Chapter 8

Thank god for Dash. When I held out my hand, he let the necklace spill into my palm. The chain was cool, and I shivered at the sensation. I picked up the pendant, flipping it from front to back. The howling coyote was made of silver and inset with turquoise and other colored stones. “Coyote is a trickster spirit or god in some cultures. Do you think it works?”

“The important thing is Serena thought it did. Say the necklace does enhance someone’s power.” Dash paced the small room, tossing the 8-Ball from hand to hand as he did. That was a good sign. Dash always thought better when he was moving in some way.

He clicked his tongue. “Option A, Serena’s power is actually causing mild injury to people she is attracted to and amplifying it via jewelry made it strong enough to kill. Option B, if her power works like you suspect it may, the necklace made that power stronger. So instead of it helping her fulfill her desires by injuring people she likes, it tried to kill them.” He held out the hand holding the ball to forestall the questions he could read in my eyes. “Option C, the necklace is junk and it was her belief in it that caused the mysterious helpful power to grow stronger.”

“So, like Dumbo’s feather, it gave her confidence.”

“Exactly. And I can’t see any way to tell which is the truth. Doesn’t SPAM have any people who can detect magic?” He spun the 8-Ball in his palm.

“That would imply magic is real.” The jury was still out as to whether powers were some kind of magic or just incredibly rare abilities inherent in all human beings.

“Do you think it is?” Dash looked at his 8-Ball as he asked.

“At one point, I would have said definitely not. But the more I see and learn, the more I realize no one knows for sure. And for me, all that matters is how people use their powers.”

“You were always more a praxis than a theory person,” Dash said with a fond smile.

“I leave the deep thoughts to the philosophers. And people like you who enjoy that kind of thing.” Dash could spend hours in theoretical discussions. I had about twenty minutes worth of tolerance for it.

“I’ll drag you over to the dark side eventually,” he said. “In the meantime, does SPAM have anyone who can tell if an object is power-infused or not?”

“Not that I know of.” They had people scouring the earth for supes with a power like that. If I ever found someone who could, I was going to test that damn ball. “We need to find some with a concrete, measurable power, like a Strongman, and run some tests on the necklace to see if it has any effect on their ability.”

Dash nodded in agreement. “What about that recording? You going to turn that in?”

“Eventually.” Maybe. Technically, there was no official response yet. Who knew if Serena was even going to be charged with anything? If there was some kind of official investigation, I would get completely sidelined. No one would let me near any evidence.

Given as I didn’t know yet who I could trust at this SPAM location beyond April—and I wouldn’t call her with something as minor as this—this had to be an off-the-books investigation. Where to start?

Dash had been thinking along the same lines. “Now what?”

“We chase down that blackish market lead.” It wasn’t as if we had a ton of leads.

Dash leaned a hip against the table. “You know the guy is going to have disappeared and no one will have seen a thing.”

That was how it went most of the time. “I know. but we have an obligation to try.”

“We can be obliging tomorrow. Someone involuntarily tried to slaughter you today. That’s enough,” Dash said. “And we still have to get your stuff from your apartment.”

Even though I knew what he was going to say, I still had to ask. “We do? Why?”

Dash took a step closer to me. “First of all, you told my mother you’d come for dinner, and secondly, you hired me to protect you, so I’ve decided you’re staying with me until I know you’re safe.”

The words were forced through a clenched jaw, and there was a deep furrow between his eyebrows. His chest expanded as he took a deep breath. After a count of four, he released it, his breath hissing through his teeth.

It probably wasn’t a good time to point out that I hadn’t actually hired him to protect me. I hadn’t hired him at all. I tried a different angle. “Aren’t you still living with your parents?”

“Yeah. Is there a problem with that?”

“No.” As long as Mrs. Bucur didn’t try to poison me for hurting her son.

“We can have a slumber party. Braid each other’s hair.” A text came in on his phone. He glanced it and then smiled. “Besides, I have a surprise for you.”

Oh no. “I hate surprises.”

