Head Rush

Dedication

To my readers. Your enthusiasm and support have been among the most unexpected and greatest gifts of my life. 

Chapter One

Simon skids his souped-up Cutlass to a stop on the tire-strewn ridge. Below us, the Midcity impound lot stretches for miles, an ocean of cars enclosed in a razor-wire fence, and beyond that, mountains of gravel and old tires.

“Christ, Simon,” I say, gently shaking my hand, trying to relax it out of the claw position it froze in from gripping the passenger door. “I am never riding with you again.”

“If we find your car, you won’t have to.” Simon passes me a pair of binoculars, and points down at a distant section of cars. “My intelligence says that cars towed in mid-January are in the southeast quadrant.”

“Your intelligence.” I peer through the binoculars, adjusting the focus. “If you had any intelligence, the last half hour wouldn’t have happened.”

“You are such a baby when you don’t zing.”

“Oh, that must be it.”

Getting here involved recklessly eluding my bodyguard through a maze of Midcity side streets, cutting across a mud gulley, sideswiping several concrete barriers, and speeding through a narrow gap in a high-voltage electric fence. At least the legendarily thuggish impound-lot operators haven’t materialized. But hey, it’s still early.

“No bodyguards. Pure freedom. Like old times,” he says. “The days of kebabs and ouzo.”

And with that, Simon evokes everything I’ve been trying to forget, or at least leave behind. Lazy dinners at the restaurant. The camaraderie of our shadowy club. Packard and me in the back booth. The candlelight, the discoveries, the lies. The intensity in Packard’s gaze, as though the emotions inside him burn too hot. The aliveness I felt.

I grip the binoculars hard, willing this train of thought to stop before it hits its destination.

“You know you love this,” Simon says.

“Yeah, Simon, I love this.” My sarcastic tone is a lie—I
do
love it. It’s been weeks since I’ve been off the radar and free of a bodyguard. Okay, maybe I’m not thrilled to be hanging around in Midcity’s highest-crime sector, but then again, all of Midcity is a high-crime sector these days. In fact, this March is already the city’s most violent month on record, and it’s not even half over.

I scan for gray car tops. The last time I saw my trashed little Jetta was just before everything went to hell, and it was safe and sound in my own parking space behind my apartment building. Where is it? It’s like this mystery nobody can solve—it doesn’t make sense that somebody would steal it, except maybe for a joyride.

A lot doesn’t make sense these days.

Simon cranks open the window and a crisp breeze flows in, carrying the mineral scent of thawing mud. I breathe deeply. A bit of a March warm-up before the blizzard tonight. It’s always warm before a storm.

Simon sighs happily. “I think I’ll have a special suit made, and possibly a top hat. How do you feel about top hats? Maybe all of us bridesmaids can wear top hats, to show we’re a unit.”

“We haven’t found the car yet,” I say.

“Keyword
yet
. Haven’t found it
yet
.”

Simon and I have made a bet: if he helps me find my car, he gets to be one of my bridesmaids for my wedding to Otto.

Simon won’t win this one; Otto’s had people checking every impound lot in the tri-state area—including this one—ever since my car went missing this past January. But if Simon loses, he’s promised to make a genuine effort to be friends with Otto. It’s pathetic of me to wager for that, but I want him to get to know Otto better. Simon’s the only disillusionist friend I have left besides Shelby; the rest have disappeared, some with Packard, probably far away by now, and I’ve heard other disillusionists are traveling, calling their own shots on where they go and what they do. A luxury none of us disillusionists had when we were minions.

A rattle. The cassette tape. Simon’s flipping over Johnny Cash. Again.

A flash of red lights in the distance.

“Crap!” I pull away the binoculars and look with my naked eyes, but it’s only a tow truck on the far side, pulling a car around the end of a gravel mountain. They’re so far off, they look like toys.

“I’m on it,” Simon says. “Keep looking.” He’s made this car thing such a priority.

I go back to my scanning, adjusting the focus for maximum crispness, but I can’t tell where I’m looking in relation to the sea of cars as a whole; I’m just lurching around in oversized motions.

