No. Please. Not Tobias.
Ivy cried out, kneeling and trying to help Tobias. Ngozi backed away, horrified.
I reeled.
NOT TOBIAS!
Armando came at me again, and I fled. I pushed off the hot dog cart and ran with my bleeding arm cradled against my chest. Warm liquid soaked through my shirt, wetting my skin. I shoved through the crowd, knocking people over in a wild attempt to stay ahead of Armando.
He flowed after me, more ghost than man or aspect. Obstructions didn’t stop him; he passed right through a crowd of people unhindered. He didn’t bother to pretend like the others. He didn’t need to try to preserve my sanity.
I shoved past a family, scrambling, and somehow got to the front of the crowd, right up near the stage. I’d gotten turned around, confused in my flight.
Red sparks splashed against the wall, then flickered and died. I looked over my shoulder. Radiant, inconsistent, dying light illuminated Armando. His eyes were dead, the eyes of a drowned corpse. He followed, inexorable, brandishing the bloody knife.
“I will cut them out of you,” he whispered, voice somehow audible over the sounds of people cheering the show or yelling at me. “I will cut them all out.”
I collided with someone in the crowd, and they shoved me the other way. My arm protested as I hit another group, and these crushed the wind from me, smashing me between them. Armando flowed through them, his face appearing from someone’s back like a stain seeping through a wall.
I screamed again, pushing people away from me, my arm flaring with pain. I squeezed through the stuffy, sweating, screeching, horrible mass. I squirmed and shouted and scrambled and finally … I burst from the back of the crowd into open air.
Armando slammed into me from behind, hitting me with his shoulder, throwing me to the ground. I hit the concrete sidewalk and gasped at the pain.
“Cut them all out.”
I rolled over, and stared up at Armando—who was backlit by an explosion of sparks in the night. He grinned.
Then a bullet took him in the forehead.
He stumbled, shaking his head. More shots followed, like fireworks. Each took him in the face, with almost no spread. He finally collapsed back to the dusty ground, dropping the knife.
I pulled myself away from the corpse, up onto the sidewalk, then twisted about. Never had I been so happy to see J.C. Still holding his sidearm out before him, he stepped over to me and squatted down. “Yup,” he said, “a part of me knew I’d have to shoot that guy someday.”
I looked back at Armando, lying in an expanding pool of his own blood. J.C. nodded for me to hold my arm out so he could inspect the wound, and I did so, feeling numb.
“So,” J.C. said, pulling a bandage from his pocket, “you going to tell me why you were so eager to keep me away?”
“Wha … what?”
“Leaving me in a slum, running off from the mansion before I could get back to you. Even my car here got caught in traffic.”
“That was real.”
“Still feels like you’re being reckless. On purpose.”
No. I wasn’t. I just … just wanted to get to Sandra. I tried to explain, but then I felt a ripping sensation. Nauseatingly familiar, as it had happened to me earlier today, with Armando. Loss. Information leaving me forever.
This one was much worse. A thunderbolt compared to a twig snapping.
I moaned, huddling into myself, as it left me forever: all the random bits of knowledge that didn’t fit into another aspect’s expertise. The trivia that touched everything I did, everything I had learned, wrapped up in a single wonderful man.
Tobias …
Tobias was gone.
“What?” J.C. asked. “What is that look on your face, Skinny? What happened?”
“He got Tobias,” I croaked.
“Where?” J.C. demanded.
I pointed the way back through the crowd.
J.C. took off running, and I lurched to my feet and followed, leaving Armando’s corpse. I didn’t think it could get up and come after us again … but there was no guarantee. Nightmares didn’t follow the rules.
By now, the real people had opened a space around me, and backed away as I moved. One got used to this sort of thing in a big city, even if I didn’t look like the usual homeless drunk. A few Good Samaritans asked if I needed help, but I managed to brush them off and make my way back toward the hot dog cart.
The two men from earlier had left. Ngozi knelt by Tobias’s body, her arms covered in blood. She’d tried, bless her, to bandage him.
