Itch: Nine Tales of Fantastic Worlds (6 page)

At that very moment, Edward wanted to slink away. He wanted vanish into the early twenty-first century and live out his life as the neighborhood bachelor who bought a house because that’s what working men do. Working men who ended up lonely because they hadn’t found the right person with whom to share their lives.

The neighborhood little old ladies who grew the lilacs and the roses and all the other smelly flowers would check on him weekly, and tell him tales of their granddaughters and how a good strong strapping young man like him needed to work less and get out more.

Because when the half-naked woman yelled at Edward, he knew he would never have anything other than his job.

But he didn’t have that either.

The cop car
whooped
and stopped at the end of the driveway. Another woman came out of the house. Edward recognized her: his current target. The woman he was supposed to set on the Right Path before that mother-kissing scumbag Lancaster fired him. The stupid, no-good, idiot desk jockey who wouldn’t even take the time to check on
why
a record appeared in the time stream database. When he got back to the ship, they’d have—

“You, without the shirt, turn around! Do it slowly!”

Edward did. And Edward punched.

***

“So…” On the other side of the bullet-proof Plexiglas partition from Edward, Sherry swiped her finger across the clipboard sitting in front of her on the flat desk-like surface. Though here, Edward needed to remember the time locals called them “tablets” or “i” this and that. “…it turned out that the original Right Path cleaning job was more complicated than the databases let on.”

She shrugged and switched the phone receiver to her other ear. Edward did the same, mimicking her movement. They made him wear a bright orange jumpsuit, the prison fashion of this time. Edward kind of liked it. It reminded him of concentrated oak, and helped him use his maintenance routines to center himself while his bunk mate counted out his daily one thousand push-ups.

Sherry continued: “The scumbag in question is—
was
—living with the target and her housemate, Naked Maria.” She swiped at the tablet again, moving over to a different page of her report.

The most beautiful woman Edward had ever seen in any era went by the name Maria. Every time Sherry visited, he asked for more detail. Maria had broken up with a longtime boyfriend about eight months ago and had moved in with the target, who had wanted someone to help cover costs. She was single, liked men, and beyond lovely with her copper hair and her perfectly oval steel-colored eyes.

Edward spent a lot of his time thinking about her.

“He wasn’t supposed to be there, of course. He’s gone.” Sherry shrugged again. “Bart took your car back to the ship, by the way. He’s doing fine. Learned his lesson about his shots.” Sherry grinned and swiped at her tablet again. “Lancaster fast-tracked him. He’s next up for an internship.”

Edward almost dropped the phone. Lancaster fired him, but promoted the kid?

On the other side of the glass, Sherry chuckled. The sound came through the earpiece tinny. “You know what that kid did? He had his monocle in his pocket! He pulled it out, called up the local internet, and found out the scumbag had a warrant out for his arrest. He sniffled a few times, did his best to be non-threatening, and smooth-talked the other officer into checking. And
bam
! Problem solved.”

The kid did have a future ahead of him. Or at least several trips Back.

Sherry looked up. Her eyes were still the same death-blue as always, but Edward thought for a brief flicker, he saw compassion. But he was probably wrong.

“You, Mr. Strevakoff, are a whole ‘nother story. Naked Maria is beside herself because she was mean to you. Seems that like her dumbass friend, she likes bad boys, and you, for some stupid reason, are now the chivalrous bad boy of her dreams.” She rolled her eyes.

Edward’s mouth rounded. He felt his lips make a perfect circle. He also felt every muscle in his body dance as if he’d licked an open circuit. “Really?”

Sherry rolled her eyes again. “Yes, Mr. Handsome Field Worker. She’s going to testify on your behalf so you can’t have any contact with her until after you get out, do you understand?
After
.”

Edward nodded. He wasn’t about to make a new mess.

“Okay, so Lancaster says the
Flight Up The Center
breaks orbit in three days, so until then, I’ll come around regularly to give you updates.”

His dancing muscles stopped cold. “You’re abandoning me?” Leaning close to the Plexiglas, he mouthed his next words.
With the time locals
?

Sherry sighed and swiped at her clipboard-tablet again. “It says here that Naked Maria has a nice life ahead of her, but my intuition—” Sherry waved her hand at her head at the same time she closed her left eye. “—told me something’s up, so I did some digging.” She dropped her hand down again.

