Chapter Ten

It being Sunday and all, I agreed to go have a late brunch with my mother. Sam begged off—not that I blamed her. Last time we’d gotten together the ice flowing around us could have frozen the Mississippi. In August.

I met Mom at one of the newest frou–frou–chi–chi places on St. Anthony Main for brunch. The entrance was on the ground floor at the back of one of the old white–stone mills. People were lined up out into the street and down the sidewalk. More than one of the yuppies gave me the stink eye as I sauntered up.

Because of course, my mother had a reservation at a place that didn’t normally take reservations. Wouldn’t have surprised me if she knew the chef personally, or had been an angel investor for the restaurant.

As much as Mom liked her charities and public board of directorships, she also delighted in being the power behind the throne.

The restaurant turned out to be upstairs, on the far side of the building. Our tiny table was next to the windows, overlooking the Mississippi. Despite how crowded the room was—wall to wall with overly occupied tables and chairs—the noise level was merely a dull roar. Maybe because the architects had kept the twenty–foot ceilings, along with the exposed brick pillars and two–foot–thick ceiling beams.

Mom had arrived before me, and there was a French press brimming with coffee already on the table.

“Hello, Mom,” I said, coming up. What was I supposed to do? Kiss her cheek? Give her an awkward, one–armed hug over her shoulder? I think she would have liked either of those. Instead, I merely nodded at her before dropping down heavily into the other chair.

Mom sighed.

I knew that if I’d been younger, she would have made a comment about me trying to be more graceful.

But I was never going to be that graceful ballerina daughter that she’d always dreamed about having. I took after my peasant Russian grandmother, solid and zaftig, not her Norwegian ice princess physique.

“Where’s Sam?” Mom asked.

“She has her own wages of sin to pay,” I told her.

“Excuse me?” Mom asked, her tone frosty.

“She had another brunch date,” I lied. Her date actually involved the Sunday paper, good coffee, and spending the morning in bed, being lazy. It was the only day that she generally took off, when she didn’t have police work or consulting to attend to.

“I see,” Mom said. “Well, I’m glad you could make it, dear.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. I vowed yet again to try harder. She always sounded so damned grateful that I showed up.

“Have you been involved with this mad bomber?” Mom asked.

I raised my eyebrow at her as I poured myself what was sure to be a superb cup of coffee from the French press. Mom didn’t normally ask about work things.

She knew that I’d been having difficulty finding employment. Not that I would ever ask her for help.

Owing Sam was bad enough.

“Not officially,” I told her. “Sam is, though, and I’ve been helping.”

“That’s good,” Mom said.

The silence between us grew. Why the hell did I agree to come to these mother–daughter things? I should have insisted that Sam come as well. At least I would have had someone to talk with.

“How have you been?” I finally asked.

“I’ve been good. Emanuel came back from Florida for the week. He would like to meet you some day,” she added.

“I know, I know,” I said. God, I was dying for a smoke. “Maybe in a few weeks. We could go have a barbeque on the beach or something.”

“That would be nice,” Mom said.

I knew it would never happen. My mother’s idea of roughing it involved a single room at a five–star hotel instead of a suite. For her to go to a beach and possibly get sand inside her sandals was unthinkable.

“Speaking of the beach…” Mom started, then faded away.

“Yeah, I was there, actually, yesterday. Saw it,” I told her. A chill ran across my shoulders and I gave a quick shudder.

“I know that event wasn’t planned by the sponsors,” Mom said. “Something else happened.”

I nodded. “Don’t know what. The timelines are all messed up.”

None of the post–cogs who had come to the area afterward had been able to get any kind of read.

And no one had any idea of how it was being done. And they all gave me the stink eye, as if I was personally responsible.

“I put out some inquiries,” Mom said slowly.

“About what?” I asked.

“About getting a job for you,” Mom admitted.

“I don’t need your help,” I told her. Wow. I hadn’t known that I could imitate her frosty tones so accurately.

Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.

“Jacobson Consortium would hire you, you know,” Mom said.

