Infinityglass (24 page)

My gaze traveled the length of her body. “So many.”

I got an eye roll, but she didn’t mean it. “About the rips?”

“I think so.” I stood up and held out my hand. “Your mom is out there somewhere, and I’d rather we find her than vice versa.”

She put her feet on the ground and let me help her up. Once she was standing, I turned around. “Piggyback?”

“Piggyback?”

“Yeah. I don’t want your toes to get cold.”

She put her arms around my neck and jumped. When her legs went around my waist, I wrapped my hands around her feet and started for the house.

“Dune?”

Her breath was warm on the back of my neck. “Yeah?”

“I’m falling in love with you.”

I didn’t miss a step. “Good. Because I’m already there.”

Chapter 23
Hallie

A
fter Dune’s breathing was deep and even, I slipped out of bed. I was too nervous to read, and listening to music only made me want to dance, which wasn’t conducive to other people’s sleeping patterns. I was supposed to contact my mother the next morning and ask her to meet us at Poe and Dune’s apartment, where Poe would pull her into a veil.

Poe had disappeared after agreeing to the plan. I’d tried to talk to him, to make sure he knew that whether he helped or not was his choice, and that he shouldn’t feel pressured. He’d just shaken his head and walked away, carrying blame on his back like fully stacked free weights.

I stared out the window at my studio, my usual solace in times of stress, and grabbed my toe shoes. I slipped downstairs and outside in less than a minute. I’d just passed the courtyard when the bottom dropped out.

The wrought iron gate made a clanging sound, and I stopped dead.

“Hallie! Get down!”

Carl, head of security, had followed me out of the house. I remained frozen as he lurched toward me. The sound of a silenced gunshot echoed three times, and he clutched his chest and hit the ground.

Memories broke free from my subconscious. Benny’s blue eyes, wide open and empty. The devastating feeling that it was my fault.

The blood.

It covered the pavers now, just as it had covered the gray stones outside Jackson Square. The difference was that Carl still had light in his warm brown eyes, and he was talking to me. I dropped to the ground beside him.

“Run. Your dad will never … forgive …”

“I’m not leaving you.” I searched the dark, hoping for help, but fearing more violence. “Someone heard the shots, they had to—”

My head jerked back as a hand wrapped around my hair and pulled me to my knees. I looked up, expecting to see a guy holding a semiautomatic, some thug my father had crossed finally getting his revenge.

It was my mother, holding a handgun. A shadowy figure stood behind her, but I couldn’t make out any features.

I stopped caring when two more shots fired, one to the back of each of my ankles.

Pain exploded through my Achilles tendons, and then everything went black.

Dune

Hallie was gone.

In an unthinking panic, I covered the whole house twice before I thought to wake up Michael and Kaleb. “Hallie’s gone. None of the guards have seen her, and the lights are off in her studio.”

“I’ll go get Lily. Hang tight, brother, and we’ll find her.” Kaleb threw on clothes and headed for the girls’ room.

Michael didn’t inflict small talk on me while I waited. I paced. My skin felt too small for my frame.

“Dune.” Lily entered the room, followed by Kaleb. She had a US atlas in her arms.

“Please tell me you found her.”

“I did, but …”

When she hesitated, I growled, “Tell me.”

“She’s alive, and she was near the river. By the warehouses behind the French Market.”

“Who she’s with?”

Lily bit her lip. “Her mother.”

“Wait—you said she ‘was’ near the river. What does that mean?” I asked.

“Now I think she’s in it. They must be on a boat.”

I cursed and punched my fist into the nearest wall. Teague had thrown my vulnerability in my face at the park, and now she was using it against me. What if Hallie encountered a rip world? What if she couldn’t get out? My thoughts scrambled for purchase before finding a solid place to land. “Send Poe. He can get to her quick.”

“Problem.” Kaleb scrubbed his hand across his chin. “Poe is missing, too.”

“Let me look for him.” Lily opened the atlas and searched. “Nothing. It’s not good, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dead.”

“He could be in a veil. That would keep Lily from being able to find him.” Michael clapped a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Maybe he’s already trying to find Hallie. Hang tight. We’ll all go get dressed so we can head down to the wharf.”

