Kit had shoved Aidan out of the Nowhere and then vanished before Aidan knew where he was.
The scent struck him first. Something musky papered over with artificial flowers choked the air. He tried to breathe through his mouth as the rest of the room came into shadowy, soft focus. Caleb and Oz stood next to him, equally bewildered. Faded burgundy drapes in velvet blocked what must be floor-to-ceiling windows with an excellent view of the city. A sliver of daylight slit them. No matter that it was a sunny day, mid-afternoon—the living room was lit with dozens of candles, thick and thin, their lumpy wax in various shades of cream. They must be at least partly to blame for the smell.
The other parties responsible were a parakeet in a cage, a little cotton ball of a lap dog, and the famous spiritualist Miss Tallulah herself. She was a small woman in a silk dressing gown, a white brunette with brassy coloring in her short hair that suggested dye, and the pallor of someone who didn’t go outside much. Aidan could smell her perfume—or maybe the lurid cocktail in her hand—from across the room.
Her mouth was rounded in shock at their sudden appearance in her living room. So much for her psychic powers. She’d sat straight up at the sight of him, nearly knocking the dog out of her lap and down into the plush carpet below. It had a floral pattern, as did the wallpaper and every other overstuffed furnishing in the room.
Miss Tallulah resettled the dog on her lap, brushing a hand through its fur and then through the loose waves of her own hair, the ends of which rested on her shoulders. Considering three strangers had materialized in her apartment, this was relatively little fuss. “I didn’t invite any visitors.”
Her tone was cool, but not outraged. Kit had said she didn’t like runners, but maybe she just didn’t like Kit. Then again, maybe she knew she couldn’t do anything to them and was trying not to show any fear.
“My name is Caleb Feldman. We’re here to offer you a chance to interview Oswin Lewis Quint on your show.”
Her eyes flicked up and down Caleb, and she adjusted her silk robe, tightening the belt, pulling the sides closed. For an action ostensibly meant to cover her further, it drew a lot of attention to her body. Aidan bit his cheek.
“Why would I want that?” Miss Tallulah said. Even in the real Quint’s tailoring, Oz couldn’t impress her. “Why would he want that?”
“He’s going through a spiritual crisis,” Caleb said in a tone like an elbow to Oz’s side.
“I need your help,” Oz said, right on cue. “I’ve heard so much about your talents.”
Miss Tallulah preened and then said, “I’m expensive.”
“I’m rich.”
Miss Tallulah bounced off the couch and began mixing drinks. Aidan declined his, more from habit than anything else. He could use a drink. The proffered cocktail was the first time Miss Tallulah had acknowledged his presence in the room. Caleb hadn’t given his name and she hadn’t asked for it. This whole setup made him uneasy. Before Kit’s offer, he’d envisioned a newsroom, or at least a more traditional talk show.
Caleb and Oz graciously accepted whatever Miss Tallulah offered. Judging from Caleb’s expression, it was strong.
“So. You want a séance? Who’re we contacting?”
“No,” Caleb said quickly. “Mr. Quint has some things he’d like to confess, and he was hoping you could offer him some guidance for how to make amends.”
“A reading, then.”
She’d agreed to that easily enough. Had Caleb researched her? They’d had so little time to plan this. Aidan had known he’d be good at this, but not how good.
“Live,” Caleb said. “We want it to be broadcast live.”
Miss Tallulah raised her eyebrows at that. “Most clients who can afford private sessions prefer them.”
“I’m trying to atone,” Oz said. “I don’t want to do it in secret.”
“Have it your way,” she said. “I need some time to get ready. But before I leave a famous criminal alone in my apartment, maybe you could tell me what he’s doing here? Don’t think that disruptor is enough to fool me. I know who that is.”
Aidan wasn’t worthy of naming. He merited only a single sharp tilt of her head.
Instead of Caleb, it was Oz who defended him. “He’s part of the story. I need him here.”
