The Awesome (23 page)

“Are you all right?” Lauren asked, looking like she wanted to cry. “You turned blue for a minute.”

“Yeah. I feel fine.” It wasn’t a lie. The burning sensation was gone, the shaking had stopped, and I could feel my temperature plummeting. I still wanted to turn on the air conditioning to arctic temperatures and blast myself in the face, but that was more because the cold helped clear my head. I needed to descramble my brains before we went toe-to-toe with a bunch of bad guys. “I’m okay. What the hell was that?”

“My magic taking root.” Jeff walked around to his side of the car. He motioned for Lauren to take her position between us. When everyone was strapped in as snug as a bug, the truck eased out onto the street to head towards Max’s apartment.

“Okay, so uhh. If it manifested, what can I do?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

Jeff smirked. “We’ve had the last part of this conversation in your head.”

S
O
I
WAS
a psychic friend. There was some consolation to knowing if the hunting thing didn’t work out, I had a backup career. ‘Maggie Cunningham, Psychic to the Stars.’ At least my phoneline wouldn’t require me to breathe heavy or moan for money. All the power to ladies who did that, but that wasn’t my deal.

I spent the better part of the next ten minutes exploring my new ability, because playing with it was infinitely less depressing than worrying about Mom. It seemed I couldn’t talk to Lauren’s brain, but I could definitely poke at Jeff’s, to which he politely informed me that I should tap gently and
ask
to get into his head rather than barging in like a nerd kid on a Mountain Dew bender. What remained to be seen was if this was a master-to-ghoul thing, or if I could do this mind stuff with other people, too. Lauren was outside of my scope because her brain was dead. It wasn’t quasi-dead like a vampire, but for reals dead, like a big pile of sludgy meat in her skull. She was amazingly cognizant for a girl who had the same brain function as a bowl of oatmeal.

“So Max’ll be able to tell if I’m talking to you while we’re in there, huh,” I said to Jeff with my new Jedi mind trick. “None of this mental crap when we’re around him?”

“He has to actively be looking for your thoughts, but if he chooses to snoop, yes. He’ll hear you. He was locked on your mother earlier, so hopefully that’ll continue when we arrive. I’d suggest not thinking about the ghouling, though. If he clues into it, we’re in for trouble.”

“... you realize telling me not to think about something means I will ten times harder.”

Jeff smiled. “I know. The best I’ve ever been able to come up with is reciting song lyrics in my head. Over and over. It’s surprisingly effective.”

Song lyrics. I could do that. Row, row, row my boat until my eyeballs popped out of my skull.

We pulled into the garage at Max’s building at half past one in the morning. I couldn’t see much from where we parked, but then I couldn’t see much the first time I was here either. Lubov had made sure to squash most attempts at area recognition by shoving my face into her chest. If I’d been into six and a half foot women with shoulders broad enough to fill a doorway and Christina Aguilera hair, I’d have been in dreamland. Sadly for Lubov, I preferred tall skinny basketball players with shyness issues. Ian’s lack of blue eyeshadow was also a point in his favor.

“When we go in, let me do the talking,” Jeff said, trotting down the sidewalk to get to the front doors. A man in a navy blue uniform let us in, giving a curt nod as we passed him by. Jeff didn’t speak again until the elevator doors closed behind us. “No acts of aggression. Don’t glare, swear, or provoke. If you do, things will escalate more than they need to. He’ll know he can’t control you anymore.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Maggie.”

For a moment, Jeff had the same warning tone Mom used, like he’d gotten an annoying, parental STD from her. It made me smirk, which in turn made Lauren smirk. No worries about us being aggressive when we got upstairs; we were too busy being smarmy peckerheads. Obnoxious had to be preferential to confrontational, though, and Jeff looked too distracted to care much anyway.

Max’s apartment was the same nouveau chic douche palace I remembered, though this time instead of ocean sounds I heard wind chimes when I stepped inside. I glanced around to see if he had a set anywhere, but no, it was piped through invisible speakers again, another relaxation CD doing its thing. My eyes skipped to the couch. Janice sat there in her Red Sox ball cap and tufts of pink hair sticking out along the sides. Her lack of weapons was strange. She had on her regular hunting clothes, but her gear was stacked on the floor across the room in a useless pile. Mom never would have taken those off willingly, which meant Max was already in her head.

