Water To Burn Part 19

"English." He grinned at me. "It's a foreign language to me."

"G.o.d! I keep forgetting that."

"Good. That means I'm speaking it properly." He reached for the last pancake on the plate. "I don't suppose you want that."

"No. I'm saving room for my main course."

"I'll hold you to that. Why did you ask about the languages?"

"It just occurred to me that the ones you know all have a bearing on Middle East politics. No Swedish or Irish for you."

"True. That's a nice bit of logic."

And a good thing about the Irish, too, but I kept that thought to myself.

CHAPTER 9.

ON THURSDAY, WHEN THE TIME CAME TO MOVE, my local relatives offered to help except for Father Keith, who had church duties. Kathleen and Jack, however, had to beg off. She called me early and explained that Jack had woken up "sick as a human," as she always modified the cliche. She took the dignity of dogs seriously.

"He says he's got a touch of food poisoning," Kathleen said. "I say he's hungover."

"Did you guys go out last night?" I said.

"He did." She put emphasis on the "he." "But I'm real sorry, Nola. I wanted to help."

"Oh, it's okay. I don't have a lot of stuff anyway. Was he out with you know who?"

"Yeah. Who else?"

She paused, and in the background I could hear Jack's baritone growling at her. "My sister," Kathleen's voice sounded as if she was holding her phone away from her mouth. "I'm telling her that we're copping out on her."

Jack growled again, a little louder.

"He says he's sorry, too," Kathleen said into the phone. "I thought maybe the sea air would-"

This time Jack spoke loudly enough for me to hear. "Would you hang up that d.a.m.ned phone?"

"When I'm done talking," Kathleen said.

I had never heard them sound on the verge of a fight before.

"I'll let you go," I said. "He probably needs some love and Alka-Seltzer."

"I wanted to ask if you'd like a puppy." Kathleen pointedly ignored both my offer and the remark. "Or maybe a bonded pair. Tuesday, y'know? I took in some darling terrier mixes that some jerk dumped by the side of the road. I had the vet check them out, and they're in great shape."

"No, I can't. The lease was real specific about that. No pets." Actually, I was lying. I'd learned over the years that outright lies were the only way to fend off Kathleen's efforts to load me up with dogs and cats.

"I don't see how you can live in a place like that."

"Er, well, y'know. I'd better go, Kath. I've got to pack up the stuff in the fridge."

I clicked off to find Ari watching me. "Caleb's back," I told him. "But I'll wait till he calls me."

"You don't want to seem too eager, no," Ari said. "By the way, I've put in a request for detailed information on Caleb to the Ma.s.sachusetts Attorney General's office. They should get back to me soon."

"You really must work for Interpol."

"Of course I do, as I keep telling you. Would I lie to you?"

"Of course you would, if you needed to."

Ari looked so annoyed that I dropped it. I had reasons for wondering. According to my own Agency's workup on Ari, he left Interpol for long periods of time to go off and do something for an Israeli undercover group that wasn't part of Mossad, unless maybe it was. Its true status was as mysterious as the "something" Ari did for it. Our agent had run into the proverbial stone wall when he'd been trying to put together a report on Mr. Nathan. I doubted if Ari believed that sleeping with him gave me the right to ask outright for more information, so I didn't. I was, however, beginning to get some ideas.

Early on Thursday morning, Ari and I made one run over to the new flats with several boxes of fragile things like gla.s.sware and our laptops. It was a good thing we did, because the Chaos magic symbol had returned, along with some typical graffiti, the F-word, and a tag insulting everyone of Chinese descent.

"I'll go get the hose and those rags," Ari said.

I threw a Chaos ward at the symbol with no result at all. Apparently, the paint was only paint this time around. Before we left, Ari washed everything off of the wall. Neither of us wanted Aunt Eileen to see the obscenities.

