Zig-Zag

[Heliotrope]

i

It was a rainy night, the sort where I had this godawful, maudlin habit of looking out the window and -- the city lit by sporadic, staccato lightning -- reminiscing about this guy I used to know. The sort of night where the whisky glass -- smoky, peaty, tasting of ancient bogs full of gods and murderers and cowards -- had all the vigor and contempt of a Sunday sermon about demons and bottles, except I wasn't listening because I knew more about both than some preacher ever could.

A long time ago, ten years, say, although it felt like yesterday, I had been somebody. And I mean really, really somebody. People, very important people, had counted on me. Believed in me. I hadn't seen what they saw. And so this guy I used to know had kicked over the chair, stepped off the ledge with a briefcase full of blackmail, and died. Now I was just a private dick, operating in an Atlantic craphole with no casinos and no nightlife, only crime. Well, that wasn't strictly true. I was a public dick, too.

But that's all in the past. You only care (and you only should care) about tonight. About what happened. You don't care about the thing in Sumatra, and I certainly don't either. It's in the past, and I hold no rancor for those who let it happen.

Tonight, in a rundown office building by the docks, where I kept office space for occasional business use and nightly brooding, I sat and watched the storm. Tried not to hear any screams in the alley below. Tried to drink and not to think. And it was all ruined by three short, sharp knocks at the door.

"Come," I said, and she did. I swear to this day that I felt her through the door before I saw her. A cold trickle of apprehension ran down my back. My muscles tensed with...awe? And as I saw her my skin flooded with goosebumps. It was all right. She was only a child of twelve, eyes sad, posture straight.

We looked at each other. We looked long and hard, and I thought for a moment that she must be very old, to have such kindness in her eyes when she saw me. She was inscrutable. I could not comprehend her at all. And yet she wanted to be here, in my office. Which meant she wanted to hire me. This was very bad.

"High Priest, I must admit. I did not expect to see your station so low."

I shook my head, staring at her blankly. "I'm sorry, what?"

She smiled coyly. It was a dead man's curve if I'd ever seen one. "Don't be. Despite what your previous employers may have led you to believe, your reputation does not begin and end with what happened in Sumatra."

My hand closed around my revolver, cold under my coat. The other hand gently set the tumbler down on the windowsill. I considered several replies, several angles of attack. Thought the problem over carefully. Honesty was the best policy, but it was also its own kind of lie. "They told me it wasn't my fault."

"I said 'led you to believe'. I choose my words carefully, High Priest. I suggest you do the same."

There. That again. What was she on about? "Now listen here, kid, this ain't a church. If you're here to confess --"

"Then I am in the right place. I have a job for you, David."

"And that requires a confession?"

She nodded once. "Not mine."

She snapped her fingers and pointed, and a ghostly image appeared, like a still photo wreathed in smoke. I heard thunder, I thought, but it was my heart in my ears. The face hovered in the air, and I couldn't look away. Her black hair was just like it had been the day we'd met. The sculpted cheekbones, the piercing eyes. Hedy Lamar and all the angels of God had nothing on my --

"Alex," I said, with ragged longing. "Where did you find this image?"

Alex winked at me. Or I was drunk, maybe. Way too drunk.

"He thinks he's drunk, Ciara. Should we tell him?"

"No. Don't come in here and trick me like this. Don't you dare manipulate me with stagecraft and research and cold reading. I've had enough of that." At some point the gun had found its way out of my pocket and was pointed at this Ciara moll's head. "Get out."

Ciara exchanged one look with her projection, and I thought I saw a flicker of something, familiarity, maybe. Understanding. I'd looked at Alex that way, at Harry before he went sour. We'd all been so close, then lies and damnation and the realization that I'd just been playing a part, like some kind of idiot in a dime novel.

"Lies can only hurt you if you give them the power of your belief, David." Alex's voice sounded sad, and rang too true. I was beginning to come around. This had to be more than a projection. I'd heard of arcana that were capable of similar things, and of course I knew from experience that they were "real" in some sense. Maybe, just maybe…

I had just gathered the courage to reach for the wispy, fraying rope when the door shut with a final click. Ciara was gone. And Alex with her.

I inspected the revolver carefully, looking at dings in its chrome finish. I verified that it was loaded with a visual inspection, then snapped out of it. I set the revolver on the windowsill, and picked up the whisky glass. Then I sat down.

It was still raining.

II

A day passed, and I tried not to have too much to think, or to spend too much time losing my nerve. Dames come and go, they have tricks they can turn that remind you of old flames, it happens. All in a day's work.

