Redlisted (36 page)

“I can’t...
I can’t talk about this right now. Not yet. Soon it won’t
matter. I don’t want to hide anything from you, Kate, it’s
just...”

I get it. You
don’t want Aya to hear. But why? Does it have something to do
with Julian?

He nods.

With the
monster... blood... thing?

“You saw
that?”

I nod.

“Do not.
Tell. Anyone.”

Who am I going
to tell? I’m a fucking mute!

“Well... all
right. Point taken.”

I empty the glass
and put it on the drying rack.

“I want to
tell you everything,” he says, lowering his voice. “I
really do.”

But you can’t,
because you’re worried Aya will do what? Tell Julian?

“Or worse.”

I try not to
laugh.

“No,”
he says. “You don’t understand.”

As if on cue, Aya
peeks her head into the kitchen. “The car is ready,” she
says. “Except for Haruko.”

“All right,”
Adam says. “We’ll be right out.”

She practically
darts away.

I grab my backpack
from the floor and start moving toward the door.

“Kate,”
Adam says. “About last night...”

I stop in my
tracks, my cheeks burning.

“I don’t
know what it meant to you. But it meant something to me.”

My heart pounds.
I can’t begin to understand what I’m feeling, much less
to put it to words.

He takes my hand.
“Look, I, uh... I have a bad feeling about Red Hook. I don’t
know why, but I do. I really don’t want you to get hurt.”

Where are you
going with this?

“Last night
I got in touch with a friend of mine. Another revenant. She can take
care of you—“

I pull my hand
away.
You
mean you want me to leave?

“No! Jesus,
that’s not...” He sighs through his nose. “No. I
just want to give you the option of... not coming with us. I can
leave you at a hotel nearby. My friend said she could be here in a
few hours.”

I look away.

“It’s
not forever. If everything goes well I’ll come back for you in
just a few days.”

What if things
don’t go well?

“In that
case I’d rather nothing happen to you,” he says, his
voice thin.

No. I want to
come with you.

“Well—but...
why?”

I narrow my eyes.
I
want to kill Mirabel.

“Most likely
she won’t even be there!”

You don’t
know that.

He pinches the
bridge of his nose. “Mother of Christ.”

It’s my
decision.

“Yes,”
he admits regretfully. “Yes it is.”

Then
it’s settled,
I tell him, shouldering the backpack.
I’m
coming with you. Don’t ask me about it again.

///

Adam carries
Haruko out to the car, places her body in the back seat, and buckles
her in. He gets in the driver’s seat. I take shotgun—I
don’t want to ride next to Haruko. I know she’ll wake up
eventually, but it’s hard not to think of her as a corpse. Aya
climbs in back next to her, silent.

We drive eastward
through the dark. Maybe two hours later, Adam pulls into the parking
lot of a twenty-four hour diner next to a truck stop.

“Would you
mind going inside with Kate?” he asks Aya. “I’ll be
in as soon as I can.”

Aya unbuckles her
seat belt, opens the door and steps outside without a word.

“Right.”
He turns to me. “Well, I’ll try not to be long.”

I follow Aya into
the diner. She sits with me at the counter while the waitress takes
my drink order, watching the line cook with a distant expression. I
fidget with my silverware, stealing glances at her out of the corner
of my eye. She looks uncannily like an older version of the girl
Julian met in Chicago. What was her name? Mariah?

Is Aya short for
Mariah?

Just as the
waitress brings me my coffee, Adam returns and switches places with
Aya. He’s carrying the box with the head.

Are you
honestly afraid she’ll take it?

He doesn’t
reply. “What do you want to eat?”

Waffles.

“You should
have some protein too.”

Waffles and
bacon, then.

“One order
of waffles and a side of bacon,” he says to the waitress. “Come
on. Let’s move to a table. I’ll tell you what I can while
she’s distracted. She’s got to be busy; she hasn’t
eaten anything in days.”

I nod and follow
him to a booth. We sit down across from each other.

“I’ll
try to tell you what you need to know as quickly as I can,” he
says. “How much did you see? Of my memories, that is?”

Just until you
gave Julian amnesia and told him you were his son.

“Ah. Okay.”
He nods. “I’ll start there.

“Honestly,
if it wasn’t for Aya, I don’t know if I’d have
survived the night. Julian was on the edge of violence. He didn’t
remember meeting me. He didn’t remember initiating me. He’d
lost another year. But Aya explained what had happened, and he backed
off.

“After that
he got very distant. Over the next few days I barely saw him at all,
and when I did he didn’t acknowledge me.

“I couldn’t
stay at the estate. I didn’t feel safe. So when Mirabel sent
the cab for me, like she promised, I took it into Atlanta. But I
didn’t go to SpiraCom. I opened the door at a red light
downtown, and I ran.

