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

Sigh. Being good was such hard work.

When the TV came on, I saw that Taggert was right, though. There was helicopter footage and on-the-scene reportage from Kat’s attack. They had the big lighting rigs mounted and everything, since now it was dark and that place looked like it was lit up like daytime. It was some office park on a city street, as near as I could tell, and the place looked way, way different from a Minneapolis street.

“Can we have a minute?” I asked, looking around the room and making a motion toward Kat, who froze at my mere suggestion. “I think we girls need to work something out.”

Taggert did not respond favorably to this idea. “Is it just going to be a talk?”

“Yes,” I said, sighing again. I had a feeling I’d be doing a lot of this.

“On your honor?” Taggert asked with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

“Well, I damned sure wouldn’t bother swearing on yours,” I said, turning my back on the bastard. “I just need to clarify a couple of points with Ms. Gavrikov before I make any commitments here.”

“Ms. Who?” Taggert asked, his face frowning in a way that looked wholly unnatural. There were parts that just didn’t move with the rest of his face, causing me to do a double take while looking at him. Plastic surgery, I realized after a beat.

“Oh, you didn’t know that was her original name?” I smirked

“Sienna, please,” Kat said, looking more than a little stricken. “Please, Taggert … we need a few minutes.”

“Yeah, all right,” Taggert said and snapped his fingers at the poor girl who’d turned on the TV. She hurried after him as he swept from the room. Scott, for his part, seemed a little less put off by that shit than I was and paused on his way out of the room.

“Thought you weren’t coming,” he said.

“I changed my mind,” I said. “It’s a woman’s prerogative.”

“If you say so,” he said, favoring me with a smile as he headed after Taggert.

I waited another minute for the room to clear, but the camera guy and the dude with the big microphone on a stick did not make any motion toward leaving. I rolled my eyes. “You, Guido, Luigi, get the hell out of here, okay?” They didn’t respond, like they were automated or furniture or something, so I mimicked Taggert and snapped my finger at them. “You know who I am?” I asked, summoning my most menacing, commanding voice. They nodded in sync. “Get the hell out of here or I’m going to take your boom mic and your camera and sodomize you both with them—sideways.”

That got them moving. Probably in more ways than one, though I wasn’t close enough to smell them to be sure. They scrambled through the open archway and disappeared into what looked like a spacious kitchen, one big enough to probably swallow my entire house. Time was, I might have sighed in envy, but that was before I parked a half-billion dollars of moderately ill-gotten gains in a Liechtenstein bank account. Someday, maybe I’d get a house like this. But probably not in California. I already didn’t care for the weather. Not my speed. Also, I knew what real estate cost out here. Half a billion didn’t feel like it would go far enough.

“So, Kat,” I said, tilting my head toward the aperture where Taggert was probably listening in on us with the cameramen, “why don’t we step outside?”

She froze then nodded in surrender. “Okay.”

“Stop acting like I’m going to murder you or something,” I said, opening the door for her, “it’s insulting.”

“I know you have a temper,” she said, just loud enough I knew she was playing for the damned cameras.

“Yes,” I said, “and remember that I’ve seen yours at work, too, including times when you’ve killed our fellow human beings in seriously unpleasant ways.” I spoke loudly too, enough to do a little playing of my own to the camera. “Remember that time in Gables, Minnesota, when you crushed like five guys to death with tree branches—?”

“Okay, let’s go outside,” Kat said, hauling her bony ass out the door before I could even finish my sentence. I guess emphasizing her war record wasn’t good for “brand management.” It wasn’t like she’d done anything wrong; the guys she’d killed were sure doing their damnedest to kill us at the time.

I closed the door behind us and stepped out onto the softly lit pool deck. Kat looked like she was glowing cerulean from the underwater lights, and I looked up into a sky that was so polluted by light that I couldn’t see a single star. “So,” I started, “as an impartial observer, I hear you’re kind of up shit creek here.” I walked along the concrete edge of the pool and tossed a quick look back over my shoulder to the house in time to see the cameraman duck down, framed in the lit window to the kitchen. He was gonna look really funny walking around with that camera hanging out of his rectum.