I had once dated a therapist, in what I was now referring to as my Lost Decade. Pretty Asian girl, very smart. Too smart. She'd told me that my jadedness was an act, a front. Some story I was telling myself, that I had a choice.

I'd lost her number. Everything was a story. Everyone was spinning something their way. Even her. If she couldn't see it…

I glared dourly at the window, which had, in a gesture of total disregard for the hangover I was nursing like a mother cat does a sick kitten, allowed the blazing midday sun into my office. I stood up, walked again to the window, shut the damn blinds. Sat down with a thud. Made sure the phone was off the hook, where it had been since the other night. Continued staring into space, angry.

A man needs his moods. Without them he's just lines of ink, typewritten and uniform.

Right now my mood was being left alone. Not thinking about Alex, or Sumatra, or fucking Harry and his schemes, or how it had gone down the last time I'd seen Harry. The Broadsheet, an invulnerable naked lady whose MO was to be black and white and then red all over (hence the name) had appeared, shortly after Bill had gone missing. Alex suspected she'd killed him. The Broadsheet had killed Alex. Harry had...well, he'd disappeared into the mists, that porcelain smile of his now garnished with an eyepatch.

The issue with all this, for me, was how it all felt like a dime novel backstory. Like they'd planned it. I didn't much like where that led me. No. I'd never liked Harry and Alex's theater kid thing, the way everything had to feel like Macbeth or smack of the tarot and ancient wisdom. Smoke and mirrors. How many layers had the lies had? My old team had spun a real potboiler, that much was sure. And my station had in fact sunk pretty low.

Which led to more dour ruminating, this time on that Ciara kid and the smoke and mirrors she'd tried to pull. About the horrifying deduction I didn't want to finish making, that my Alex had ended up as smoke and mirrors in the end. Of a different kind? Was that supposed to be comfort? I wasn't sure I cared.
But all this was nothing compared to the story I wasn't telling, wasn't even reading. The story of what I was hiding, what had happened in Sumatra. What might happen again. Why I was a detective. Blame was easy. Jilted lovers and widows loved it. See, people romanticize PIs. They think we solve cases. We don't, and the truth is farcical in comparison. We assign blame. Solving cases is what the good guys do.

A knock. I winced. The sound had brushed against my hangover very loudly. But at least I could stop thinking.

"Fuck off," I said. Make 'em work for it.

"I know too much," a voice said. "You can't talk to me like that."

I scoffed. "Try me."

I'd seen this before. Some kid from the local high school, playing tricks. It didn't exactly take brains to put it together. Empty office building, only occupant never leaves. No one comes in, no one goes out. Sign advertises private eye services. Yes, the guy has something to hide. They usually left at about this part.

"Really? Out here in the hall, David? I suppose I can start. But where?"

She knew my name. "In here, please." I presumed she'd heard the haste in my voice. Not great, but salvageable.

She opened the door, slowly. I heard her muttering to herself as she turned the knob, then a whispered curse as she took in the room. I looked her over in return, looking for something to judge with equal vitriol. Maybe she could clean if she didn't like it. But all I saw was legs that wouldn't quit, glass green eyes glaring at me – the right leg kicked up, as she leaned forward, the projector faded to black –

"I'm sixteen, asshole."

"Huh?" What did that have to do with my reverie?

"You know exactly 'huh'. Don't do that. But I digress. Thanks for letting me in. I wouldn't want to be a tattletale."

"Just who or what are you going to tell?"

She sat on my desk and leaned back, bringing her lips close to my ear. "Wouldn't you like to know," she said.

"I think I already do."

She nodded. "Our secret, then."

"How did you know my name?"

She clucked her tongue. "See, usually it's on the door. And that would be funnier. But you know what's even funnier?"

I thought I had an inkling. "Tell me," I said.

"It says Eidolon Investigations."

"So?" I folded my arms. "That guy was such a big deal they based Superman on him. You can't blame me for ripping him off to get people in the door."

"So," she says, sliding a photograph of a hooded man with what appears to be an aura around him across my desk, "Superman doesn't have a hood. You know why?"

"You know more than me, lady."

"I'm glad we both agree. Clark Kent doesn't have a face only a mother could love."

"Hey."

"I know, I know, you resemble that remark."

Damn, that's actually good. But I'm not the disarmingly self-aware type. Can't be. Not with all the things i know, not when I can't even count how many tricks I have up my sleeve. "Isn't this a little rude for a consultation?"

