Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib (Kindle Serial) (30 page)

You were never supposed to tell
ghosts your name, because then they could call you directly. Some people had to
stop using crystal communications entirely because their ghosts called
continuously and they were impossible to block.

“My name is Joy Wilkins,” she
said.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Ms.
Wilkins,” said the ghost. “My name is Hilda Ruiz. You might be interested to
know that Ken Song’s life is in danger.”

Hilda Ruiz. As
in founder-of-the-Thirteenth-Rib Hilda Ruiz. Joy wondered what might
have happened differently if she’d known that the first time she’d picked up
this particular ghost on her line. “Thank you, Hilda.”

“No problem, dear. We’ll be in
touch.”

Joy let go of her crystal and
put both hands on the wheel. There was no good option, here. If she didn’t do
something about Prince Stolas, he might trample the town; if she didn’t help
Ken Song, an army of Sons of Order might spill into this dimension at any
moment. On the other hand, Stolas was enclosed in a summoning circle, and she
didn’t know what she was going to do about him anyway. Flood’s conjure-and-capture
teams would arrive at any moment, but she couldn’t ask Flood for help with
anything concerning the Thirteenth Rib.

“Who do you suppose that is in
the limo behind us?” she asked.

“Probably the Sons of Order,”
said Lutrineas. “If we’re truly unlucky, my sister is with them.”

“Dammit.” No matter what she
did, Flood was going to be upset with her. She could call him in a minute, give
him the address Abel had given her, make some excuse.
No sense worrying beyond that. But there wasn’t any backup she could send to
the McMonigal Arms.

“Hold on,” she told Lutrineas.

“What?”

Joy caressed the brake and then
spun the wheel, hard. The ancient pickup’s engine growled in protest as Joy
swung it around on the narrow blacktop road. In the back of her mind she
started rehearsing her apology to Abel Bouchard.

Lutrineas clung to the door
handle. “They’re not—”

The limousine slammed into the
back of the pickup as Joy was still straightening it out. The pickup shuddered
and its right wheels skidded off the road. Joy slammed on the accelerator,
brought the truck back onto the blacktop, and left the limousine trying to
execute a three-point turn.

“Not a very practical pursuit
vehicle,” she said.

“That was lovely,” said
Lutrineas.

“Thank you,” said Joy. “I aced
the agency driving test.”

“Oh, don’t tell me that. I
liked it better when it felt spontaneous,” said Lutrineas.

Joy peered into the rearview as
the turn back onto the mainland approached; the limousine was nowhere in sight.
She redoubled her speed, ignoring the rattling sounds from the back of the
truck. “You do like spontaneous, don’t you? I read a story that involved you
cutting off your own head so you could sleep better. Do you want to tell me
about that?”

Lutrineas mumbled his response.
“Not really.”

“Then shut up and hold on.”

The arrow in Prince Stolas’s
eye sparked as the demon reeled, shaking its head and stumbling into the bounds
of the summoning circle.

“I bet you thought I was going
to aim for a wing that time, or a leg,” said Ingrid. “Since I told you I was
going to knock off your crown and then I did. That’s what you call
misdirection.”

Y
OU
WILL SUFFER FOR YOUR ARROGANCE
.

“What you’re
not understanding, Prince, is that I don’t care if I suffer. I just want
my sister back.” Ingrid nocked her last arrow. “Any requests
for my next target?”

W
HAT
YOU ASK IS IMPOSSIBLE, YOU MUST REALIZE THAT
. W
HAT IS IT YOU ARE TRULY ASKING
?

“I’m looking for an exchange,”
Ingrid said. “Take the chi that you need from me, and let hers go.”

T
HIS
IS NOT EASILY ACCOMPLISHED
.

“I agree,” said Ingrid. “It
would be easier for me to just shoot you in the other eye. But I would rather
have my sister back.”

Ingrid’s vision had narrowed
almost to a point: a tunnel, a kaleidoscope of Stolas and its sparking, ruined
eye, a rainbow playing over its feathers. A flare of
apprehension impinged on her periphery, a white light of worry—not fear,
but worry. Of course Stolas would try to double-cross her, but Ingrid had a
double cross of her own in mind. If this worked, she would have her sister
back. If this didn’t work, she would still have her sister back, but she would
never know it.

An even exchange.