I nodded. “I talked with them on Friday. But the contract is horrific.”

“You read the contract?” Mom asked.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” I told her dryly. “I can read, you know.”

“It’s just that that’s unlike you,” Mom said. “You’re usually jump right in, feet first, damn the consequences.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, squirming a little. Mom wasn’t necessarily lying about that. “I’ve always had my reservations about the Jacobson Consortium.” The consequences of their programs were still being dissected behind closed doors.

But the paranormal community didn’t take well to being lied to. Possibly nobody else cared, and the Jacobson Consortium owned enough politicians that there might not ever be public consequences for their years of deliberately blocking support to some of the PAs.

According to Sam, though—no one would take another Jacobson Consortium job. As contracts came up, they weren’t being renewed.

If they were so desperate for talent, you would have thought the contracts would have gotten more favorable, not worse.

“I know, dear. And I’ve looked into some of your accusations. There isn’t anything provable, however.” Mom paused, frowning. “What exactly did that contract say?”

“I’m glad you asked,” I said, pulling out a folded up copy of the contract from my pocket. Sam had harangued me until I’d made a copy for my mom. I was sure she wouldn’t be interested.

We might have had a bet with more sexual favors on the line.

“Hmmm,” Mom said, taking the papers and unfolding them. Obviously she wanted to scold me for not treating the paperwork more carefully.

It was just a copy, though.

Mom rapidly flipped pages. “You know that most of this isn’t enforceable,” she stated. She read for another few moments before looking up at me in horror.

“You weren’t kidding. This is one of the worst contracts I’ve ever seen. You can’t sign this.”

“Mom—it’s the only legitimate job offer I’ve had in the last six months,” I said carefully. “If I want to work with my abilities, I’ll have to take their offer.”

Mom hesitated. “If it’s about the money—”

“No. Thank you. But no,” I said firmly. I was never going to take money from my mom. I’d rather sign a shit contract than be indebted to her.

Besides, I was still taking some shifts at Chinaman Joe’s. I could go back fulltime if I needed to. Not like I wasn’t already working three–fourths of the time there anyway. When I could get the work.

“You know,” Mom said, after glancing at the contract for another minute, “their non–compete clause is pretty standard. But their non–disclosure agreement is only applicable while you’re employed there.” She paused, then added, “If I had to guess, someone made a mistake with an existing contract, a copy–and–paste error.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. I had a vague idea what she meant, but I wasn’t sure how that made anything better.

“A lot of the issues with the Jacobson Consortium have come up because there’s no proof of systematic wrongdoing. A few people lost here or there is justifiable.”

“Really,” I asked flatly. That struck me the same as being “a little bit pregnant.” You couldn’t just go halfway. A company needed to work diligently to train everyone who was trainable, not to deliberately let some slip through the cracks so they could do illegal drug testing on them.

But I wasn’t about to debate ethics, or worse, morals, with my mother.

Mom waved her hand, pushing aside my reservations. “You know what I mean. So,” she flipped between two pages, nodding, “you can’t work for a competing company while you’re employed with them. You also can’t divulge things about the company, but only while you’re working for them. After you quit, you can say anything you want. Legally.”

“So if I happened to sign this contract, I could go in as a corporate spy. Learn about the Consortium. Maybe get some good dirt that we could use to bring them down.” I must admit, that made signing away my life much more appealing. Maybe I could do some good for the Paranormal community.

It wasn’t as if the community had welcomed me with open arms. And I doubted this type of information would make me a sudden hero. I still was on the fringes of their general membership.

Still considered crazy by too many of them.

On the other hand, screwing with Josh was exactly the kind of thing I’d love to do.

“Exactly,” Mom said. She gave me a cool, calculating smile.

There was something else she wanted. Something else lurking in that brilliant brain of hers.

I had to admire her deviousness, particularly when it was working for me, and not against me.

The waiter came up to take our order, and we got into a conversation about a local author and her most recent book.