It hadn’t been enough. J.C. was down on one knee beside Tobias, his handgun held limply. Ivy stood nearby, one arm wrapped around herself while she smoked a cigarette with the other hand. Damn. She’d given that up years ago. J.C. rose and walked over to her, and she leaned into him, crying softly on his shoulder.
I just …
I stared at the body.
Tobias had been the very first. A calming, optimistic voice pulled from the shadows and nightmares. I remembered sitting at night in a chair, lights off, surrounded by whispers—and then hearing him for the first time.
He had been my lifeline to sanity.
“What…” Ngozi said. “What do we do now?”
I didn’t know.
“We have to keep moving,” J.C. said, still holding Ivy. He needed the comfort as much as she did. “We’ve drawn attention. Look.”
Though the spark show had ended—and someone was starting to spray down the stage with water—security was making its way past the dispersing crowd. A few people turned toward me, gesturing animatedly.
“We can’t … just leave him,” Ivy said.
“There’s a way out,” I whispered. “A way to fix this. Sandra. She knows.” I stumbled over to the hot dog cart. On the counter was a note and the pouch with the cell phone in it. The note read simply, “We’ll be in touch.”
I grabbed both pouch and note, and—though it pained me to do so—I left Tobias’s remains. It felt wrong. It felt awful. I’d come back for him though. I’d give him a proper burial.
He’ll just lie there, I thought, with people walking through him. Never knowing what they’re treading on. The great man they could never see, could never know.
Had to keep moving.
I limped away, still cradling my cut arm as the security guards called after me. They hurried to catch up, but then I approached my limo, which was still parked at the curb.
Barb opened the door, and the two guards backed off. I’d suddenly moved from “random homeless drunk” to “above my pay grade.”
I climbed in, then used my foot to kick the door back open as Barb tried to close it after me. Ivy, J.C., then Ngozi entered and slumped into seats.
Barb peeked in. “Um, all in?”
“No,” I whispered. “But we can go anyway.”
“Sure thing!” she said, chipper. “Anything I can get you? Some water, or—”
“You can shut up.”
She closed the door, perhaps a little too firmly. I missed Wilson, and …
Oh, hell, Tobias was dead.
I lay down on the seat as J.C. knelt by me and worked on the bandage some more.
“Right,” Ivy said, taking a deep breath. “Right. We need a plan. I can’t believe how much this hurts … but we need a plan. Steve, this can’t happen again.”
The car started. Barb flipped on the intercom. “Are we going anywhere specific?”
“No,” I said. “Just drive. Please.”
Anywhere but here.
EIGHT
I didn’t know what type of phone this was.
I turned it over in my hands as the car pulled onto the freeway. Beside me, Ivy helped Ngozi clean the blood off her hands using the limo’s sink and water bottles.
Why did it matter what kind of phone it was? Because Tobias had known everything about phones. Not just the devices themselves, but all about the companies that made them. The history of technology was just one of his many littl
e quirks. I’d grown used to having that knowledge comfortably in the back of my brain, not really that important, but still … there.
I tried texting Sandra a few times, but she didn’t respond. Finally, at a suggestion from J.C., I texted saying I’d turn the phone back on in an hour—then took out the battery, so I couldn’t be traced using the phone, just in case.
“J.C.,” Ivy said. “Call the mansion.”
He did so, dialing Kalyani, then putting her on speaker.
“Is there news?” she asked immediately.
“We…” Ivy took a deep breath. “We lost Tobias.”
Silence.
“You lost him,” Kalyani finally said. “As in … he ran away?”
“He’s dead,” J.C. said. “Gone.”
Kalyani gasped.
“We need to prevent something like this from happening again,” Ivy said. “I want you to gather all the aspects and get them into the White Room. Let us know if anyone is unaccounted for.”
“Yes. Yes, okay,” Kalyani said. “But … Tobias. Are you sure?”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“How is Mr. Steve?”
Ivy looked at me. “Not well. Call us back when everyone is together.” She hung up.