“Chi is chi, isn’t it?”

As teenagers, Ingrid and her
sister used to go to a coin arcade in Copenhagen after school and on weekends.
They played Centipede and Ms. Pac-Man and Portal Chase—Selma was a master of
Ms. Pac-Man, to the point where she got bored and stopped playing it. Ingrid
was never very good at any of the games. She liked Joust, but she was so bad at
it that she quickly ran out of money and wandered the arcade watching other
people play.

One day she was watching an
older girl play Portal Chase. The girl ran out of lives on the Medina level and
noticed Ingrid watching. “You out of money, kid?” she had asked.

Ingrid, in those days, was so
shy that she could only nod.

“You come here all the time,
don’t you?”

Nod.

“Let me show you something,”
said the girl. She held out her hands; they were both empty. Then she snapped
her fingers, and a five-krone piece appeared in her palm.

“Wow,” said Ingrid, although
she had seen similar conjuration tricks many times.

“This is the same coin I just
plugged into that game,” said the girl. “It’s a slug. They used to put coins on
a string and pull them back up, but you can’t do that anymore. Instead you use
a simple find-your-keys spell that you’re not supposed to use on money, but the
owners here are too dumb to cast an autodispel on the
machines here.”

“Oh, cool,” said Ingrid.

“You wanna buy it? How much
money have you got?”

Ingrid didn’t have any money
left that day, and she didn’t see the girl for a long time after that. So she
decided to figure out how to do a find-your-keys spell on her own. It took her
months. She mostly stopped going to the arcade to study conjuration on her own.
Selma didn’t care, because Selma was discovering girls by that time, and the
girls she was interested in didn’t play video games. And by the time Ingrid
could do the spell on her own, the owners who were too dumb to cast an autodispel on their machines had wised up.

The final part of Ingrid’s plan
was inspired by this memory. She was giving up a part of her soul, but she was
planning to take it back.

A spirit
slug; a soul on a string.

L
OWER
YOUR WEAPON
, said Stolas. I
WILL
DO WHAT YOU ASK
.

“I’d rather keep it up and keep
you honest.”

S
O
BE IT
.

The pain was like a finger prick,
at first, and then it was like the flesh of her finger was being dragged out through
that finger prick, and then the bone, and then the bones of her arm and her
shoulder, her lungs and her heart and her kidneys, all passing through a hole
smaller than the eye of a needle. But the string was there behind her, even
after all of her had been sucked out of that tiny hole. The string was
invisible, undetectable, so beneath notice that it was difficult to trust that
it was there. But Ingrid believed in it. She had to believe in it. Facing
Stolas had made her feel alive again, made her want to live. She just needed
someone to pull that string.

Selma woke up gasping for
breath. She tried to sit up, but her stomach hurt when she tried to move.
Everything
hurt.

She rolled onto her side and coughed, a deep, dry hacking cough. The pain from the
coughing was sharp. She could focus on it. When it stopped, when she finally
began to catch her breath, she saw a handwritten sign set up on a table next to
the bed:

T
AKE IT SLOW

D
RINK SOME WATER

There was a small glass of
water next to the sign. Selma’s thirst was far greater than the glass could
possibly satisfy, but she sat up, reached for the glass, and drank it down.
Every motion was agony.

She was naked, on a bed, in
someone’s basement. There was a TV at the foot of the bed, a wooden chair next to
it. There was a walker behind the chair, the sort an elderly person might use.
There was also a string tied to the back of the chair, connected to something
in the shadows of the basement. There were clothes on the chair—a T-shirt, some
underwear, sweatpants, a robe. On the floor there was a pair of Ms. Pac-Man
slippers.

This was Ingrid’s house. She
knew this, suddenly, without any memory of ever having been in Ingrid’s
basement. But where was Ingrid?

Selma put on the slippers and
the clothes. She did so slowly; the pain was not as sharp now as it had been at
first, but it would not be going away soon. Underneath the sweatpants was
another note:

W
HEN YOU FEEL UP TO
IT, PULL THE STRING

(I
T’S BETTER IF YOU
DO THIS SOONER RATHER THAN LATER
)

Selma disliked doing things
without knowing the reasons for them. But she knew Ingrid’s handwriting, and
she trusted her sister. She moved carefully from the bed to the chair, and then
yanked on the string.