It turned out to be a pleasant morning. Particularly since I didn’t feel I needed to tell Mom that the reason I knew about the woman and her writing was because I’d slept with her before I’d met Sam.

We left on good terms. Hell, I was even willing to meet with her again in a few weeks.

Maybe we could have a mother–daughter brunch once a month that wasn’t one hundred percent antagonistic.

It wouldn’t have been the strangest thing to ever happen to me. Merely a close second to preventing Ragnarok.

Ξ

The day looked fucking amazing when I was sitting inside the cool restaurant. But outside was boiling and hell–like.

I didn’t want to spend the money on a cab, and damned if I was going to walk. So I went looking for a bus stop before I fucking melted on the pavement.

Too many happy!shiny! people were on the sidewalk. Moms with their suburban–sized strollers. It wouldn’t have surprised me if some of those fucking huge things were bulletproof. There was a group of nerds on their phones, playing some kind of asinine game in a group, standing in a circle and blocking the pavement while every one of them jabbed their screens rapidly.

Well, at least they were only blowing up virtual shit. Not real people or real light rail cars.

A guy started keeping pace with me as I walked up the sidewalk. Did he want a cigarette? I’d just lit one myself. I glanced over.

He was tall and blond, like they grow them here. Taller than me. Lanky, with a strong jaw and huge honking nose.

When he turned his head to smile at me I realized he only had one eye. The other was covered in a black patch.

Fuck me.

“Loki?” I asked as he kind of faded and grew transparent. I could see the cars on the street passing directly behind him for a moment before he grew solid again.

“You’re doing a terrible job saving the world, you know,” Loki said with a sly grin.

“I suppose you’re here to help,” I said, taking a long drag on my cigarette. If I blew the smoke at him, would it blow through him? I’d have to try it the next time he faded.

Loki gave a horse–like snort. “That would entail doing something that far too closely resembled work,” he said. “No, I’m here, as always, to provide sage counsel.”

“And lies,” I pointed out. Loki wasn’t necessarily known as a truth–teller.

Then again, neither was Odin.

“The wisest always hear the truth, even in lies,” Loki replied.

He faded again.

“Why do you keep fading?” I asked. I wasn’t ready to blow smoke through him that time—maybe next time. Or if he pissed me off more.

“It’s not my sight that’s failing, but yours,” Loki said. “You’re the one who’s growing weak.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, a bit defensive. The timelines had gotten messed up for everyone, not just me.

“Tell me, Cassandra,” Loki said at his most condescending, “do you really believe that what’s happening is normal?”

I sighed. I wanted it to be normal, for it to be caused by people of this world, not by gods or titans or some other such shit. And I really hated the idea that it was caused by some kind of fucking Old Ones.

“No,” I admitted. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it ain’t normal.”

“There you go!” Loki said, beaming. His words continued to sound false, though. “To figure out what’s going on, you’re going to have to be able to see who’s causing it. And I’m afraid that ability in you is fading.”

I knew I was going to regret asking this. But I was like some damned hellhound—throw me a ball and I bring it right back. “How do I stop it from fading?” I asked.

“Well, you know, I’ve always been interested in trying sex with someone as knowledgeable as you,” Loki said flirtatiously.

“No. Not just no, but hell no,” I told him, glaring.

Loki’s appearance shifted. Instead of a giant, gangly guy, a very attractive woman stood there. She had dangerous curves and a luscious smile, fingers that tapered elegantly and promised all kinds of wicked pleasure.

“No,” I ground out. I was not about to cheat on Sam. Especially not with Loki.

“Fine,” Loki said, shifting back into his more normal appearance. “There’s one other way.”

“And that is?” Again, already regretting the answer I was sure to get.

“The drugs. The poisoned pearls. The highly refined chemicals that your people excel at making,” Loki said.

I nodded and didn’t say anything. Instead, I started walking up the street again, Loki falling easily into step beside me as I walked and smoked.

Hunter had said something similar. I did not want to take more of the drug, though.

I’d be unemployable for life. Working shit jobs like at Chinaman Joe’s or worse, having to be a barista somewhere. Never able to scratch that itch of using my powers to do something good.

