Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change (24 page)

“Okay, that needs to stop right now,” Phillips said.

“I agree,” I said, “which is why I really want to beat her around the face and neck like—”

“No.”

“But I guarantee she’d stop when rendered unconscious—”

“No …” He paused. “Still no.”

“I like that you had to think about it for a minute.”

“Do we have any clues?” Phillips asked.

“Well, Augustus faced this guy down in Atlanta,” I said. “Buried him in the earth. I put in a call to him to try and get his take, and he gave me a good pointer on how to hurt him, but we’ve still got nothing on the guy’s identity.”

“You didn’t answer your phone,” Phillips said. “Can I assume another replacement is in the works?”

I pulled out my phone and looked at it before trying to push the on button. “When I died, it kinda got—I dunno, either electrocuted or waterlogged or maybe both—”

“Okay, don’t tell me that,” he said, “I don’t really want to make an official report on that up the chain.” I rolled my eyes. Presumably he was worried, again, that if he had to make an official report on me dying, it would eventually make it out to the press and get covered—well, probably poorly. Your champion dying at the hands of the evil villain is not the most inspiring news, I suppose. “I’ve got J.J. working on this, and the rest of the agency is digging in now. It’s all hands on deck. We’ll get this guy.”

“What about Reed and Augustus?” I asked.

“They’re still in Austin,” Phillips said. “If you need them desperately, I can pull them back, but they’ve been on stakeout for a hundred and ninety two hours. I mean, there’s a murderer at work on their case, too—”

“Leave them in place for now,” I said. “If we can keep Kat from exposing herself to the public—both literally and figuratively—we won’t need them. We’ll hunker down. That might give me a chance to poke my head up and see if I can nail this prick to the wall.”

“Got it,” Phillips said. “Get that phone replaced and call me if you need anything else.” He hung up without saying goodbye, of course. He was still Phillips, after all.

I pulled Guy Friday’s phone away from my ear and stared at it. “This is just weird,” I said aloud to the empty room. Why was Phillips not being an asshole? Phillips was always an asshole. It was like an iron law of the universe. Gravity pulls down. Fire burns. Andrew Phillips is an asshole.

My world was crumbling around me.

My phone buzzed and lit up, displaying a text message.

Ricardo

You are as beautiful as you are mysterious.

“And suddenly the world makes sense again, in all its rampant and infinite bizarreness,” I said and started upstairs to return Guy Friday’s cell phone before I went to have my little chat with Scott.

Kat was pacing in her room, the big guy with the mask watching from the door, immovable, his arms folded like always. She didn’t mind having him here. He was just another servant, like a piece of furniture but one that could speak if necessary.

“Can you believe this?” she asked, practicing her poise as she walked—no, stalked, because she was furious. “She acts like she doesn’t remember. As though absorbing me wouldn’t be the fulfillment of her dreams, as though being able to touch anyone she wanted wasn’t her greatest ambition.”

“My greatest ambition is to visit the Santa Monica pier at this point,” Guy Friday said. “I wonder if they have Skee-ball?”

Kat stalked on. This was important. “Well, she may be fooling herself, but she doesn’t fool me. I’m a tasty meal, like fries with truffle oil after she’s been eating McDonald’s for years.”

“Or like a USDA prime filet mignon when you’ve been eating canner grade meat for years,” Guy Friday agreed.

“Yes!” Kat agreed, though she hadn’t had a steak in years. Red meat was too unhealthy for her to consider it. “Exactly that. But good luck getting anyone else to see it. It’s always
Sienna, Sienna, Sienna.
”

“I think you mean, ‘Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.’”

Kat made a face and ignored him; she had no idea what he was talking about and it didn’t matter, anyway. “Do you know how long it took for me to step out of her shadow? She was the face at the front of the war, like me fighting—like I had nothing to do with it?” She placed her ragged nails on her t-shirt, which was a $250 lime-green, all-cotton original. She needed a manicurist terribly. “When we were at MacArthur Park, did you know some ragged fashion victim came up to her asking for an autograph? From
her
.” Kat scoffed. “She’s probably never taken a headshot in her life.”

