Null Set Read online

  “Cassandra, stop! Stop trying!”

  He had closed the distance between us and was gripping my shoulders, heedless of the gun that was now in his face. And I—I hadn’t seen him do it. Somehow I had missed the movements of a potential threat while in the middle of a standoff.

  I tore back from him, away, tightening my grip on the Colt, making my aim straight and sure. “Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me!”

  “Cassandra—”

  “Stop calling me that!” Who was this man, this … apparition? And the only person I’d ever known who used my name every other sentence that way was Rio—

  Rio.

  I saw Rio and this man standing together, talking, backlit against a deepening twilight—

  “Cassandra! Stop! Come back to me!”

  He’d come up and grabbed my wrist this time, pressing my gun down. I twisted out of his grip, shoving him back. My heart slammed in my chest, my adrenaline spiking. “What the hell are you doing to me?”

  He didn’t seem to have heard my question; his eyes were crawling slowly over my face like he was surveying me as a home furnishing. “Oh—oh God—what happened?”

  “What do you mean, what happened? Who are you?”

  He blinked very fast, his forehead knitting, and his eyes fastened on mine again. His gaze was arresting, a dark magnetism that threatened to pull me in. I choked on it.

  “Cassandra,” he said softly. “I have to ask you something.”

  “Tell me who the fuck you are first.”

  “My name is Simon. Like I said, I knew you. A long time ago.”

  “That doesn’t tell me shit.”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “But I have to ask something of you. It may—it may seem crazy.”

  “How were you following me?” My voice was hoarse. I didn’t bother trying to raise the gun again.

  “When I try not to be noticed, people usually don’t notice me. It’s nothing nefarious, I swear to you.”

  “You’re doing something to me. My thoughts. My memory.” Fuck, I’d met other people like him before—or at least, one other person. Dawna Polk.

  Dawna Polk, psychic extraordinaire, who’d had me betraying Rio, Arthur betraying Checker, and her minions so brainwashed they believed entirely in her cause.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “That’s why I can’t— You’re from Pithica. We had a deal!”

  “No! No. I’m not Pithica. I swear.”

  Buzzing filled my brain, as if it wasn’t getting enough oxygen. “You say you’re not them, but you know who they are. You know that name.”

  “Yes. And I see you do, too.” He searched my face.

  “You, you’re … you’re like them.” A psychic. Another bloody psychic.

  We stared at each other. I needed to escape, or kill him, or break his bones until he told me everything he knew about me that I didn’t.

  I wasn’t going to do any of those things. This was Dawna all over again. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  “Cassandra, I’m not trying to— I won’t make you do anything against your will, I wouldn’t. I promise. I haven’t been, and I’m not now. I tried not to be noticed, I admit, and I’m, I’m effective at that, but I wasn’t doing anything to you. I swear.”

  “That sounds like a distinction without a difference.” I lifted my Colt back up, slowly, cautiously. “If you’re not doing anything to me, why does it feel like I couldn’t shoot you no matter how hard I tried?”

  His head straightened back and his hands hitched higher. “There are some things— I’m not doing anything consciously, but— Cassandra, please, it’s not an exact science.”

  “You just can’t help brainwashing everyone around you, is that it?”

  “No! That’s not— I’m not.”

  “I’m probably going to forget this whole conversation, aren’t I.”

  “No.” His eyes stretched wide and scandalized. “Cassandra, I wouldn’t. I won’t. That’s why I’m standing here asking you; I wouldn’t have to if I didn’t…” His expression crumpled. “Cassandra. You trusted me once. Please.”

  That seemed unlikely.

  He ran a hand through his curly hair. “Cassandra, I’m begging you. You’re in danger, and I don’t know what, or how, not unless you let me—” He bit his lip again, cutting himself off.

  “Let you what?”

  “I need to … look closer. Please.”

  “You mean read my mind.”

  He closed his eyes. “Yes, but—”

  “No way. No way in hell.”

  “Only to figure out what kind of danger you’re in. That’s all I’ll look for, I swear.”