Fantastic.

“Maggie. So glad you joined us!” Max stood, wearing a pale gray Abercrombie tee shirt and a pair of jeans that looked new off the rack. A pair of earthy crunchy sandals exposed his perfect toenails. Ahmad moved in to Max’s left, eyeballing me like a good guard dog. He’d been friendly towards me during the kidnapping, but that seemed to be over now. Max tutted at him and shook his head. “She’s family now. Stop that.” Ahmad scowled. He wasn’t buying that family crap any more than I was.

Max gave me an assessing look, and I realized it was time to break out the song trick. All my row-your-boat intentions flew out the window; for some horrible reason, the only song I could think of was the Sex Pistols “Friggin’ in the Riggin’”—possibly the crudest song in the history of rock and roll. Mom played the crap out of their tapes for a while, and to this day I can recite most of their discography from memory. Other kids got lullabies. I got “Anarchy in the UK.”

Max, picking up on the rampant cussing in the Sea Chanty From Hell, stared at me incredulously. I gave him a weak, gassy smile, forcing my brain through the next stanza, bouncing with every mentally-screeched swear word. He cleared his throat and looked past me, probably thinking I was as soft as a sneaker full of baby crap. It was for the best; the lyrics only got worse after that.

“Lubov, get them drinks. And... who is this?” Max motioned at Lauren. “One of Maggie’s friends?”

“She’s my charge.” Mom turned toward us. I smiled at her, and she returned it, but it was stiff, her cheek twitching like she’d gnawed on electrical wires. “She’s in the DoPR’s protective care. Her name’s Lauren.”

“Sit
down
, Janice,” Max said. I could hear the weight to his words. Mom could, too, and she plunked herself onto the couch because she had no other choice. I did, though, and I crossed the room to stand behind her, putting my fingers on her shoulder. She grabbed my wrist and squeezed. Lauren came to stand beside me, and the three of us peered at Max like an angry cluster of estrogen.

Lubov returned bearing cans of Coke on a platter, putting them onto the table in front of Mom. When she stood, she cast me a huge smile, like she was legitimately glad to see me. Too bad she was one of Max’s people—she’d have been a likable person otherwise. I hoped I didn’t have to shoot her later.

“Maggie, it is good to be seeing you again.”

“Hi, Lubov.”

“Are you thirsty?”

“No, thanks.” I didn’t add the part about “I’d rather drink donkey piss than anything you guys give me” because it went without saying. Max had to know I wasn’t happy about the ghouling. Putting a Coke in front of me as a stark reminder of how he’d tricked stupid Maggie Cunningham felt a lot like an unspoken “Fuck you.”

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to tell him to shove it. So many scathing things twisted around my tongue, threatening to burst from my mouth like explosive diarrhea, but a gentle brain poke from Jeff kept my temper in check.

Don’t.

I heard him clear as day, like he’d said the word to my face instead of piping it into my noggin. Fine. He was right. Letting Max know I thought he was a douche wouldn’t do a whole lot other than give me away. I might feel better for five minutes, but at what cost? I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, casting my eyes to the floor.

“I’d like to get up now,” my mom said.

“No. Not until we’ve had a talk.”

“This is considered a magical attack by forcing me to do something against my will. Under clause six one b, chapter twelve, you can’t...”

“I’m not talking to you, but to your daughter. In fact, you stop talking altogether,” Max snapped. Mom shut up because she had to. I felt her stiffen under my hand, her body trembling. She was furious, and now she couldn’t give voice to it. She couldn’t explain to Max which laws he broke. The offenses against me were now piled on top of offenses against her. Jeff said Max would tinker with Mom’s head, so he probably figured he’d be able to erase all of this and clean slate her before he was through.

Again I wondered how Mom broached the subject; had she pointed a gun and told Max to drop? Had she mooned him? Had she told him his mother smelled of elderberries?