“This isn’t some cheap prank? He’s not going to jump behind me while we’re broadcasting and make me shriek?”
Aidan struggled to avoid smiling or frowning; he couldn’t say which. He could protest that he wouldn’t do that, even if he had his powers. But now that it had been suggested, he wanted to.
“No,” Caleb said, so solemnly that Aidan knew he was amused.
“Hmph,” Miss Tallulah said. She considered the three of them. “You know I don’t need anyone to be present except the person I’m reading for. It’s disruptive to have two extra people here.”
Oz was getting better at recognizing cues. He waved a hand. “I’ll pay.”
“I don’t need you to confess anything, either,” Miss Tallulah said. “The cards will show what they show.”
“I know. But I need to.”
“It’s very unusual.”
Disapproval weighed down her words, and Aidan had to cough to hide his laugh. This woman who billed herself as an old-timey spiritualist in 2093, with her candles and her silent-movie haircut, who ensconced herself in a fancy high-rise using the subscription fees of the poor saps who believed she could tell the future, who was romantically involved with some mob boss from Kit’s past, she wanted to shame them for not following the rules?
“We’re an unusual group of people,” Aidan said. Miss Tallulah pinched her lips together and flounced out of the room.
As soon as she was gone, Oz eyed Aidan and Caleb. “What if she figures it out?”
“Hush,” Aidan said. It was amazing how little it took for Oz’s whole act to drop. One nervous eye movement, a single whispered sentence, and Oswin Lewis Quint was nowhere to be found. “She won’t. She can’t. You… don’t actually believe any of this is real, do you?”
“I don’t know. I came here from another reality. It doesn’t seem all that impossible anymore.”
Caleb put a hand on Oz’s shoulder, and Aidan’s gaze was drawn inexorably to that point of contact. His brain set about imagining what the touch must feel like—how warm, how tight, how reassuring—drawing from the database of all the other times Caleb had touched him. Stop, he thought, and it had no effect.
“I watched a few sessions before we came,” Caleb said. He had done research. “She’ll only answer the questions you ask. And whatever the cards are, you interpret them how you want. She uses a new deck, the one that’s been in fashion since the sixties, so it’ll have cards like The Void in it, just so you know.”
“A new deck? The sixties? What?”
Caleb dropped his hand from Oz’s shoulder, and Aidan was perversely glad.
“Right,” Caleb said. “This was different for you. The first run was in the thirties, and it was a woman. Li Xiuying, right?”
“Yeah. Didn’t that happen here? She’s like, really famous. Everybody’s hero.”
Caleb shook his head. “The first publicly acknowledged run happened in 2058, and it was done by a man named Fehim Terzi. After that, the idea of the Nowhere freaked people out. Lots of religious leaders weighed in about whether it was some kind of limbo or gate to the afterlife. A lot more people started believing in ghosts and angels and whatever. And here we are a few decades later with spiritualists.”
“Huh. I guess there’s some mysticism surrounding it where I come from, but not like this,” Oz said. “Anyway—you’re sure the psychic won’t figure it out?”
“No one will figure it out,” Aidan promised. He didn’t have Caleb’s way with people, but that didn’t mean he could abandon Caleb to do all the work alone. “Just tell your story, then look thoughtful when she does the reading.”
“And don’t worry if there’s a card you don’t recognize,” Caleb added.
“Trust me, that’s not the part of this that worries me.”
Miss Tallulah reappeared in the doorway, wearing the same silk robe but with her hair slicked and her face made up. They stopped their quiet conversation when she appeared, and Aidan wished they’d smoothly switched topics to something innocuous. All Miss Tallulah said was, “Mr. Quint should follow me. I broadcast from in here.”
To Aidan’s relief, the next room in the apartment was cooler. The air had only a faint trace of the floral miasma in the living room. It was more minimally furnished, with a camera on a tripod trained on a round table and two chairs. Miss Tallulah gestured for Aidan and Caleb to stand off to the side, where they’d be out of frame.
