Marked (19 page)

Was this how it was going to end? Because of the enemies I'd made and the mistakes I'd put through? I'd gotten Bellury killed. I'd screwed up, over and over again. I'd screwed up here.

Do you have anything to say for yourself, Adam Ward?
the official asked.

We have a great deal to do this afternoon,
Tubbs put in immediately, with a censuring thought.
This is not a cut-and-dry case, and it is not the most important thing on the Council's docket. I say we delay the matter until a better time.

You want to keep him here during a madness crisis?
Charlie asked, unbelieving.
It's stupid to waste good resources on watching him.

That hurt. We'd been in school together, and he was treating me like a stranger.

We could throw him in a cell,
Tubbs said.
Worked last time.

And Kara's boss, just as heartless. I felt my heart sinking.

Throw him out on the street,
the pale woman said, without any compassion.

Won't he run?
asked Chin.

Give him a mind-tag,
Johanna said, the first time she'd said anything. The implication was that they could find me anywhere if I did run. She, like the pale woman, seemed utterly without compassion.

I was going to die.

We could just kill him now,
Rex observed.

I braced.

Release him,
Diaz said, as if coming to a decision.
In two days, we'll meet again. And, Adam?

“Yes?” I said, feeling like I was in shock. Divorced from all of my surroundings. Confused.

You will receive that mind-tag, from a member of Enforcement. If you do not report back here on time . . . well, there are worse things than death. And far worse than a removal of your Abilities. Think about that.

I backed out of the room, numb, numb, so numb. I backed out and, when the door shut behind me, collapsed on the floor.

“What did they decide?” Stone's voice asked me.

I struggled to breathe, the pressure so great. The only thing worse than dying today was not knowing if you were going to die in two days. I let go of the information, letting it
whoosh
out in Mindspace in an uncontrolled, amateur blast.

He took a step back.

I stared at the floor. “You're still a member of Enforcement?”

•   •   •

After it was over, Stone had Turner drive me home. I kept poking at the tag in my head, the little piece of Stone's mind stuck onto mine, temporary in theory, but this was the second time we'd done this. Every time I poked at it, I had pain, pain like poking at the empty place where a tooth used to be.

The city lights passed over us as the aircar settled into a ground lane and Turner took a turn.

“You know when to show up?” she asked, flatly.

“Yes.”

“Do you need me to pick you up?”

“I think I'll find my own way, thanks.” Even if I had to take the bus, it was better than them ferrying me around, especially if it was going to be . . . I shied away. I shouldn't think about that. It wasn't helpful. It wouldn't do any good.

She didn't say anything else, and after a while the aircar came to a stop.

“It's time to get out now,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, and looked up, walling off my thoughts as strictly as I'd walled off the rest of the world, as strictly as I'd walled my mind against Mindspace.

We were sitting in front of my apartment building, an old converted office building with lovely architecture . . . and stains and cracks so deep you could hardly see one without the other. It looked . . . sad today. It looked defeated.

I got out and closed the car door; the car started moving right then, without waiting. Ignoring the cold, I trudged up the cracking stairs and into the lobby, where some homeless guy was settling on our couches. I didn't know where the security guard was. I didn't care. The key got me into the stairs, and the stairs got me onto my floor.

I paused outside my door. Too many people had been in my apartment over the last months for me to ever go in without checking. A mind sat in the middle of my living room, a mind I recognized.

I turned the key and opened the door.

“Hello, Cherabino,” I said.

CHAPTER 17

“How did you—?”
She stood. “Stupid question. The Link, right?”

“That's right,” I said, closing the door behind me. I wanted to collapse. I wanted to shake. I wanted to do anything and everything except stand here being brave, being normal in front of her.

Maybe some of that leaked out onto my face.

She came over and leaned into me, putting her arms around me. “Stupid Link. It will be gone eventually. It will. You promised.”

I stood stock-still.

She gripped harder.
What's wrong?
she sent over the Link, getting through even my tightest, most tightly clenched shield.
What's . . . wrong, Adam?

Her kindness and concern melted the hard shell I'd put over my emotions and I started to shake. My knees softened.

She pulled me over to the couch. I barely made it, staggering like I was drunk.

“What's wrong, damn it?” she yelled.

I was shaking. They'd let me go. They'd let me go and now I had to go do it all again. I—they'd kill me. They'd do worse.

Cherabino climbed into my lap and held my head in her hands. “Talk to me, please.” Her voice was hard, desperate.

“I . . .” I shook my head. “I can't . . .”

And then she kissed me, slow and quiet and comforting. I kissed her back, and I gathered her in my arms, and I just shook.

Sometime later, with me stretched out on the couch and her stretched out on my chest, rubbing her hand up and down on my arm, I thought I could try.

“Can I ask you a favor?” My voice was low, hesitant.

She looked up, concern in her eyes. “Anything.”

“Would you drive me to the Guild day after tomorrow?”

She nodded, slowly. When I didn't say anything else, she asked cautiously, “Why?”

I let go enough to tell her, mind to mind, quietly.

“Ooof,” I hissed as she hit my stomach trying to stand.