“The choice is yours, of course,” Loki said faintly beside me.

He was barely there anymore, just an outline.

“Just don’t wait too long to choose,” he said as he faded further.

I blew a steady stream of smoke at him, pleased to see that while most of it flowed through him, he still crinkled up his nose and waved his hand in front of his face.

I took it that meant goodbye. At least for now.

I walked slowly up to the bus stop. What the hell was I going to do? Sam would kill me if I took more of the drug. I’d never get a job. Hell, even my mom might disown me.

But if the choice was between that or seeing more people die, more bombs explode, I knew what I would have to do.

The only problem was—I had no idea where I was going to get the drug. Dusty no longer came by the shop. And Hunter had disappeared.

Loki had been wrong. It wasn’t the choice that I had to make quickly.

It was figuring out how to score some product.

Ξ

“Whatcha reading?”

I heard the words somewhere outside of me, and had to pull myself from the dark, cavernous pit I’d been in.

“H.P. Lovecraft,” I told Amy, holding up the book for her to see.

I sat in the tiny break room at the back of Chinaman Joe’s. It was actually more of a storage area, with shelves full of dildos, vibrators, cock rings, anal probes, and other toys. But one Sunday, before we’d opened, I’d dragged in a table and a few folding chairs that I’d found in an alley.

Chinaman Joe hadn’t liked it, and had threatened to trash the table and chairs. There was always work we could be doing. Orders to ship, even on our breaks.

I’d emailed him links to productivity studies, showing how workers were more productive if they had regular breaks.

Chinaman Joe didn’t say anything, but he had stopped glaring so forcefully when he found us sitting back there.

Amy scrunched up her face. “Ugh. Horror.” She gave a mock shudder as she sat down on the break table.

That had kind of been my take on it as well. But the stories were kind of cool, though totally over the top, with prose not just tinged with purple but well–nigh dipped and dyed in it.

Shit. Now I was starting to sound like the damned book.

“Why are you reading that?” Amy asked. “Don’t you usually read better stuff?”

I shrugged. She was kinda right. I did read a lot of what would be called literature—women’s fiction, stuff on the Lambda Literary recommended reading list. (Though I might have read some of that for the sex scenes. Research.) I read the weird stuff sometimes as well.

Not fantasy. My life was weird enough without that kind of shit, thank you very much.

“This stuff,” I told her, holding up the book again, “is considered a classic.”

Amy held out her hand silently for the book.

I handed it to her and stood up. I’d gotten really involved with it, sitting there hunched over for, damn, nearly an hour.

That wasn’t like me either.

However, something had pulled me into this book. No, not the characters (stupid, rich, privileged white boys) but the scenery. I could see it as he was describing it. Even the insane buildings that didn’t follow Euclidian geometry.

I wasn’t sure what that said about me.

I suspected that if I’d read this book a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have made it through the first story. Since the mixing of the timelines, those things growing into sides of the light rail train car, I had a much better feel for these kinds of places.

Was some asshole trying to bring this world into ours?

Or worse yet, to bring Hell onto earth and raise the Old Ones?

That just didn’t make any sense to me. Why would someone want these asshole gods ruling us?

Then again, bombing a bunch of people in order to get your “message” across didn’t make much sense either.

They were connected. I just knew it. I didn’t see how, yet.

“You need something?” I asked Amy as she handed the book back to me, her face still scrunched up, as if she’d just tasted something sour.

I didn’t blame her. These stories weren’t to everyone’s taste.

“You asked me to come and get you if any of the working girls came in,” Amy said. “Monique just walked in the door.”

“Thanks,” I told her, marking my place in the book.

Not all the working girls used drugs. But enough of them did that I figured it was a good enough place to start with, trying to find Dusty and his operation.

“Hey girl,” I told Monique as I walked up. She was in her usual getup, a short skirt that looked like sprayed–on denim, no hose, high heels that made my feet hurt looking at them, and a white lace crop top that left very little to the imagination, showing off the pink gem in her pierced bellybutton.