There was resistance at first,
and then the string went slack. A small cardboard box appeared on the floor
with the end of the string tied around it, and at the same moment there was a
sort of a thunder-crackle from outside, like a sonic boom and the scream of a
bird of prey all at once.

Did I do that?
Selma wondered. She pulled on the string again, to
bring the box to her. It was a little larger than a jewelry box, but there was
no ring inside, just another, longer note:

D
EAR
SELMA
:

I
F
YOU’RE READING THIS IT MEANS THAT AT LEAST HALF OF MY PLAN WORKED
. W
ELCOME
BACK
. Y
OU PROBABLY DON’T REMEMBER IT, BUT YOU’VE BEEN MOSTLY DEAD FOR ABOUT SIX
MONTHS
. T
HE SHORT EXPLANATION IS THAT SOME GROUP OF MYSTERIOUS ASSHOLES DECIDED
TO MANIFEST SOME MAJOR DEMONS BY STEALING LIFE FORCE FROM INNOCENT CIVILIANS
.
T
HEY DID THIS ON THE ONE DAY IN WHO-KNOWS-HOW-MANY YEARS THAT YOU HAPPENED TO
BE AT THE MALL, SPENDING A GIFT CERTIFICATE THAT YOUR THOUGHTLESS SISTER GAVE
YOU FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY BECAUSE SHE COULDN’T BE BOTHERED TO THINK OF A DECENT
GIFT
.

I
’M
SORRY ABOUT THAT
.

I
’M
NOT SURE WHEN
I
’LL SEE YOU AFTER THIS, SO THERE ARE SOME THINGS
I
WANT TO BE
SURE TO TELL YOU
. F
IRST OF ALL, YOUR BODY IS GOING TO NEED SOME TIME TO REACCLIMATE TO, WELL, LIVING
. Y
OU SHOULD SEE A DOCTOR
ASAP.
D
ON’T DRINK OR EAT TOO MUCH
. T
HERE’S A SMOOTHIE IN THE FRIDGE UPSTAIRS, AND
MORE WATER, BUT TAKE IT EASY ON BOTH.

A
BUNCH MORE OF YOUR CLOTHES AND STUFF ARE
UPSTAIRS IN THE SPARE BEDROOM
.
Y
OUR CAR AND YOUR APARTMENT ARE GONE, BUT YOU CAN STAY HERE AND USE MY TRUCK
.
T
HE KEYS ARE BY THE DOOR.

T
HE
MAIN THING
I
WANTED TO SAY, THOUGH, IS THAT
I
LOVE YOU AND
I
’M SORRY THAT
I
’M
SO SHITTY ABOUT SAYING IT OR SHOWING IT
. I
’VE REALIZED THAT
I
’M KIND OF FUCKED
UP AND DEPRESSED AND
I
NEED TO WORK ON THAT SO
I
CAN BE A BETTER SISTER
. I
’LL
DO THAT AS SOON AS
I
GET BACK.

W
HICH BRINGS ME TO THE PART
I
’M NOT SURE ABOUT
. T
HE SECOND PART OF MY PLAN IS PRETTY CHANCY,
TO BE HONEST, AND IF IT DOESN’T WORK PERFECTLY IT MAY TAKE ME A WHILE TO GET
HOME
. I
WISH
I
COULD BE MORE DEFINITIVE ABOUT THAT
. I
F IT COMES DOWN TO IT AND
I
DON’T COME BACK
, I
THINK IT’S MORE THAN A FAIR TRADE
. Y
OU WERE ALWAYS THE
BEST OF US BOTH.

Y
OUR GHOST, THOUGHT, IS A DEEPLY SPITEFUL BITCH.

L
OVE,

I
NGRID

P.S.
G
O UPSTAIRS, GET SOME MORE WATER, AND CALL AN AMBULANCE
.

Selma reread the note until her
eyes refused to focus; then she carefully folded it up and put it in the pocket
of her robe. Trust Ingrid to be cryptic, and for her attempts
at reassurance to sound worrisome. Selma decided to expect her at any
moment.

Selma was as stubborn as her
sister. Clearly Ingrid thought she would need the walker to make it to the
stairs, so Selma made up her mind not to use it. But she changed her mind as
soon as she tried to stand. Her body was in full protest, every nerve and
muscle screaming. She grabbed onto the chair and weakly made her way around to
the walker.