“Dune.” Emerson appeared in the doorway, a blanket around her shoulders, tears in her eyes. “They found the head of security in the courtyard. He’s been shot and he’s on his way to the hospital. It doesn’t look good.”

My body went numb. Em was holding back. “What else?”

She crossed the room and put one hand on my arm. “It wasn’t just Teague. Jack. And he didn’t bother wiping Carl’s memory. He … as he was going into the ambulance, Carl told us that Teague shot Hallie. Twice.”

Emerson’s tears streaked down her cheeks as she held
up a pair of toe shoes. They were splattered with blood.

“Meet me at the river.” I took off at a run, and stopped briefly at the door to look back at Lily. “Keep ahold of that atlas. I’ll call you for an update when I get there.”

Chapter 24
Hallie

I
woke up as the sun rose, opening my eyes to find seagulls wheeling above me.

Two levels of windows, plus an observation deck. The paint was a graying white, and the blue and yellow trim was mostly peeled away. Dull wood, dingy brass, and the smell of dead fish. A riverboat, its shipshape days long past.

There was an echoing pain in my ankles that wouldn’t dull, even though the open wounds were healed. The irony that my mother had chosen my Achilles’ heels wasn’t lost on me.

Carl. She’d shot him. Who else had she hurt to get me here? Where was Dune?

Black, low-heeled boots echoed across the boat deck. Her apple red coat matched the color in her cheeks, and she should’ve painted a sunny picture. But the brightness in her eyes was menacing rather than cheerful.

“Hello, sunshine. Did you sleep well?”

“Bitch.” I flexed my feet and groaned. “They’ll find you.”

“They might. I’m aware of what Lily can do. But Dune’s the one you want, and he’s going to think twice about the river.”

“He’ll handle the water.” And if he couldn’t, his friends could.

“Doesn’t mean he’ll find us. We’re only hitching a ride.” She curled her lip at our dilapidated surroundings. “There’s a speedboat waiting a few miles away. Our next destination involves a lot of open water. It’s difficult to pinpoint a location when you’re always moving.”

I felt my anxiety expand beyond the tightness in my chest and spread to the very corners of the ship, weaving its way through the railings and the wood, catching in the paddles at the stern. There were men on the ship, a crew of them. She’d been planning this.

A man wearing a tailored suit stood behind her. Not part of the crew.

“Oh, where are my manners?” Mom actually clucked. “Let me formally introduce Jack Landers.”

Jack was so pale he was almost transparent. His eyes were dead in his face.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” His overconfident tone suggested that he was used to getting what he wanted, and his slick smile told me the rest. A woman in a dirty yellow coat stepped out from the shadows.

Her nail-bitten fingers worried the buttons—open and closed,
open and closed, over and over again. She didn’t look at me, didn’t even acknowledge where she was standing. Her eyes were vacant. Lost. She had to be strung out on something.

Jack ignored her and moved forward, leaning heavily on a cane, the smile growing wider. “I’ve waited a long time to meet you. I look forward to doing business with you.”

“I can’t say the same.” Growing up in New Orleans taught me not to do deals with the devil. It was always a bitch when he came to collect.

Jack studied me. “What have they told you about me, Hallie?”

“You manipulate people to get what you want.” I rolled to a sitting position, wincing when I tried to stand and couldn’t. My ankles weren’t ready, and I felt too vulnerable on the ground. “I’m guessing you’re responsible for whatever’s wrong with her.”

He looked at the woman beside him. “I haven’t done anything she didn’t ask me to do.”

“You steal memories, and she doesn’t look like she can remember her own name.” The woman stared vacantly in the direction of the shore. Flecks of spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth. “Did she ask for that?”

“She asked me to make life better for her, which involved erasing some things she wanted to forget. It took a while, since there were a lot of … situations to work through.” The two of them came closer. Her hair was short and unkempt, and she couldn’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds. “However, erasing you from the memories of your new friends
shouldn’t be too difficult. Erasing all of them from
your memory
might be.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. If being erased resulted in the ruin of the woman standing in front of me, screw my aching ankles. It was time to start running. I tried standing again.