“I know.”

Like the gentleman his mother raised him to be, Dash took his hat off as he walked into my apartment in a perfect serviceable if bland building. “Nice place. Very homey.”

Since he’d stopped when he was barely through the doorway, I was forced to sidle past him to get into the room, a process not helped at all by my casts and cane. The air between us felt charged as I limped around him, close enough to touch, and hit the light switch. “Give me a break. My stuff just got here the other day.”

With his hands on his hips, Dash surveyed my soulless corporate apartment. “No, actually. Can’t say as I do.”

“Well, take a good look, because if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.” That wasn’t an exaggeration. Stay in enough of these places and you started to forget where you were when you woke up. The furniture, the art on the walls, even the dishes and fake plants were identical. I could probably find my way around this place blindfolded. A few cardboard boxes were stacked against one wall.

“Is this all your stuff?” Dash turned to me.

Did he mean was all of this my stuff or was he asking if the meager collection of boxes truly contained the totality of my life?

Before I could answer either question, DT swanned through the door, holding a drink carrier with three coffee cups. A delivery driver with stars in his eyes followed closely behind him. The kid had the wide shoulders and guileless blue gaze of the star quarterback in some small, Midwestern town, and he carried a cardboard flat loaded up with greasy brown paper bags.

Tears pricked at my eyelids. It was the most beautiful sight I’d seen in days.

Though it was still mid-afternoon, DT looked like he was ready for a night of clubbing. His jeans were painted on and his shirt was more a concept than an actual garment. Eyeliner and thick fake eyelashes made his blue eyes appear huge, and his lips were glossy red.

DT glided over to me and twisted one of the cups out of the carrier with a squeak of cardboard. “Here you go. Decaf white-chocolate raspberry latte for the gentleman.”

“Bless you.” I’d been trying to give up sugar, but I decided to make an exception on days I’d almost been killed. I didn’t know how that Peter Pan prototype had ferreted out my specific guilty pleasure, but I was glad he did.

The first sip was perfection. I took a second sip of the sugary concoction and then cradled the cup against my chest. “Marry me?”

DT cocked a hip and put a finger to his lips as if he was considering my offer. Then he shook his head and sucked air in between his teeth. “Ooh, I would, but I swore it off after my seventh, no, eighth, marriage.” He turned a hundred-watt smile on the delivery man, who lost his grip on the box of food. Dash was watching and caught it before it could hit the ground.

“Nice reflexes.”

Dash winked at me as he put the box on the counter.

“Does that happen a lot around him?”

“All the time. It’s his twink superpower.” Dash took off his trench coat and hung on the back of a kitchen chair. “Keep an eye on the kid, he might get a little weak in the knees if DT smiles at him.”

“Superpower?” The poor delivery guy’s eyes got even bigger. “You’re a supe?”

DT scowled at Dash, then turned back to the delivery guy. “I am, honey. But that’s not my superpower.” He walked his fingers up the guy’s arm, moving closer as he did. “For me to show you what it is, we’d both have to be naked.”

The guy swallowed audibly and swayed toward DT. Holy crap. There was an honest-to-god chance he was going to swoon. When I looked at Dash, he just gave a one-shoulder shrug and mouthed, told you.

A business card magically appeared between DT’s fingers. Keeping his eyes locked on the stunned delivery man, DT slid his hand back down the guy’s arm and tucked the card in his shorts pocket with a little tap. “Call me.” He did the same magic trick with a folded twenty-dollar bill, stuffing it in the same pocket. The guy didn’t move. I wasn’t sure he was capable of moving. DT smiled kindly and gave him a pat on the ass. “Right. Off you go.”

The guy took a few stumbling steps, then looked over his shoulder at DT. DT blew him a kiss and wiggled his fingers at him. “Toodles.”

After the door closed, we sat at the unreasonably tall table the designer had put in the kitchen alcove. While DT passed out burgers, I got us all glasses of water.

“Tell me what happened,” DT said around a mouthful of burger.