Lurching around in oversized motions is like a metaphor for my entire existence right now. In the last two months, I found out I wasn’t a servile minion for life, I got engaged to Mayor Otto Sanchez, my building was condemned because city engineers discovered a mysterious sinkhole under it, and I was forced to move into Otto’s condo because of it. And between the mysterious new wave of violent crime, the sleepwalking cannibals, and Otto’s growing faction of enemies, the entire city is lurching around too. It’s terrible, after Otto worked so hard to clean up the crime problem when he was police chief.

But most devastating of all, I watched Packard shoot a good man, point blank.

I thought I knew people.
I thought I knew Packard.

Watching Packard shoot Avery—not only a good man but the man my best friend, Shelby, loved—changed everything. I haven’t trusted the ground beneath me ever since.

I haven’t trusted myself.

My thoughts drift back to the scene. Avery’s frightened eyes. The way his body jerked when Packard shot him in the chest, then a different jerk when he shot him in the face.

A twinge in my head.
Damn
. I lower the binoculars and take a centering breath. I’ve been getting this stabbing pain behind my eyes whenever I think about the shooting. Shock, no doubt.

Otto says that whenever I catch myself dwelling on the shooting, I should switch my focus to the future. He doesn’t understand why that won’t work. How can I tell my fiancé that every time I think about his enemy Packard shooting a man, it feels like the end of the world?

“Definitely a top hat,” Simon says.

I concentrate on the image of Simon in a top hat. “What color?”

“Black,” Simon says.

“Oh yeah? What else.”

Simon drones on, and I allow my thoughts to be hijacked by his disturbing description of what he’d wear if he gets to stand up for me at my wedding. It involves a shirt constructed from belts and chains, black pants, some sort of cape, and pirate boots. I’m laughing by the end. “Otto will be so thrilled.”

I resume my scanning.

In spite of his potential bridesmaid’s outfit, part of me wouldn’t mind Simon’s winning, because it would mean I’d have my little car back. Yes, it makes a funny noise and has a smashed taillight. And yes, Otto has repeatedly offered to buy me a new car. But having my old one back would be like having a bit of my old life back. Something of the old crimefighter Justine.

The binoculars are irritating my eye sockets. Some of the car tops seem familiar. Am I going over the same area twice? I pull the glasses away from my face. Is this bad for my head? I rub my left temple. “It’s like a kaleidoscope of car tops.”

“Are you being methodical?”

“No.”

“Give me those.” Simon grabs the binoculars, flips a hunk of black hair out of his eyes, and takes over looking. Simon fancies himself a crack investigator, though to me, the first rule of being a good sleuth is that you should not draw attention to yourself, something Simon utterly fails in. Today he’s wearing a shaggy, white fake-fur coat, perfect for creating that bedraggled poodle-bear effect. No shirt of course, all the better to display the dragon tattoos covering his chest. He’s finished his ensemble with black jeans and boots.

“Trashed gray Jetta,” he says. “But you don’t have a parking sticker on your windshield, right?”

“No. And look for the Gumby on the dash.”

“Right. ‘Ol' Gumby’.”

“The car must be intact and operational,” I remind him. “Otto says that after two months, it’s sure to have been chopped up or junked.”

“We’ll see about that.” This in a tone that’s just a little too casual.

I give him a look. Simon’s definitely up to something. He says he heard through his “PI grapevine” that an impound-lot employee was accidentally transposing license plate numbers, causing some cars to become invisible to the computer, and that this was happening during the stretch of time my car went missing. And he insisted on a bet. Simon can’t pass up a long shot; his specialty as a disillusionist is recklessness. Gambling.

“Oooh, ooh, ooh—Jetta. Rear light smashed. Your license plate start with an H?”

I sit up. “Yeah.”

Simon hands me the binoculars. “See that corner? Red car? Count twenty-four rows down and thirteen over.”