Now she was standing and screaming, in a rush of words that didn't make any sense, mostly curses.

“Who do they think they are?” she finally said, making sense, eyes alit with some dangerous fire. “We'll fight this. We'll fight this!” And more in that vein.

I sat up, and sighed. When she quieted down enough that I could be heard, I said, “They own me, Cherabino. Legally. For all I've done to get away from them. And all they've done to push me away. That's what Koshna means. I'm a telepath, and you can't touch me legally. And you can't touch the Guild. They can kill me in broad daylight in front of witnesses, and other than some bad press, there's nothing anybody can do. They can find me anywhere now.”

She came close, bending down to look me in the eye. “You can't give up. We will fight this!”

I blew out a breath. “Please. Help me stay distracted. Help me— I don't know, Cherabino.” I ran my hands through my hair. I'd never done this before, this facing inevitability. Well, that wasn't true. I'd done it once, and I'd checked myself into rehab. But there was no rehab here, not for me, not for this. “Drive me there and stay with me, okay?”

She knelt on the floor and looked up. “You want me to take you to these bastards? Give in?”

I nodded. “Yeah. If I don't go it'll be worse.”

Cherabino shook her head violently and got back to her feet. “I don't know if I can do that,” she said.

“Can you at least stay the night?” I asked. “Not—not for sex,” I added, before I could think better of it. I'd promised her I wouldn't make the Link any stronger than it was. And if they were going to turn my mind inside out or torture me, I didn't want to draw her into it. I didn't want her to be tortured too, or die when I was killed. As much as I wanted to lose myself in sex right now.

“You want me to sleep with you? Just sleep?” she asked.

I looked down. “If you need to leave—”

“You're loaning me a shirt to sleep in,” she said, in a brittle voice.

I went over there and put my arms around her. She went stiff, and then relaxed a little into me. This was all new, all too—but I didn't want her to leave. If I didn't want her to die, I also didn't want her to leave.

I was too much of a coward to want to face this alone.

•   •   •

Neither one of us slept all that well.

“We should have gone to my place,” she grumbled more than once. My cot was not even the size of a twin bed, and not intended for the weight of two people; you could feel the support bars beneath you. We were so close together, with not an inch to spare, that I got several good handfuls of pleasant parts without really trying.

And she didn't push my hands away, I realized with a pang. If I was really going to be wiped, or worse . . . I adjusted my position to curl around her. I wanted more and my body agreed, but neither she nor I commented.

She stole the only pillow, got comfy, and started to snore. I sighed.

As the minutes rolled by in the dark, I found my attention going back to the hidden compartment over our heads.

Up until just a few months ago, I had had a stash of my drug sitting there, waiting for me. I knew where to get another one now.

I wondered if I'd done the wrong thing by having her stay over.

•   •   •

Six thirty a.m. Cherabino rolled out of bed, hitting the floor with a curse. She sat up, looked for her gun, and blinked, bleary-eyed, at the offending morning.

“Coffee,” she barked at me.

I got up and limped over to the tiny kitchen counter I had in the main room of the apartment. It was clean. That was about all you could say for it. But the five-foot counter was large enough for a small coffeemaker, a sink, and a microwave, and a fridge beside it that suited most of my needs.

I set the coffee brewing and opened the cabinet. I was out of cereal. I hadn't slept very well for a hundred reasons, but I'd missed my apartment mind-canceller the most. I had no idea how it would interact with someone else's mind-waves, so I'd left it off. My mind felt beat up, without a chance to recover, even though I felt better emotionally after sitting in the edges of Cherabino's mind all night. So it took me a moment to process.

That's right, the weekly delivery of groceries hadn't come. I had money now, but no job and no grocery service. If they killed me it wouldn't matter.

I caught myself halfway down a really intense pity moment and replayed one of Swartz's pep talks in my head while I visited the bathroom. It helped. Some.

Standing in the middle of my living room in my pajama pants, watching a grumpy Cherabino complaining loudly about the state of my kitchen, helped a lot more.

She'd found a toaster I didn't know I'd had, and bread from somewhere, and was coaxing the microwave to cook some kind of egg-and-cheese thing I didn't know I'd had the ingredients for. All of this apparently required an ongoing litany of abuse against the tools and complaints about the early-morning hour. She was really cute.

I smiled. None of that was out loud, was it? I should have backed out of her head a little then, but why?

Ding
went the microwave, interrupting both our trains of thought.

She fished out the bowl, cursing at the heat, and plopped it on the counter. Triangles of toast were added to the edge, and then she found a towel to carry it to the coffee table in front of the couch; I didn't have a regular table.

“What are you doing? Get us some juice,” she demanded.

I complied, smiling.

Cherabino practically inhaled her food, which I didn't mind, since she was wearing one of my shirts and not much else. The view was nice. The haste, perhaps, was not.

“You're going into work today, I take it,” I said.

She nodded, still chewing.
Cases to solve and people to see.
I didn't think she realized she'd said this over the Link.
Have to leave in twenty minutes, tops, and I still need a shower.
She looked at me critically, like she thought I was going to be an obstacle to said shower, an obstacle she was going to overcome.

