She calmed and, after a moment, she nodded.
“Did he drug you?”
She stared at me, probably trying to decide how much trouble she’d get into for answering. She apparently decided it was worth it, and nodded.
“We good to go?” asked Potash.
“She’s moved the bed almost eight inches,” I said, pointing at the depressions the bed legs had left in the carpet. “If her struggling hasn’t woken him up, nothing we do is going to.”
“This feels too easy,” he said, but I didn’t answer. If you do it right, it’s always easy. This was the great and dreadful end of everything I did, the paradox that made my life one long, successful hell. Months to find a weakness, more months to exploit it, endless nights of planning and practice, building up and building up until that one, perfectly executed strike that I don’t even get to make. Potash walked to the bed, aimed his machete, and cut off Cody’s head. The demon’s eyes snapped open, his mouth gaping in a caricature of speech, but it was too late. The bright red blood pumping from his neck turned to black, greasy ash, and his body crumbled to nothing. The girl screamed, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. There was no danger, no thrill, no visceral thunk as the machete vibrated in my hands.
Months of built-up tension and nothing to release it.
“It’s done,” said Potash in his radio, breaking the silence now that the job was done. He wiped his blade on the blanket and looked at the girl, passed out by his feet. “The runaway fainted, so I guess she isn’t stuck with Withered senses forever.”
“Get her out here,” said Kelly. “I’ll take her to a hospital while you and John go through the house.”
Standard procedure: we go through the house, looking for anything we can find that might give us a hint about other Withered. Finish one hunt and get started on the next one, building more anticipation. I held my hands in tight fists, pushing out the blood until my knuckles were white as bone.
No rest for the wicked.
2
Here’s a logic puzzle for you: there are four people, named Grant, Bill, Marci, and April. Each one has a different eye color: blue, brown, green, and hazel. Each one has a different role: girlfriend, neighbor, therapist, and mother. Each one died in a different way: a stabbing, a slit throat, slit wrists, and fire. One of the women died alone. The other woman died without a blade. One of the men killed the other one and then he, in turn, was killed by a child. All of them loved the child, but the child didn’t save any of them. Can you solve the puzzle and find the answer?
Do you even know what answer you’re looking for?
“Good morning, John.” Dr. Trujillo was an older man, short and squat, his white hair making a stark contrast with his bronze skin. Him I’d probably poison, though there were other options depending on the circumstance. His shirt was wrinkled enough that I assumed he must have spent the night on the cot in the room next to Brooke’s—we’d paid Whiteflower extra to get a second room, and Trujillo slept there more often than not. He stood when I walked toward him. “I heard about the project yesterday; I’m glad it went well.”
We always called them “projects” in public. “Job” felt too crass, “mission” attracted too much attention, and “government authorized murder of a supernatural monster” just didn’t have that sassy ring to it.
“It pays the bills,” I said. He tilted his head analytically, and I rolled my eyes. “Is she awake?”
“Let me ask you a question first,” he said, as if my permission had anything to do with it. “When you say that our work ‘pays the bills,’ what do you mean? Obviously it’s true, but it’s not a way you’ve ever characterized our work before.”
“Do we have to do this right now?”
“I’m your psychologist, John, assigned to this unit specifically to help keep you and Brooke on an even keel. The reasons why you do the work you do are every bit as important as the work itself, and if you’ve begun to think—”
“Is she awake yet?”
“If you’ve begun to think of yourself less as a protector of human life and more as a contract killer, that’s exactly the kind of thing I need to be watching out for.”
Trujillo was the most zealous therapist I’d ever had, but on the plus side, having a lot of therapists meant I’d gotten really good at pissing them off. “Actually I prefer to swing as far as I can in the opposite direction,” I said. “I have a full-on messiah complex now. I don’t just protect people, I’m the outright savior of mankind.” I spread my arms beatifically.