The Flight of the Silvers (58 page)

“Go to hell,” she croaked.

“Yeah, that’s right. Azral gave it to me. He knows I’m a sucker for old-world gewgaws.”

“Why?”

“Hey, I have a sentimental side.”

“Why would he give you a gift?”

“Oh.” Evan’s grin deflated. “I guess
he
has a sentimental side.”

His last encounter with Azral and Esis had been a tense, mystifying affair. He knew they were mad about his hotel prank, the spiked mimosa cocktails that triggered a near-fatal brawl between Amanda and Hannah. And yet instead of venting their ire, the pair took Evan on a portal jaunt to Amsterdam, treating him to a sumptuous lunch at a five-star floating restaurant.

At dessert, Azral presented Evan with a book bag full of treasures rescued from Terra Vista—Zack’s original sketchbook, Theo’s Oakland A’s cap, Hannah’s iPod and
Entertainment Weekly
. The unprecedented bounty had left Evan speechless. After fifty-four lifetimes, he still couldn’t figure out the Pelletiers. They operated with the convoluted madness of a Rube Goldberg machine, shaping all their actions on complex calculations and byzantine prophecies.

Once they returned to Indiana, Azral acted more in line with expectations. He’d gripped Evan’s arm, chilling him to the bone with his harsh blue stare.

“You will not jeopardize Hannah again. Not until she serves or fails her function.”

Esis made it clear, in her own loopy way, that the same applied for Amanda.

As the days passed and his purpose on this world grew muddier, Evan convinced himself that there were still plenty of ways to strike at the sisters without risking their precious bodies. If anything, the challenge made Round 55 a hell of a lot more interesting.

He plucked his handtop from the reception desk. An empty view of the hallway filled the tiny screen.
Christ, sister. Hop to it. We’re on a clock here.

“You know, it wasn’t easy bringing your iPod back to life,” he boasted to Hannah. “They have none of the right cables or batteries here. I had to jury-rig a solution. And hey, speaking of Jury . . .”

“Fuck you.”

“Whoa ho ho! The man’s a sore spot already. And just from a driver’s license photo. Good thing you never saw his biceps. You’d be inconsolable.”

Hannah shot him a murderous glare. From the moment Evan showed his cruel and juvenile face, she sensed an odd frustration behind his loathing. He wanted to do so much more to her than he was currently doing. Clearly it wasn’t his conscience holding him back.

“My iPod wasn’t a gift,” she speculated. “It was a bribe. Azral doesn’t want you hurting us.”

Evan narrowed his eyes in pique. The woman could be jarringly sharp when she wanted to be. He scrambled for cover behind a sneering grin.

“Nice thought, Giggles, but Azral didn’t care when I killed Jury. He won’t shed a tear over you. By the way, I have to know. Are you still carrying his license? You can tell me.”

“No.”

“Liar. Come on. I know you’re keeping Jury near your naughty bits. Show me.”

“Would anyone shed a tear if you died, Evan?”

“You would.”

“I’d cry with joy.”

“That counts.” He raised his jolter. “Now are you going to empty your pockets or do I need to make you fork over your pants?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? That’s what this is all about.”

“Getting in your pants?” Evan cackled with scorn. “Oh sweet Jesus. The ego on you. If I wanted that, hon, there are easier ways. Spreading your legs is the fastest thing you do.”

“For men like Jury,” she seethed. “Not like you.”

“Amazing how you’re proud of your shallow standards.”

“Is that why you killed him?”

“Don’t play detective, Boopsie. You’re out of your element.”

“You told Zack you used to be part of our group. You and Jury both.”

Evan sighed with ennui. It was always so tedious to watch the Silvers play catch-up.

“In times undone,” he told her. “Days gone bye-bye. Don’t mistake my wistful look for nostalgia. The memories aren’t fond.”

“What did I do to make you so angry?”

He checked the screen of his handtop.
All right. Finally.

“The question you should be asking right now . . .”

He pressed a button on his console.

“. . . is what did
she
do?”

Hannah spun around in her cage, just as her sister collapsed in front of the open door.

“Amanda!”

Forty minutes ago, Evan had stashed a video camera and an electron chaser in the planter outside the law office. The moment Amanda hobbled into range, he remotely activated the weapon’s charge. In an instant, the widow’s world went red with pain and her muscles turned to jelly.