"Depends on who you think is consulting who. Are you right? Are you wrong? Wanna bet?" Another stab of that infuriating grin. I want to slap it off her face, and that is the exact intended effect. She's good. Either that or she's a two bit manipulator and I'm just feeling susceptible today.

"Both." She laughs, mocking and musical. Altogether she reminds me of this recurring nightmare I have, a winged woman who hates me almost as much as I hate myself. I wonder if it's intentional, if she knows. How deep her power goes.

"Let's be real, David. You have a lot to work with, and it's written all over your face."

I just gape at her, blankly.

"Like that." She winks.

"Get to the point. Did Ciara send you?"

She shakes her head. "I'm gonna have to circle back to that on my own time. Wow, what a motherlode. Ow. Okay. No. She didn't. I have two jobs for you. One at a time, for now."

"Go on." I sit up straighter, now, more confident. More in control of the encounter now that she wants something.

"Don't go getting ideas, big guy. Okay, first. I have a friend, right? She's having trouble in school. I know why, but I can't fix it. Can't prove it. I'm...powerless, which is a funny feeling."

"I don't follow. You want me to find information you already know and fix some teenybopper's problem? What, did she get knocked up?"

"I wish," the girl scoffs. "It'd be easier, you know? Okay, first. I can't go to the cops with a rap sheet as long as my arm. And it is very much a cop thing. Follow the thread, draw your own conclusions, make my friend's problems go away. As payment we talk about the second job."

The nerve of these chicks, sometimes. "Now listen here, lady. That's not how this works. And even if it was I don't do divorces, personal protection, anything in the area you're talking about. And I sure as hell don't tail kids. Hell of a way to get yourself knocked off." I did, of course, and I had.

"You don't do anything, Eidolon." She watches my face, and I remember why the other guy wore the hood. "You had your first customer in six months last night, and you turned them away."

As much as I hate to admit it, she's right. "Okay. Where do I start?"

"Show up to Winslow High tomorrow. Ask around for a Taylor Hebert. Follow the clues."

"Second job better be good."

She smiled over her shoulder, mocking but encouraging in some strange way. "It is." And she was gone.

I stood up, and opened the window. The sun was still shining.

III

I hated jobs like this. Saving some rich girl's little friend from embarrassment, at best. There was a reason David didn't do anything, a reason Eidolon was dead and gone. When I didn't do anything, I was happier. I was bored, but there weren't – well, I'd caused a diplomatic incident in Sumatra the one time I'd tried to be myself.
And anyway, at worst, I was a "flying monkey", like the movie. Someone this "tattletale" character was using to get this Hebert girl, and her little dog, too. Punish her for some imagined slight. For having gone straight, maybe, given the obvious mobbed-up vibes I got from the girl.

Which made it awkward and stupid that I was following her around in a school, of all places. I wore a janitorial outfit – grey trousers and shirt, white smock, and followed her at a distance, pushing a wheeled dustbin along. I had seen nothing amiss, so far. A fly here, another there. She stunk, maybe. Wasn't close enough. Poor family? I made a mental note for later. I hadn't gotten the nerve to follow her home yet.

I was fairly sure what I'd find. She was painfully shy. She seemed to be on speaking terms – to have been, more likely, with a redhead that looked like she belonged in the same social circles as the tattle-girl with the green eyes. They avoided each other, or spoke in whispers. I had once relied on a couple of knacks I had stowed away for just such situations – the ability to read lips didn't use up much gas, for example – but that was dangerous. I could get better at reading lips with practice. Something about a bike? And scarlet? I thought for a second and shook my head. Kids these days.

But something about Hebert's expression caught me off guard. This wasn't the profane banter of a couple of adolescent flappers. Not with the third girl, panther-like, stalking in the shadows at a distance. I'd seen this dynamic before. I'd been part of it.

When would everything stop being Sumatra? When I finally had the balls to cut off the Omega Society's initiatory tattoo. But I'd been someone. I'd been part of something! At Sumatra.

I was a janitor. Technically a school employee. That janitor, and not the schmuck I'd have to blame later, stepped forward. "This girl bothering you, miss?"

Ginger tapdanced backward and flashed her eyes at me. "It's fine. None of your business." The third girl stepped toward me – an untrained bystander would not have noticed the imperceptible change in her stance, but I did, and it was all I could do not to reach for the snubnose in my jacket by instinct – and then away again.

"It's on school grounds, it might be school business." I shrugged indifferently.