“Hey girly–girl,” Monique said. She looked me up and down. “You look like shit,” she said. “Your girl not treating you right? Monique got the cure for that.” She gave me a broad wink with eyelashes that were probably an inch long.

I shrugged. Not much I could do about that at present.

Not when I was faced with the choice I had.

Maybe Sam would understand after I took the drugs. Or maybe I wouldn’t have to tell her, at least not right away.

And maybe Hunter would suddenly turn himself in.

“Look, I got a different favor to ask,” I told her. I held up my cigarette pack, shaking up a smoke stick for her.

Monique looked from the offered cigarette to my face and back again. “Oh no,” Monique said loudly. “I don’t do that shit. Not cigarettes, not pot, no drugs cheapen this temple,” she said, stepping back and indicating her body. “You just need to say no.”

“All right,” I said. “No need to blow a gasket.”

“Now girly–girl, you gotta get your head right. No artificial high is gonna get you there, not like the loving of a good woman,” Monique continued, still speaking really loudly, as if she were making a speech or something.

Then I realized what was going on. She knew I’d been working with the police.

Hell, all the working girls probably did.

They thought I was a narc. None of them would help me.

“Thanks anyway,” I told Monique.

I was going to have to find another way to get to Dusty. And time was running out. I just knew it.

Ξ

Josh just about peed himself when I showed up around noon at the Jacobson Consortium on Monday. He was smart enough to be suspicious of my agreeing to what we both knew was a shitty contract.

“Really?” Josh asked again as he looked at the contract that lay between us like a misbegotten pact.

We sat in one of the endless, soulless conference rooms that places like the Jacobson Consortium grew like mushrooms. The oval table in the center of the room looked like bad Ikea—light Danish wood cheaply put together and fragile. The chairs were all the same sort of design aesthetic, modern torture chambers with netting strung between lightweight metal that was sure to bend if you placed any real weight on it.

“You got me over a barrel,” I told him. In some ways, I wasn’t lying. No other place would take me.

And possibly, after this, I’d be in worse shape. Possibly my position would be better, but I doubted that after all this that Josh would give me a glowing job recommendation.

“Well, um, welcome to the Consortium,” Josh said after he glanced again at the contract, making sure that I’d signed and initialed and dated everything.

“Thanks,” I said. “So tell me about my vacation days,” I added.

“I’ll set up an appointment for you with HR,” Josh said dryly. “There’s a bunch of stuff they’ll need to go over with you anyway. In the meantime…” Josh sat back and looked speculatively at me.

I didn’t like that look. Not one little bit.

“Let’s get you over to testing,” Josh said after another long moment. “Make sure that we fully understand your native abilities.”

“What, before you start using me as your lab rat for all your psionic enhancers?” I asked. Because while there was stuff in the contract about doing paranormal work, most of it was about the drug testing.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Josh said with a chuckle. He clutched the contract to him like it was the holy grail or some shit.

I knew I was going into this kind of blind.

I just hoped it wouldn’t be as bad as I imagined.

Ξ

The testing was as weird as the Psychic Ability and Distribution Test (PADT) I’d taken to originally determine my paranormal abilities. It was done in one of the regular testing rooms, that were exactly like the ones I’d seen on TV: a small cubicle–like room, with a chair and a desk, the lights low.

A large glass window was set in the wall. The lights on that side were bright and white, showing what looked like a computer lab. On the other side sat a large African–American woman who wore the brightest pink sweater I’d ever seen.

“Hi there!” she said.

Oh god. Shoot me now. A chipper tester. Josh had probably set this up on purpose, to see how long it would take before I ran out screaming.

“My name’s Antonia,” she said as she adjusted one of the two computer monitors on her desk. “Please, have a seat. Make yourself comfy. We’ll probably be here for a while. You want anything? Water? Coffee? Tea?” The half–dozen monitors behind her all came to life, running lines of white code on black screens, too fast for me to read.

“Cigarette break?” I asked.