Guy Friday paused, thinking it over. “I think she’s taken a few headshots. She’s pretty good with a gun, I doubt she makes all her shots for center mass—”

“Not that kind,” Kat snapped, seething. “We all know she’s good with a gun—like that’s some sort of virtue. How many people do you think she’s killed?”

“Hundreds,” Guy Friday said. “Maybe thousands—”

“That’s just …” Kat felt her skin crawl. “I could be one of those thousands, you know. Sometimes I’m surprised I’m not, that she didn’t just kill me in the war and call it an accident.” She wandered toward the bed and threw herself lightly onto the bedspread, letting her mussed hair get trapped under her neck as she reached for the remote and turned the TV on. “And then no one would even know me.”

The TV picture resolved after the brand name showed on the screen for a few seconds. A news anchor for one of the local stations was talking in a hushed voice. “… Fans of Bree Lancer are in mourning today, still shocked by the sudden death of the—”

“Ughhhh,” Kat said, lifting her head for a second and then driving it back into the bed as she rolled over onto her face. “Yes, poor Bree, who got killed by the murderer who’s
still
after me, by the way. Way to bury the lede, guys.
Her
problems are over.”

“I think this is about her fans,” Guy Friday said as Kat tried to push her face further into the fluffy bedspread. It smelled like cotton but like something else, too, and she wondered when last it had been washed. She pulled her face out immediately. “Yeah, look at them. They seem really sad.”

Kat managed to cast a look over her shoulder at the TV. There were people with posters of Bree, with signs, with tears running down their cheeks. They looked like they were near the police barricades that had been set up last night, the wreckage of Anna’s house in the background. “Yes, it’s so sad. Bree was a saint, Bree was an angel.” Kat snatched up the remote and turned the channel. “What they really ought to report is that Bree loved pills more than she ever loved another human being, and that when she was high, she was nasty enough to go down on a leper, or Pauly Shore.”

“Did you ever see her do it?” Guy Friday asked, voice raised with curiosity.

“Not Pauly Shore, no,” Kat said, gripping a pillow and pulling it down so she could curl up in the fetal position with it. “But I saw her give head to a Gawker reporter one time, which is probably worse than Pauly Shore
or
a leper.”

“Hmmm,” Guy Friday said, standing a little straighter.

Kat turned her gaze back to the TV. “The city’s insurance carrier is already refusing to pay,” the anchor said, live at the scene, with a shot of the drained MacArthur Park Lake behind him, “citing the recently ruled-on court case terming metahuman incidents as ‘Acts of gods.’ The city is pledging to fight it in court, but one of the legal scholars we spoke to suggested—”

“Should have gone with Lloyd’s of London, guys,” Sienna said, bumping Guy Friday out of the way as she opened the door. “And speaking of which,” she looked directly at Kat, “you should insure your back with them, since you’re literally making a living on it.”

“What do you want?” Kat asked, pulling her head off the comforter enough to look at Sienna. She still looked terrible, of course, the ruins of her suit hanging tattered about her. Redbeard dressed better than her.

“Came to return the big guy’s phone,” Sienna said, slapping a mini-brick of a phone into the center of Guy Friday’s chest. It made a thumping noise as it hit him.

Guy Friday grunted. “Careful.”

“Because it’s an antique?” Sienna snarked, a nasty smile on her face. Kat wondered if she even knew how ugly those looks made her. She used them all the time, every single occasion she made one of her little jokes. “You’re a phone hipster, I get it.” She stood there for a second, looking around. “Well, as much fun as this has been, I wouldn’t want to interrupt your scintillating conversation.” She snapped open the door. “Au revoir.”

“I hate her so much,” Kat said, clutching her pillow so tight it felt like it might explode.

“A lot of people feel that way,” Guy Friday said, and for some reason, Kat found that very comforting.

“Come in,” Scott said when he heard the knock at the door. He’d been sitting on the bed, waiting, hands sweating, reabsorbing the perspiration and then letting it seep out again accidentally when he lost himself in thought. He stood nervously, wiped his hands on his pants, then reabsorbed the liquid through the cotton trousers into his legs.

The door opened smoothly, quietly, and Sienna came in, looking haggard. “Ugh, Kat,” she said. “Can you believe …” She sighed. “Never mind. What’s up?” She stood expectantly, her back against the suite’s beautiful paneled door.