It was about seven feet from
the chair to the base of the stairs; Selma was sure it took her at least twenty
minutes, and sweat was pouring off her by the time she got there. She found
another, taller, glass of water on the bottom step, with another note:

Y
OU’RE DOING FINE
.

Joy drove back up the bluffs. The strange quiet that had followed Prince Stolas’s appearance had been replaced by a convergence of sirens along the riverbank. Whoever had been pursuing her, Joy was confident that they would hang back, or disappear to wherever it was they had appeared from.

“More authorities, I take it,” said Lutrineas. “This dimension makes me itchy.”

“I find it hard to believe that there are no police where you come from, or no government,” said Joy.

“Where I come from, there is no one,
period
.” The bitterness in Lutrineas’s voice was such that Joy decided not to pursue the topic.

Abel Bouchard was outside the McMonigal Arms when Joy pulled up. He came running toward the curb.

“My truck!”

“Yeah,” said Joy. “I’m really sorry.” The impact had been in the driver’s side rear, and the truck bed on that side was a dented wreck. Joy didn’t want to mention it, but the steering had been pulling to the left on the way back as well.

Abel seemed to be stunned into silence.

“Abel, we’ll get it fixed, but right now I need to know if Ken is OK.”

“Ken is OK.” He said it in a tone that left Joy unsure whether he was just repeating the last thing she had said. “He’s upstairs,” Abel went on. “The others are with him.”

Joy offered him his keys, but he just shook his head.

“No, keep them. The blue one opens the outside door. I think I’m going to stay out here for a minute.”

“I really am sorry,” said Joy. “We were being chased.”

Abel did not respond. Joy hurried up to the front door of the building and unlocked it with the key Abel had pointed out.

“Aren’t you going to say something wry about humans?” she asked Lutrineas. “Something about lack of perspective or something?”

“No,” said the trickster god, still wearing Philip Fitzgerald’s shape. “It was a nice truck, and you really messed it up.”

Joy rolled her eyes and ran up the stairs to the third floor.

The window on the landing there gave them a perfect view of Prince Stolas on the river as it twisted its head, sparks flying from one of its eyes. It lurched forward as if to power through the summoning circle…and then it shrieked, there was a bang and a flash of light, and it was gone.

“Seems like Ingwiersen had it under control all along,” said Lutrineas.

“Maybe,” said Joy. “Or maybe the conjure-and-capture teams got here fast.”

Yves Deschamp met them at the door to the library. His orange aura was sweating bright yellow; clearly he was afraid that things were spinning out of control. Joy knew the feeling.

“Abel said Professor Song is OK?”

“He is,” said Yves. “Beyond that, I don’t know what to think. We’ve been compromised in a way I never thought possible…” He shook his head and stepped aside. “Perhaps you can get some answers.” He spoke quietly, and nodded toward the back of the room. “The others are down there.”

Ken Song was sitting on a leather couch, with Simone beside him. Cyril Lanfair was pacing in front of a wooden chair next to the couch.

Tied to the chair, looking deflated, was Bebe Stapleford.

“Cyril found her trying to strangle Ken with a belt,” said Yves.

The way Cyril Lanfair was pacing in front of Bebe was almost protective, but Joy noticed that he wasn’t looking at Bebe even when he turned. “I walked in from downstairs and I found them. She was…she didn’t put up much of a fight. I just pulled her off of him. Ken barely seemed to realize it was happening.”

“We thought it would be better if she were restrained,” said Yves.

Bebe glared at Joy as she approached. A tiny, spiteful part of Joy felt vindicated by the scene; it had been clear from the outset that Bebe had not cared for Joy. Mostly, though, Joy was tired.

“Ken?” Joy said. “You’re OK?”

Ken nodded.

“It hurts for him to speak,” said Simone. “I’m taking him to the hospital once we get some answers.”

Cyril was still pacing. “This. Makes. No. Sense,” he said.

Joy put a hand on his shoulder, and he stopped walking. “Do you mind if I ask Bebe a few questions, Cyril?”

He shook his head, walked to the nearest bookshelf, and slumped against it.

Joy pulled out another chair and sat in front of Bebe. “Are you working for order, Bebe?”

Bebe stared at the floor, her mouth set in a line, but Joy could tell that she had heard the question.

“Are you working for the Heartstoppers?”

