Keeley Thomson (Book 3): Mistress of Souls (23 page)

The rest was more awkward. She needed to confront Darla with everything and try to get the truth from her, but no matter what she said, it couldn't be trusted at all. Or, rather, she could make herself trust it, but if it was filled with lies that would be worse for her than almost anything else. Believing lies could destroy the sense of reality and balance in a person. She'd seen it happen before, to almost everyone each day.

If she couldn't trust Darla though, what was she going to do? She didn't know enough to go it alone, did she? It was scary to think about, but she knew that she just might have to.

Even with her emotions shut off as tightly as she could manage, Keeley felt a cold emptiness inside that ached a little. Like she was all alone in the world and always would be, at least in every way that actually mattered.

Chapter twelve

Darla didn't come back on Thursday and Keeley had missed school, even though she insisted that Eve and Hally go. It would look suspicious if they were all gone. Bad enough that Barb had just disappeared like she had. The girl had been a cheerleader, which meant high profile at the school, so she'd be missed eventually. Having that happen at Raintree wasn't going to be a good thing, not after having lost Rob less than a month before. People were going to freak when they figured it out.

Scared or not, Keeley found where Barb had lived and broke in, expecting to find booby-traps or guard beasts, something out of a novel or movie. It was just a really big, very nice, house, with two cars in the garage and a couple that lived there who were... gone. Not at work, they were in the dining room sitting at the table eating, but still not truly there. Something had happened to their minds that made them ignore her totally, just going through the motions of living.

They were both clean and even well cared for, but they didn't speak, just spooning up something that looked like canned soup with cheap crackers. They didn't seem to have been abused otherwise and when Keeley got on their computer it looked like all the bills had been paid up to date, and that the man was fairly wealthy, though he hadn't been until three years before. One the walls were pictures of a girl she recognized, looking happy and younger. Barb.

Thankfully she hadn't existed until three years before either. The pictures, even the younger looking ones, showed that clearly. She was always Xenses.

That news actually sent a wave of relief through Keeley, a tension she hadn't realized was there, just letting go. Barb wasn't real. She'd always been Xenses. That meant that she wasn't locked in the basement as his rape toy. It also meant that he hadn't killed and eaten her. Or done even worse things.

The girl that she'd known and liked would always be safe, having never really existed.

It hit her then that Hally and some of the others had been picking up on how wrong Barb was but that she hadn't. The signs were there, like the delay in information coming off of her when touched, but she hadn't understood it at all at the time. Darla hadn't either, so it was even worse than it seemed on the surface.

After assuring herself that the broken people that lived there would be fine given time, that even if they never recovered they wouldn't starve or neglect themselves, she left. It wasn't her business to fix every mess someone else made and really, given everything, she didn't have a clue what Xenses had done in the first place. If she were older she might have an idea, but if it existed in her memories anywhere she didn't have the right search term to find it yet. There were thousands of ways to break and condition people though. The easiest was to pay them, training people to do what you want with consistent rewards, but that just wasn't Xenses' way.

Without waiting for Darla to return she decided to move everyone to the new house, the big one that needed a lot of work. If she came back Keeley wasn't certain that she wanted to have any ties with her. Or at least she told herself that. Tried to anyway.

The truth was she didn't want her to go away at all. She was her best friend. Her sister. Or her aunt maybe, depending on what was true. The idea of losing her hurt far more than it really should have, given how short a time they'd known each other.

It didn't take long to get everyone shifted over though, since they didn't have a lot of stuff. Rebekah had the most, having a full bag of clothing and some toiletries. She was already packed when Keeley suggested they do so.

"We've known that the move was coming. Should I get Elis around?" Her tone was polite, but guarded, like she expected to be snapped at. It made sense when Keeley touched her arm gently, the Vampire woman had been involved in Charles' death, if only on the burial detail. That kind of thing tended to make others involved dislike you a little, even if the job had to be done. Even if they'd ordered you to do it.

That was silly, but made sense at the same time, getting Keeley to smile and pat her on the arm.

"Do that please. Balthias too."

It was both harder and easier to get a vehicle than she'd figured it would be. She just found an ad for a van that was being sold online and took cash with her. It was light blue and had primer spots on the right hand side, where someone had messed up at some point and hit something large while trying to park. Given the damage she could still see, even after it was popped out, it was probably done by a drunk person. Anyone else would have gone slower and stopped sooner.

She bargained hard with the man selling it, who was drunk at the time, but needed the money. In the end she still overpaid for it slightly, but not so much the man felt giddy about cheating a teenage girl. He actually called her a bitch under his breath as she drove off. It made her smile. He'd gotten a good deal for it and signed it over on the spot. True, it was in her name, but she'd put her mom in as co-owner, just in case she had to bail and run off sometime soon. The first thing that she did though was take it to Darla's favorite auto-body place.

It was the only one she knew she could trust.

"Hi." She waited for the older man to recognize her. They'd met before after all. It didn't take him long, but he subconsciously looked at her breasts, which were a little bigger now, probably wondering if she was wearing a wonder bra or stuffing. It had been too short a time for her to have had work done after all, a few weeks.

"This beast is..." She thought for a second and then grinned. "Bertha. She needs a new paint job, and if you could rebuild the engine, make sure that she has all new tires that will run while flat and all that?" The man nodded and promptly ignored her, circling the vehicle as if it were an adversary now that he knew what would be done.

"That will cost a bit. We need to replace this side panel. Whoever did the work on it wasn't very good. Do you want it bullet proofed?" He seemed eager that she say yes, but she shook her head. That would make it heavy and less maneuverable after all.

"No, but could you put in some refrigeration in the back section? It's going to be carrying fresh cut flowers a lot. She's a work vehicle." That meant something to the man that she didn't understand, but he looked at the machine and then her several times.