Sherry had intuition? Edward didn’t say anything, just let her talk. He didn’t know what to say. Nothing about this situation had been covered in the manuals.

“Turns out the longtime boyfriend she broke up with has unsavory connections. The databases hint at a lot of messes in her time stream.” Sherry sat up straight and set the tablet down on the desk surface. “So I made a recommendation.”

Oh
,
shit
, Edward thought. Ice cold Sherry—
thorough
Sherry, which he hadn’t known before because he’d always been frightened of her and her burnt popcorn—made a recommendation to that idiot Lancaster. Edward sniffed the antiseptic odor of the jail and wondered if he’d ever smell the scent of fresh tobacco again.

“I told Lancaster that Naked Maria is a special case. One we need to watch.” Sherry’s eyes went cold again. For a second, Edward wondered if his unsubstantiated fear of her was
his
intuition. But now was not the time to investigate.

“So you, Mr. Strevakoff, are going to stay in this time. And you are going to make sure she’s tidy.” Sherry nodded once, the way Edward’s father used to nod when he told little Eddie to
do as I say
. Or
don’t ask that question
. Some things were better left out of the databases, and obviously Sherry understood what those things were better than Edward did.

“Okay.” He blinked, wondering how he’d gotten so lucky. “So I’m supposed to befriend Maria?” He’d do more than befriend. He’d keep her life clean. “And I get to keep my job?”

Sherry nodded once again, with the same sort of
no more questions
look in her eyes. She hung up her receiver.

Edward hung up his as well. And when he returned to his cell and his cell-mate doing his pushups, he sat on his slightly urine-smelling mattress. Thoughts of his mom returned, and all her comments about hygiene and, in many ways, duty. And Edward wondered if he was about to make her proud.

~ ~ ~

Just to the left, and maybe a little ahead, we find a magical present not all that different from our own…

Murder leaves a sour taste
. The humans in charge gag and the next thing I know, I’m on scene providing the correct saline solution to rinse their throats.

It doesn’t matter who got caught with their pants around their ankles or how big the coin they drop into the firm’s accounts. Or, as with this case, how much political blood drips from the veins of one Mary Seenly-Santiago, the human woman who now sits in the back of a police cruiser a hundred feet away, behind the yellow line, under the hammering rain.

Sometimes a member of my firm is close enough to make it to a scene before the press and the detectives. I was ten minutes away with my husband in our little café, the one where I proposed. He laughed at my jokes tonight, his wonderful wavy hair frizzing because of the storm. His finger worked suggestively over the side of his coffee stirrer, and he smiled one of his suggestive smiles. Then he sipped his after-dinner decaf, commenting on how this evening, even in the rain, the café workers still made it taste perfect, with that little hint of chocolate.

It reminded him of me.

Now, the rain pelts the top of my new German-engineered behemoth of a sedan, the one I didn’t want, but appearances are appearances. And when Senator Santiago calls hush-hush from his cell phone, appearances matter even if they shouldn’t.

There’s no police report yet. The second string detectives arrived moments ago and now watch my car, probably wondering why the thin-faced blonde is tapping at her phone instead of chatting up the officers. The device’s screen feels greasy under my fingertip and I think I should clean the case.

When I glance at the cruiser, I wonder just how deep a cleaning I’ll need to do tonight.

I read the text transcript of the Senator’s call to my phone again:
Tam
,
listen
,
I need you
. A pause. The phone doesn’t know how to translate the sound of thunder.
Mary’s in trouble
. The Senator’s wife.
Goddamn it Tam she’s in trouble
.

One hundred feet away, in the back of the police cruiser, sits the wife of a senator with more dark money up his ass than all of K Street. She plays her part, does the parties, but she’s not like him. She tries. She works the channels. Does the deals. Tries harder than anyone in this city to get the world to see the whores, pimps, and the dealers as human beings.

Knowing his good wife might cause him headaches keeps the Senator extra suggestible, something my kind needs if we are to keep the masses calm. Humans don’t need to know about the other things roaming their city.

I live on a trash heap. This place, here in the “real world,” is where the other realms dump their worn-out televisions and their kids’ dirty diapers. And like any dump, it has its cawing gulls circling above, and its coyotes and rats sulking about.

It also has its vultures. And monsters.

Lawyering isn’t my real job. It’s a cover. I deal with the dark things skittering in the shadows and unfortunately, my true work and my glamour sometimes cross.

I flick over to hearing the Senator’s call.