“Does that make you happy?” Kat asked softly. I suspected that absent the abnormal lighting, she would probably look pale and sick. As it was, she looked a little like one of those aliens from
Avatar
, but shorter.

“You getting the shaft doesn’t exactly make me sad,” I said, folding my arms in front of me. “Do you have any idea how bad you screwed me over with that crap you pulled?”

“I didn’t—”

“If you deny it, I will fly my ass home tonight and drag Scott along with me,” I said, throwing up a finger in accusation.

“It wasn’t me,” Kat said. “I don’t have anything to do with the editing of the show, okay? I’m not the director.”

I locked my jaw until the last twitch of rage passed. It took a few seconds. “Who is?”

“Taggert,” she said, a small surrender.

“That guy really does have his fingers in a lot of butts.”

She blanched. “He’s just doing what he needs to in order to make the show successful.” She straightened a little. “To make my career a success.”

“Yeah, well, I remember when I put my effort toward making sure you lived long enough to have a career outside of a snuff film minus the film,” I said, glaring at her. “Though I doubt you even remember that time I stopped your brother on the IDS tower—”

“I remember,” she said, muttering.

“Yeah, so do I,” I said crossly, “every time that knucklehead pipes up about his precious Klementina—”

HEY
, Gavrikov said. It was the favored expression of outrage among the voices in my head, because it always got me to take a moment to respond.

Shut up, Gavrikov.

“Can you please cool it about that?” She looked genuinely worried.

“Why?” I asked. “You worried that your brand will take a hit if people find out you’ve celebrated your centennial?”

“I did not celebrate a centennial,” she said, more than a little irritated, something that Kat very seldom was. “I don’t remember any of my life before, and you know it. I lost those memories—”

“In some noble pursuit, I’m sure.” I didn’t roll my eyes this time, because for all I knew, she had lost them nobly. Kat’s power was tied inextricably to life. As a Persephone-type meta, she could manipulate living greenery, which was kind of a cool thing to watch. Her other ability, though, was to heal people with the touch of her skin. Unfortunately for her, if she tried to heal too much, she lost memories. I’d seen her lose all her memories of Scott after an incident in Des Moines, Iowa, when she’d saved his life. They’d been one of those really annoying boyfriend/girlfriend combos, tight as her pants one day, and the next day he was a sobbing mess and she didn’t know him from a random guy on the street. It would have made for an awkward Thanksgiving dinner if we’d actually celebrated Thanksgiving that year.

“Sienna, I just want to live my new life—”

“If you’d just wanted to live your new life,” I said with grating harshness, “you would have let my little prison break incident pass without inflicting a call on me.”

“Well, I haven’t called you since,” she said.

“Not so,” I sniped. “You called me when I was in Atlanta dealing with that business with Tom Cavanagh—”

“Oh,” Kat said. “Right. I forgot. Well, it’s not like you answered—”

“Hell, no. I had J.J. block your calls.”

Her face fell. “What if I needed to get hold of you? You know, for an emergency—”

“You mean like this?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then I imagine you’d call me from a friend’s phone—
if you have any of those left.
” I delivered the coup de grâce with the utter lack of remorse it required and watched it hit her like a punch to the jaw. Not one of mine, of course, because that would have required all the plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills to fix, but close. She actually took a step back, looking a little unsteady, and I realized that in my natural, admittedly sadistic, desire to lash out at this person who had caused me so much pain, I had just stumbled on something that I hadn’t even realized.

Kat
didn’t
have an actual friend left in the world.

I worked that all out in a few seconds and watched her try and blink her way to a response, failing utterly.

“Never mind,” I said hastily, suddenly embarrassed for her. I shouldn’t have been, because obviously she’d been plenty shitty to me, even trying to come back to the well after knowing how crappy things had gone for me after her first phone call, but … I actually did feel sorry for her.

Because if there was anything I knew after the last few months, it was what it was like to feel like you didn’t have a friend left in the world.

“Wait, that’s it?” she asked, like she was having trouble coming to terms with the fact that I’d started to walk away from our little argument after less than a round. Of course, I felt like I’d landed my knockout punch and was ready to leave, but maybe she didn’t know that.

“That’s it,” I said. “I mean, probably. I might let slip a little passive-aggressive comment every now and again, some sarcasm, which is the way of my people—”

“Your people?” she asked. “The … Norwegians?”