  “The only person I’m in danger from right now is you and your twisted brain-screwing powers.”

  He sucked in a breath. “Then tell me—what happened with Pithica? How do you know that word?”

  “How do you know it? How do you know me?”

  “Cassandra—”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “Please!” He reached out to catch my arm. “Please let me—”

  I snapped my hand over his wrist this time instead, so fast it was a blur, and wrenched. Simon yelped, his body following his arm to stumble to the side as I let go.

  “I said don’t touch me,” I said. “And I never, ever, ever want you in my fucking head.”

  Adrenaline and fear punched through my system. If he was really like Dawna, he could make me give him permission—whatever he felt he needed it for—and I would do it gladly. Who knew why he hadn’t forced me to his side already, but Dawna’s machinations had been games within games, twisting my logical processes around until I’d lost which way was up.

  I backed away, edging toward where I’d left my car.

  “Cassandra!” he called again.

  “What did I say?” Raising the Colt was probably useless, but I did it anyway. “Get away from me and stay away. Don’t follow me. Don’t ever come near me again. Ever.”

  I got to my car, drove away, and kept driving. I switched cars and drove some more, crisscrossing the city half a dozen times before going to a hole-in-the-wall I hadn’t stopped at in months.

  I didn’t sense anyone behind me, but that didn’t mean anything, did it?

  Fuck.

  I finally pulled over and leaned my head against the steering wheel. Every muscle ached, and the work gloves pulled at my scabbing hands every time I shifted my fingers.

  I should probably tell Checker what had just happened. That a man from my past had appeared. That a man from my past had appeared, and was a … was one of them.

  Heck, I should probably tell Checker and Arthur both, and Pilar, and Rio—anyone Simon might approach and attack with his powers.

  Rio—

  Try Los Angeles. It’s a big enough city. America will be easier to disappear in.

  I closed my eyes and breathed. My pulse was racing.

  Shit. I’d left Simon outside Checker’s house. I hadn’t even been thinking about it. And I’d seen him outside Arthur’s office—he knew everyone I associated with, could approach any one of them, find out whatever he wanted, turn any of them into his puppet.

  Was Checker’s inane crusade to figure out my secrets already a part of this Simon person’s master plan? How much could I trust anyone?

  Or maybe he wants you not to tell anyone. Maybe that’s his plan, to convince you to keep him a secret, like a tree that’s fallen with nobody to hear it, an unobserved particle, until he’s gotten whatever he wants out of you.

  This was the trouble with psychics. I never knew which decisions were my own.

  But come on, what would I even tell Checker anyway? That a psychic man from my past had followed me and then demanded permission to read my mind? It was starting to sound mad.

  This isn’t a joke—Cassandra, listen to me, please, you’ll go mad—

  I jerked.

  You’re in danger, I heard Simon say again. He overlapped with the memory of Checker, pushing at me to look into my p
ast, telling me I could have other enemies—

  Enemies. For all I knew, Simon might be one of them.

  Christ, I didn’t have time for this.

  I texted Checker to make sure he was okay, and he confirmed right away, which I supposed I could trust as much as anything right now. Then I toyed with the phone, considering, trying to weigh the pros and cons of what to do about Simon without fucking second-guessing myself. But after less than three minutes, I was interrupted by Checker texting again:

  GET 2 HOSPTL

  JP GOING AFTER ARTHUR

  I didn’t wait to ask how he knew. I accelerated so fast I took a layer of rubber off the tires.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. This was what we got for going to a hospital, for reporting to the police like good citizens. Pourdry didn’t just have the game of evading law enforcement down. He had informants.

  If anything happened to Arthur, I’d burn Los Angeles down to get to Pourdry. Hell, I’d do that anyway. I was out of patience.

  Whoever Simon was, he and his stupid, bizarre, frightening pleading could wait.

  seven

  HOSPITALS DON’T have great security, but they tend to frown on people with guns. I left my carbine and carried my Colt concealed.

