CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

 

 

"Park out back. We don't want to be seen."

"You lecturin' me on staying hidden, Detective?"

The pickup grumbled as they swerved into the gravel lot behind the Rosenfeld Mission. Lights on, but that didn't mean much to Goodwell. Could be anyone waiting inside. Rosenfeld, if they were lucky. The new queen's servants, if they weren't.

They only had two Molotovs left from Fitch's original stash. Thank God Goodwell was still carrying his big stick.

He shielded his eyes as they tumbled out into the rain. "This tug. You're sure it's-"

"Nothing quite like Rosenfeld calling out to you. You'd know it if you'd felt it, Detective."

A slow, sideways look. "That's a good question, Fitch. Why do you feel it? Why not me?"

"Couldn't say. Maybe you're just too uptight."

"Maybe," Goodwell mused. "Maybe."

Or maybe he just wasn't the type. Maybe the old queen's power insulated him, like rubber boots in a lightning storm.

Convenient, so long as Fitch didn't put two and two together.

He let the vagrant lead the way, keeping to the shadows beneath awnings, head ducked, flinching away from approaching headlights. No telling which cars were civilians and which were cops. He hugged the wall, shoulder dragging against brick, until he bumped into Fitch's back.

"Been a while." Fitch was frozen in place, gripping the handle. Hesitant. "Me and Rosenfeld... we didn't leave each other on the best terms."

"Argument?"

"Nah. Just learned a little more about each other than we cared to." Fitch glanced over his shoulder. "If she tries anything funny-"

"Rosenfeld? She's a pensioner. What's she gonna do?"

"Detective," Fitch said, "sometimes you really have no damn idea."

Shaking his head, Fitch hauled the doors open, and the two men stepped into the light.

 

A gasp.

Footsteps.

Arms closing around Fitch's middle.

Weight against his chest. Tangled hair. A heartbeat that wasn't his own.

"You son of a bitch. You made it. You actually made it."

Her hands on his shoulders.

Cloth rustling.

Tears, hot on his cheeks. Hadn't felt those for a long while.

"Yeah," Fitch said. "Took our time."

He didn't lift his hands to wipe his eyes.

 

Kimberly was still shaking five minutes after Fitch and Goodwell wandered into the Mission. She'd almost forgotten the ragged man's face in the days they'd been apart. Lost track of the topography of scars, the furrows left by age and exhaustion.

Goodwell, on the other hand... He was harder to forget. The first sympathetic face she'd met in Rustwood, but something about the detective's quiet smile, the way he rubbed his unshaven jaw, left Kimberly cold.

She didn't know why. Didn't have the strength to interrogate herself. All she wanted was to sit, to collapse. Decompress with the one man she trusted.

Problem was, Fitch wasn't giving her the chance. He'd disengaged fast after their hug, like something about Kimberly smelled bad. Now he was perched on the end of a trestle table, arms folded across his chest, staring at the floor.

Maybe, she thought, because he didn't know her at all. Rosenfeld said she was near enough to this town's Kimberly to make no difference. But if anyone could tell the difference - maybe in the way she stood, the stains on her jacket, a lock of hair cut too short - it was Fitch.

When she looked at her friend - her only friend in Rustwood, if she had to tell the truth - she couldn't see anything that set him apart from the Fitch she'd left behind. But that didn't mean much. If she'd learned anything from her time in town, it was that the worst horrors concealed themselves beneath the skin.

She'd hugged him when he walked in. Couldn't help it.

Wouldn't make that mistake again. Not until she knew.

"Been hoping you'd turn up," Fitch said. "Where the hell did you go?"

"Around." Kimberly was glad he wasn't trying to meet her eyes. She couldn't bear the questions there, starting with what she'd seen on the far side of the mountain.

What she'd done after walking down the slope.

What set her apart from the Kimberly this Fitch had known.

She didn't want those questions. Didn't need the answers either. Because that forced her to think about the Fitch she'd left behind. Was he still frantic, wondering where she'd gone? Or had a near-identical Kimberly arrived in the town she'd just left, walking the same paths?

Cells, she reminded herself. Each unit of Rustwood was a single cell in a hive butting up against the next. Cells split and divided.

But hives had borders. Or maybe she was thinking of it all backward. Cells also implied a body, each similar but fulfilling a slightly different function from the one next door.

So what was the body?

And what was Kimberly?

Fitch's gravelly voice jerked her back to attention. "We nearly got to you, you know. Saw you go over the top. I would've stopped you if I could."

"I know."

"You understand what this place is, now?"

