chapter forty-six

“These switches are making me dizzy,” I muttered after Shiro again stepped back. I leaned forward and patted Michaela between the shoulder blades like she was a gassy baby. “There now, Michaela. Maybe it can be fixed. It’s not like you to give up. And to … um…” I realized that the real Michaela was a vastly more complex creature than the person I thought I knew. I had no idea what it was and wasn’t like her to do.

“I just wanted to help.” She cried on my shoulder, clutching me with startling strength. I could feel the fabric of my turtleneck twisting in her grip. “I should never have gone out into the world to try and find you. And when I did find you, I should have left you to your lives.”

Hmm. Yeah. Our lives. Shiro taking whatever newspaper assignment she could for shit money. Adrienne coming out to steal food more often than not, whether it was for us or to give to someone even hungrier. Nowhere to live, and too scared and ashamed to go back to the hospital. Knowing we were smart but not sure what we were supposed to do with being smart.

Being afraid all the time.

Yeah, what a deceitful bitch Michaela was to help us find a way out of that, to find that there were places we were welcome and skills we could use. I hoped Shiro would eventually be able to see it like that. To remember what it had been like, pre-fake BOFFO.

Because George was right; she collected mother figures. She had always looked at Michaela as more than a boss. But she hid that from herself with the same skill we used to turn away from BOFFO’s obvious absurdities.

“So what now?” George had finally stopped whapping his head against the counter. I wasn’t sure whether I was glad or sad. “We all pack up and leave? Can you give your fake employees fake letters of reference?”

“You’re not fake employees and I wasn’t a fake boss. I’m not a fake boss,” she said, jerking her face away from my shoulder. I noticed her switch from past tense to present. “We’re still here and there’s still work to do. HOAP won’t save us; I see that now. We’ll have to come up with something else.” She lunged for the fridge and yanked out a bag of carrots, then selected a new knife. “Right away.”

“Wait a minute. Those knives…” How had I never put this together before? This was something Shiro would also have noticed right away if she had allowed herself to. Was that long-ago medical research even real? Or was it all just a sieve for her to catch freaks in? “Those are Cutco knives!” I whirled on George. “Did you sell her these knives?”

“Sure. That’s how I met her. I was earning money for school and she was a customer. Bought the Ultimate set and the Signature set.” He paused. “Oh. Huh.”

“Yeah, ‘huh.’” Any more clues pointing to our ignorance and willful blindness would have given me a blinding migraine.

“Like I said,” Michaela said in a brisk Remember me? tone. “We’ll have to come up with something else.”

“We will?” George was giving me his Help me out! look, but I had no idea how to do that. “Right this second, or by the end of the week, or…”

She blew out her breath in a disgusted sigh. “A lot of this has been about how smart you all are and how you needed a proper channel for that intelligence. Well, think! You know what the situation is. We need at least five million to keep going through next year. If we can get some significant funds back into the system, we can work off the interest and buy ourselves some time. HOAP won’t work, but something else should. Something else will.”

Wow! My powers of comforting are even more impressive than Shiro hoped!

I wasn’t sure how to feel. Betrayed? Hopeful? Pissed? Worried? A combo? Worry with a dash of betrayal and a side of hope?

“You two can stop judging me right this second,” Michaela snapped, misinterpreting our Nope, still no idea how to feel expressions. “Yes, I am an unscrupulous, disingenuous killer … and for years, all that stood between some of you and darkness or death or worse: institutionalization.” She had her priorities right, that was for sure … institutionalization was worse than darkness or death.

“Look, you can’t just—”

She picked up her carving knife and thwacked it into the cutting board, cutting George off as effectively as a slap. “I’m not done apologizing. Or fighting for you. Or asking for forgiveness or finding funds. I’ve got my work to do, and you have yours. You two, follow up with Emma Jan. And double-check the Sussudio files … make sure HOAP.2 didn’t plant anything in front of that killer. I don’t think those files have been contaminated, due to your admittedly brilliant leaps earlier. Figuring out his motivation was really quite clever. Paul gave you the nudge and you ran with it—the way it’s supposed to work. Still, you’d better double- and triple-check those files.”

We just stood and stared at her. I’d seen her go through more emotional shifts in one hour than I had in two years. And I was plenty intimidated by her. Was she the kind of mom who protected her young or ate them?

“Well?” Thwack! “Get to work!”

We scrambled out the door, the habit of obedience long ingrained. Then we just sort of stood there and looked at each other.

“God help me. God help me.” George was shaking so hard I helped him lean against the wall. “The lies, the betrayal. The suddenly revealed family secrets, the never-suspected depth of feeling! She loves us!”

Um, some of us. He was right, though. Yeah, she’d lied and tricked and deceived. And I was starting to thank God for it. I wasn’t sure I could keep working for her, but I wasn’t going to turn my back on her. At least not yet.

“I’ve never been so horny or terrified in my life. My life! My God, she was so MILF-y and hot and scary!”

“GILF-y,” I corrected. “She must be old enough for grandchildren.”

“Christ!” Then, unassisted by chemicals or a blow to the head, George Pinkman passed out cold. I tried in vain to keep his bulk from sliding off the wall but gave up at the last second so his limp weight wouldn’t drag me to the carpet, too.

Pam Weinberg, Michaela’s assistant, must have heard the thud, because she popped around the corner and stared at George’s unconscious form. “Ohmigod,” she breathed. “You finally did it, Shiro. You killed him.”

“It’s Cadence, and nuh-uh.”

“Oh.” She looked, and looked again. “Huh.” Resplendent in her usual uniform of flannel jammies and bunny slippers, she set down her files and bent over George. “What happened? Is he sick? Did you trank— No, you wouldn’t do that.”

You’d be surprised, honey! The week I/we were having, anything was possible. Now that I knew what I knew, I looked at seventeen-year-old Pam with fresh eyes. We didn’t know how she ended up in, as I’d put it a few weeks ago when I still swam the sea of ignorance, “the FBI’s very own cuckoo’s nest.” We knew her home sitch was terrible. We knew the foster system either didn’t notice she was in the BOFFO building at least a hundred hours a week (Pam liked sleeping in her office) or didn’t give a tin shit.

Pam almost never left the office. Which suited her fine … and us, too. She also typed 140 words a minute, never had to be told something twice, kept Michaela’s staggering schedule updated, knew who’d been naughty and who’d been nice, and needed only about four hours of sleep a night. In other words, she was the perfect palace guard. The fact that she wasn’t yet a legal adult was the least important thing about her.

What did Michaela save you from? I wondered. Where would you be if she hadn’t invited you into her lie?

“George? Hellooooo, Georgie! Wakey, wakey.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” I advised. “You probably don’t want to touch him right now.”

Knowing his perv tendencies, she jerked her little hand back like he’d grown lava hot. “What should I do?”

“Maybe poke him with a stick? Find a bucket, fill it with coffee, throw it on him? Just don’t let your flesh touch his. Not right now. I’m doing you the favor of your life by giving you this advice.”

Pam narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re in a weirdly good mood.”

“Yep.”

“Does that mean Michaela’s mood is gonna improve? She’s been a real—” I shook my head. Michaela was still chopping away in her other office and had, as Emma Jan put it, “ears like an eagle.” Damn! That expensive kitchen makes a lot more sense now. “Oh.” Pam gulped. “Thanks.” She grabbed her files and scurried back down the hall and around the corner.