit?”

“Yes.”

I frowned. “Oh. Well. Then I came here and we cracked the code. Jinx is going to input all the data into his computers and then we’ll get our answers.”

Arthur was silent for a long time. When I finally dared to look up at him, he seemed blank.

“You’re not my father,” I said, before I thought about the words. “I don’t have to apologize to you.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry.” I immediately gasped. “That came out wrong! I know you’re only trying to help me. I’m sorry! I just . . .” I shook my head.

His lips moved in a tender smile. “I know, Lilith. You do not have to apologize to anyone. Everything means something, right?”

I looked at my feet. There it was again, that subtle correction. He was reminding me, without seeming to, that I was fixated on an idea that would spiral into darkness if I wasn’t able to control my reaction to it.

Of myself.

I didn’t need to apologize, we both knew, but if I didn’t keep my grip, I’d end up like Ursula.

“Got it. No blood-drinking. Right.”

In his almost-silent way, Arthur chuckled. “How many cokes did he get out of
you
?”

“First or second time?” I replied with a smile.

“Both.”

“Two the first, one the second, but that one was a freebee.”

He turned in his chair and struck some hash marks on a running tally he seemed to be keeping. In deference to my newest friend, I pointed at the slashes. “Um, you promised him espresso.”

Turning back, he blinked at me.

“He’ll be expecting it.”

He wrote it in and pointed to my wrist without looking. “Don’t do that again.”

“Giving me orders?”

“Suggestions. You strained the stitches.”

“It doesn’t hurt. In my vision,” I said without preamble. Now that I saw how he interacted with Jinx, I understood why he had a taste for a lack of prefacing. “Jinx said that he infected himself by studying math.”

Arthur nodded. “Do you remember the invisible road to nowhere?”

I thought back to the mall. That trip seemed to have happened so many months ago, but it was only a few days. “Yes.”

“He found it.”

“Katsu.”

“Yes.”

“Ah.” I rubbed my wrist carefully. “So, what did it for Eva? You never said.”

He pointed to the red books. “I’m sure she told us.”

“Do you think,” I wondered aloud, “that the Sangha are planning a counter-strike?”

“They don’t need to plan. They are opportunists with abilities like yours. They will let the pieces fall into place, and eventually, you will come to them.”

“No I . . .” then I thought of the vision. If I hadn’t been able to go spirit-stealth at that moment, would I have gone in physically? When I realized I couldn’t answer my own question, I buried my face in my hands. “Crap.”

He turned away knowingly.

“Sam told me about the man who died downstairs,” I revealed, hoping my newfound talent would work on him, but when I put all my concentration into reading his face, feeling the air for the vibrations of a speeding heartbeat, I found nothing. “Who was he?”

“Stop, Lilith. You do not need to interrogate your friends.”

My cheeks burned, and I looked at the floor in embarrassment. “Okay, I won't experiment on you, but I still want to know who he was.”

“An old friend,” Arthur said quietly.

“Who
found
you?”

“Yes.”

“Like Jinx did.”

His eyes revealed nothing. “Yes.”

“A two hundred-year-old immortal ubergeek walks into a coffee shop and you just say, ‘wow, how lucky?’ Come on,” I demanded.

Arthur tilted his head. “He’s a caffeine addict. It’s not that unlikely.”

*  *  *

The white glow of the computer screens was an uncannily attractive compliment to Jinx’s personal color scheme. He sat in the coveted beanbag in the dark, peering at the gibberish, scanning Eva’s volumes into his hard drive, comparing and inputting all the numbers he’d derived from the legend. He was a tireless typing god and did not ever object to the uncomfortable happy face. I kept him supplied, running down to the café every couple of hours to refill his giant espresso, bound and determined to maintain his state of vibrating quickness. Headphones in, he only looked at me to smile in thanks, and it was in that focus, in the glances of understanding, that I saw his maturity.

He was average height for a grown person of nearly two centuries prior, which meant he was about shoulder height to me and seemed much younger than he actually had been, whenever it was he had achieved Right Liberation. That, combined with his demeanor and syntax, made the perfect camouflage. It was no wonder I could not perceive his true age, but grateful for the composure it gave him. I sat on pins and needles.

Finally, he sat forward and put down his two keyboards, one normal, one a plate of what looked like glass stuck with uniquely arranged preprogrammed keys.

“
Mon
dieu
!” He flattened back his spikes like a hedgehog being petted, and then fluffed them forward again with a limp arm. He didn’t seem tired, and indeed, I wasn’t sure they ever really slept. I knew I did, but then again, as Arthur had said, I wasn’t finished changing yet.

I blinked at Jinx.
Done?

“Not even close,” he muttered, sounding as if he had just uncovered, through painstaking excavation, the tip of a perfectly preserved pyramid of pure diamond. “Where’s Art?”

I began the sentence and Jinx gave a nod.

“Yeah, okay. I need to stretch my legs anyway.” He got to his feet and reached for the ceiling. When his arms fell, his face was pointed in my direction. Relaxed and seemingly enraptured, he smiled the smile of appreciation for greatness. “Your sister was a genius.”

He turned around and went downstairs, leaving me to reason through what he said. I thought back to our youth together. I had been much older than Eva and found her bothersome. Before the accident, she was a sidekick I didn’t really want, someone annoying who always seemed to get in my way, making it so I couldn’t go out with my friends, borrowing my clothes for dress-up games, crying anytime I looked at her funny. After the accident, she was a stranger I willingly tried not to think about, even as I grudgingly fulfilled my obligation to her. Had she been a genius all along, desperate for the incomprehensible qualities I possessed? Had she been reaching all along, only to finally give up?