The back wall of the room was a giant display, currently white, but as Miss Tallulah began to set up, it showed what the camera was recording. Oz sat in his chair with posture so good it made Aidan feel stiff just to watch.
The studio was carefully lit, not as dim as the curtains-closed living room, but not unflatteringly bright. Miss Tallulah lit a candle in the center of the table. She had skill with makeup, Aidan had to give her that. She’d done something to make herself not merely prettier, but sharper. More alert, and yet more mysterious. She laid the deck of cards on the table between herself and Oz.
“My subscribers received a notification that we’ll begin streaming soon,” she said. “We won’t get the highest numbers at the beginning, so if you want more people to hear whatever it is you plan to say, you’ll need to hold onto it for a few minutes.”
“Will people be able to watch this after it’s over?” Aidan asked.
“If they pay,” Miss Tallulah said.
Hmm. That wasn’t great for visibility, but this should be the first of a few appearances, so maybe it wouldn’t matter.
She spoke to the camera in a lower, sultrier voice, one with an accent that seemed to come from every foreign country at once. “Welcome, friends, to today’s session. I am honored to perform a reading for Oswin Lewis Quint. You may know him as the CEO of Quint Services, or…”
She turned to Quint, offering him an opening to say more about himself. The real Quint owned many companies, and was probably known to most people for the facial recognition algorithm that had earned him government contracts and made him rich at the age of twenty. Beside him, Caleb shifted in silence. Had they mentioned any of that to Oz?
Oz merely smiled at the camera. “All that matters today is that I’m here. Thank you for having me.”
“I understand you have some things you’d like to say before we begin.”
Caleb took hold of Aidan’s elbow, turning him away from the two people at the table and toward the wall display. In the bottom left corner, it said live in fat red letters, and underneath that was an ever-changing number in white. Five hundred. Six hundred.
Six hundred people had dropped whatever they were doing in the middle of the afternoon to watch an unscheduled session with Miss Tallulah? How much were they paying for that privilege?
Enough that Miss Tallulah could afford this apartment.
Six hundred people wasn’t enough to make his plan work, but he took a deep breath and reminded himself that it was only the beginning.
A few feet away on stage, Oz took a deep breath, too. “I came here today to confess to a terrible crime. My company, Quint Services, recently abducted two runners, held them against their will through starvation and sedation, and experimented on them without their consent. I make no excuses for this unconscionable violation of two innocent people, and I fully accept the blame. The two runners in question have now been freed, and no further experiments will be conducted, but I am here today because I feel lost. I need to know how to move forward. I know I may never fully be forgiven for what I have done, but I have to work toward that end regardless.”
Miss Tallulah lifted her manicured eyebrows, but otherwise appeared to be taking this shocking news in stride. It must be bad for business, showing surprise. “Mr. Quint, if you don’t mind, I have a few questions.”
“Please go ahead.”
“Have you considered that confessing to a crime on my live stream might result in authorities tracking you down and arresting you?”
“Yes. I plan to turn myself in shortly.”
She raised her hands, palms facing the camera, and gave her subscribers and presumably anyone surveilling her a charming smile. “For the record, I had no part in this.” Then she turned back to Oz, her gaze shrewd.
The robe, the cocktail, the little fluffy dog, the ridiculous decor—all of it combined had made Aidan underestimate her. He shouldn’t have. Miss Tallulah was a force to be reckoned with.
“That’s quite a confession, Mr. Quint,” she continued. “What made you change your mind?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s your company. You authorized those experiments, didn’t you? At the very least, you hired the people who did them. Whether you let it happen or whether you helped it along, it doesn’t really matter. Somewhere deep down, you knew something like this would happen. So what changed?”
“Ah,” Oz said. Aidan detected the first creeping edges of panic in his tone and his rapid blink. Oz had memorized that little bit about his crimes, and they’d agreed that he’d just play his character—aloof, professional—if anything else came up. He was taking his time.
Come on, Oz.