She shook her head. "I've got no goddamn clue. All I know is I still want out."

Goodwell had been standing a couple paces behind Fitch all the while, hands in his pockets, musing. Now his expression tightened. "Don't we all, lady?" He spoke without turning, like he was addressing the room at a police briefing. "Used to have a real soft spot for this town. Now I'm wondering..." He sighed. "I'll feel better after a meal. Hey, Mrs Rosenfeld. I smell that famous cheapass soup of yours. Got any spare?"

The clatter of bowls and the rhythm of the Raconte twins serving Goodwell a meal was almost enough to fool Kimberly into thinking everything was alright again. Just a standard day in the Mission. Morning would come soon, and with it the homeless and desperate. All those grateful smiles, dirty fingers curled around chipped porcelain.

The one spot of pure kindness in an otherwise shithole town.

Fitch finally turned, shifting across the trestle table to rest a hand on Kimberly's arm. She jerked free. "Don't do that."

"Why? Mrs Archer, I was so worried-"

"I'm not the same."

Fitch dropped his gaze. "For sure. I wasn't the same either, after I went over the top. Got to feeling real tiny."

"You..." How could she say it? That she didn't know what was happening behind his eyes? He wasn't her Fitch. Wouldn't ever be.

But if she couldn't believe in Fitch - this Fitch, her Fitch, any goddamn Fitch - what did she have left?

She sighed and looked over his shoulder. Goodwell was occupied at one of the tables, slurping down broth. Safe enough, for now.

"Watch," she said. A flick of the finger. A hand curled into a fist.

A single roach scurried from the damp corner of the hall and arrowed for Kimberly's feet. With one hand by her side, she described a circle with the point of her finger. The roach obeyed, tracking around her shoes once, twice, three times, before retreating into the shadows.

Fitch watched in silence. Once the bug was gone, he whispered, "How?"

"Whatever Gull did to me. It's making... things happen."

"Like what I saw on the mountain?"

"Your Kimberly did that too? I haven't been able to squeeze fire out again, but if you give me a couple weeks to practice-"

"We don't have weeks, and a couple roaches isn't gonna keep you alive when the queen comes knocking. Rosenfeld pulled me here for a reason, and I'll betcha a dollar she has a plan. Or is it yours? So, spill."

No hiding the truth from this Fitch. Maybe that was why she liked having him around. Secrets were bullshit and deceptions felt like a waste of time. "We're hitting the queen, you and me."

"A suicide run."

"No, not this time. Feels like we have a real shot."

"Mrs Archer, you don't understand what she is. I don't understand what she is."

"But Rosenfeld does. And she's-"

A knock at the door. Rosenfeld, sitting on the far side of the room, shot to her feet. "I didn't invite anyone else. Kimberly, you'd better-"

"Open up! Police!"

Kimberly, ready to run, relaxed where she stood. "That's Chan, isn't it? I know that voice. You have a Chan as well."

"Karen?" Goodwell was the first to the door, grasping for the handle with shaking hands. "Christ, I thought we'd lost her on the mountain. Came back and she was gone. Chan, just a second, this lock is-"

The door jerked open.

Two figures in the gloom, streaked by rain, dripping and miserable. Detective Karen Chan, one hand at her hip, glancing over her shoulder into the darkness.

Beside her was the monster in the mirror-lens sunglasses.

 

Rosenfeld was the first to take action. "Get back!" she called, and went to her knees to draw a wide semicircle in the dust, marking an arc around her six feet wide. "Behind me!"

Kimberly was scrambling away as fast as she should, Fitch following close. Goodwell had retreated from the door, ass hitting the trestle table, bumping his bowl of soup. The Raconte girls were suddenly on the other side of the kitchen counter, standing tall, fingers curled into claws. Their hair seemed to rise around their heads in static clouds.

And still, the woman in bug-eye sunglasses hadn't moved. She waited in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest, the rain shimmering on her shoulders.

She nodded to Fitch. "Hey, beautiful."

"Close the door!" Fitch called, but the only person close enough to slam it shut was Chan, and she was stepping inside, shaking the water from her hair. Kimberly's throat was closed in panic, breath coming in a panicked wheeze. She was already raising her hands, feeling the response from all the corners of the dining hall. Gnats and roaches and moths and spiders rustling in the cavities, turning their attention to the thing in the door, and behind them all a greater power, a fire boiling in her fingertips she didn't know how to set loose...

Detective Chan let go of her pistol and held out both hands, standing between the dead woman and the rest of the room. "Don't shoot. Whatever you've got, put it away. She's with us."

