Head Rush (22 page)

This hush falls over the boxcar. It’s all so horrible. And now there are maybe forty violent, powerful highcap criminals after his head? To be delivered to Otto by three on my wedding day? Like a twisted wedding present?

“Any of them working together?” Packard asks.

The Brick Slinger shrugs. “Nah. But yesterday we started getting suggestions where to look. Guess you’re better at hiding than they thought.”

“The Tanglelands?” I say, recalling Otto’s phone conversation. “Was that a suggestion?”

“Yeah,” he says.

Something’s not right. “Was Mayor Sanchez standing close enough to be watching these operations?”

“Oh yeah,” the Brick Slinger says. “Yup.”

Packard looks at me. He sees where I’m going with this.

I say, “I can’t imagine him watching a surgical procedure of any kind. Especially one around the head.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” The Brick Slinger demands.

“And a circular medical facility. Implants that explode. As a nurse, or almost-nurse, I just have to say, that technology isn’t here. Especially not in Midcity.” 

“Head implants that explode unless a certain high-stakes mission is completed…” Jordan’s laughing. “Yeah, I saw that movie years ago. When it was called
Escape from New York
.”

I straighten. She’s right. It’s almost the same plot.

“I’m not making it up!” the Brick Slinger says.

“Yeah,
you’re
not making it up.” Jordan plants her hands on her hips. “Kurt Russell starred in it. Guess who’s the biggest Kurt Russell fan in town?”

My heart flips over.
Sophia
. Sophia loves Kurt Russell. He’s her screen saver.

“Kurt Russell? Who is that?” Shelby asks.

“He’s an actor,” Jordan says. “In a movie that has a suspiciously similar plot.”

“What are you talking about?” The Brick Slinger asks.

Jordan turns to the Brick Slinger. “You said
they
let you out. Was one of them a pretty redhead?” Jordan points to Packard. “Hair much redder than his, but with Cruella de Vil eyebrows?”

“Yes, yes!” he says.

“And was she there at other times? Was she there when you got free?”

He seems surprised. “She was in the car that dropped me at the Parklands.”

Jordan looks around at us, prim eyebrow raised. “Who has a circular operating theater lit in green? Nobody…except a UFO. It’s
Escape from New York
mashed up with half the UFO movies ever made. The entire operation was a memory revision.”

“But what if it’s not?” The Brick Slinger asks. “I remember it—I was there.”

“You
think
you were,” I say. “She was there to get you out of the booth, and there to drop you off, and in between you had an implant at an alien facility as the mayor watched?” I shake my head. “You were revised during that car ride, that’s all.”

“What do you know?” he snaps.

“Plenty,” I say. “And I know you wanted the chip out of your neck by tonight, and guess what? It’s out.”

He yanks at his bindings when he realizes we’re going to leave. Shelby sticks him with another knockout pin and we take off.

Packard calls his force-fields guy from the car. Some highcap I’ve never met named Robert. Packard congratulates Robert for getting out of the hospital and arranges for him to create a field around the Brick Slinger’s boxcar.

I pull out my phone. It’s two. I have to be back at our condo by five o’clock.

Jordan laughs some more at the false memory Sophia chose to plant. “You’d think she’d try a little harder to make it seem different from a TV show or a movie.”

“I don’t see anything funny about Midcity’s most dangerous killers thinking they’ll die if they don’t deliver Packard’s severed head.”

“It is strange that she’d make it so bizarre,” Packard says. “And why put Otto in the new memory? I don’t think that was her getting sloppy. I think it was a small rebellion. A clue.”

“They believe it; that’s the part we should worry about.”

“I’ll be okay,” Packard says.

“Yeah, if you go back to the one place they won’t look.”

“You must go to Delites,” Shelby says. “Our only choice is to leave city or you must go back to Delites.”

“I’ll do neither,” Packard says. “We need to find Sophia. There are other prisons out there, and she’s probably in one of them. Let’s see what she wanted to tell us.”

Jordan says, “I’m going to guess her information pertained to crazed highcap criminals out for your severed head.”

“It’s a no-brainer that Otto would send people after me. There has to be more that she can tell us. Something useful. We need the rest of the Vindalese document translated—I bet her location’s in there.” He fingers the hem of my jacket. “And guess who knows a guy who has a contact who knows Vindalese? Simon.”