  I dashed into the ER, phone to my ear. Checker had been trying to reach Arthur but hadn’t been able to get through—he didn’t know whether Arthur was still in the middle of being treated or the hospital just had bad signal, but he was tracking medical updates in real time. “He’s in exam room four. Straight down the hall from the entrance, through the door in the back right corner of the waiting room, past the nurses’ station, third room on the left.”

  I snapped my senses into the mathematical overlap of visual fields. Every set of eyes became angles that stretched from vertical and horizontal meridians, constantly shifting and crossing in rough elliptic cones. There were too many people crowding the ER to make myself completely invisible, but I could at least dance around the staff. People who weren’t in authority generally wouldn’t speak up.

  I slid between peripheral fields of view like I was dodging lasers, ducking and sliding through the door and then crab-walking by the nurses’ station. In order to stop me they would have had to see me, and not a single person in scrubs or a white coat did. A patient or two caught the edge of my antics and frowned my way, but then they looked to those in charge, assumed they must have noticed me, and shrugged it off to go back to their own business.

  I escaped the crowded areas and sprinted down the hallway. Exam room 4, third door on the left—

  I burst in, my gun raised. Arthur looked up. He was on his feet, but still in a hospital gown, and leaning heavily on a gurney. A wiry white guy was sprawled on the floor with a needle stabbed in his neck.

  “Oh,” I said, brought up short. “Nice job. Are you good to get out of here?”

  “Lord yes,” he said. “Just gotta get some clothes on. Two minutes.”

  I turned my back while Arthur got dressed, keeping half an eye on the goon on the floor. He was breathing, but shallowly.

  Part of me was sorry I was too late. My helplessness against Simon was still bitter in the back of my throat, taunting me. The aggression I had wanted to wreak against him coiled in every nerve.

  I briefly fantasized about introducing this guy’s face to my boot, letting the crunch of bone reassure me of my own power over myself. How much would I be pushing it with Arthur if I did?

  “Probably not worth the time to ask for crutches,” Arthur mused. “Give me a hand?”

  I took a moment to clear my expression of any of my dangerous mental wandering and then came over to duck under his arm. He leaned heavily across my shoulder. I cast one last glance at the unconscious man on the floor, then helped Arthur limp over to the door, where we cracked it and peeked out.

  Hospital staff and patients flowed by intermittently, unaware.

  “Get ready,” I said.

  The moment the hallway had a lull in traffic, I pulled the door open and supported Arthur’s hobble out. We hoofed it away from the waiting room and its many eyes, toward the emergency exit at the end of the hall, the one labeled, “Emergency Exit Only—Alarm Will Sound.”

  “Wait! Sir?” a woman’s voice called behind us.

  “Time’s up,” I said, and pushed open the emergency door. We spilled out into the parking lot, the alarm blaring after us into the night.

  “I got the detectives’ number,” Arthur said. “I can call ’em and straighten this out, soon as we’re safe—”

  The spattering pop of gunfire sounded off to our right, and the brick wall of the hospital spit back, bits of stone and masonry pelting us across the shoulders.

  “Get down!” I yelled, tackling Arthur. Already off balance, he toppled to the asphalt. I had my Colt out, tracking the night.

  “You got another piece on you?” Arthur huffed from below me.

  The caustic insecurity I’d been feeling crackled down my limbs, twisting my face and making every nerve tingle. Every self-doubt about what I hadn’t been able to do to Simon buzzed against my fingers, making me itch to prove myself.

  “Take mine.” I stuffed the Colt into Arthur’s hand and dove straight toward the shots.

  It was dumb. I’d pinpointed the position of our attacker in the first instant. In one extra second I could have taken out whoever it was and covered Arthur if there were any more, instead of pretending he needed my only weapon for self-defense. But halfway across the parking lot was too late to question myself.

  I zagged between the parked cars and rushed the gunman.

  He saw me coming, but only at the last second. His eyes widened from where he was hunched over a car hood aimed at the hospital’s back entrance with some variant of AR-15. He tried to bring the rifle around, but only managed to turn about three degrees before I smashed into him with pure ballistic force.