“You think they’re your friends, but they’ll forget you easily. They’re all so malleable.” Jack looked at my mother. “Does Hallie know Lily told us where to find the pendant? On Halloween, when I ‘borrowed’ her from the Hourglass.”

My chest tightened at the thought of Lily doing anything to help Jack or my mother. “What pendant?”

Jack answered for her. “Obviously, your mother never needed to search for the Infinityglass. But she did need the thing that allowed the Infinityglass to transfer abilities.”

I made it as far as one knee and one foot on the floor. “I don’t believe for one second that Lily would help you find it.”

“Lily didn’t know. Still doesn’t. We made her think it was a simple location test, so I didn’t even have to wipe her memory. Tell me.” Jack leaned over conspiratorially. “Does Emerson like you? I hope she does. She’s already so fractured. If she’s formed an attachment, erasing you from her mind will take her one step closer to where I need her.”

His eyes held a sick elation. I wondered how someone could be happy about causing so much pain, and then I thought about the things Jack had done to Emerson. Changed her time line,
erased her memories. Her words came back to punch me in the solar plexus.

“Nothing like owing your life to a madman.”

If Jack kept going, would he rob her of the happiness she had now? Would she end up mindless and empty, too?

Jack was too pleased with the sound of his own voice to shut up for long. “Dune will be harder. He loves you, and that just makes it all the more tragic. Because if he or your father gives us trouble, we’ll take care of them the same way we took care of Gerald Turner.”

Even though I was still on the floor, I lost my equilibrium. I put my palms flat as my vision blurred. When it cleared, I stared up at my mother. Not an ounce of emotion crossed her face.

“How is it that you haven’t given Jack ‘trouble’?” I asked. “Why hasn’t he taken your memories?”

“I know how to block him. He’s the one who taught me how, back when we were both in Memphis.”

Jack looked like he regretted the choice.

“Too bad she didn’t learn the trick.” I gestured to the woman beside Jack. “Whoever she is.”

“I’ll introduce you.” He took my arm and hauled me to my feet. “Cat, you’re being rude. Shake hands with Hallie.”

Cat stared at Jack for a long moment.

He nodded, and she made a grab for my hand.

My very bones vibrated the second she touched me. Time slowed down, my body roaring as if an electrical fire burned
under my skin. Something that felt like a rectangular piece of metal branded the skin below my collarbone.

“Let go,” I screamed over the sound of the wind in my ears and tried to jerk my arms free, but got nowhere. “Let me go.…”

Cat’s mouth formed an O shape as her skin tightened on her already skeletal face. I was draining her energy. I felt it flowing through me. To Jack. His hand was still on my arm.

All the noise and activity dissipated in a rush. I hit the ground again.

Cat followed.

A mere husk of the woman lay crumpled in a heap. Aftershocks of power surged through me, but I ignored them and put my fingertips on her throat, searching. She looked like an addict who’d taken things too far. Desperate, starving, ruined.

Dead.

Jack held a spinning purple sphere in his hands. It gave off a crazy, glowing light, and crackled with electricity, just as I had thirty seconds ago. I’d seen Poe with something similar. Exotic matter.

“It worked,” Jack crowed, mesmerized. “She transferred Cat’s ability to me.”

Whether Cat had been willing or not, she’d overdosed on Jack Landers and his ability to take away pain. He had been her illicit drug.

I looked at the dead body beside me and wondered if he was about to make me his next addict.

Dune

I hadn’t underestimated the power of the Mississippi. Muddy, churning, and teeming with life, the current pulsed strong and willful. The closer I got to its banks, the more it pulled at me. Regulating my intake of air was the first step to maintaining control, the second, exhaling.

The desire to see what I could do was powerful, flowing through my veins faster than my blood. The desire to keep Hallie alive was stronger.

The cab dropped me off just below the Port of New Orleans, and I followed the coordinates Lily had texted me. They led to a docked riverboat. I could see Hallie lying on the deck. Jack Landers stood beside her, holding a spinning ball of exotic matter in his hands.

The loading dock was at the other end of the boat. I approached it at a run, slowing down as I crossed it, and only then to soften the sound of my footsteps.