He nodded. "In my head, I heard you calling. Afraid. Trying to escape. So I came to help."
"Look, about that — I appreciate the help, but I really gotta go."
"You are not who you are."
My heart skipped a beat. "Come again?"
"You are not who you are," he repeated. "Your body — it fits you funny, like borrowed clothes. And the voice you used to call me is not the voice you use now."
The kid rocked back and forth as he spoke, and still his gaze avoided mine. It was clear he wasn't quite right in the head — but could he really see me?
I rested my weight against the loading dock and stretched my consciousness toward him — probing, testing. The pain in my head redoubled as I struggled to focus. My body went slack as I pulled away. My vision dimmed.
I brushed against his mind, and he flinched as if stung. I settled back into the Friedlander body. The kid stared at me with wide-eyed terror.
"That isn't very nice," he said, shaking his head, his knife held ready between us. "My head is crowded enough already."
"I'm sorry." My hands were raised palm-out, my tone placating. "It's just that most people, they can't see me. What I am. Their minds won't let them."
He scowled. "You thought I was crazy."
"Of course not!"
"Everyone thinks I'm crazy. I guess maybe I am. But the pills, they dull everything. The tastes, the smells, the sounds. They reduce it all to ash. You ask me, I think crazy seems the saner option."
"Listen, kid, you got a name?"
"My mother called me Anders."
"Nice to meet you, Anders. Mine called me Sam. You think maybe we could do without the knife?"
He looked down at the knife in his hand as if seeing it for the first time, and then at me. From his jacket Anders produced a makeshift scabbard of duct tape; he slid the blade into the scabbard, and both disappeared into his jacket.
"Sorry," he said. "I was worried they'd come back. The ones who hurt you."
"Did you see them?"
"Yes. They were not like you. They were fuzzy. Hard to see. Like looking at the sun."
Shit — angels. That's what I was afraid of. What they wanted with me, I had no idea, but it was clear it wasn't good.
I pushed myself up off the ground and clambered awkwardly to my feet, careful to keep my weight on my good leg. "Anders," I said, "I have to go. I don't think I can walk, so you'll have to help me. You think you can do that?"
Anders nodded. "Is this about the girl?"
"What do you know about the girl?"
"Before, in my head, when you were trying to escape — you said she was in danger. That you had to save her. That everything depended on it."
"I did?"
"Yes."
I eyed him appraisingly. "So you in?"
Anders shrugged. "I guess," he said. "I mean, I'm not busy."
I laughed.
Anders added, "You said something else, too, you know."
"Yeah? What's that?"
"You said you thought she might save you."
I smiled and shook my head. I didn't doubt what the kid said, but I'd been a fool to even think it. After all, I was lost a long time ago.
9
"Are you all right?" Anders asked. "You don't look well."
"I'm fine," I lied. Truth was, my head was fucking killing me.
"You're slurring. You need to sit down."
I opened my mouth to argue, and then closed it again. Anders was right. We'd been hobbling along for what seemed like hours, and I was exhausted. My leg was throbbing, my mouth was dry as dust, and my head felt like it was full of angry bees.
I looked around. The world lurched — my vision was slow to respond. We were heading north on Church, a few blocks south of City Hall. At the corner was a mounted cop, lazily scanning the crowd from atop his steed. I looked away. Beside us was a family of tourists, decked out head to toe in New York gear, and walking hand in hand. Their youngest, a girl of maybe six, caught my eye as they passed. Her eyes flickered with black fire as she spotted me, and her smile faltered, replaced by a look of pure hatred. As soon as it appeared, though, it was gone. She shot me a quizzical glance as though I was to blame, and then she smiled again, turning her attention once more to the sights of the city.
"I think maybe I should sit down," I said, "but not here. We need to get off the street."
Anders led me through a narrow parking lot to a side street. Beside a rusted metal door marked as the service entrance for the deli around the corner sat a battered dining-room chair, curlicues of green vinyl arching skyward from its cracked and peeling seat. Anders dropped me into the chair and plopped down onto a milk crate beside it.
I closed my eyes and willed the throbbing in my head to stop. It seemed my head had other plans. But at least sitting down, my leg was tolerable, and after a couple dozen blocks serving as a human crutch, I'm sure Anders was grateful for the rest. Crazy or not, he sure as hell never signed on for this.
We sat in silence a while: me stock-still as I waited for my head to clear, and Anders rocking gently back and forth, his gaze fixed at a spot just in front of his shoes. Eventually, though, his curiosity got the better of him.
"The men who attacked you," he said. "They were cops?"
"Not exactly."
"Then who?"
"That, I'd rather not say."
Anders nodded, as though that were answer enough for now. "But you're not fond of the cops — I've seen the way you look at them. Watchful. Wary. Always quick to look away before they see you."
The kid was nuts, maybe, but not stupid. "I guess I like them fine," I said. "Only right now, they're not too fond of me."
"Why?"
"I took something that didn't belong to me."
"So you're a thief."
I smiled. "I guess you could say that."
"And the others?"
"What others?"
"The lady throwing bread to the pigeons. The man at the window in the coffee shop. The little girl, just now. All like you — like someone else behind the eyes — but only for a moment. They've been watching you. They've been watching you, and you've been terrified."
"Not like me," I said. "Not themselves, but not like me."
"Then what?"
Ah, hell, I thought. If he can see them — Anders deserves to know. "They call themselves the Fallen. But demons, devils, djinn — you can call them what you like."
He fell silent a moment, as if processing what I'd told him. "These demons — they're looking for you? Hunting you?"
"I don't think so," I replied. "These creatures, they're powerful, and clever as well. Any of them could've taken me if they wanted. No, I think they wanted me to see them. I think they wanted me to know that they were watching me."
"Watching you — why?"
I thought back to what Merihem had said to me. You think either side wants a war? When last it happened, one-third our number fell — and all because a son of fire refused to kneel before a son of clay. You couldn't begin to understand the world of shit that would rain down upon us all if one of our kind was caught damning an innocent soul to rot in hell for an eternity. My guess was, whoever Merihem had been leaning on had got to talking. Not that I should be surprised — if this morning was any indication, my days of flying under the radar were over. "It's complicated," I said.
"The men who attacked you — were they demons, too?"
"No."
I could have told him, I guess. That they were angels. I told myself then that he wouldn't have believed me, but I'm pretty sure that's crap. I think I was worried that he would have. I mean, Anders was a little off-kilter, yeah, but he seemed like a good kid. Who's to say he wouldn't have taken the angels' side? The way I figured it, the shape I was in, I needed all the help I could get. If that meant keeping the knifewielding crazy person in the dark, then so be it.
He shook his head. "You don't seem very popular."