Poisoned Pearls (13 page)

“And blind,” Hunter said. “And you’ll never catch the person
who’s killing your friends.”

“That’s a job for the police,” I told him, though I knew it
was bullshit even as I spoke the words.

Hunter shook his head. “They’ll never find the non-man. If
you go through regular training, it will take years for you to come to your
full potential. And everyone you know will die before then.”

I’d always had my friends’ backs. Always. Even when they
didn’t have mine.

“It won’t be as painful for you as it was for me,” Hunter
promised. “You’ll always know what you’re seeing. You won’t get lost between
the worlds, like I was, for so long.”

“If I ever do get lost, you better bring me back, you son of
a bitch,” I told him, reaching for the tabs.

As my mother had always said, I had more stubbornness than
brains.

And I was going to catch the bastard who was killing my
friends.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Sparkles, at the very
least. But nothing happened. I felt a little woozy, like I was coming off a
night of drinking straight scotch and smoking like a chimney. It wasn’t just
the hit to the head. It felt different than that.

Hunter had me lie down on the bed, his cool fingers on my
wrist counting my heartbeats, his pale eyes flickering over my body, probably
taking in as much as Ferguson’s recording pen, maybe more. Hunter stayed
perfectly still, as if he were part machine himself.

Would I be able to do that, once I’d finished my training?

But I didn’t see anything. No ghosts came to visit. No
sudden visions happened, either.

Hunter pulled a penlight from some hidden pocket and flicked
it at my eyes.

“Ouch!” I complained. I was completely blind from the bright
light. “Fucker.” Made my head hurt even more.

“You should be fully under now,” Hunter said, nodding.
“Let’s begin.”

He had me sit up, leaning against the warm pine wall. My
eyes must have been way dilated at that point because the room was lit up like
there were lights in every corner, plus the edges of everything were fuzzy. Not
that there was much to see: a green painted wooden door in the corner, Hunter’s
pile of blankets on the floor, a portable toilet in the other corner.

“Close your eyes,” Hunter directed me. “Now, imagine
yourself as a blue dot.”

“Blue, huh?” I asked. All the TV shows had used blue to
represent the seer, as well.

Hunter shrugged. “It’s the color that works.”

“Huh,” I said, closing my eyes and trying to see a single
blue dot in the darkness.

I got a sense of that dot, baby-boy blue, warmer than a
summer sky. It pulsed in the corner of a black field.

“Okay, got it,” I said.

I didn’t have to see Hunter to know that he gave me a huge
grin. “Perfect,” he said. “The drugs are working. Now, draw a square around
that dot. Lines should also be blue.”

I frowned after I tried a couple of times. “Does the dot
have to be in the center of the square?” I asked. Because I couldn’t really get
a square. It was more of a rectangle. Some sort of straight lines going out
from the dot made more sense to me, but I had to trust Hunter that he knew what
he was doing.

“Yes,” Hunter insisted. “And the square should start out
square. It can grow more rectangular later. But keep it square.”

I shook my head. The square kept morphing.

Finally, Hunter told me, “Open your eyes.”

The room had grown dim again. I figured most of the drug had
left my system.

“What am I doing wrong?” I asked Hunter.

“I don’t know,” he said, obviously frustrated. “It should
work. The squares work. It’s part of the training. It’s what everyone follows.”

I shrugged. “They aren’t right,” I told him. “Or I’m not
right.” Maybe I didn’t have the powers that Hunter thought I did.

Maybe I didn’t actually have any abilities. Maybe Josh and
Hunter and everyone was wrong.

“No, I must be doing something wrong,” Hunter said,
accepting the blame for my failure.

I blinked at him. Guys didn’t normally do that.

“Let’s take a break. Rest. Try again,” Hunter said.

I nodded. I was exhausted. I didn’t understand why focusing
my mind on a single dot had left me so tired, but it had.

I really wanted a cigarette, but I fell back asleep before I
could ask about it.

When I woke up, we tried again. And again.

And I failed every time.

***

Eventually, Hunter let me take a smoke break. The afternoon
was turning gray and dark—I guessed it must have been 3 p.m. or so. It
felt later, as if I’d been working on focusing my mind for three days.