Bebe scoffed, but didn’t answer.

“That sounds like a no,” said Joy. “But the manifestation sent you into a panic. Why?”

Bebe shook her head. “It wasn’t that,” she said softly.

“What was it?”

“That manuscript you brought in,” said Bebe. “That girl…I knew Carla. She…she came to me. Somehow she had dug up a book, a biography, of another Crowley. From a negative dimension.”

“Negative dimension?”

“We distinguish between the dimensions we know of by negative and positive numbers,” said Simone. “Positive dimensions are in the direction of order and its environs. Negative dimensions are as yet untouched by the greater force of order.”

“So Carla had a biography from a dimension order hasn’t reached yet,” said Joy. “One in which Aleister Crowley never went to work for the United States. He never weaponized demons, and he never founded the FBMA.”

Bebe looked up at Joy. “You read the manuscript,” she said.

“Yes. I
can
read. I assume you looked at it as well.”

“Of course. She came to me about a year ago, as the semester was starting. I had taught a seminar the spring before, and we had met on campus. Somehow she had found out about the Thirteenth Rib. She wanted our help.”

“And instead, you turned her over to order,” said Joy.

Bebe nodded.

“Where did they take her?”

“I don’t know. They don’t tell me things like that.”

“How long, Bebe?” Cyril Lanfair crouched down to shout his questions in her face. “How long have you been working for them? Lying to us?” He was crying; Joy didn’t intercede. Bebe’s own eyes pooled with unshed tears.

“After…” Bebe’s voice cracked, but when Joy offered to have some water brought, she refused it. “A few months after Hilda died, I heard her voice. I was calling someone on my crystal, I don’t even remember who, and Hilda answered. I almost…she wasn’t looking for me; she didn’t know me. But hearing her made me realize how much I missed her. So I tried something stupid. I tried to summon her spirit, just to talk to, and maybe convince her to…I don’t know.” Bebe laughed, a brief, jarring sound. “To haunt us, I suppose, but in a benevolent way. I wasn’t thinking very clearly. Hilda was…well, you all know. Most of you do, anyway.”

“You shouldn’t even be saying her name,” said Cyril.

“Let her talk,” said Joy.

“It wasn’t Hilda that came through. It was…it was another me!” Bebe smiled as she said this, and there were tears in her eyes. She looked as though she were seeing a glimpse of paradise. “A version of me from one of the positive dimensions. Positive Seven. She was dead, of course, but she’d had such a good life. She’d had a family, she—”

“Damn you, Bebe,” said Cyril.

“Don’t you get it?” Bebe shouted at him. “It wouldn’t have mattered what we did. This world we live in is just built for us to fail. We were born to be miserable! It doesn’t matter what we felt.

“You read that manuscript,” she said to Joy. “A hundred years, they’ve been laying groundwork for this. They’re organized, they’re smart, and there are millions of them. Even if we were on the right side, we’d never win.”

She was crying so hard that snot ran out of her nose. She hiccuped. “Does someone have a tissue?” Joy asked. Simone, finally, reached over to wipe Bebe’s face with a handkerchief.

“So I guess our secret society is not very secret at all,” said Yves.

“They don’t even care about us,” said Bebe. “The only one they’re concerned about is Ken. And maybe him,” she said, glancing up at Lutrineas.

“If you’ll forgive me the hypothetical, Ken, what can they do if you die?” Joy asked.

“Just about anything they want,” said Simone. “Ken basically keeps the door shut. When they attack, they can sometimes slip one or two of their people across while Ken is distracted. If he was out of the way, they could start rolling tanks through.”

“OK,” said Joy. “So what if
we
distract
them
?”

Her crystal chimed. They were all staring at her. She stood and crossed to the other side of the library.

“Joy Wilkins,” she said.

“Where are you, Wilkins?” It was Flood. “Your demon exploded, and Ingwiersen has disappeared, but we’ve got a Heartstopper setup down here on the riverfront. It looks like your informant was involved.”

“My informant?”

“The security magic professor. He went off a roof with another suspect. Where are you?”

“I was delayed,” Joy said. “There was an assault. People went a little out of their minds when the demon appeared. Is Hector OK?”

“He’s alive,” said Flood. “Leave the assault to the local cops. I want you to head over to Ingwiersen’s house and see if she portalled past us somehow. Agent Brooks will be your backup.”