I count down, then I lose my place and have to count some more, going back and forth between normal sight and the binoculars. After the fifth misfire, I take a rest, rubbing my eyes. “This back and forth is straining my vision,” I say. “This is bad for me.”

“You better not wig out.”

“I’m not wigging out. I’m pacing myself. Excuse me if vein star runs in my family.” I lift the heavy binoculars back to my eyes. “Strain on the eyes affects the whole head, you know. It strains the cranial-muscular system.”

“How long has it been?”

How long have I gone without a zing, he means. “Sixty-two days.”

“You’re insane,” he says.

“I’m free.” Sixty-two days ago I zinged Otto’s kidnappers. I petrified them with my fear. My last zing.

“Sixty two days,” he groans.

“Which is amazing, considering all the nursing and anatomy textbooks I’ve been studying. Do you know how much fear that stokes up? But I haven’t zinged any of it out. I couldn’t have lasted this long without Otto.” I feel this wave of gratitude for Otto, the one person who understands my terror, who’s always there with me in my deepest pit of fear, because it’s his pit too. We know the darkness of it, the sharpness of the rocky bottom. We help each other when we’re down there—other people can’t understand it because other people haven’t been there. Nobody else fears vein-star syndrome like we do.

And of course, it doesn’t hurt that Otto’s considered one of the sexiest men in the city, all dusky curls and deep brown eyes. Lush, thick features and the strength of an ox. Local magazines and papers love to run his picture.

Simon says, “Sixty-two chances to feel normal. To feel that peace. Squandered.”

“It’s not peace if it ruins things for somebody else.”

He sighs dramatically.

I give him a hard look above the binoculars. “And I’m not free if I have to zing somebody just to feel good.”

He says, “The thirteen starts at a red truck, I think.”

I get back to searching. Soon enough, a familiar car top. “Whoa!”

“You see it?”

Carefully, I adjust the view. I spot the smashed taillight, and my panda bumper sticker. “Holy crap! That’s it!” I laugh incredulously. “You found it!”

“Good. Let’s handle this. I have to pick out an outfit for your bridesmaids’ dinner tomorrow. And start working on my outfit. Three days to the wedding. Can’t wait!”

“I can’t believe you found it.”

“I
am
a PI.”

“Oh really? Do you have a PI license?”

“I found your car, didn’t I?” He starts up the engine.

“No bridesmaid of mine is wearing a chain-and-belt shirt.”

“This one is.” Simon makes a U-turn and speeds around a tire pile; ice crusts cling to its shady side like gray moss.

Simon as a bridesmaid. Otto’s going to hate this. I take a deep breath, rubbing the muscles around my eyes. I wish Simon hadn’t reminded me that I haven’t been zinging, because it reminds me of the pain, and now I’m focusing on it again. Is it coming back? But I forgot about it before, didn’t I? That shows it’s not dire.
Snap out of it!
I tell myself.
It’s nothing! You’re just a stupid hypochondriac!

“Look at you,” Simon says. “You are building up way too much goddamned fear.”

“I’m fine.”

“All that potency, going to waste. With how much you have stoked right now, you could dominate anybody. Trump any weapon.” He’s been dying to see me strike fear into a random person, ever since we found out we can psychologically attack whomever we choose.

“Zinging isn’t a superpower,” I say. “It’s a crutch that I don’t need anymore. Because I’m free.”

“I know you remember what it’s like, Justine,” he says smoothly, “when it all rushes out. All that darkness, overtaking them, and how light you feel. Serene, and so goddamned aware. The wind in your fingertips, the bliss. Glory hour—”

“Enough.”

He turns back. “Fine. Let’s talk top hats then.”

We bump down a utility road, rocking over deep, mud ruts. I hang on, hoping the car doesn’t slip down the hillside into the electrified fence.

Yes, zinging would feel good. Beyond good. That doesn’t make it right.

“Of all things, Simon,” I say. “What guy wants to be in a wedding? Most men would consider getting
out
of a wedding to be the prize. Are you sure you don’t want something else? I bet Otto would pull strings to get you a PI license.”