“Come on, Kat,” I said, ignoring her. “Let’s get you inside. It’s not safe here.”

“Okay,” she said, watching me warily as she headed for the door, “I have to get ready for the party anyway.” She made her way inside past me, leaving the door open, walking like she’d had plenty of the starch taken out of her step, and I didn’t think she was acting this time.

“Yeah,” I nodded sagely, “you should—”

Wait,
what?

What kind of idiot goes to a Hollywood party when they’ve nearly been murdered that very afternoon?

World, I introduce to you Klementina Gavrikov, a.k.a. Katrina Forrest. If fate protects fools and babies, then this girl was clearly being watched over by Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. They were probably metas, as all those ancient Greeks with power tended to be. I hoped for Kat’s sake they had power beyond my own, because based on her level of stupidity, whoever was protecting her would have to work overtime to keep her safe.

I followed Kat’s car to the party by flying overhead about a hundred feet, drifting along at what felt like snail speed after my supersonic flight across the country to get here. Before you ask, I did consider arguing with her about going to a party at this exact moment, but my Halibut steak had been burned off during my flight and I was hungry again.

Also, I was kinda hoping Jennifer Lawrence would be there because I had a feeling she would be a fun person to get loaded at a party with.

I set down in front of Kat’s SUV just as the valet was stepping out to get the keys from the driver, a guy named Dan who looked like he was not happy to be on the job today. I nearly scared the valet as I appeared, causing him to draw a sharp breath and take a few steps back, almost stumbling on the pristine white brick driveway. “Dude, settle down,” I said to him as I walked to the back of the SUV, “you’ve probably opened a door for Miley Cyrus, don’t get all skittish over little ol’ me.” I grinned like an ass because, let’s face it, I was kinda being one.

The door popped open (I didn’t open it because, well, I’m not Kat’s damned valet) and Karyn stepped out first. I’d learned she was Kat’s assistant from Scott just before we left. My reply when he’d told me that: “Are we sure she’s not actually Taggert’s slave?” He guffawed.

Karyn held the door open as Kat unfolded her skinny, long-legged carcass and stepped down in a gown that was slit up to the hip and made me wonder if she was trying to get some side-beaver photos taken “accidentally.” She preened a little, stopping when I rolled my eyes. The two photogs who were on the scene had already finished their pictures and moved down the line to the limo pulling in behind us.

“No press,” Taggert said as he stepped out, buttoning up his jacket. The man was wearing blue jeans and a suit jacket with a button-up shirt that looked like it might have come from Hawaii. Like, sold on the street in Hawaii, not from a retailer. “That’s good for us.”

“What do you mean, ‘no press’?” I asked, furrowing my brow as I waved at the two photographers who’d just snapped half a hundred pics of Kat. “What were those guys?”

He smirked—again. “That’s like having no press. You’ll see what I mean tomorrow.”

“Excuse me, ma’am.” A guy snaked out in a black suit with a white shirt and black tie. “I’m gonna need to search you.”

“I’m a federal agent on a case,” I said, flashing my badge and keeping my patience under tight wraps. “So, no, you don’t.”

He looked ready to argue behind black sunglasses, and I saw he had a companion just behind him. It’s night, boys. The “stars” aren’t bright enough to justify that look, you jackasses. “All right,” he finally said, “Ms. Nealon.”

“Thanks for your cooperation,” I said, giving him a patronizing smile. “You should totally search her, though,” I said, waving to Kat behind me, who probably couldn’t have hid a toothpick in that ensemble. I watched with some satisfaction as a woman dressed exactly like the first Secret Service wannabe gave Kat a very thorough pat-down. Not gonna lie, it did my heart some good to watch it.

“Hey,” Taggert said with a broad grin as he received a security screening of his own, “you do much more of that and I’m gonna have to charge you.” I rolled my eyes. I had a feeling it usually worked the opposite way.

I led the way into the party, drawing a scathing look from a guy with a mohawk who had a chain stretching from his earring to his nose piercing. I felt a little strange being judged by Mr. Slightly Unconventional, but whatever, I guess. Maybe my hair was a little askew. Try flying cross-country without a plane and not being a little mussed.