“I want to . . .”
“What about that guy, Sergeant Preston? How come you brushed him off?”
More tears welled in Cassandra’s eyes. “When I touched him, Isaw . . .”
“What?”
“He has a little boy from his first marriage. His widowed mother depends on him and his three brothers adore him. And he is going to die trying to save me.”
“Wow, that does kind of put a big old stinky blanket on the budding romance.”
“Jasmine, I’m serious!”
“Oh for chrissake, Cassandra, why do you have to be all gloom and doom lately?” I had an inspiration. “Why can’t you just jump in the sack with the guy, do the happy hoppy, and wallow in regret later like the rest of us lowlifes?”
“The happy hoppy?” She smirked.
“Hey, I’m a quart low here. You want clever, you better get me some replacement blood.”
“You are such a hypocrite. I know you have never just ‘hopped in the sack’ with anyone. It’s not in you.”
“Hey, if I want a lecture on my faults I’ll call my dad. Oh, that reminds me, I should call my dad.” I pulled out my phone.
“Jasmine,” Cassandra hissed, “we are not done here.”
“Yes. We are,” I said. “We have clearly established that your recent visions suck so bad we’re going to have to take drastic steps to break them. Also that you really need to get laid.” I bulldozed over Cassandra’s shocked intake of breath by greeting my father. “Hey, Albert.” I pointed to the phone, mouthed, “It’s my dad,” and turned my back to her before she managed to reach past her civilized veneer and smack me a good one.
“Jaz? Did you try to call earlier?”
“Nope.”
“Huh. Somebody keeps calling and hanging up.”
“Probably a telemarketer. Um, could you call me right back?” As in, on his scrambled line.
“All right.”
We hung up. Seconds later we’d reconnected in a way that was safer, at least from his end. “Look, Albert, I’ve encountered a creature nobody seems to know much about. It’s called a reaver. Third eye in the middle of the forehead. Badass shield that repels bullets and blades unless you can find the sweet spot. Takes souls but only under certain circumstances. I’ve been able to get some background on them but not much. I was hoping you could call some people. Maybe see if anybody’s ever dealt with one of these things before.” I really didn’t expect Albert to be able to help me on this one. But he’d rediscovered quite a bit of his pride assisting on my last case, so I was hoping we could continue the process on this one.
“Absolutely.”
“Thanks. Talk to you soon.”
“Will do.” Funny, in our thirty-second conversation he seemed to have shed ten years. Had he really felt that useless in his retirement? If so, maybe I should talk to Evie. No way could I keep him busy enough to maintain this new outlook. Maybe she could think of something.
“Lucille Robinson?”
Cassandra wheeled me toward the white-jacketed forty-something holding my file folder in her hand. She was studying me with an air of disbelief. “How in the world does a person get eight nearly identical wounds in her hands?”
“I’ve been hanging with the wrong crowd. My mother always told me it would come to this. I guess I should’ve listened to her, huh?”
She eyed my gauze-covered fists. “What did you do?”
“Would you believe I wiped out while trying to surf the handrail at the telephone building?”
She shook her head, her ponytail waving a double negative behind her.
“Would you believe I punched a skateboarder who was surfing the handrail at the telephone building?”
“That I’ll buy.”
“Sounds like we’ve got a winner,” I said just as young black guy with the name “Dr. Darryl” stitched on his lab coat entered the picture. For a minute there he couldn’t seem to decide which one needed more attention, me or my file.
“Ms. Robinson.”
“Hi, Doc. Would you believe I punched a skateboarder—”
“No.”
Clunk. All at once my adrenaline rush from the fight fizzled, my goofy survival high vanished, and the don’t-worry-be-happy bubbles in my poor blood-deprived brain burst. “I think I need to lie down.”
Cassandra helped me to the table and laid her hand under my cheek because some sadistic nurse had stuffed the pillow with concrete blocks. As I rested my head in her palm, I had my own vision. My blood-soaked corpse lay on the glowing wooden deck of theConstance Malloy . Desmond stood over it, tonguing my quivering soul while his third eye glowed brighter and brighter blue.
Dr. Darryl stuck a needle in my left hand so he could numb it, at which point I decided the entire medical profession was an oxymoron. My brain wanted to rant further, but the vision expanded.
Now the Tor-al-Degan arrived on the yacht. Not vanquished after all, just transplanted from Miami so she could finish the job she’d started. She shambled toward my failing soul, licking her chops, her pincers waving with delight at the prospective meal before her.
“Do you feel this, Ms. Robinson?” Dr. Darryl asked, pinching the skin of my numbed hand.
Do I feel it? Are you kidding me? I am in the middle of something absolutely epic. Me, Jasmine Parks, the girl who’s barely equipped to run her own microwave. I’m telling you, this guy I know, Raoul, has made a huge mistake recruiting me to fight these freaks. I can’t deal with them anymore. It’s not like they want to steal my credit card or sell me a bag of weed. Ramos wants to be emperor of the damn world, and Chien-Lung’s dragon suit could just get him there. And as if that isn’t scary enough, Creepy Reaver Dude is after the source, the stuff that makes me Jaz. And he could get it. He could do me till I’m done, and then what? Then what? THEN WHAT?
I started to shake. It wasn’t making the sewing any easier, therefore the doc did not approve. He frowned at me.
“She’s afraid of needles,” said Cassandra, shrugging when he gave her a perplexed look, as if to say, “Who can explain the human mind?”
I can. It’s a bat cave. A warren. A maze. And I’m about to get lost in mine.
Cassandra leaned over and whispered into my ear, “I saw that vision too, Jaz. It’s what they want you to see. They want the fear to mold to you, like a body cast. Because if you can’t move, you can’t fight. You were right before. We have a choice. We can change the vision. You were right.”
Was I?Big blank moment when I hoped somebody with the Big Answers (Yo, Raoul?) would jump in and give me a big yuh-huh.
Raoul’s busy, Jaz. So pick one. Are you right? Or are you crazy?
I had to be right. Had to. If not, I’d be spending the rest of eternity lying on rock-hard hospital beds, peeing into metal bowls and yelling for the nurse to pump up the volume onWheel of Fortune .
I watched the thread pull the pieces of my broken skin together, one tiny stitch at a time, and thought it strange to be able to see yourself mended.
“Do you get torn up like this a lot?” asked Dr. Darryl.
“Yeah.”
“Well, as long as you’re in Texas, I guess I don’t have to worry about job security.”
Ha. Ha-ha. Hey, Doc, while you’re at it, can you stitch my soul back on nice and tight? I’m afraid it’s coming loose at the edges.
“Jaz?” I looked up, so immersed in the memory of our hospital jaunt that I was surprised to find myself sitting under the RV’s awning with Cassandra while kids yelled in the background and the smells of pulled-pork barbecue made my mouth water. She stood. “I think I’ll take a walk. Maybe it will clear my mind.”
“Okay.” I watched her go. When I looked back out at the bay, nothing had changed. TheConstance Malloy sat there like a sore on the water, and nobody knew. “Bitch needs to burn,” I murmured. Checking my watch, I saw it was nearly setup time. Though we’d put the basics in place and practiced until we didn’t actively suck, we still needed some audio stuff and a couple of lights. Clearly Bergman’s area, but maybe he could use a hand. I hauled myself out of the chair, various aches and pains reminding me it was time for another dose of painkillers, and went inside to see if he needed a roadie.