The track marks in her arm were faint but visible. The thin white scars across her wrists were in neat little rows, running up to her elbow, fading and old but made worse by scratching. I said, how old are you?
She shook her head.
Are you ready?
I smiled and replied, something a little kinky?
I gave her the key before I pulled out the handcuffs. It never serves to give the wrong impression. She looked briefly shocked, but her professionalism managed to restore her smile quickly enough and, gesturing at the bed she said, come on in.
I lay down on the bed, let her cuff my right hand to the bedstead, and as she lent back to admire her handiwork, I caught her left wrist with my free hand and
jumped.
“Hey there,” I said, as the body beneath me blinked bleary, unfocused eyes. “I think we should talk.”
Chapter 22
The scars on my arms itched.
Hidden beneath my tights were fresher scars on the inside of my thighs, still burning, crying out for the scalpel and the antiseptic wipe.
Nathan Coyle–or at least the man whose Canadian passport so proclaimed him to be–lay handcuffed to the bed beneath me. I sat down beside him, crossed my legs, put my chin in the palm of my hand and said, “You’ve got some text messages.”
His eyes focused on me, and with clarity of vision came clarity of thought.
Clarity of thought, it seemed, was not impressed with its conclusions.
His jaw tightened, his fingers tensed.
“I’m guessing,” I said, “that they’re security checks. The first was Circe, the second Aeolus. Having no idea who to reply to or what to say, I didn’t respond. Your colleagues must know by now that you’re in trouble. Good news for you, unless they shoot you like you shot Josephine.”
He lay motionless. Flat. The angle of his arm cuffed to the bedhead couldn’t have been comfortable, but he was a tough guy. Tough guys don’t fidget.
“I read the Kepler file,” I added, fighting the urge to scratch my arms. “It’s mostly correct–I’m impressed–but you don’t appear in my file, and based on what I can remember I’m reasonably confident I never touched your body, right up to the point you shot me with it. So it can’t be personal. Met any ghosts before now, Mr Coyle?”
Silence.
Of course.
Tough guys, they wake up handcuffed in strange places, gun down women in stations, get possessed and marched halfway across Europe by an invading consciousness, but it’s nothing they can’t handle.
“I considered mutilating you,” I breathed, barely aware of the words as I spoke them, and had the satisfaction of seeing something twitch in Coyle’s face. “Obviously not while I was inhabiting, I have never had a taste for such things. But I still hope that your colleagues, whoever they may be, may hesitate to kill you, as you killed my Josephine, and that hesitation could yet save my life.”
Silence.
“In Edirne I asked two questions. Having spent some time in your body I now have a couple more, though the direction of the enquiry hasn’t changed. Who are you working for, and why did they lie about Josephine?”
He levered himself, just a tiny bit, further up, and for the first time his eyes met mine, and stayed.
“It’s lies,” I breathed. “Most of the file is fine, but then it gets to Josephine and it’s lies. Your employers wanted her to die as well as me. Why is that, do you think? Who are these people she’s meant to have killed? People have always tried to kill my kind, down the centuries. It is inevitable, given what we are. But you shot Josephine in the leg, and even though I fled, even though you knew I’d fled, you still put two bullets in her chest. And I don’t understand why. I want this to end well. You’re a murderer, but you didn’t act alone. You’re alive because you’re the only lead I have.”
I waited.
So did he.
“You’ll be wanting to think,” I concluded. “I understand.” My fingers crawled against the soft inside of my arms, tracing scars, wanting to scratch. I pulled my hand away, stood up, hoping that motion and speed would distract from the physiological urge. He watched me. I smiled. “This body–” I gestured head to foot at my skin “–she’s maybe seventeen? Self-harm, drug use, prostitution and schoolbooks under the bed. Not my problem, of course. This is just a rest stop, no business of mine. Tell me: do you like what you see?”
Did tough guys have opinions?
He didn’t seem to.
Perhaps the discipline in suppressing terror also suppressed thought.
“You think,” I said. “I’ll potter.”
And I did precisely that.
I swept the grubby pieces of foil into a plastic bag, scraped the crumbs off her desk, opened the window to let in cold night air. I straightened her books, folded her clothes where they’d fallen from the lopsided wardrobe, threw out two pairs of tights with irredeemable holes. I realigned the not-quite-art on the wall, and as I went through the drawers I pulled out a small packet of pot, another of cocaine, and added them both to the rubbish. The bottom drawer was locked. I forced it with a kitchen knife, and from within produced a collection of well kept medical scissors, bandages and a single silver scalpel. I hesitated, then threw the sharps away, left the bandages intact.
Coyle watched me from the bed, sharp as a cat, silent as a paw in the night.
His stare was a distraction. I have stood up before the US House of Representatives, and been witty and vibrant and in control, but then I wore a three-thousand-dollar suit, ate a two-hundred-dollar lunch, and I was fabulous because it was what I was meant to be.
This girl–whoever she was–was not fabulous. With her fraying tights and her welted arms, the temptation to hide behind her frailty, to curl up into my skinny bones, shoulder blades sticking out like chicken wings, chin down, neck tight, was as natural as night. Yet still Coyle watched me, and it wasn’t me he watched, but me, myself, and no shadowed eye or buried face could alter the object of his interest.
Unsettling. Unwelcome and unfamiliar. Exciting.
I concentrated hard, my every step measured, and went about imposing what should be upon the what was of the bedroom. Cleaning a room is an extension of cleaning a body; changing its furniture as well as its clothes. Everyone needs a hobby, and everyone was mine.
Then Coyle said, “You’re an arrogant son of a bitch.”
“My God!” I exclaimed. “He speaks.”
“You fuck with her life—”
“Do you mind if I interrupt you before this becomes emotive? I am here to talk to you. And as you cannot think when I am in residence, I need a host to let you mull the fruity depth of our conversation. I don’t deny that I bore easily, and naturally I regard the skins I wear as something of a project, as anyone would, as everyone does. Some people knit; others take up yoga. If this were a long-term habitation, I would absolutely consider the latter–I feel my knees would benefit from the regime. But it isn’t, so I do what little I can in passing, and you, before you hold forth on the theme of my monstrosity, should be relieved that rather than tidy and bin some junk, I didn’t pull your fucking eyes out with my fingernails.”
His lips sealed once more.
I hopped back on to the end of the bed, tucking my knees up to my chin, wrapping my scarred arms across the thin bony shins, staring into his grey, dark eyes.
“You tear people to pieces,” he said at last.
“Yes. Yes, I do. I don’t deny it. I walk through people’s lives and I steal what I find. Their bodies, their time, their money, their friends, their lovers, their wives–I’ll take it all, if I want to. And sometimes I put them back together, in some other shape. This skin,” I flicked a stray piece of hair behind my ear, “is going to wake up in a few minutes, frightened and confused because several hours of her life have vanished in a flash. She’s going to think I raped her, maybe drugged her, did something to her body, her belongings, which are the only symbol she has of achievement in her life–in most people’s lives. She’s going to be frightened not because of any pain to her flesh, but because someone walked in and violated the home where she lives. And perhaps she does what she does when she feels alone. Perhaps she cuts, perhaps she sniffs, perhaps she drinks and then finds a guy to pay for all of the above. I really don’t know. But you and I needed to talk.”