“Then I
called Haruko. I figured if she used me for the card, I’d use
her for shelter. I didn’t explain what had happened. I just
told her I couldn’t stay in Savannah any more. She let me stay
with her for a few months. I think she thought I was in love with
her.

“Then, a few
months later, Desmond came into town. She asked me to stay in a hotel
for a few days, said she’d pay for the room. She wanted to get
me out of the way while he was there. I wasn’t stupid enough
not to know what that meant. They were an item. Though not any more,
not the last I checked.

“I figured I
couldn’t go back to Haruko’s place after that, but I
didn’t have any money. She’d made me up some fake
documentation, at least, but that was all I had—a new name, a
new social security number, and a new drivers’ license. I
wasn’t sure how long she’d be willing to pay to put me
up, either.

“But then a
revenant showed up at the hotel. Another Mnemonic, like me. One of
Mnemosyne’s old lieutenants; I recognized him from Julian’s
memory. He told me to take him up to my room. You know the way they
ask for things. So I did, although I didn’t want to.

“When we got
to the room, he gave me a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills. One
like you’d see in the movies. Of course, it came with terms
attached.

“The first
was that I submit myself to a teacher to be trained in Mnemonic
manifestations, which... well, it’s not important right now.

“The second
was that I watch Julian.”

Watch him for
what?

“Signs of...
personality distortion.”

Why couldn’t
one of them do it?

“None of
them can use their manifestations to see him, except when he has his
wards down, which is never. And he would never offer to entertain
them at his estate or anything. I’m the only one he trusts at
all.”

I nod.

“I visited
Julian’s estate maybe once a month for years. Eventually he
started talking to me again, and, slowly, we became friends.”
He sighs. “And that’s what makes this all so difficult. I
respect him. I know that none of this is his fault. It’s
Mnemosyne’s fault. None of this would have happened if not for
her.

“In any
case, I couldn’t avoid the topic of what happened in 1992
forever. When he asked, I told him the truth. I thought it would be
easier than lying. I told him everything, down to why I had taken
away the memories. I thought he’d understand. I thought he’d
be able to handle it.

“I was
naïve.

“He fought
with himself for a long time over it. Fifteen years. He knew all he
had to do to see those memories for himself was to force me to give
him my blood. I knew it, too, but I thought it would be all right.
That was the training was for, you see—to resist compulsion.

“But he’s
so fucking
subtle
.
He doesn’t demand things. He makes you think they’re
reasonable. He makes the most innocuous, polite requests, and before
you know it...

“Well. The
training failed. He got his memories back.

“At first it
didn’t seem to matter. He seemed like himself. Sane enough. But
I’d seen him at his worst; I knew what could happen. I couldn’t
leave Mnemosyne with him.

“So I went
to Haruko. I figured she and Desmond were planning on abducting
Mnemosyne, and I was right.”

Wait, but—why
do you care what happens to her?

“Mnemosyne
is the only one of us who has a chance in hell of defeating Mirabel.”

I frown.
Well,
all right... So you were the ones who stole Mnemosyne from Julian?

“And brought
her to the Warden holding facility in Red Hook. But how her head got
stolen, and how Mirabel got ahold of it, I have no idea.”

I nod slowly,
trying to re-establish my ideas about this mission, about everything.

There’s
still one thing I don’t understand. Why did you bring Aya with
you to SpiraCom to get the head back?

“Honestly,
we needed her. We needed someone who could make themselves look like
one of Mirabel’s workers so we could pass through the retinal
scans.” He shrugs. “Maybe it was foolish.”

Well, yeah. It
seems like it backfired.

“I’m
not a secret agent, Kate. I’m not some trained operative. I
frequently don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

I’m
sorry. You’re right.

“It’s
okay. Who knows?” he says with a weak smile. “Everything
could still turn out all right.”

When I’m
finished eating, we go back out to the car. Aya is waiting for us in
the back seat, staring dead ahead. Adam pops the trunk and puts the
head inside, then gets in the driver’s seat.

The next few hours
are excruciating. Aya says nothing, and neither does Adam. It’s
impossible to tell whether or not she heard us; her blank look seems
fairly typical for her, and she’s never been very talkative
around me, but I can’t help but worry.

I try my best to
stay calm and think about what will happen after we bring Desmond the
head. And there will be an after. Everyone will survive and it will
be fine and Adam has no reason to worry about anything.

I guess I’ll
need to stay with him after this is all over. I’m beginning to
think that won’t be so bad. What will it be like? I mean, I
kissed him. Are we a couple now? I don’t know how these things
are supposed to work. Why don’t I know how these things work?
It’s not like I’m stupid or socially inept. I remember
stuff, just not about myself.

Shit. Have I ever
had a boyfriend before? I can’t remember. Oh God. Am I a
virgin?

No. I would know
if I was.

Would I?

A hoarse gasping
sound comes from the back seat.

I crane my neck
and look back. Haruko’s eyes are open. She’s sitting up,
clutching her forehead.