Evan dragged her inside and closed the door behind them. Hannah shook the bars of her cage. “Stop it! Leave her alone!”

“Hush now, darling. Screaming time is over.” He snickered derisively. “I swear, you two are so easy to trap. Just a shame it took Peter’s Cotton Tail so long to hop her way over here. We’re a little behind schedule.”

His synchron watch beeped its noon chime. Evan adjusted the handtop to access his lobby cameras.

“Yup. There it goes.”

Hannah eyed him confusedly. “What are you talking about?”

“The barricade,” he replied, with a savage grin. “The Deps are storming the castle.”

—

At the stroke of noon, the tempic sheath around the building fell to the government’s solic drill. The glass doors shattered at the edge of a metal battering ram.

Rosie Herrera shouted a staccato barrage of orders as she led the charge to the lobby. Her motormouth zeal was fueled half by adrenaline and half by fear that Melissa would try to seize control of the operation. To Rosie’s surprise, the eccentric agent from L.A. followed the crowd in demure silence. Once she reached the first bloodstain, Melissa uttered a single word.

“Shift.”

Eight armored speedsuits lit up with a crosshatch of bright red lines as their wielders jumped to maximum velocity. A temporal voice converter in each helmet allowed the team to communicate with their unshifted brethren, though Melissa had quietly disabled those devices nine minutes ago. The speeding elites were now isolated in their own headset network, Melissa’s to command by default rank protocol.
Sorry, Rosie. It’s easier this way.

“Fan out,” she ordered them. “Search every corner. You see a fugitive, shoot them in the gut, even if they raise their hands in surrender. These people are never unarmed. And I assure you they have no intention of coming quietly.”

The men dispersed in streaking blurs. Melissa moved to the elevator bank and studied the two young corpses on the floor. They looked like they’d been gored by rhinos. No sword or lance could have killed them this brutally.

Tempis,
she thought, with sinking dread.
God help you if you did this, Amanda. God—

—

—help me.

Amanda lay chest-down on the carpet, her slender frame convulsing with shudders. Her wall-hugging hop down the hallway had been the single most agonizing experience of her life, until Evan’s chaser set every nerve ablaze. Now she was a prisoner of her own fractured body, a tiny creature in a cage of screaming flesh.

She had a moment to register Hannah through a sideways glance before Evan crouched to eclipse her view. He chuckled at her bug-eyed recognition, the long pink fingers that wriggled helplessly like earthworms.

“The tempis you’re trying to call is currently unavailable,” he teased. “Please try again later.”

“P-please . . .”

“Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t cork your weirdhole. That was the cute Asian solic you met downstairs. Her name’s Mercy Lee, but you can call her the Future Mrs.—”

“Leave her alone!”

“—Trillinger.” He spun around to glare at Hannah. “
Don’t
step on my lines.”

“She never did anything to you!”

“
BAAAP!
Incorrect.” Evan squinted venomously at Amanda. “She’s done plenty.”

Though Amanda didn’t know it, she and Evan carried centuries of animosity between them, dating back to his first days on this world. Even when he’d tried to be a good little Silver, the sharp-faced bitch never trusted him for a moment, never liked the way he looked at her sister. He, in turn, hated the gooey hold she took on his one true friend. She ruined Zack every single time.

As a full-fledged adversary, Amanda was even worse. Just months ago in his recollection, on a cold and rainy night near the end of his fifty-fourth lifetime, the widow came looking for blood in the wake of Hannah’s murder. She took Evan by surprise on a Boston rooftop, swooping down from the sky on her mighty wings of aeris. Before he knew what was happening, Amanda’s cold tempic sword burst through his chest. One inch to the left and he would have died instantly.

Instead, Evan spent sixty-two of the longest seconds of his life on the wet concrete, sobbing and pissing and begging for mercy while Amanda looked down at the wretched creature she’d made of him. Though her disgusted pity allowed him enough time to concentrate on a rewind escape, the phantom pain followed him for weeks. The memory still tortured him at night.

Now he walked a slow preening circle around his nemesis, basking in their reversal of fortune. Amanda didn’t piss herself, as Evan had hoped, but she was just a few pokes away from full emotional collapse.