“It was a dame,” Dash said mournfully. “It’s always a dame.”

“A dame? Okay, Marlowe. Take the fedora off and join us in the twenty-first century.”

We filled DT in on everything. On Serena and the necklace and the problem of determining if the necklace had any affect at all.

DT held out his hand. “Give it.”

I slid the necklace over to him.

His examination was thorough, I’d give him that. He flipped the pendant front to back, held it up to the light, peered closely at both sides, then put it between his teeth and bit.

“Huh.”

“What?” Dash leaned forward. “Is it genuine?”

DT tossed the necklace on the table. “Genuine what? Turquoise? Yes. Magic? No idea. Quality work, though. Back to the seminar today. How the hell did all that happen? The sequence of events seems improbable at best.”

That I could help with; while waiting for Serena, I’d had time to study the list of agents and civilians who had attended the seminar. “Funny you should say that. Improbable. That’s exactly what it was. One of the new agents, Alfred Alphonse, was there. His power affects probability.”

I could see the gears turning in Dash’s head. “Holy hell. That guy is a human chaos engine. Does he have any control over it?”

“None whatsoever.”

Dash tapped his fingers on the glass tabletop. “How does it work? Does it increase the probability of something happening or decrease it?”

“Either. It’s unpredictable.”

“Think of the possibilities.” DT finished his burger without smudging his lipstick. “The improbabilities, even. How powerful is he? Could he cause someone to win the lottery? Or is it only small things, like a broken fingernail?”

“From what I’ve learned, no one is sure. It’s not an easy thing to measure.” I’m sure somewhere in some laboratory a cadre of scientists were developing a test even as we spoke.

Dash shook his head. “How is this guy even allowed to walk around unsupervised?”

“He’s not. SPAM worked very hard to find him and recruit him.”

“Huh.” He digested that information for a few seconds. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

He wasn’t the only one.

Dash had stepped right into the tangled web of ethical dilemmas that lay at the heart of SPAM’s existence. How safe was it for people with potentially destructive powers to walk around unmonitored? How does a society balance the safety of its citizens and their right to freedom?

Alfred could theoretically cause a building to collapse simply by walking past it. Whether he meant to or not made no difference to the people who would be killed when the walls came tumbling down.

Yet we as a society don’t lock people away for things they might do.

People like labels. Defining a thing, putting a person or an idea into a box, helps people make sense of an often confusing and ever-changing world. It brings order to chaos.

Unfortunately, when it came to powers, super or subpar, those labels and boxes were arbitrary at best and meaningless at worst. Offensive or defensive, harmful or helpful. Good or bad. Even super or subpar. Any power could be dangerous in the right hands at the right time.

For example, there was an agent working in the Tulsa field office who could throw up a force field. She was one of the lucky ones who had excellent control of her power. She could throw a shield over a crowd that could protect people from anything from a swarm of killer bees to an explosion. That same force field could push a train off the tracks or keep an EMT from reaching an injured person. Every healer knew a hundred different undetectable ways to kill a person.

Differentiating between active and passive powers was a useful distinction. A supe with a power that took intention to activate needed to be handled differently than a supe whose power was constantly working. Poor Alfred didn’t have to do anything to impact the world around him. He changed it all simply by existing.

Then again, didn’t we all?

Dash had changed the shape and trajectory of my life simply by walking into the room.

“Harley?” Dash said my name like it wasn’t the first time he’d called me.

“Sorry. Just tired.” It had been a long day in a long week.

DT sucked up the last of his frappuccino with a loud slurp. “I don’t like it.”

“Which part?” Dash asked.

“All of it. But mostly the whole trying to murder you with a magical necklace part.”

“I’m not a huge fan myself.” Frankly, it was getting old.

“It’s ridiculous,” Dash agreed. “There are too many coincidences and unknowns. How did this mystery seller know how Serena’s power worked? Did they know she had you in her sights, or did the target not matter? The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. I can’t figure out what whoever is behind this was thinking. They’re either a genius or an idiot.”