Shelby says, “Simon?”

“We had some of Otto’s books looked at once,” Packard says. “Do we know where Simon is right now?”

“Tailor,” Shelby says. “For outfit. For wedding.”

“Call him,” he says. And then he catches my eye.

The wedding.

Chapter Twelve

A bell rings as we enter Trinh Tailor, a tiny storefront in the university corridor, just west of the Tangle. The four of us wait at the counter, watching the little door that must lead to the back room. Here in this small space, I’m uncomfortably aware of how badly we must stink of Tanglelands tea. We raised a few eyebrows at the drugstore where we stopped to print out my photos, too.

While we were there, I picked up some sterile bandages and antibiotic ointment that I’m eager to use on Packard’s wound. I’ve noticed he’s not using that arm much, and I worry it hurts, which could signal infection.

A dark-haired boy of maybe ten comes out and frowns—at the smell, no doubt—then motions us to follow him down a hall and into a large back room, which is mostly empty except where Simon and Ez stand on side-by-side elevated platforms. I half expect them to react to Packard strolling in, but they don’t. Meeting with him all along, I suppose.

Ez wears the lovely black bridesmaid’s dress we picked out last month, only now she wears a black silk cape that’s trimmed with white fur. The cape is pinned to her dress and she’s glowering in a general way—at the room, us, the situation.

Simon wears a cape identical to Ez’s, but that’s where the similarity ends. His chest underneath the cape is bare, except for two crisscrosses of leather and one chain, allowing for yet another display of his many dragon tattoos. His black pants are shiny as can be, and his boots reach up nearly to his knees. The bruises on his face from the impound-lot fight complete the insane effect.

“What are you supposed to be?” I ask. “King of the freak farm?”

Simon smiles. “I’m your bridesmaid, Justine, and I couldn’t be more excited. Ez here agreed to stand in as the model for all the rest of you so we can all have matching capes. Wait until Trinh comes back with my hat.”

“Simon told me this was a mandatory fitting,” Ez glares at Simon. “It’s good I’m here anyway. Or our capes would’ve been five feet longer.”

Shelby laughs. “A bare-chested man standing up at Otto’s wedding. I will like that very much.”

“I will too.” Simon pushes his cape backward, baring his shoulders. “I’m having four of these capes made so we’ll all match. Don’t worry, Justine, it’s fake fur. It’ll be a great effect during the horse procession.”

“Unless the horses trip over them,” I say.

“There’s not going to be a procession,” Packard grumbles. “It’s not going that far.”

Simon gives him a look. “Come again?”

A hush falls over the room as an elderly woman in a bright-blue smock brings out a black top hat with white fur around the brim. Trinh. She smiles at me as she hands the hat to Simon, who introduces us. Trinh clasps my hand, telling me how honored she is to play a last-minute role in the mayoral bridal party’s couture, and how important it is to her to match everything to the work of my original dressmaker. She also compliments me on my
bold design vision
for Simon’s special outfit; nonpraise if I’ve ever heard it. I thank her, praying she doesn’t recognize Packard, who’s taken a seat on the couch in the corner, next to Jordan. He’s kept his black winter cap on, at least. Not much of a disguise, but it’s better than his curly, reddish hair acting as a flashing beacon.

Shelby introduces herself as a member of my bridal party. Trinh apologizes—she has the capes cut out only, not yet sewn. She starts removing the pin-filled cape from Ez, telling us she needs only two hours.

“Take your time,” I say.

She looks at me strangely. “You are indeed a calm bride.”

“Not at all—don’t be fooled.” I force a laugh. “Do you mind if we stay to have a quick, private meeting in here? We’re meeting a friend. Secret wedding stuff.”

“Please, stay as long as you like.” She removes Ez’s cape, and then Simon’s, leaving him wearing just his chest straps, hat, pants, and boots. We decline her offer that the boy bring refreshments.

“Where’s your Vindalese guy?” Packard asks Simon as soon as Trinh’s gone.

“He’s on his way,” Simon says. “What’s this about stopping the procession?”

“The second she senses danger she needs to jump out, that’s all. It’s becoming far too dangerous,” Packard says.

“Nothing’s different,” Simon argues.