I was surprised at the neighborhood. It must have been
someplace in southern Minneapolis. The houses were all from the 1930s and ’40s,
all two-stories, with large front and backyards. The street was actually wide
enough for cars to be parked on both sides. In the quiet of the afternoon, I
could hear the freeway humming nearby.

The house we stayed in was solid brick, with a couple gables
sticking out from the snow-covered roof. Tall trees arched across the street
and between the houses. No one was out, though next door some kids had tried
building a snowman on the one warm day we’d had in the last month, when the
snow would have stuck together.

When I reached in my pocket for my gloves, I realized that
Hunter had left me my phone—I knew better than to think he’d forgotten it
there. I sent off a message to Travis, asking for him to cover me until later
that night.

Would I be able to make it in? Would I ever go back? Better
to be covered, though I knew Chinaman Joe would be pissed.

Hunter appeared beside me. I had no idea how long he’d even
been outside with me.

“It isn’t working, is it,” I said, drawing another deep drag
on my cigarette and purposefully not looking at him.

“No, it’s not,” Hunter finally admitted.

“I don’t have any sight. Any ability,” I said, breathing
out. I don’t know why saying that hurt so much. I’d denied having any abilities
my entire life. I hadn’t thought I’d had any for even a single day.

But it felt like letting go of a huge, lifelong dream.

“You do,” Hunter insisted. “I know you can see. I
just—I don’t know how to access it. Or how to teach you to access it.”

“So I should go back to the center. Get proper training,” I
said carefully.

“I don’t know,” Hunter said. “We could try the spray
instead.”

I glanced at him. “Because we both trust Josh so much,” I
said dryly.

Hunter gave me a flash of a smile for that before he turned
serious again. “Point.”

“I should get to work,” I told Hunter.

“You want to try again?” Hunter asked, surprised.

“No. My job,” I told him. “At the shop.”

Hunter took a deep breath, then blew it out. White fog
billowed from him, instantly frozen in the cold afternoon air. “All right,” he
said. “But I hadn’t expected this. I’d thought…well. I’d seen a different
future.”

“Is it possible to change the future?” I asked.

“Of course,” Hunter said. “We do it all the time when we
see. We see so we can change things. So they don’t have to remain as they are.”

I nodded. “So maybe someone, somewhere, did something else.
And my future has changed as well.”

Hunter hesitated. I could tell he wanted to instantly deny
what I’d said. I decided to press my advantage. “So when was the last time you
saw me with abilities? Recently? Yesterday? Today?”

“That’s different,” Hunter growled. “That’s not something
that can change. That’s who you are.”

“Could the drugs have blocked my ability rather than
enhanced it?” I asked.

Hunter looked worried at that.

“Not all cures work for every body,” I pointed out. It was
one of the things that continued to frustrate the government psychic training
program. While the training could be the same, the chemistry was always
different.

“Will you come back?” Hunter asked. “Try again, later?”

I didn’t want to. It was damned hard work. And it had been
so disappointing this first time. Even though I hadn’t known what to expect,
I’d had high expectations.

So had Hunter.

“I will,” I said. “But—not until tomorrow.” My shift
would run until closing again tonight.

“All right. I’ll meet you back here,” Hunter said, turning
to go back into the house.

“What is this place?” I asked him before he disappeared. It
wasn’t his house, I knew that. Just from the few feet I’d walked from the
basement stairs to outside I could tell it was actually lived in by a family.

“Housesitting,” Hunter said seriously. Then he disappeared
around the side of the building.

Housesitting
? Who
would trust Hunter to take care of their place?

Then again, if a burglar saw a crazy vet wandering around a
house, she’d probably think twice before robbing it.

I put out my cigarette, kicking the butt under the
accumulated snow, then followed my ears up toward the main road. Turned out I
was just a couple blocks off Nicolette. Easy enough to catch a bus, get downtown,
go to work.

Because that was going to be my life: a shit job at a sex
& toy shop.

Not seeing ghosts or saving my friends.

***

The shop was more busy than I’d seen it in a while. When I
walked in the door, six people stood in line at the checkout stand, and at
least another dozen were on the floor, wandering around and looking at things.
Plus there was a much longer line for the peep shows.

Seemed that Chinaman Joe had decided to put an ad in the
weekly free rag and hadn’t bothered to tell us about it.