DT snorted. “In my experience, idiots are the more dangerous of the two because they’re unpredictable.”

“That’s been my experience, too.” I crumpled the wrapper from my burger and tossed it in the greasy paper bag. When I held my hand out to Dash, palm up, he put his wrapper in it. I crumpled it and tossed it in the bag as well. “Okay. Dash, grab that ball of yours. First question: Was Serena primed and aimed at me, specifically, or was there some other reason for the theatrics?”

Dash shook the ball as he reframed the question. “Was this assignation attempt aimed specifically at Harlan?”

When he glanced at the viewing window, his eyebrows rose to his hairline and he exhaled through his teeth. He gestured for me to look.

Yes. Definitely.

Well, fuck.

DT clucked his tongue. “Looks like you got a hater, Harley. Now all we have to do is find them before they find you.”

Dash stood. “What we have to do first is pack Harlan up and go to my house for dinner.”

“But I’m not hungry now.”

“You tell my mother that.”

“Nooo.” I would eat until I popped before I insulted Dash’s mother by turning down her food.

DT laughed at me. “I’ll go back to my place and put on a more suitable outfit.”

Dash gave DT a head-to-toe once-over. “Why are you dressed like you charge by the hour anyway?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” DT stood and kissed Dash and then me on the cheek before he left. “Ta for now. I’ll see you at your house, Dashie.”

“Interesting fellow,” I said after he had gone. “How did you two meet?”

“That’s a long story for another day. Stop stalling and get packing. Do you need a hand or a foot?”

“No, I’ve got it.” What I needed was some privacy to make a quick phone call to confirm that no mention of Dash had ended up in the official reports of that clusterfuck.

Phone call completed, I packed as quickly as I could, and started dragging my bags out of my room. Dash hurried over to help. He shook his head at the two garments bags, wheeled carryon, backpack, and large suitcase I’d filled. “Are you moving in for good?”

“I like to be prepared.” Since there was no way to know how long I’d be unable to get to the apartment, I’d pack three suits along with underwear, gym clothes, a few pairs of shoes, my work laptop and my personal lap top. Oh, and my vitamins and toiletries, of course. Back in the army, Dash had used the cheapest three-in-one bodywash/shampoo/conditioner he could find. He may have changed, because his hair looked great, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

He sorted through the pile. “Is that it?”

“One more thing. My weapon.”

Dash straightened up, brow furrowed. “You’re bringing that?”

“I have to. It’s not like I can leave it. It’s for work. It’s in a portable gun safe with a biometric lock, and the ammo is in a separate, lockable box.” I knew Dash was familiar with weapons and had scored high on marksmanship in the Army. “And I’ll take it with me when I leave the house.”

“Are you always carrying?”

“Not always, but often. When I’m on duty, yes. If it makes you feel better, I have never fired it in the line of duty. Just on the range so I can stay qualified. Do you want me not to?”

I could tell he was conflicted. On one hand, guns were dangerous and could make a bad situation worse. On the other hand, someone was trying to kill me and I couldn’t fight back or runway in my current condition.

He shook his head. “No. Do what you feel is best. I have a gun safe in my room for my weapon. I almost never use it. You can put it there.”

“Okay. Thank you. I appreciate everything you’re doing for me. I know I just barged into your life and disrupted things.” Look how much trouble I’d caused him in just a few days.

“It’s all good. I missed you. I’ll take the disruption.”

To my horror, tears sprung to my eyes at that simple admission. I was in pain and exhausted and all my defenses were down. And truthfully, I hadn’t been sure if he had missed me. We really needed to have a serious talk sooner rather than later. I blinked away the tears, hoping he hadn’t noticed. (Of course, he had, he noticed everything.) “I missed you, too. Every day.”

He nodded, and his smile was gentle. “Go get your gun, Annie. The night ain’t over yet.”

I sagged. “This has been the longest day in the history of the world.”

He laughed. “Go. Things will be better when we get home.”

God, they really would.