"It will cost about fifty thousand for top of the line work. That isn't a padded estimate either. I can't negotiate on that price." The odd thing there was that he clearly meant it. Most people would have tried to get more out of her if they could.

"Fine. How long to have her up and running?"

"Two weeks? Maybe less if the parts we need come in fast."

That should be fine. She wrote the man a check for half the work up front, without waiting for him to ask for the money. She had the funds for it after all.

Then she asked if he had a small economy car she could buy from him. The man shook his head and offered to loan her something, until she explained.

"Bertha isn't for me. Work vehicle for my mom. I'd like something reliable that doesn't look like I have much money. You know, like what a working mother might get her teen daughter for a first car, but on a budget?" She really didn't care what the man thought of her plan, but he nodded as if it made total sense.

"I can do that. Here, follow me..." On the way out of the shop they past a young man that was wearing a tan work shirt who waved at her as she passed. She recognized him from when Freida had needed some repair, thanks to Edith Givens, so she waved back and smiled. It was hard to summon the energy for it, but the guy went back to work, pretending not to be overly interested in her. It was a good strategy, not looking too eager, as long as he followed up on it later. He had her number if he wanted to. If not, well, she didn't particularly want to date him anyway. He was a bit too old for her. Enough to get in legal trouble if they did the wrong things. It would be mean to lead him on, so she wouldn't bother unless it became useful later.

She didn't need discount auto work at the moment, so unless he had other skills that wouldn't be happening.

The older man smelled of cigarettes and coffee as he walked in front of her, with just a hint of clean sweat. He had a blue collar job, but that didn't mean he was a slob. The three days beard growth was a cultivated look she figured, which meant the man was smart. Building an image in his clients' minds that played off of what they expected. More intelligent than most would figure given his occupation. It was probably why Darla used his services.

He stopped by a hideous vehicle that looked like it had been beaten by an ape with a sledge hammer and then fixed by that same creature. It was purple... In places, and primer gray in most others, with a bit of rust red slapped on as if it matched in color. It wasn't shiny at all, the whole thing dull. The man smiled as she took in what it looked like, noticing that the tires had been scuffed on the sides, but had new tread. Without waiting the man popped the hood.

The engine inside was actually pretty. For all the lack of class on the rest of it, this car purred when it was started and ran so quietly it almost didn't seem to make any sound at all.

"Looks horrible I know, but she can go from zero to sixty in seven seconds officially and a bit faster in the right conditions. The engine won't break down for a long time and the heater works. So does the air conditioning. The radio is broken, of course and old. No one looking at it will know what you have under the hood. Would this do? Or were you thinking something a little prettier? This used to belong to a friend of mine that had a... rather delicate business that could need a reliable vehicle, but also needed a low profile. He sold it to me when he needed funds to leave town a few months back. Not exactly a babe magnet, but..." Whatever he was going to say got swallowed as she nodded at him, finishing it.

"But I'm not picking up babes. It looks about right. I
was
actually thinking of something prettier, but this should do pretty well. How much?"

They haggled on the price and in the end it cost more than was reasonable for a piece of junk, but less than it was worth to her. She drove away in it, suggesting the man call when he had an update on Bertha. He laughed at the name but acted as if that part didn't need to be said. Which it probably didn't given what she was paying him.

Then she got a prepaid cell phone and maxed out the minutes on it. She could have had a more stable set up, but this way she could dump the thing if she had to without feeling bad. It wasn't a perfect plan, but it gave her something and until she had a problem she could refill this one easily enough. It wasn't like she planned on needing it overly. Not for too long.

It took most of the afternoon, but she left Frieda safely in Darla's garage and walked home from there, wondering if she needed to move out of the house she was in. It might become prudent. She just didn't know.

On Friday night there was a knock on the door as Sherry and Eve worked in her office on the next big floral project. It was for a baby shower, which seemed bizarre to Keeley. Not that people did that, but that anyone would hire Clara for it and want thousands of dollars of flowers. They could have bought a cake from Wal-Mart and saved the money for the kid's college fund instead. Then, that probably wasn't a real issue to whoever was doing it. If they had that kind of cash they probably didn't have to plan for the future all that carefully. It was all about image. Showing all their friends and frienemies that they could afford the best even for things that didn't matter.

Cool. More work for Clara and her mom.

Keeley knew who it was before opening the door, she could get a sense of Darla, even though she was trying to block out any possible mind reading. Keeley made herself do the same all the time now, so it was fair enough. Hopefully she was doing a better job of it though. She'd have to work on that later, just in case. Ideally it should feel like she wasn't there at all. That was possible, but hard to manage most of the time.

She opened the door to find the blonde girl dressed in jeans and a sweater. It was pink and fuzzy, which shouldn't have worked given her coloration, but did somehow.

"Hey. Come on in." She tried to sound bland, not wanting to admit that she'd wondered if the Durgs had killed her or anything so sentimental.

Darla grinned.

"They fought well and led me on a merry chase. Took a while. Quince is still alive, and I don't think he knows yet. Other than that, same old news. How about you? I notice a new ride in the drive way, is it yours?" She entered easily enough and settled on the sofa like she belonged there. Like nothing had happened.

"Yep. I got it off of your mechanic and got mom a new van. Well, an old van, but she's being rebuilt. Frieda is safely in your garage. I didn't know how to put her in the storage facility." She waved her right hand, trying for graceful and sat on the arm of the chair across from her, in case she had to fight. If she did she was opening with a deal and going from there. If she'd done that with Xenses she'd have fared a whole lot better. She
thought
. It was about the only thing that kept her going. The need to heal first like she'd done had taken almost everything, if she came at it strong and healthy, it might work better. The same had to be true of Darla.