Tallulah, conscious of the damage this long silence was doing to her viewer count, said, “Did you do this because of your mother?”
“My… mother?”
Damn. Aidan should have remembered: Quint’s mother had passed away recently. Oz had mentioned his mother offhand, so she was still alive.
“Her death must have come as a shock to you,” Tallulah pressed, like a predator who’d scented blood.
Oz swallowed and nodded, his wide eyes giving credence to that idea. Maybe he’d recover. Caleb had done his best to train him in the short time they’d had, and the role ought to come naturally, right?
“It did,” Oz said, telling the truth and finding his voice at last. With fresh certainty, he added, “But I didn’t do this for my mother. Someone else inspired me.”
And then he turned his gaze toward Aidan and Caleb. Aidan froze. Where the hell was Oz going with this?
“Do you believe in true love, Miss Tallulah?”
“Of course, Mr. Quint. I see it between my clients and their departed loved ones all the time. And I’ve experienced it myself.” The woman who’d ferociously dug into Quint’s personal life on camera disappeared behind a dreamy smile.
“I wasn’t a believer, but I’ve been converted,” Oz said. “Do you know of a man named Aidan Blackwood?”
“The terrorist? What’s he got to do with this?”
Out of view of the camera, Caleb put a hand on his arm, making Aidan realize how rigidly he was holding himself. He tried to relax his face, but the scowl just kept coming back. Caleb stepped closer, as if he could put his body between Aidan and whatever was coming next.
“Some may call him a terrorist. I’m afraid that he was my victim in all of this.”
“You mean the runner you abducted and tortured was Aidan Blackwood?” Tallulah mustered some shock for this point, even though Aidan had been standing feet away from her the whole time. “That’s an important detail you omitted. But what does it have to do with true love?”
Aidan rolled his eyes at Tallulah’s breathless professional-interlocutor schtick, and Caleb gripped his arm tightly. Aidan didn’t need a scolding; outside of that lone eye roll, he’d behave himself.
Caleb tugged at his arm until Aidan turned. The number in the bottom left corner of the screen had changed.
Three thousand.
It ticked upward while he watched. Three thousand five hundred. Four thousand. Had the mention of his name done that?
“Yes,” Oz was saying, “Aidan Blackwood was one of my victims, I’m ashamed to say. But you should have the whole story. Aidan was held in a cell in a secret facility for about a week, starved and sedated so he couldn’t get free. Another runner was with him. I’ll keep the second runner’s name out of the story for now, but you should know that we calculated when we picked these two. We picked runners we thought nobody would miss. Yes, Aidan is famous, but it’s closer to infamy. You yourself just called him a terrorist.”
Miss Tallulah nodded, not daring to interrupt. Aidan wanted to burst in, grab Oz’s mic, yell stop telling my story, but he was rooted where he stood. He couldn’t reveal himself. He was a despised public figure. Quint couldn’t make public amends in the company of a hated criminal. What the hell was Oz doing, bringing his name into this?
“This facility, I should mention, no longer exists, but it was top secret, and it was in space. We took precautions, since we were dealing with runners. Every detail I tell you makes me sick with guilt now, but it’s important that you know.” Oz took a breath. “It was impossible to get out of this facility, and it was very nearly impossible to get in. But one person did.”
“A runner?” Miss Tallulah asked. A logical guess.
“No,” Oz said. “Not a runner. A young man named Caleb Feldman. He’d taken a job with Quint Services about six months prior, working as a nurse in a clinic. He was an exemplary employee. I knew about him when he was hired, because he was a known associate of Aidan’s. We had tried, in the past, to persuade Caleb to bring Aidan in. Caleb implied at his job interview that he would work on it. He never intended to. At Quint Services, we thought we were keeping an eye on Caleb, but really, he was keeping an eye on us.