“You need to stop, Max,” Jeff said, his voice quiet. “The less free will you allow her, the worse this will go.”

Max sniffed and threw himself into a chair, leaning back until his chin rested on his chest. He peered at Mom, then at me, his fingers clasped together on top of his sternum. “How did this happen, Maggie? I told you not to tell her. I explicitly said...”

“Not to tell a living soul,” I said. “I didn’t. I told an unliving soul.” He clearly had no idea what I talked about, and I jerked my thumb at Lauren. “She’s the living dead and I told her.”

He peered at Lauren, suddenly a lot more interested in her. He crooked a finger to motion her near, but she stayed put, wedging herself into my side. She was scared, but then, she hadn’t been exposed to monster shenanigans when she’d been alive so this was a whole new experience. I should have warned her it wouldn’t be fun. She’d insisted on coming along to help, though, and I doubted she’d have taken no for an answer if the whole bureau-lifting thing was any indication.

“No, thank you.”

Her politeness made Max smile, and he sat up straighter in his chair. “How sweet! Come here, dear.” Again he added that weight to his words, like he’d done to me, like he’d been doing to Mom since we’d arrived. And yet...

Lauren stayed put.

“No, thank you. I’m comfortable where I am.”

She was immune—no brain waves meant he couldn’t razzle-dazzle his way into Lauren’s thoughts. True fact: our zombie was totally kick-ass awesome, and he could suck it for trying to mind-molest her.

Max didn’t see it that way, of course, and he went back to his new old staple, the glower. “Are all the women in your household difficult?”

“Uhh, yeah, but in our defense you kidnapped me and now you’re holding my mom hostage. That’s bound to annoy us.”

“I took you to
help
you. To
save
you from Matthew. And your mother came to me. I didn’t take her from anywhere.”

“Bollocks,” Jeff said. He closed the distance between himself and Max, not stopping until he could jam his finger in Max’s face. “You helped
yourself
. You didn’t want Matthew coming after you for his descendant’s death. Instead of properly watching your fledgling, you shoved her off onto a handler, and that handler made a grievous error, which I’m sure he died for. Far easier to punish him than yourself for being an irresponsible sire.” Jeff glanced at me and Mom. “I hadn’t thought of this before, but I’m going to venture a guess Matthew wouldn’t want monetary restitution, he’d want blood. Lizzie was their peace treaty, assurance that the two territories would play nicely for the next twenty years, and Maxim cocked it up. The DoPR report would have outed him, so he thought to scare you away from filing it.”

I’d never heard the term ‘cocked it up’ before; we said screwed up or fucked up or messed up, but not cocked up. I liked it, it had a ring to it, but it was an unusual turn of phrase, and I socked it away for later usage. Anything to add to my vast and varied dictionary of obscenities was okay in my book.

Maxim rose from his chair, face angled in such a way that no matter how he looked at us, it was down his nose. Douchebag. “Do you know how dangerous these accusations are?”

Jeff eased toward my mother, never giving Max his back. “Of course I do. But I have to wonder if Matthew would be so stupid as to put a bounty on a hunter’s head? Another monster, perhaps, but the moment he discovered Lizzie attacked Janice he’d have to let it go. Retaliation against an agent of the federal government would result in a purge of his domain. The only alternative he’d have is to come after
you
. But Maggie doesn’t know our politics. You used the child’s ignorance against her, didn’t you? That’s low, Maxim.”

I disliked being called a child. I loathed being called ignorant, even if it was the right word to use. But how could I have known any better? I was targeted. I was the stupid apprentice versus my Mom’s two decades of hunting experience. Maxim used that to his advantage to save his own ass.

What a dick.

Max curled his lip at Jeff, his brown eyes somehow managing to appear cold. “Do you forget your place? Do you know who you’re talking to?”

Jeff smiled, revealing every one of his razor sharp teeth. He fussed with the cuffs of his shirt sleeve, unbuttoning them and rolling them up to his elbows. “I’d ask you the very same thing, Maxim. Do you know who you’re talking to? Because I am guessing you don’t.”