"Bullshit!" It came in a chorus, Goodwell and Fitch and Kimberly spitting the word all at once.

"Honest to god. We've come a long way."

"Close the goddamn door! Lock her out!"

Rosenfeld had said nothing. She was still scribbling on the floor, Kimberly noticed. Not with blood but spit, sucking her finger and inscribing runes on the floorboards. Rapid but careful, each stroke smooth and punctuated with a tap of the fingertip.

And yet, as she finished the final rune, Rosenfeld looked up and said, "Why?"

The dead woman hadn't come inside. The rain battered her, sent her jacket flying out around her hips. "Why not?"

"You tried to kill me."

"Not true. I left you alive. You know how many can say that? One, maybe two. No. One." The dead woman's grin was white, almost radiant. "Me and your detective, we came to an agreement."

As one, everyone turned to look at Chan. She'd moved inside to sit on the end of a bench, one hand in her lap, the other returned to the butt of her pistol.

Kimberly felt the hair on the nape of her neck stand up. "Detective?" She started edging sideways, toward Rosenfeld. "I think we need to-"

"Oh, for Christ's sake." Chan unclipped her pistol and held it out toward Goodwell, barrel pointed at the floor. "Darling's split from the queen. Don't know why, don't care, so long as she's not trying to cut our heads off. She took me on a trip to the DMV."

A long pause. Kimberly looked to Fitch. Fitch looked to Goodwell, who was caught in a half-crouch. Kimberly didn't know whether he was preparing to flee through the back door or to tackle the dead woman through the open door and out into the rain.

It all depended on Chan. No sunglasses. Exhausted bags under her eyes, but she had eyes. Did that mean the queens hadn't gotten to her? No, that didn't mean anything. The queens had gotten to Goodwell in some way - she'd suspected it for a long while now, he always knew just a little too much - and he still looked human from every angle.

Finally, Goodwell came out from his shelter behind a trestle table and advanced on Chan with slow steps. One quick swipe, and the pistol was in his hand.

Chan didn't flinch. "Happy now? She's not coming in until you let her. Told me all about it on the drive. So if you don't have the space, leave her out in the rain. Not like she's gonna catch a cold. That, or get us a couple of towels so we can dry up and listen to what we have to say." A slow nod toward the thing in the doorway. "It's not all bad. Might even cheer you up some."

Again, silence stretched taut. No sound but the drumming of the rain outside, and the floorboards creaking beneath Fitch's weight as he sidled around the mess hall, always keeping his eyes on the woman-thing. Kimberly's breath was slowing. Calm now. If it attacked, if it rushed her, panic wouldn't help. She'd need her little helpers. Need every inch of control.

But as she looked at the women in the mirror-lens sunglasses, she felt that fear bleeding away. That wasn't a predator out there. Something about the woman had changed. She was... brittle. Smiling, yes, but that was a mask thrown on to disguise a whole heap of pain.

Maybe she was a slightly different woman-thing, in this town. Or maybe something had shifted over the past days. Alliances creaking, bending under pressure.

Mrs Rosenfeld must've felt the same, because she stood from behind her wards with a creak of old joints. "I invite you in," she said. "And if you mess with me or mine-"

"I see," the woman said. "Nice scribbles. What do they do, burn the whole place up?"

"No." Rosenfeld's hands were clasped before her, eyes downcast, modest before the monster. "Just you."

Kimberly couldn't breathe as the woman-thing stepped over the threshold. The last of the rain pattered from her sleeves. She looked around, one hand on the stem of her sunglasses, like she was ready to remove them. Then she thought better of it and returned her hands to her pockets. "You've cleaned up since I was here."

"Wiped the blood off the floor, you mean."

"Don't play with me, Rosenfeld. That stuff in you is barely blood. But sure, let's play nice. After all, we've got a common enemy now. The pretender's after both our heads."

Rosenfeld studied the woman through half-lidded eyes. "You're not lying."

"Wouldn't have come if all I had were lies. Cold as hell, though. You got something to warm the soul?"

"Got soup."

"I wouldn't piss on your soup."

"Neither would I. Waste of good soup."

A quirk at the corner of the woman-thing's lips. "You're all right, Rosenfeld. Might just be that we can make this work."

Mrs Rosenfeld finally stepped out from behind the shield of her wards. The woman-thing kept her distance, but it seemed respectful. The wary prowl of two predators passing on a jungle trail.

Kimberly let herself relax. To her left, Fitch was doing the same. His hands, bunched into fists, slowly unfurled by his sides.

He looked to Kimberly, one eyebrow raised.

"Darling?"