“Shower's all yours,” I said, hoping I might get a glimpse of a less-clad Cherabino at some point in that process.

She got the edge of that thought.
Down, boy. We don't have time. Don't you . . . ?

I could almost feel the knowledge of what I'd told her last night hit her.

She nodded, to herself. Then looked back up. “We'll find a way to fight this. The Guild isn't everything. Bransen—well, we'll go ask him what he thinks we can do. He's sneaky with the law stuff, more than Peter ever was. We'll figure this out,” she said again, with real heat behind her words. If she was mentioning her dead husband, this was serious.

“Who are you trying to convince, you or me?” I asked.

“We're going to fight,” she said, meeting my eyes. “You're going to fight.” Then she looked at the clock behind me again. “We have fourteen minutes. We'd better hustle.” She pushed the dishes at my hands, and I took them as she darted back toward the bathroom.

Her breasts bounced in a delightful way during the whole process. Perhaps the dishes waited a little longer than they should have.

•   •   •

Sergeant Bransen was the quintessential man in a suit, a fortysomething white man with overstyled hair and an air of perpetual confidence I found off-putting. In previous meetings, he'd made it all too clear he found me off-putting as well, so I wasn't looking forward to this meeting.

It was early, almost too early, before the main press of day-shift cops started coming in to demand things from Bransen, but he still looked tired. I wondered how much of Paulsen's crusade against the budget he was playing the knight for. Looked like no one was getting sleep these days.

Bransen's office was smaller than Paulsen's, with a very battered desk and single desk chair. His door was open, and Cherabino's knock on its frame made him look up.

“Isabella,” he said, with a genuine smile, which dampened when he saw me. “Ward.”

Cherabino pushed me toward the chair.

I stood too, since Bransen was standing. “Sir—”

“I told you, I wasn't going to give you an answer for a few days. I needed to think about it,” he said to Cherabino and only Cherabino.

Her lips pursed. “That's not exactly—”

“What is it, then?” This was as impatient as I'd ever seen Bransen in person, his habitual smile completely gone. “Paulsen has already told me what happened, and if you think working for the Guild is going to make me—”

“Sir,” Cherabino interrupted. “That's what we're here to talk about.” She looked at me significantly.

I coughed. “Yes. I—”

“The Guild is threatening him with execution tomorrow,” Cherabino interrupted again.

Now I had Bransen's attention.

That's not the way I would have said that,
I complained to her.

She didn't react.

I sighed.

“Are you two sleeping together?” Bransen asked.

“No,” I said at the same time she said, “Yes.”

I glanced at her; she shrugged.

Bransen sat down then, shaking his head. He looked at me, and this was the moment with Paulsen that would have saved me or damned me, based on the words I said next. I didn't know Bransen as well, but the damning was likely forthcoming.

I did what Swartz would have told me to do. I faced the problem square-on. “The Guild had a murder investigation they wanted an outsider to investigate. I was the only outsider with the right experience who they thought they could intimidate into staying quiet about whatever I saw. I made a bad call, and now they're following through on the threats. With Koshna, they have full rights to do it. I'm not sure why Cherabino is so determined to get you involved.”

Bransen blinked, and I could practically hear the wheels turning. “Don't do anything halfway, do you, Isabella?” He laced his fingers and set them on the desk. We all waited.

And waited.

The decision crystallized just as I was starting to get nervous.

“It's okay,” I said. “I wasn't expecting anyone to help me anyway.”

“Damn it, don't interrupt me!” Bransen said. His mind echoed that I hadn't earned the right or the respect to do half that.

I was quiet. And confused. Very confused.

“Humph. Well. First, before all of this I was planning to allow you to work with Cherabino under provisional unpaid status as a test. We'll go ahead and do that, though God help me, you'd better realize I don't do a tenth of the handholding Paulsen does. If you need my attention more than once a month, twice in an emergency—maybe—you're fired. I don't have time for that crap—I don't care what your close rate is. You play by my rules. You cause trouble, you're out. You fail to impress me with results, you're out. You sneeze one too many times and annoy me more than you're worth, you're out.”

“Understood,” I said, still confused. If they were going to kill me anyway, what difference—

“What—” Cherabino started.

He held up a hand.

She subsided.

“I don't have jack-shit jurisdiction over the Guild or anything the Guild decides it wants to do if it doesn't affect citizens. You, Boy Wonder, are not a citizen.” He held up a hand again to forestall any additional objections from the peanut gallery in the person of Cherabino. “How
ever
, despite this jurisdiction issue, I don't have a problem telling said Guild it's awfully unfriendly to go threatening my provisional employees. I will make that phone call today. I may ask a politician to do the same
if
I have the time and
if
they are free to take the phone call.”

He leaned forward. “I wish you luck and the kind of golden talking that keeps getting you rehired in this damn place in the middle of layoff season. If you make it back alive, I expect a report. Promptly, understand? Even from the hospital. If you don't, I will promise you several phone calls to prominent reporters to set them on your case. We'll make a stink such as the Guild hasn't seen in decades.” He paused. “Plus give you a decent funeral, if they'll let go of the body. Seems decent.”