"No, it's fine." Taylor spoke, at last. "Emma here was just reminding me of the person I used to be."

I raised an eyebrow.

Taylor flashed a smile. "Old friends, right Emma? You knew me when I was better."

"Getting worse is a choice." The girl's voice spat and hissed like a cat in heat marking a summer sidewalk. But she left, flipping her hair and sashaying away.
It was too late. I'd already made contact. "Observe and report" was a dead letter. "Some history there?"

She glared at me over her glasses. "Isn't there always?"

I shrugged, putting on a wry smile. My expression was warmer, this time. This David guy could act, if he had to. "I suppose. She doesn't seem to like you very much."

She sighed. "It doesn't matter."

This was looking more and more like someone had left the gas on, blamed her for tripping down the stairs. I didn't like it. I had principles, damn it. They were just rusty. "It does. To me."

She shook her head. "Tell Coyle I'm not coming back."

I raised an eyebrow. "Coyle?" I was beginning to understand the second job.

She nodded, tight-lipped. Then, sotto voce: "I have a knife."

I blinked, felt my face flush. I was acutely aware of the nasality of my voice, and I got a little hot under the collar. "I have three," I said, like an idiot. "And I'm not who you think I am."

"I never thought you were the janitor," she said, edging closer to me. The third girl was watching us. I met her eyes and winked, then stepped around Taylor to block the third girl's view.

"Thank you," she said, and ran.

"Hey, wait!" A paper fluttered to the ground behind her. It caught my eye, doubtless as intended. But she'd caught me flat-footed, and I couldn't risk making a scene. I bent over to pick it up, and felt a twinge in my back.

It had very neat Palmer script on it. Seriously, where had this kid learned penmanship? Her mother wasn't a doctor, that was for damn sure. The words took a moment to sink in, but when they did they hit me like the baku-dan hit New Siam.

Four words, perfectly legible. Step up. Not sorry.

Well, I was a janitor, right? I crumpled it up and tossed it in the bin.

iV

The phone line was crackly – it was being bugged, certainly, but Brockton Bay's wiring probably hadn't even been thought about since the twenties. The girl's voice sounded like she was down a hole somewhere, with a faint echo, but it was still smug and infuriating. "Coyle, with a Y and an E. Not like a mortal coil. Like Conan Doyle."

I didn't see it. I said as much.

"Yeah, well, you're not very perceptive."

"And yet you're paying me."

"Well," she said cheerfully. "There are good gumshoes, and there's Eidolon."

"He's not real. He's branding."

"I know," she said. "Anyway, maybe the name needs work. The girl needs somewhere to belong. She's dangerous alone. And more dangerous in the wrong hands."

It was almost something I could hear in a voice-over narration. Too cute to be anything but a line. This wasn't a movie, and if the girl thought it was –

"Did she seem to have any knowledge that mundanes wouldn't? Any abilities?"

I thought about the note. I did nothing but think of the note. It was a rat in my walls, chittering away. "No," I said.

"Mhm. You don't either, right?"

"Anyway, you want her for your little…"

"We're called the Untouchables. We're in, we're out, your valuables are fenced by morning. We're very good at what we do, and since the Depression no one has money anyway, except the assholes we lift from. It's good, harmless fun."

"Until you get locked up. In what way is this a better use of her youthful innocence than –" I heard brakes screech, and a stray thought gave me the finger. "What does she do all day?"

"Exactly. Wait, have you not been tailing her outside of school hours?!"

I had no answer for that but the truth. "Playing it safe. These things take time, and I got made a week ago."

She sighed. "With a pretty little note and everything, right?"

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

"She does that."

"Little fortune cookie type notes? Confucius say, be a man, stuff like that?"

A giggle. "Yeah. That's Bug."

"Wordplay." I grimaced. "A theme with you."

"Sure," she said cheerfully. "It's fun. You're not used to fun?"

I was not. I didn't say as much.

"Poor you. DId it really say to be a man?"

This conversation was getting uncomfortable fast. I had to redirect. "So is this what she does for your team? Writes notes? I need to know, understand, just in case it's relevant. You can't lie to me, and you can't hold back. I have to be able to help." Fuck. I was babbling again. Had probably been years, unless I'd blacked the last time out. I hadn't babbled with Ciara, what was different? Why?

She giggled again. "You're a real piece of work, Eidolon. Whatever she wrote, it undid you."

"I wouldn't say that." I was undoing myself. Picking at the scab she'd drawn my attention to. But I wouldn't say that either.