“Caleb requested a transfer—he wanted to work in one of the clinics with the most cutting-edge research, he said. Because he was so good at his job, he was offered a position in one of the space facilities—the one I mentioned. Nothing in his file shows this, but I now know he wanted a transfer there because he suspected Quint Services of wrongdoing. Aidan had gone missing, and Caleb intended to find him. Caleb was ready to leave behind his family, his friends, and his entire life on Earth to go into space, working for an employer he knew might harm or even kill him, motivated only by this suspicion—this hope that he could save Aidan.
“When I heard that, I wondered—has anyone ever loved me that much?”
Beside Aidan, Caleb had gone eerily still.
Aidan couldn’t speak to him, not here, not now, not to say don’t worry, I know it’s not like that.
At the table, impassioned by his role as storyteller, Oz continued.
“Is there anyone in my life who would throw away everything if I was in danger?” Oz shook his head sadly. “Now that my mother is gone, I can’t say that there is. But what a force! That kind of love could fell empires. It could—and did—save lives.
“You may think that getting into the facility in space was the most difficult part, but it wasn’t. Outside of the two scientists conducting this experiment, none of the personnel at this facility knew about the runners who were being kept there. They were kept in a room that was accessible only by runner. There was no door. Caleb kept working, solving this mystery, and through the sheer force of his determination, he found a runner who could get him in. Together they found Aidan and the other imprisoned runner, freed them, and brought the whole affair to my attention.”
Oz aimed a beseeching, misty-eyed gaze at Miss Tallulah. The real Quint had probably never looked like that in his life, but it had the desired impact on their host. Her lip wobbled.
“So, you see, Miss Tallulah, I was so moved by this young man’s heroism, by the overwhelming love that motivated him, and by the suffering that I myself had caused, that it turned my entire world upside-down. Now here I am, on your show, wondering what to do next.”
Miss Tallulah reached out to put her hand on top of Oz’s. “I can see that it changed you, Mr. Quint. And since it was such an incredible story, before we do the reading, I would like to invite the two guests we have in the studio to join us at the table.”
Caleb was blushing scarlet, a nice complement to Aidan’s white knuckles. Christ. They had no choice but to play along. If they didn’t, this whole thing would be a waste.
Despite his blush, Caleb was more present than Aidan, and he was the one who pulled folding chairs up to the table next to Oz. Before the two of them moved into the frame, Caleb tapped gently on the side of Aidan’s glasses.
Oh. He had to show his real face for this.
Aidan folded up the disruptor and switched to his real glasses, blinking. He’d have to remember which face he was wearing from now on.
They sat close in the small space, made smaller by the camera pointed at them.
“I didn’t do it alone,” Caleb said. “I had a lot of help.”
“But the story is true?” Miss Tallulah asked. “You really left your entire life behind to go search for Aidan in space?”
“Yes,” Caleb said. “I just wanted to clarify that I had help.”
That was the only clarification he wanted to make? Not “we’re not actually in a romantic relationship, just very good friends”? Trapped, Aidan sat still and silent, clenching his fists under the table.
Caleb laid a hand on his shoulder. It was exactly the kind of comforting touch he might have offered in private. Now there was a camera on them, and Aidan couldn’t trust it.
“Aidan doesn’t usually stay in the spotlight for more than a few seconds at a time,” Caleb said to Miss Tallulah, a wry allusion to Aidan’s past. It was a bad idea to bring it up. People would remember they hated Aidan.
But Caleb gave her one of his dazzling smiles and she returned it, then said, “I’m so happy the two of you have found each other. Tell me, what made you go to such lengths?”
“I knew I couldn’t live without him.”
It had the ring of truth when Caleb said it. It didn’t sound at all like he was playacting some grand love story for an audience, and yet a knife twisted in Aidan’s gut. Why had Caleb put in such an effort to save him? They had a lasting friendship, sure, but Aidan had been a shitty friend in the past few years. Why hadn’t Caleb given up on him?
Caleb pressed his thigh into Aidan’s. Under the table. Where no one could see.
Aidan met his eyes. Caleb’s gaze had some urgency to it, but the message was indecipherable.