“I wanted to …” He paused, feeling as though there were a fork was through his center, twisting him like spaghetti noodles. “I wanted to have a talk with you … about something that happened at the park.”

“Well, thank you for not being Kat about it,” Sienna said, coming in and looking around the suite. The floor to ceiling windows at his right offered a pretty nice view of the darkness falling over Los Angeles.

“Go easy on her,” Scott said instinctively. “She’s had a rough day.”

Sienna looked amused when she answered rather than upset. “
She’s
had a rough day? I
died
.”

“And you’re taking it so very well,” Scott said, brushing that right off. “Listen … when I was … evaporating the lake, I saw … something.”

“What kind of something?” Sienna asked, brow furrowing with interest. “Like, something related to Captain Redbeard? Because, boy would I like to sink his ship.”

“No,” Scott said, afraid to look at her for fear of losing his nerve. “You know … all those rumors about you and me … as a couple?” He chanced a look.

Sienna was watching him carefully, frozen in place. “Uh … yeah?”

“Kat said something funny about that, too,” Scott said, splitting his gaze between the carpet pattern and Sienna. “That we were together. And then … today, when I was draining the lake … I saw … like a vision.”

“A vision?” Sienna was holding very still, her face carefully neutral.

“Of the two of us,” Scott said, struggling to get it out. “Having an argument. And the way it was … it looked like we were … like a couple.” He looked her right in the eye. “Do you know what I mean?”

“I don’t typically have a lot of visions, no,” Sienna said a little too flippantly, but with just a hint that she was experiencing something else, some other feeling, as well.

“I don’t feel like it was just a dream,” Scott said, looking away again. He stared off at downtown in the distance, the lights coming on in the Bank of America tower. “It felt real, this argument between us.”

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” Sienna said quietly. “We’ve argued in the past.”

“This was different,” Scott said vehemently, shaking his head. “This was us clashing over—over life choices. Not the sort of thing I’d call you on as a friend.” His face tightened. “Sienna … why don’t I remember the rest of that conversation?” He waited for an answer, and when it didn’t come, he prodded her. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

She watched him like she was carved out of stone, her eyes frozen in place. “Yes,” she said finally, the facade cracking enough to show some uncertainty. “Yeah, I remember … I remember that.”

“When did it happen?” Scott asked, taking a few steps toward her. His head felt foggy just from the effort of trying to jar a memory loose, of trying to pry it out of some dark cranny in his mind.

“Probably the night of my abortive, horrible interview with Gail Roth,” Sienna said matter-of-factly, lowering her gaze as she did so. He was presented with a view of the top of her head, and the frizzed, barely-dry, electrified mess of her hair. “That’s when it happened.”

“Why can’t I remember that?” Scott asked. “I mean, I remember seeing the Gail Roth interview on TV, obviously, but—” He shrugged. “I don’t remember seeing you that night.”

“Well, you were there,” she said.

“Where?” Scott asked. “At the interview?”

“Yeah,” she said. It felt to him as if he were wrestling something valuable out of her grasp. Her whole body was filled with tension, and she held herself back slightly, like she was preparing for a blow from an unseen source. “You were watching it unfold live.”

“How I do not—” He blinked, trying to remember. “How can I not—I don’t even recall—” He looked at her, could read the guilt in the way she held herself. “Did you …
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
me?”

Her brow creased, her lips turned down. “Did I … what?”

“It’s a movie,” he said. “About a couple that has the memories of their relationship erased from their minds.” He watched her like he was waiting for her to bust out a signed confession.

“Oh, well,” Sienna said, rubbing a hand along one of her exposed forearms, “then no, I did not.” She waited a second, fidgeting, then went on. “Because, uh … I only erased …” her voice fell to a much softer timbre, “… your memories.”

Scott felt like a baseball had streaked through the window, broken the glass, and clubbed him right between the eyes. “Do … do you think is funny?”

“No,” she said, the answer coming fast, with a rapid shaking of her head. “I don’t now, and I didn’t then, either. I thought it was tense … horrifying … painful … all of those, for both of us, which was why I took the burden of our failed relationship entirely on myself.” She looked straight at him.

“What?” Scott took a step back, like he really had been hit. “What the hell were you thinking?”