“Goddamn it Tam she’s in trouble!” Santiago hisses. There’s heavy breathing. The sounds of shoes dragging.

When I pause the replay, I feel a hint of heat on my fingertips.

I understand an omen when I feel one. I’m going to need to seal this breach in the walls around the dump. I’m pretty sure Mary Seenly-Santiago escaped one of
my
monsters tonight.

My fist tightens around the plastic and printed metal of my phone. Exploitation hums off the damned thing, adding an acidic undertone to the storm’s ionic flavor.

I don’t care if the Senator needs this kept quiet. I don’t care if the tabloids want the sleaze. I know only that the woman in the back of that cruiser is a canary. A little bird capable of singing about the monsters. She could expose my kind and what we deposit here.

And when I tap my fingers along my silver arm ring, my tattoo, my entire hand feels as if I touched the sun.

I allow myself one brief moment of stillness. One second to breathe and to hear the storm dance on the roof of my homo sapien-built chariot before I lunge into what needs doing.

I’m out of the sedan, swinging my sensible shoes into the rain, and pulling up my collar around my ears. The coat is one they’d all expect me to wear, as is the jewelry and the hairstyle. I blend in well with the locals. It’s my job.

The Senator wags his sausage finger in my direction as I walk up. Carl, his chief-of-staff, stands next to him looking sour and exhausted. Carl’s young, neither sensitive to my kind nor suggestible to our whispers, and does a fine job wrangling the empty vessel that is Robert Santiago.

The man has no original thoughts. He can edit and refashion snippets with great skill, but he’s not a creator. His wife may be a canary, but the senator is a terrified octopus mimicking his environment.

“It’s about time you got your ass out of your un-American piece-of-shit car.” Senator Santiago pulls on his cuffs, adjusting his suit under the rain slicker obviously provided by the city’s finest, and glares at his chief-of-staff, not me.

Behind him, near the wrought iron fence I dare not touch, the three members of his Secret Service detail stand perfectly still, each huge and imposing but still blending into the rain-soaked shadows under the umbrellas they hold over Santiago.

Carl, to his credit, stands rigid in the rain, his three hundred dollar hair cut flat against his three hundred thousand dollar Princeton brain, and sniffs as if the rain blinding us all was pissed out by Satan himself.

Santiago seems to catch onto Carl’s posture and yells at the other man as he nods toward me. “Why the
hell
did it take you seven minutes more to get here than the gunslinger? You’re my head boy. Explain
that
to me.”

Carl looks at me, not the Senator. “Reports yet? What happened?”

Santiago tosses his hands into the air, knocking the edge of Carl’s umbrella. “What do you
think
happened?” He steps to the side, then back, stopping as if he realizes he can’t stand still. “She was
helpin’
. Because she’s always freakin’
helpin’
.”

Under his breath, I hear, “Always feeding the goddamned poors.” Carl doesn’t hear it, though I suspect at least one of the three Secret Service guards does. The biggest one.

I can’t see the man’s eyes so I don’t know if he’s blinking the way sensitives do when they look at us. But I sense it on him.

“I told her not to come down here alone.” Santiago paces. “I
told
her to take Fitz and the black one.” He jabs his finger over his shoulder, at the big sensitive behind him. “Jeremy, that’s your name, right? You’re a damned linebacker. Secret Service told me you served in Iraq.”

Jeremy stays impassive. “Yes, sir.”

Carl’s watching the police cruiser and ignoring his boss. “She was by herself?” Carl still hasn’t moved an inch. “With hookers?”

Santiago mutters again. “I hate this city.”

Two stints in the senate and we run him for president. It’s all funded. All good. The people love Texas and he’s an easily controlled suggestible.

But his wife just became a liability.

Santiago snarls at Carl. “You look like I got you out of bed. You with your boyfriend?” The Senator steps to the side again and his Secret Service detail steps with him.

Carl’s eyes narrow. “Were you? Is that why your wife was out here by herself?”

Santiago’s face tightens, but he keeps his mouth shut.

Carl looks like he’s about flip off his boss. He’s having a hard time holding it in. His hand twitches.

I smile to myself. Carl might be useful, in the long run.

“Stay here.” I wave them off and turn toward the cruiser.

“It’s not like they’ll let me near her anyway!” Santiago glares at Carl like it’s his fault.

The city’s finest have their protocols. The detectives will want to talk to Mary but they have to let me talk to her first.

