Living with the Dead
Page 69

"So you talked to her, made her feel welcome."
"Bobby didn't need help mingling. She's quiet – compared to me – but she's great at making small talk. Gotta be, in her job. These girls we were sitting with, though? They only knew two kinds of small talk. Gossip and snark. Now, if you want to engage in a serious conversation about the propriety of the groom's stepmother wearing a leather miniskirt to the wedding, Bobby's your girl. But sniping and backbiting? No. That was the first thing that got my attention – the way she handled it. Most people would have joined in just to be included. Bobby tried, very politely, to steer the conversation in more constructive directions. When that failed, she backed out."
"And talked to you."
Damon's smile burst into a grin. "By that point, I was the one doing the initiating. I asked about her job, she asked about mine. Few things kill a girl's interest faster than 'I'm a junior high math teacher,' and I came this close to mentioning my band gig instead. But I could tell that wouldn't fly with Bobby. So I told the truth, and she was cool with it. Interested even. We got talking so much, I didn't notice when dessert was served, which, for me, is a miracle."
He paused, as if watching the movie in his head, one he'd replayed so many times he could mouth along with the words.
"And that was it then," Finn said. "You asked her out."
"Wasn't quite that easy. We were both seeing other people. For me, that other relationship was over before the meal was. Robyn had to be convinced, and that wasn't easy when she wouldn't even have coffee with me while she was involved with another guy."
Finn liked that. It supported the picture he was forming of Robyn Peltier as someone principled and honest, someone he could work with and help... if only he got the chance.
"You ever read The Godfather?" Damon asked.
It took a moment for Finn to slide back from his thoughts. "Seen the movie."
Damon's eyes rolled up in thought. "Not sure if it's in the movie. I read the book when I was young. There's this part where Michael Corleone meets his first fiancée, in Sicily, and this old guy says Michael was hit by the thunderbolt. I remember rolling my eyes at that. Really schmaltzy, like something from a bad romance novel. But the night my sister got married, I understood what it meant. Sounds corny as hell, but it's true. You can meet someone and, bam, it's like being hit by a thunderbolt."
"Love at first sight."
"Mmm, I guess so. But that always sounds so... passive. It's not like that at all. It wakes you up with a jolt and you know your life is never going to be the same. Say what you will about fate and that metaphysical shit, but I don't think our meeting was a coincidence, us sitting together, alone, our significant others unable to attend. Me and Bobby, it just... works, you know? We have something." He paused. " Had something." Another pause, then Damon looked out the window. After a moment, his fingers returned to the armrest, silently drumming.
 
COLM
 
 
Colm had to warn Adele.
He took out the cell phone she'd given him, the one she'd taken from Robyn. She'd set up a speed-dial number to her cell phone. He called it... and got a message saying she was unavailable.
He tried twice more. She must have accidentally turned it off. He had to get to their meeting place. He ran behind the bookstore, his chest so tight that each breath seemed to lodge in his throat.
What had happened in there?
Adele had made it sound so simple. Get Robyn Peltier out and Adele would take it from there.
But she hadn't said how to get Robyn out. Maybe she thought it was so simple he didn't need instructions. But it hadn't been simple at all.
He'd hesitated and, in that hesitation, he'd betrayed Adele.
The kumpania taught that the gods punished mortals for laziness, for letting fate lead the way, for failing to take decisive action in shaping their own destiny. Adele knew how to please the gods. She'd never hesitated to take the most difficult steps to protect herself and the kumpania. A strong, shining example, like his mother. Colm was weak, indecisive and afraid, like his father.
His mother never said anything negative about his father, but Colm had heard the rumors. His father had been a durjardo, like Adele, an outside clairvoyant welcomed into the kumpania. Unlike Adele, though, he'd failed to assimilate and in the end, he'd abandoned his family, and for that he'd died. Killed by the gods. Given a chance at the best possible life for a clairvoyant, he had turned his back on it.
Now Colm saw himself failing, like his father. He'd followed Robyn Peltier... and walked straight into a trap. He'd never told Adele about that couple at the apartment. He'd seen the man's supernatural powers. He'd suspected the woman's powers. But he'd refused to consider the implications. He'd run away.
Adele had thought Robyn was an unwitting pawn. She'd been wrong. Robyn was part of the plan to capture Adele for the Nast Cabal. If there had been any doubt, any sense he might be overreacting, it had been erased when he'd seen the man in the ball cap.
Colm knew him. He had no idea how or from where, but one look at the man's face and recognition had hit like a fist to his stomach. With that recognition came the feeling that seeing him was bad, horribly and impossibly bad. That meant the man had to be from the Cabal.
Like every kumpania child, Colm had undergone "the lessons." He couldn't remember much about them, but sometimes he'd have nightmares and wake gasping and shaking, remembering snippets of a basement room and Niko's voice and photographs being flashed on a screen and jolts of indescribable pain. Seeing that man, and feeling that dread, Colm knew he must have seen him in those photographs – pictures of people who worked for the Cabal.
The man had said Colm's name. Not once, but twice. And Colm had seen his future – locked in a Cabal cell, forced to use his clairvoyant powers until he fell into madness, consumed by his visions.
The accidental dropping of his gun had seemed almost a stroke of good luck. As the security guard bore down on him, gun at the ready, Colm had seen his escape route – the final release every kumpania child was taught to take if he was ever cornered by a Cabal. All he had to do was reach for the fallen gun and the guard would free him.
But the Cabal man hadn't been about to let that happen. And when he distracted the guard, giving Colm a chance to escape, he'd taken it.