I wouldn't talk about what had happened in Sumatra. That was why Yamada had lost my number. I uncorked the whisky and topped off my Nepenthean draught.

"I'm not the only visitor you've had. Want to talk about her?"

"About Alex? Goddamn it, no."

"I didn't…mean…Alex," she said carefully, feigning hesitation. At least I figured she was feigning it. Trying to draw out more information. She couldn't ever say anything plainly, because it would lose the game she was playing. Everything was a game to masked heroes, at any level. It was becoming clear that there was no difference between the Omega Society and the Untouchables, at least not as far as their mutual pal Eidolon was concerned.

"Okay," I said. I couldn't hang up. Not yet. I needed to know what she wanted with the girl. Step up.

"She can crack a safe as simple as asking the question. But that's a waste of her talents," she said with genuine admiration, or what sounded like it. "No, we use her to find the goods in the first place.
"So let me guess, she left because she's not getting a large enough piece of the action?"

A long pause.

"Well?"

"No." Soft breathing, on the other end of the line.

"What, then?"

"Follow her home sometime." WIth that, Coyle hung up.

I didn't like this. The deeper in I got, the more people tried to get me invested. To make it personal. And the trouble was, I was enjoying feeling invested again.

That was how they got you. Dames. Dames and their siren songs.

V

For today's excursion, I had decided it was best to skip tailing Taylor at school. Hopefully she'd be able to hold her own with her "old friend".

That was a strange reaction, on my part, I made a hard rule to never get attached. This was the real reason I never took cases like this, cases involving kids, cases where I might care. But the corporate clients didn't come calling very often, anymore. It wasn't just Sumatra. It wasn't just my previous associates. It was that I had several problems, and personality and alcohol were not one of them.

See, it's funny because they were two. I haven't told a joke since Alex died. Did it land? Anyway.

I'd pondered two potential disguises before choosing. A social worker wouldn't do. They were too often female, and it would seem too intrusive, too personal. If it got me more access, that would come at a price. The family might feel threatened, and the girl most certainly would.

But this threat was almost inevitable if contact was actually made. And contact was probably inevitable. I had, after all, a face for radio, and one Taylor had seen already. So I needed to be surgical about any muscle I was placing behind my search for more information on what I was even doing here. If they were going to be angry with me anyway, make it educational.

Which meant that tonight I was dressed up as a process server, complete with papers made out to HEBERT, ANNETTE, who was listed as Taylor's mother in the public records I had been able to get to down at City Hall earlier in the day. What was she being sued for, you might ask? Well, if I had to, I'd find out.

I was also prepared for worse. The snubnose revolver was tucked into a pocket of my suitcoat. I had my head on a swivel, tonight. I wasn't sure why, but I had a bad feeling about all of this.

No, I was sure why. In my dreams, i'd seen Alex, last night. I'd kissed her. She'd turned to smoke, her throat torn out while she was still in my arms. The rat had chittered. Sumatran barbacoa had risen in my nostrils, on the smoke coming off of the waterfront. There had been music, soft soulful jazz that stuck with me even now. A flutter of wings, and I'd woken up.

I was afraid. Afraid that I'd have to use my arcana today, and afraid that I was getting into something I couldn't get out of. Bill and Harry had speculated that my arcana had an "always on" aspect, of some kind or another, and when I told myself I wasn't merely a paranoid alcoholic that was one of the pieces of evidence I used.

See, I wasn't afraid, like a fresh kid, or some kind of woman. I was rightfully conscious of danger and cautious in avoiding it. Moreover, the danger in question would be caused by misapplication of my own strength.

It was one thing to say that I was scared of my own shadow, and another entirely to say that I was tall.

I approached Winslow High School just as classes were ending for the day. Taylor slunk away from the crowd, head down, back slouching in a way that would give her problems later in life (don't ask how I knew) – which was a near thing, because the "third girl" (Emma's heavy) was right behind her. Was it a trick of the light, or did I see a telltale shadow coalescing on the third girl's arms and torso?

God damn it. Now I had a possible arcanist, and would potentially have to intervene to keep Taylor from whatever the other girl had planned for her. This would blow my cover. I did the smart thing. I crossed the street. From the other side, I could be a good witness if something went down, swoop in and gain rapport after –

Another reason I didn't work a lot was I hated the kind of person that could be good at my job. I was very good at my job.