Carl jogs up. “This is bad.” He turns his back toward his boss and leans close. “Even if she’s just a witness, this is bad.”

Mary Seenly-Santiago’s handlers can spin what she does the way they need to—until a spotlight focuses on the shelters at which she volunteers. On whom she helps. Why she helps here, and not in some approved church annex.

So yes, Carl’s right. Mary may no longer play well to the Senator’s base.

Which will cause problems for his campaign. Her talking about the attack and a dead hooker won’t help, either.

“I’ll handle it,” I say.

Carl nods and walks back toward the Senator, his stride as worn out as one would expect from a man peripheral to a plaything of gods. Part of me wants to touch my silver ring. Give the man a boon. But I need to focus.

The uniformed officer standing between the cruiser and the techs in their electric blue latex gloves and their black FORENSICS jackets looks more upset about the scene than the woman he holds in custody.

He blinks twice when he sees me walk up, and squints like he forgot his glasses.

Rain sometimes alters a glamour. I suspect he’s a sensitive.

“Officer…?” I offer my hand.

He shakes his head, blinking again, as if trying to clear his eyes of rainwater. “Martins.” He steps back, not offering his hand. Instead, his fingers inch toward his weapon.

It’s unconscious. A learned and automatic response. This cop senses I’m not quite right. Or at least even less right than the politician standing one hundred feet away surrounded by bodyguards and Carl the chief-of-staff.

I pull back my hand and smile, forcing my eyes to brighten as well. Humans like bewitching eyes. I flip out my identification, and flash the smile again. “I’m Ms. Seenly-Santiago’s lawyer. Is she under arrest?”

The officer looks like he wants to sigh. “This is a crime scene, lady.”

“I have the right to speak with my client.” Again, bright eyes and luminescent smile. Bewitching and beguiling.

The officer frowns but opens the cruiser door for me.

“Leave it open,” I say. I don’t want to be locked in the back of a cop car.

It’s cramped. The seats are plastic and it smells like vodka-laced vomit. They might hose it down each night, but some odors never fade.

Mary Seenly-Santiago blinks her round bland eyes as she watches me fold myself into the seat next to her. She’s close enough to physically perfect she fits the mold of a senator’s wife, but far enough away she doesn’t hold attention. Not-quite blonde hair, not-quite large breasts. Well-dressed, if conservative. Smooth but angled enough to not look different. She has, by her human nature, the perfect glamour.

She watches me carefully, blinking again, but this time very much like the officer, and I remember what the senior partners at the firm said: She’s a sensitive. “Use it,” one told me. “Scare her if you need to.”

Sensitivity isn’t an ability that correlates with any mindset, skill, or physical trait. It seems to be evenly distributed among all the versions of humans, regardless of class, creed, or color. We don’t know why.

Most of my kind don’t care, either. But sometimes I wonder if the things living where we dump our trash are more evolved than we give them credit for.

It doesn’t feel right to use fear. I have no interest in being as predatory as what crawled out of the shadows and attacked the hooker.

Mary Seenly-Santiago looks away. She’s sitting up straight when I fold into the back of the cruiser, her hands on her lap, her chin high. Her posture doesn’t change, but she’s taken on a hint of defensiveness, that tightening of the shoulders and arms sensitives do when we come around.

“Do you remember me, Mary?” We’ve met a couple of times, at her husband’s functions. Everyone at the firm knows all the clients, specifically for moments like this.

“You’re one of the… lawyers.” She doesn’t blink. Or look at me. Her shoulders tense more.

“Yes. I was close by when your husband called.” I wiggle enough my clothes rustle against the plastic of the seats.

Mary glances over, as I had hoped. She blinks again. She’s definitely a sensitive. “It looked like you. Fuzzy.” She looks away. “Being lawyers is not enough now? You have to kill us, too?”

I think the firm’s consistent efforts to intimidate might have made her angry enough to talk about what happened tonight. To want to organize and protect those who need protecting and to fight.

Because that’s the woman in the car with me. She’s resistant to a world she sees and believes needs resisting. And she’s becoming more and more of a liability.

“What do you mean, Mary?” I need to know what she knows. What she might say.

“Do you know why I come down here? Why I sneak out and don’t bring Jeremy or the other guys? Because I don’t want to be around your kind. Or my husband’s.” Mary Seenly-Santiago presses her lips together, forming a tight seal between her words and the world.