  I was wrong. The sound of bone crunching against me did not make me feel more in control.

  More gunfire behind me. Pourdry’s men shooting, and the supersonic crack of my .45 answering them. Arthur. I had to help Arthur.…

  I staggered back from the dead man. His neck was broken, what had been his face a mess of fleshy pulp. Had I hit him more than once? Why couldn’t I remember?

  I reached down to take his gun, my limbs shaking. But not from the killing. What will Arthur think?

  Images crossed each other in my head, a scene from a year ago, months ago, a day ago: Checker’s house. Through my eyes, as I stood off to the side with a glass of whiskey, neat, lurking in the shadows. Checker and Arthur, and some other people—their friends—Pilar; Checker’s friend Miri; and Arthur’s friend Sonya, the math professor, laughing as they got out board games—no, this wasn’t right, this wasn’t real; this had never happened.

  Their faces went skeletal. The demon mathematics professor turned to me and stretched out a hand burned down to the bone.

  And then she was someone else, someone with a scar down her face—

  “Russell! Russell, come on!”

  I fell against the hub of a parked car. Where was my gun?

  The hand plunged into my chest, numbers and equations flowing down it, in both directions, carving me out and giving back a power I didn’t want.

  “Russell!”

  Arthur was yanking at me. The night crashed back, drenched with shouts and sirens.

  “It’s getting worse,” I gasped out.

  “Never would’ve guessed. Let’s go.”

  “I brought a— My car is over there. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. One of the hospital staff was hit. Better for everyone if we get gone.”

  I managed to scramble up, and Arthur leaned his weight on my shoulder again. We made it to the car and piled in. Trying not to show how unnerved I was, I flattened the accelerator, zooming us away toward one of my bolt-holes. Arthur would need a place to lie low. Yes. Pourdry was coming after him—coming after all of us, and I couldn’t protect—

  I k
ept an eye on the rearview mirror and backtracked, changed directions, turned onto a different freeway. How many people could Pourdry have sent? I flipped through my mental file of safehouses in my head—Arthur would need one without stairs. Fortunately, since knowing Checker I’d acquired a few of those.…

  I could do it. Get him somewhere no one could find him.

  Unless my telepathic stalker had stumbled across every one of those addresses in my brain.

  Dammit! Did Simon have that kind of power, to pull locations straight out of my head like that? Or would he have had to trick me into telling him, while the whole time I thought it was my idea?

  Maybe I had told him and forgotten. Panic flitted in and out of my thoughts. My senses flickered across the headlights of the expressway, searching for ghosts, but I didn’t trust myself.

  “Keep your eyes out,” I warned Arthur.

  He held a finger up to me—he was on the phone, presumably with Checker. “Did you talk to— They’re safe? You sure? Okay. Good man. No, it’s best if I don’t know for now. Thanks … Don’t know yet. You talk to Pilar? Yeah, best to be safe. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  “Pilar knew what she was signing up for,” I said. Of all the things to worry about right now … as far as I was concerned, occasionally needing to keep her head down from bad guys was in her fucking job description.

  Arthur shot me an annoyed look and spoke back into the phone. “Yeah, I’ll be in touch. You be careful, too, son.” He hung up.

  I drove faster.

  “Pilar’s gonna stay with Checker,” Arthur told me, even though I hadn’t asked. “He keeps his digital tracks pretty clean; don’t think anybody would track me to him.”

  “Then they’re fine.” I needed to believe that. I couldn’t be everywhere at once. Jesus, I was even failing at being in one place at once.

  Just how far was Pourdry’s reach? Had he only tracked us to the hospital, or did he know everything about Arthur now?

  “No one should have to worry about getting shot at just ’cause they work with me.” Arthur sounded tired.

  “Probably no one should get shot at period. In a perfect world. Pilar and Checker are grown adults, and they wanted to be in on fighting Pourdry. They knew what it could mean.” I sounded pretty sure of that. I didn’t have to take on responsibility for fucking everyone, did I? They’d taken this on of their own free will, right alongside me and Arthur.