But she was safe for now. My face was not easily seen, and I was just going the same direction, walking quickly, on official business. Emma's gun moll might not be moving toward us after all. I watched Taylor carefully. As her steps picked up pace, her spine straightened, and she began to whistle a tune. "Bye Bye Blackbird," in fact. Kid had good taste. Then again, it was a little morose for a cheery afternoon jog. I was beginning to like this kid. Damn it all.

I followed her for about fifteen minutes. We'd probably lost our tail, if we'd ever had one. I couldn't tell, not without doing one of three things I had sworn I'd never do again. (In order of importance, getting mixed up with masked heroes, getting attached to a case, and using my arcana.) I was only worrying because there was a slight indication that the third girl had an arcanum of her own. That was unusual, but less so with each passing year – and it stood to reason that as an arcanist herself, mixed up with arcanists, Taylor had made enemies who were also arcanists.

There. What Bill used to call "semantic satiation" had kicked in, and now the gun moll was just a teenage girl again. I was tall.

I wanted a drink.

But it would have to wait, because what came next made me actually need a drink.

Taylor Hebert walked up the sidewalk, as I watched from a safe distance, and put her foot on the stairs to her front door. I took note of the way her foot skipped a step. Perhaps it was broken, or she was worried it might be? Maybe she just skipped steps. It occurred to me that I'd never seen her climb stairs.

She opened the door. "Mom, I'm home," I heard her call out. A woman, presumably the "Annette Hebert" on file at City Hall, came to the door and wrapped her in a hug. My jaw dropped. I could, now that I was this deep in the caper, only attribute my stupidity to willful denial.

They looked exactly alike. Mother and daughter. Taylor looked exactly like Annette. I hadn't mentioned yet, for reasons that will soon become clear, that there was another member of our circle. And at fourteen, she'd looked just like Taylor. After the thing in Sumatra, Charlie had disappeared – never to be seen again.

Except that I was looking right at her.

Taylor's mother looked right at me, from a hundred yards. "A process server, just as predicted," she called out, in a melodic and cheery voice. "Step two hundred and seventy three. Please, David. Join us for dinner?"

 

[Heliotrope]

One more chapter. You'll never guess what it's called!

Click to shrink...

I hadn't mentioned Charlie because she was the heart and brains of the Omega Society. She was one of these calculating, cold, uncompromising dames I keep getting myself mixed up with. She made me angry, made me uneasy, made my skin crawl in ways I couldn't quite place. She made me jealous, if I were being honest.

"Davy," Yamada said. "You don't have to be that person if you don't want to." I ignored her, pushed another drink back. She made a terrible Beatrice, and I a worse Dante.

After Sumatra, Charlie had been the only person willing to stand up for me. She'd made it seem like I'd done what she wanted. I didn't like that. I didn't like feeling like I had no control, like it was all someone else's game and I was just playing it. That wasn't the Eidolon we'd agreed to sell to the public. That wasn't the one I'd bought.
Earlier I said I held no rancor to those who let the thing in Sumatra play out the way it did. That's not strictly true. I looked at Charlie, and I hated her for letting it happen. Hated her for congratulating me.

Of all the femmes out there, Charlie was the most fatale. She'd looked out along the waterfront, that hateful night, at the flickering flames, and over the screams she'd said "It wasn't your fault. You needed –"

And I'd punched her. I'd decked a fourteen year old girl and sent her sprawling. Just the cold way in which she'd said it, the sense of impersonal evil behind her words.

It had nothing to do with the fact that I'd known the next two words she was going to say. After all, I'd sent the giant rat packing, and single-handedly at that.

Yeah. We're finally to the point where I can talk about Sumatra. Jessie said it was my sublimated id, come to life. I know better. It is, and still is, my self-hatred. A giant skittering monstrosity, bigger than me and stronger. I didn't best it, by defeating it publicly. I lost, and badly, by letting it escape my body at all.

There's a reason I can't talk about Sumatra.

Anyway, the present. I looked at her and tried, for some stupid reason, to play dumb. Maybe I wasn't playing. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I think you have me confused for someone else." Then I made a show of awkwardly shuffling my papers, adjusting my hat and trying to get the hell out of Dodge.

"Maybe I do." There was a sad lilt to her voice, and it made my heart hurt. I wanted to lay her out again. I knew what she was doing. But her next words turned me cold. ""Come inside, Bug. We'll talk alone."

"Mom?" Taylor didn't seem all that shocked. Like I was watching a movie, again. Scripted lines. Psychics pissed me off. "You knew?"