“You know, I learned a long time ago why Tits McGee over there is such a train wreck. I know why all your husbands grow to hate you. You just have that effect on people. You beat them down with your high-and-mighty know-it-all-ism until they just want to stab a hobo. Godmanda, Judgmanda, Reprimanda. Hell, even now if I asked you to beg for your life, you’d beg for Hannah’s instead. And it’s not because you love her. You don’t. You just have to be the noble one.”

“She
is
the noble one,” Hannah snarled. “Compared to you, she’s Jesus in drag.”

“What part of ‘don’t step on my lines—’”

“—do I not understand? I get all of it, you weasel-faced shit geyser, just like I know your threats are worthless. You’ll either kill us or you won’t. Nothing we say will change that. So why don’t you shut your mouth and—”

“‘—do what you came here to do,’” Evan said, in perfect synch. He shook his head at her, chortling. “One of these days, you’ll come up with new dialogue. As for your ‘tough girl’ bit . . .”

Evan pulled a snub-nosed .38 from his holster and aimed it at Amanda’s head. In a sharp instant, all the bravada left Hannah’s face. She lurched forward in her cage.

“Wait! Stop!”

He balked in mock bother. “But . . . I thought my threats were worthless.”

“Please! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Don’t!”

Evan chuckled scornfully. “You always were a shitty actress.”

He checked the countdown timer on his synchron. Two minutes and twenty-eight seconds until Melissa’s speeding bloodhounds reached the fifth floor. He rooted through his duffel bag and placed two gas grenades on the reception desk. Evan had all the right lies and credentials to walk out of this building a free man, but he’d have to send the sisters to sleep so they wouldn’t rat him out. That came last, after the fun.

Hannah watched with furious perplexity as Evan donned a mortarboard and glasses from his bag. Now the young security guard was a professor from the neck up.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked him.

“What I came here to do.” He stooped down to poke Amanda. “Hey, honey? Snookums? I know you’re on the verge of passing out, but if you don’t want me to shoot your sister through her all-access fun tunnel, you’ll need to pay attention to what I say now. It’s very important. Will you listen?”

Amanda dug her taut fingers into the rug, nodding tensely.

Evan smiled. “Smart girl. Keep it up, A-Cup, and you just might hobble out of here.”

He cleared his throat, his brow crunched with scholarly gravitas. Behind his satirical expression, Evan glowed with rapture. This was his favorite part of the show, the absolute high point of his looping existence.

“There’s a crucial bit of information you gals have been missing, a piece of the puzzle that ties everything together. Now the Deps won’t tell you because they don’t know about it. The Pelletiers? Eh. They don’t care if you know or not. But the Gothams? Ah, this is where it gets interesting. You might have noticed they’re a little . . . edgy about something, some future event that has them all soiling their short pants. They might have even said something about it during their many attempts to kill you. Any idea what I’m talking about, class? Anyone? Bueller?”

Hannah looked to Amanda and noticed a quarter-size spot of tempis on the back of her hand. At long last, the solis was wearing off. Her heart leapt with anxious hope.
Don’t let him see it. Keep his eyes on you.

“A second Cataclysm,” Hannah replied. “Peter mentioned it in a letter.”

Evan snapped his fingers. “Aha! Yes! Except . . . no. That doesn’t add up. The Gothams don’t give a crap about anyone outside the clan. If they thought their Habitrail hamlet was going tempo-nuclear, they’d simply pack up and move. So then what’s the real issue? Why are they freaking out?”

Hannah kept her tense stare on Evan.
Look at me. Look at me, you worm.

“What? You’re saying Peter lied to us?”

“Through his big Irish chompers. Excuse me a moment.”

He aimed the cone-shaped jolter at Amanda and pulled the trigger. Hannah screamed as her sister convulsed in fresh pain. The tempis vanished from her hand.

“You’ll have to try better than that, girls. This isn’t my first day teaching.”

Hannah cried through the bars. “Stop it! Stop! Turn it off!”

“You know if you just paid more attention, you wouldn’t be here in remedial class. The answer’s been out there. You’re just not connecting the dots.”

“Then just tell us! Tell us! Stop hurting her and tell us!”

“You tell me, Hannah.”

“I don’t know!”

“Get it right and I’ll stop hurting your sister.”

“I don’t know!”

“Think harder! This is the lightning round! Take a Hail Mary, shot-in-the-dark, wild-guess stab at the answer! What horrible event do you think is coming?”