For a smart man, sometimes he was pretty dumb.

I took over the cash register at the peep show and let
Travis deal with store customers. Seemed that I was the one who did that best,
talking with actual people, telling them the rules of the show (no smoking, no
spitting, no masturbating—two out of three which were generally
followed). Who knew? I never would have bet that I’d be good at that sort of
thing.

That I’d turn out to be the
friendly
one.

At about 9 p.m. the rush finally died down and we were all
able to take breaks. I sent Travis and Amy out first, then took my break after
theirs. We figured there would be another rush around 10:30, just before the
main band up at First Avenue started playing.

I spent part of my first break breaking down boxes and
hauling them out to the alley. I didn’t think anything of the bum I saw going
through the dumpster at the Chinese takeout next door.

Not until I saw him move
through
the container.

Fuck.

I caught my breath and just stared. Was that what Hunter meant
by ghosts? Figures that looked real until suddenly they weren’t?

I was so screwed.

Of course, Hunter didn’t have a cell phone. I had no way of
getting in touch with him. I was just supposed to meet him at the house
tomorrow.

Over the next hour, the visions (visitations?) got stronger.
I went from seeing the one guy in the alley to seeing groups of three or four.

Were they all from this future? Was I seeing futures from
multiple worlds, like Hunter?

I had to admit, once I got over the
squick
factor, it was kind of cool. I was even starting to get the hang of identifying
which ones were real, in the present day, and which ones were just in my head.

None of them tried to talk to me, or even acknowledged that
I was there. And none of them tried to come over and fight me, either.

It wasn’t until my second break, when I was taking out the
last of the boxes, that I saw
him
.

That non-man that Hunter had been talking about.

Unlike the ghosts, he was easy to distinguish as not being in
the present. I could see
through
him.
He wasn’t solid at all. His skin glowed faint and white, like the best of
Hollywood movie effects.

But he still held Kyle’s hand as they walked down the alley
together, stopping once to kiss passionately.

Shit
. “No!” I
cried out. I rushed at them, trying to get Kyle to stop.

Rushed right through them, too.

This was the past I was seeing. Not the future.

Hunter had been wrong.

I could see, yes, but not like him. The exact opposite of
him, actually. While he saw the future, I was a post-cog. I saw what happened
in the past.

The non-man wore a long black coat lined with red. He was
tall and typically Nordic looking, blond with horsey teeth and a big nose and
pale blue eyes.

And big hands. Kyle had always had a thing for guys with big
hands.

The non-man wore something around his neck. It looked like a
goth
teenager’s spider bag.

Except this thing was alive. Its legs moved up and down the
non-man’s chest, as if it was vibrating with excitement.

I got close enough to hear Kyle tell the man, “No pictures.”
So it must have appeared as a camera to him.

What the hell was that thing? Hunter had never mentioned
anything like that, that sometimes things didn’t appear as they were.

There was probably a lot Hunter didn’t know. Was the
training for post- and pre-cogs so different? Was that why I’d been failing?
Was that also why the squares just didn’t work for me?

I stepped back when Kyle and the guy got into it. They
weren’t saying anything anyway. And while the non-man seemed to be just as much
into it as Kyle was, at the same time, he was also detached. He wanted to
stroke Kyle, wanted to watch him come.

Not a sight I’d wanted to see, that was for damned sure.

Still, I made myself stick around. For all the warnings I’d
been given, I had to see.

It was over pretty quickly. The guy stepped back and dropped
Kyle’s dick just as he started to shoot.

Was this when he gave Kyle the drugs?

The non-man picked the spider thing up from his chest, and
held it out toward Kyle. A web formed, catching the last few drops of Kyle’s
come.

Over Kyle’s harsh breathing, I could hear the
click
of a camera. Though what was
really happening was the spider was shooting strand after strand of web around
Kyle’s face, each sinking into his skin, though none of those marks had been
seen on his body.

With a graceful sweep of his hand, the non-man gathered up
the strands and
tugged
.

Again, I cursed Hunter for not being able to teach me
exactly what I was seeing.

Because for all the world, it looked as though the non-man
had just ensnared Kyle’s
soul
in that
web, and was carrying it away with him.

Kyle slumped back, sliding down the brick wall, assuming the
position I’d seen him in when the police had come to get me.