Great. Kid was an amateur. She was volunteering information, which was always pointless…unless you knew what your opponents already knew.

A smile tore at Charlie's face. I hated how much it suited her. "Taylor," she said calmly. "Do you think Eidolon will be joining us for dinner tonight?"

"Ninety-eight point nine seven six eight two percent chance that he does," Taylor said, almost without thinking. Then she put a hand over her mouth, eyes wide, and tried to recoil from herself. I'd seen it before. Most arcanists did, when their arcana took hold. Charlie never had. Charlie belonged to the arcane, and not the other way around.

Charlie just smiled, a sphinx with a mother's face.

"How did you know?" She didn't know Charlie. Charlie knew everything, especially the things she wasn't supposed to know. Anyone who Charlie had opened up around at all knew that. Knew how much Charlie loved being the only real person in any room.

There were complicated reasons I'd hit her, okay?

Those reasons were what propelled me across the lawn. I resisted the urge to use my powers, to float, to bring down a giant thunderstorm around the house and make my entrance that way. Maybe that would come later. I didn't know. To be near Charlie when she was doing her thing was to lose control, to be a bystander watching the bus crash that was your life now. To be near Charlie was to need a cigarette, all the time, for a lot of reasons.

Charlie was like me. There was nobody in there. She'd just been better at it.

"What is this," I heard myself growl. "What are you not telling her?"

"Come inside, Eidolon." She dusted her hands off cheerily, even though she hadn't done any work. Sometimes I thought that everything she did was calculated to make me hate how much I hated her.

All my grumbling aside, I obeyed. If I knew her at all, I'd be eating dinner by the three hundredth step no matter what I did. And it smelled good, really. "I didn't take you for a meatloaf kind of woman," I said.

"There's a lot you don't know about me," she said. "Like, take for instance how the Path wants me to inform you that step two hundred ninety six is to remind you that you're particularly susceptible to this kind of manipulation. Or how I just circumvented the compulsion by obeying it."

I nodded, unsure what she was playing at. I knelt down and removed my shoes, looking around carefully and checking my exits.

"Mother." Taylor growled. "What's going on?"

"You tell me." She glared, unimpressed. I had to assume, by this point, that she knew all there was to know about the Untouchables and Taylor's association with them. More than I did. That was Charlie for you.

"You first." Taylor folded her arms.

"It doesn't have to be this way," she said, and I wasn't sure which of us she was addressing. "I put a lot of work, after Sumatra, into making sure it didn't have to be."
"You tried to go straight," I said.

"I didn't tell my daughter that I used to run the world from the shadows. A small omission, don't you think?"

Taylor gaped. Her mother, still cool as a cucumber, put a plate down in front of her.

"Well? Eat up, young lady."

Taylor did as she was told. Seeing this, Charlie put another plate down in front of me. "It's definitely poisoned."

"Right." I dug in. Better that than dinner with Charlie and Charlie Junior.

"Mother. Why has Eidolon been following me around school?"

"I don't know, dear." She looked at me pointedly. "Why have you?"

I ignored the question, tried a feint. "How long have you known I'm Eidolon?"

"Five minutes." Taylor ate another forkful of meatloaf.

"Too long." I grunted.

"No comment," Taylor said.

"Taylor, why has David J Peterson, owner and sole proprietor of Eidolon Investigations, been following you around?"

"I don't know," said the girl. She clearly had her guesses, and tamped them down with another bite of home cooking.

I just watched, somewhat stymied by the apparent change in Charlie's behavior. She didn't seem to be manipulating the girl, except in a sort of parental way. I could only imagine her concern, with a power like that. Which is why her next words, typical Charlie as they were, brought me back to reality.

"Taylor," her mother said in that impeccable mid-Atlantic she'd always had. "What chance is there it has to do with Lisa?"

Taylor answered without thinking. "Ninety nine point ni– fuck you!" She winced. "May I be excused?" Her nose was bleeding and her face pale.

"Of course, dear." She wiped her mouth with a napkin and looked at me, as Taylor cleared her plate and headed for the stairs. "She didn't answer the question. There are always compulsions."

"You said Sumatra was one," I tried, once Taylor was out of earshot.

"I did. You didn't direct that energy properly, and it destroyed you. Your genius used your arcana for you."

"So when you said it wasn't my fault…"

"Damning with faint praise. You couldn't stop it. You wouldn't have if you could have."

I nodded. "Figures. What did we do to you, kid?"