Caleb took his hand and put it on the table. Right. Okay. A public display of affection. They needed to be convincing. Their romance had convinced a heartless trillionaire to give up his evil schemes and set out on the path to redemption. If a little fake handholding was all it took, Aidan could do that.
Caleb stroked his hand over Aidan’s, a quiet show of comfort and intimacy. There was no such thing as fake handholding. Either you were holding someone’s hand or you weren’t.
He smiled, because no matter the circumstances, looking at Caleb made him want to smile.
It would be so, so easy to let himself believe this was real.
Caleb was telling a story now, a well-worn childhood scrape in which they’d gotten in trouble for trying to return a bike that other kids had stolen. Aidan’s whole life was like that, he was saying—Aidan had a drive to do the right thing no matter what it looked like to other people. Sometimes you had to shout and trespass and break a few rules to do the right thing, but he’d never hurt anyone.
He’s making me look good, Aidan realized. Caleb was doing this for him, because Aidan was incapable of doing it for himself. He didn’t know how to be likable and charming. He certainly didn’t have Caleb’s flair for lying. Still, it wasn’t right to make Caleb do all the work.
“Caleb is being so generous,” Aidan interrupted. “He’s downplaying his own contributions, which is typical. He won’t talk himself up, so I’ll have to do it. Everything Oswin said about him is true. He gave up his family and his home and his life to come look for me, and if he hadn’t found me, I wouldn’t be here today. I don’t even know how to express how grateful I am. How grateful I’ll always be.”
Caleb squeezed his hand. He knew acting didn’t come naturally to Aidan. His smile was an affirmation that Aidan had done a good job.
Funny. Every word he’d said had been true.
“This is so touching,” Miss Tallulah said. “I could let you talk all day. But Mr. Quint did ask me for a reading, and I think we should do one. We’ll do a simple two-card spread to answer your question about how to move forward. Your first card represents the situation, and your second card represents a challenge.”
Oz pulled out The Runner, which had an image of a human silhouette in white against a shimmering bluish-black background. The figure was upside down.
“The Runner, reversed,” Tallulah said.
Aidan stared. He didn’t believe in any of this, and yet, here he was: a runner, reversed. Was Caleb having the same reaction? His eyes were intent on Oz’s hand pulling the second card. Aidan nudged him, but their shared glance passed too quickly to decode.
Oz laid his second card of solid black on the table. The Void.
It was a neat trick, if it was a trick. Not all the cards in the new deck had to do with the Nowhere, but Oz had drawn two that did. The second card was a rectangle of impenetrable black. What would Tallulah say about it? Quint himself was like a void—heartless, implacable, powerful—and in a way, so was Oz. An imposter. An emptiness. A person with no ties, no roots, no history.
“Interesting,” Miss Tallulah murmured.
Aidan had never participated in anything remotely like this. Would she question Oz to fish for clues? Would she hem and haw for a long time?
“I usually like to speak elliptically about these things. Poetically. But we’re nearing the end of our time today and I don’t want to keep you waiting, especially when the answer is so obvious. You’ve harmed people, Oswin Lewis Quint. You’ve harmed runners. As your solution, you drew The Void. You know what you have to do. You came here to confess—to pour out the poison you were keeping inside. To make space. Emptiness. You were right to do that. Keep doing it.”
“What?” Oz said. Aidan was as puzzled as Oz. They hadn’t discussed this with her beforehand. Caleb had been sure they’d be able to spin whatever she said.
Aidan hadn’t expected her to fulfill all his wildest dreams.
Tallulah tapped the cards with a fingernail. “You did wrong, and maybe you can never make it right, but you can try. Empty your bank account and turn yourself in.”
Caleb had the best poker face of the three of them, but Tallulah’s bluntness had startled even him. Then Aidan saw what Caleb’s wide-eyed gaze was focused on and realized it wasn’t only what she’d said.
The red number in the lower left hand corner of the screen blinked every second as it refreshed. Twenty-two thousand people were watching.