“Yes, sir.” Joy hung up.

“What should we do with her?” Simone called from across the room.

“I could arrest her, if you like,” said Joy. “But that will lead to a lot of questions. Speaking of which, I have one more for you, Bebe: did you know Ingwiersen was planning this? Was she working with you?”

“No,” said Bebe. “She was always too much of a wild card. Ask them,” she said, nodding toward the rest of the group. “We never knew where she stood, really.”

“That is true,” said Yves.

“All right,” said Joy. “You’d better get Ken looked at. Let me know when you decide what to do with her.”

Cyril had his face turned to the wall; Bebe wouldn’t even glance in his direction. Simone and Ken were holding hands and looking down at them. Only Yves made eye contact with Joy as she left.

“Do send Abel up,” he said softly. “We have some decisions to make.”

Hector never lost consciousness. He wanted to, because the pain was like a thousand hammers pounding on his right side. He knew bones were broken; he was probably bleeding internally. Blood trickled into his eyes. He tried to wipe it away, but he couldn’t feel his right arm, and his left arm wouldn’t move the way he wanted it to. His hand just circled his head, like a self-administered blessing.

He was pretty sure Chuck was dead. He had landed on Chuck, which was probably why he was alive, though broken. Chuck lay on the asphalt with his back to Hector. Hector thought this was probably a good thing; he probably didn’t want to see Chuck’s face, for more than one reason. Even so, he tried to call out to Chuck, but he couldn’t even hear himself. That was when he realized that one of his lungs had collapsed.

He went away then, but he still didn’t lose consciousness. He was flying with the crows, looking down at the campus, out at the river. The massive owl-demon was still there. It could have swallowed him, crow and man, in a breath. Instead it wavered like an elusive TV signal, yelled…and crumpled into nothing.

When he came back, Zelda was next to him, crying and telling him he was going to be OK. She wiped some of the blood away from his eyes, but he still couldn’t see her and he couldn’t speak. He moved his arm some, and she told him to be still.

The paramedics arrived soon after that. Hector thought to himself that he should start measuring time in units of pain, somehow. Breathing was painful; he could count the breaths. But he lost count when they moved him to the stretcher, and again when they cut off his clothes, and again when they portalled to the hospital. Zelda was with them but they told her to wait outside. Hector grunted and tried to speak, but there was a tube in his mouth and no one heard him.

He went away again. The crows were wheeling away from the campus in a flock, descending on the riverfront, seeking out chunks of what was left of the owl-demon. He looped through the air with them, swooped down to the banks, squawking and tussling over the meat they found. The meat was lean and gamey. It glistened with blood and magic.

He woke up on an operating table. They were still working on him, poking, cutting, talking behind their paper masks. The pain was gone, but he felt dull, like a stone ax some Paleolithic ancestor had given up for useless and tossed away.
Why didn’t I just fly off the roof?
The thought made perfect sense in the moment. No one had wings only part of the time. That wasn’t how the world worked. He tried to roll over so he could stretch out his wings, but he could only move far enough for it to hurt, and to make himself go away again.

The crows tore stringy chunks out of the owl meat and left the rest. Hector was almost worried, but he supposed that it wasn’t the first time in the history of the world that crows had eaten the corpse of a demon. They screeched at each other and took off again, their never-full bellies still panging them. They wheeled up through the rose and black of the sun setting far to the west, chasing and looping back up to their home on the bluff.

Agent Brooks—Piper—met Joy outside the McMonigal Arms in Joy’s own car.

“Once this is over, I’d like to talk to you about my insurance,” Abel Bouchard said to Joy, glaring at her car as if he would like to smash its back end. Then he snatched his keys from her and went inside.

Piper was still in the driver’s seat. She wore a different hoodie over a different tank top and leggings.

Joy leaned in the passenger-side window. “I thought you were probably too young to drive,” she said.

“Funny,” said Piper. “I thought you were probably the one person in the agency who didn’t judge by appearances.”

Joy had been about to insist upon driving to Ingrid Ingwiersen’s house on the south side of town, but Piper’s comment stopped her. She climbed in and put on her seat belt as Piper turned on the headlights and pulled away from the curb.

“I, uh. You’re right,” she said. “Flood told me you’ve foiled two attempts on my life already.”