"What I'm not doing to Taylor. She shouldn't have to know about the arcane, or about what it's like to be us." She rolled up the sleeve of her blouse, and showed me her wrist. "She should never have to have one of these."

I nodded, displaying my own and grasping her hand in a masonic grip, such that our extended fingers touched the pulse points of the other, marked by the tattoo. "We're the only two left."

"Not true. Broadsheet is still out there, for one."

"But she killed Bill."

Charlie shook her head. "She is Bill. But you didn't hear that from me."

I really, really needed that drink.

"It's in the cupboard. Your favorite. Help yourself. Three hundred and twenty four." She smiled, a merry mocking twinkle like twin stars.

Thing was, I didn't have to wonder what she was. I already knew. "No more taking drinks from you, Charlie."

Taylor chose this moment to speak up. "You knew my mother?"

I nodded. Turned my head to look over my shoulder. "We'll talk alone. Later." A challenge. I didn't trust Charlie. Not with a kid.

I didn't trust myself with a kid, either, but better him than her.

"Suit yourselves. But yes. I knew him. We were involved in some nasty business together between the Great Wars."
"Like, crime?" Taylor poured a glass of water from the sink and took small sips.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Taylor rolled her eyes.

"We ran the world from the shadows. Most of history is because of us. My girlfriend was the head of the FBA. Remember how Alex Costa-Brown was killed in that gang shootout, back during Prohibition?"

"I wasn't alive then, but yes."

"It wasn't a gang shootout."

"It wasn't?" Her eyes went wide again.

"Nope. It was that Broadsheet moll."

She nodded. "I see." She was Charlie's kid. I knew she did.

"And Harry. Everything was always Harry."

I looked at Charlie. Tonight was turning out to be full of surprises. "She hurt him, though."

"David, you stooge." There was actual venom in Charlie's voice. "She's a projection operated by the smartest man alive. She injured a gadgeteer cosmetically. Harry made himself a new eye the moment he disappeared."

That meant he and Bill were still active. I'd been licking my wounds, hating myself. I could have stopped them! I could have done something! Charlie may have been at fault for Sumatra, but those bastards – they were worse, their plans were worse, and god only knew how much of them they'd been able to pull off while I just sat there. But wait. "Charlie, you knew, and you…" It dawned on me. Oh, god, I was a stooge.

"I what, David?" She stood over me, leering, as Taylor watched in horror. "Do you find your meatloaf agreeable?"

I coughed, feeling lightheaded. The room spun. I had limited means of escape, of clearing the poison from my body. Not without – no. Not yet. "Should have known you wouldn't lie to me."

"Never, David. Never." She stroked my cheek. "How does it feel to be on the other side of this? Drugged and helpless, you know? What if I…" her voice trailed off, and she leaned in close to my ear. I felt the gun press against my temple, and I was reminded of the tattletale girl.

"Lisa," I said without thinking. "Get Lisa." My voice was hoarse. That must be her name, right?

"On it," said Taylor. God, that girl could run.

As soon as she was out of the room, I picked up the habit I'd kicked after Sumatra. I traded one bottle for another, flushing the poison from my body with a Tibetan visualization exercise to guide my atrophied arcana. That was door number one. Then I tapped Charlie's chest, and sent her flying. Door number two. I stood. I spread my arms. "Come on," I Said, striking a pose. "Find out what's behind door number three."

"Just like your comic books," she said. "So predictable." She fired the gun, and of course I had no choice now. Goddamn it.

Door number three was a defensive trump. I plucked the bullet from mid-air as it passed my hand, pocketing it with a flourish. Then I reached out with my hand, to strike her again. Just like last time, only this time I'd finish the job –

"Welcome back," she said. "The world needs Eidolon right now."

"What?" She was putting the gun away, why was she putting the gun away?

"Step four hundred and eighteen. Eidolon becomes a hero again. For the girl?"

I nodded, numbly.

"You always did have a soft spot for the young and vulnerable types. Just another thing you were confused about. You've spent so many years manipulating yourself, are you even capable of being yourself anymore?"

I shook my head. "Going to step up and find out. Another one of your tricks, Charlie?"

She nodded. "Harry and Bill are calling themselves Cauldron. They're about controlling the world, not helping it. They're in Antarctica, doing something, and I mean to stop them."

"But Harry was a hero."

"He probably still thinks he is. Just like you still think you're a failure."

I shook my head. "The difference is that I'm not lying to myself."

"No, you are. You just need –"

I nodded. "Worthy opponents."

It was beginning to look like I might be making like a bird and flying south for the winter.