“Now, you know you can’t smoke in there. This is a public building. But we’ll take a break in, oh, say, forty minutes. How’s that?”

“Peachy,” I told her as I slumped down in the chair on my side of the glass.

I could hear my mother’s voice telling me once again to be more graceful.

I told her very rudely just where to go.

Antonia didn’t turn down the lights on her side of the glass. She didn’t seem to care that I saw her clearly. Or maybe that was part of the test, to see how much I could concentrate despite the large woman in front of me sighing frequently and heaving her chest and her really great tits.

“All righty now, are you ready?” Antonia asked when she finally seemed to find the right page on her computer screen.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I told her honestly.

For the first forty minutes, the questions ranged from the mundane (“What year were you born?”) to the bizarre (“What color tails should elves have?”)

I wondered if they were calibrating my abilities again, getting a baseline of my current abilities. Would they be able to see a difference between my original PADT scores and my current ones?

Of course, they’d never share that kind of information with the test subject. I wondered if this was another area that Sam and the rest of the PA community should start bitching about, that their test scores should belong to the testee, not the tester.

“There we go!” Antonia said brightly when we finished. “Now, if you go through these doors here, turn right, go down to the last hallway and take a left, you’ll find a balcony at the end of the hallway where smoking is allowed.” She winked broadly at me. “Not that I ever take advantage of such a location.”

“Thanks,” I said. Maybe being so perky wasn’t a bad thing. “Coffee?”

“Mmm hmmm. I’m right there with you. Just before the balcony on the right is the kitchen. You’ll find some coffee there. Now, it ain’t some kind of fancy K–cup or espresso blend. But it’s got caffeine.”

“Good enough,” I said. “Thanks, Antonia.”

While this might be the evil empire, not everyone in it was going to be directly evil. I mean, sure, Josh was evil. And a lot of their policies were evil. But they employed normal people as well.

Hell, they currently employed me.

Ξ

When I got back to the testing room, Antonia was no longer there on the other side of the glass. Instead, there was a curvy white chick who looked as though I’d peed in her cereal that morning. She might have been pretty if she smiled, with brown hair streaked with maroon, teeth that were too white, done by a cheap process that left them fluorescent, and tiny hands.

She had a great rack, though.

Over her slacks and blue oxford blouse, she wore a white lab coat. She didn’t have geek glasses on—but the way she blinked made me think she was wearing contacts. She did carry a large clipboard.

“Follow me,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

Probably yet another health junkie who didn’t like smokers. Too fucking bad.

I sauntered after her. I was damned if I was going to try to keep up with her brisk pace. She was probably trying to impress me with her professionalism.

Fuck that.

She signed when she turned and saw I was several feet behind her, but she waited like a good girl until I joined her.

She only walked down one more corridor before she stopped in front of another gray door. Then she read what was obviously a prepared speech from her clipboard, not looking me in the eye.

“Something happened behind this door. Something recent, in the last twelve hours. Your task is to go into the room and get a reading. Then you will go back to the lab, where you will recite what you saw.”

“What if I can’t get a reading?” I asked her innocently enough.

Finally, she looked up at me. Her brown eyes were amazingly emotionless. “You will be monitored when you get back to the lab. We will be taking your blood pressure, heart rate, flush rate, and EEG. You won’t be able to lie about not getting anything.”

So they were prepared for me to throw the test? Interesting. How many of their testees tried to fake not seeing anything?

Then again, if they were used to the people Josh recruited, “uncooperative” was probably built in.

“Good to know,” I told her. “You sure you don’t want to monitor me when I’m in the room?”

For the first time, she cracked a crooked smile. “Why would you think that we aren’t?”

I had never really had a thing to geeky/nerdy types. But she really was pretty when she smiled.

She was also, as far as I could tell, one hundred percent straight. Didn’t set off my gay–dar at all.

I had no idea what would have happened in the room that would have enough resonance for me to track. I wasn’t sure I was up for finding out.

But I’d come this far. There was no sense in turning back.

Not that I’d ever backed down from a challenge.