“Everything’s different,” he says. “A day ago she wanted to marry him and thought I was a killer. Now she knows
he’s
a killer who’s set loose the most dangerous people in Midcity.” He tells Simon about the highcaps let out of the prisons.

“Let’s concentrate on going forward,” I say. “Otto and I are leaving to get my dad in a couple of hours, and there’s no reason to call that off. We’ll bring him back to the condo to have dinner and then to his hotel. I’ll keep my eyes open.”

Packard huffs out a breath, forehead furrowed. “You’ve had your eyes open for two months.”

“No I haven’t. My eyes are open
now
.”

“Just in time to be trapped in a car with him for an hour? You’re a good liar, but you’re not that good.”

“Yes I
am
that good. All my life I’ve been pretending to feel fabulous when I’m freaking out. You think I can’t act like I’m having a nice time when I’m not? You think I haven’t done worse?”

There’s this awkward silence where I’m guessing everyone is taking the time to remember that I had sex with Otto when I thought he was Henji, a super dangerous killer.

“Christ,” Packard says.

“It’s not going to come to that, but just to illustrate. This is something I can do, and only I can do it. And maybe I’ll find something,” I say this with a bravado I don’t feel. In truth, I’m anxious about being with Otto, and worried about Packard, hunted by the most desperate and dangerous men possible, yet running around in public. I wish we could get out of this tailor shop, out of Midcity.

Jordan raises a finger. “And if Justine gets killed or sealed away forever, you’ll feel sad, blah, blah, blah, but later you’ll find somebody of similar looks and personality, and she will replace Justine. That’s how it always works with people.”

Packard and I both glare at Jordan.

Just then, the boy comes in with a man with impossibly shaggy blond hair and blue-tinted aviator glasses. Hank the languages genius. Hank compliments Simon’s outfit, and the two of them settle down on the couch with the printouts of my photos. Jordan, Ez, and Shelby gather around them.

Packard pulls me off across the room to a little alcove with a coffee maker and a plate of decorated sugar cubes, plus every color of fake sugar packet known to mankind.

“What are you going to find new in the condo, or on a trip to your dad’s? I don’t want you taking risks for peanuts.”

“We have a day,” I tell him. “There’s something to find, I know it. Don’t forget that e-mail from Fawna. Even Fawna predicted
his downfall
. Fawna predicted
our success
.”

“Fawna also predicted the ground running red. And she didn’t say whose blood that was.”

“She didn’t even say it was blood.”

The planes of his face seem harder. “Justine, when a seer uses the phrase ‘ground running red,’ she’s not talking about the carpet.”

An excited murmur from the group.

“You can’t prevent the world from being dangerous,” I say.

He says, “I can
want
to.” The wounded intensity of his gaze drills clear into my heart. He takes my hands and squeezes. “I don’t want you to leave me again.”

I don’t know what to say, or really what he means, by my leaving him
again
. I was never really
with
him. But then I realize something: I grew up with a family that loved me, messed up as they were—people who loved me unconditionally. Packard never had that. He’s always been alone—fiercely, completely isolated. Fighting for whatever he could get.

A crash of metal and glass from the front. I jump. Packard lets go of my hand and moves stealthily toward the sound. In comes a dapper man, dragging the boy with him, gun to his head. The man wears a tan business suit, and his kinky, black hair is slicked back with so much product, it looks wet. A second man enters, pudgy and pale with bushy, angry eyebrows, and an old yellow chainsaw that also looks angry.

“Vanderhook,” Packard says, addressing the dapper man with the boy, who seems too stunned to cry.

“It won’t help,” Vanderhook says. He means it won’t help that Packard has just let us all know that this is Vanderhook, Midcity’s most notorious short-term prognosticator. Not everyone would know Vanderhook by sight, but we’ve all heard of him. He’s a thief and a killer who can see ten moves beyond the present. Another one Otto supposedly imprisoned. I don’t know what type of highcap the chainsaw man might be, but just to be safe, I skunk my thoughts with a repetitive song: “It’s a Small World After All”.

He glares at me.

“The other’s a telepath,” I announce.

“That won’t help either,” Vanderhook says.

A scream—Trinh stands in the open doorway, a wad of white fur at her feet.

“Stay back!” Vanderhook gestures at the boy. “This one doesn’t have to die.” He turns to Packard. “You do.”