Aside from that nasty little incident, the move went as easily as moves ever do, which meant tiring and confused but possible. Even without the Donovans, we had enough warm bodies. Uncle Jim took Thursday off and allowed Michael and Brian to miss a day of school. Aunt Eileen, my older brother Sean, and his boyfriend Al also showed up. We got all the stuff out of the apartment, into the upstairs flat, and arranged in a single long day, except of course for the inevitable boxes of small items that only I could put away.

We even had a surprise helper. Around one o'clock, Itzak Stein turned up. He'd taken the afternoon off, he told me, to help Ari install the security system.

"Security system?" I said.

Itzak gave me his charming smile. "Did you really think Ari could live without one? Mr. Suspicion Writ Large?"

"More fool me, yeah. Well, then, thank you."

While the rest of us unpacked and fussed with furniture, Ari and Itzak scurried around, hammering insulated staples, stringing wires, placing routers, and generally putting together elaborate electronics inside and out. At one point I walked into the bedroom to find Ari frowning at my old camcorder. He was turning it around and around in his hands.

"Something wrong with that?" I said. "It's not going to blow up or anything, is it?"

"No, it's just very unusual." He set it back down on the dresser. "I've never seen one quite like it."

"That's because I got it from the Agency. There's a guy there who does stuff to stuff."

"Interesting. Do you need me to move some furniture?"

"No. I think everything's pretty much in place."

Toward the end of the day, Uncle Jim ordered pizza and soft drinks for everybody, and salad, too, at my insistence. While we waited for the order to arrive, I went into the bedroom to start hanging clothes in the closet. Michael followed me. With him came a little Chaos critter, a scaly blue cross between a lizard and a meerkat, with yellow claws and snaggly brown teeth. He called it "Or-Something," since we had no idea if it was male or female, alive or some sort of artificial construct. Whatever it was, it could walk the worlds and carry messages between them. Normally, the Chaos masters use them as spies, but this particular creature had come over to the side of the Balance, mostly because Mike fed it. It sniffed at the folded blankets and promptly p.i.s.sed on the mattress.

"Fail!" Michael said. "Clean that up!"

Or-Something whimpered, and the puddle of green slime dried up and disappeared without leaving a stain.

"Nice trick, bro," I said.

"Thanks." Michael rummaged in his jeans pocket, brought out a couple of linty M&Ms, and gave them to the critter. "It can learn stuff, but you've got to be seriously patient with it."

"Yeah, I bet. How does it make the mess disappear, or do you know?"

"I think it just dumps it in another world, probably the one it comes from, wherever that is."

"So it can move things between worlds?"

"I guess." Michael shrugged and held out his hands palm-up. "It can't talk, so I dunno for sure."

I opened a cardboard box of Ari's clothes and set it on the bed where I could unpack more easily. Or-Something started to sniff the cardboard in a suspicious manner. When Michael snapped his fingers, it disappeared, much to my relief.

"There was something I wanted to ask you," Michael said. "About Lisa."

"Which one?"

"The one in the deviant level. I've sort of broken up with the one here."

"Just sort of? You mean: she doesn't know it yet."

He winced. I spent a few seconds rejoicing that I was no longer a teenager.

"But anyway," Michael said, "the one there, y'know? I was wondering if I could bring her here."

"Say what?"

"Help her start a new life, y'know? She's stuck in that c.r.a.ppy world, working as a-a-" He braced himself. "A wh.o.r.e, really, a cheap wh.o.r.e, and she's too good for that."

"They're all too good for it, the women who get forced into prost.i.tution. Look, Mike, when you say 'cheap wh.o.r.e' you're being really judgmental. She's got to do what she's doing to survive."

"Well, yeah, I know that. I just didn't think, like, you would."

"I'm not judging her. Women have worked in the s.e.x industry practically forever."

"Thanks. But I still want her to stop doing it. She sure wants to stop."

"Good for you and her, but getting her the new life isn't going to be easy. She'll be an illegal immigrant. Her life's going to be one long juggling act."

"Yeah, but the family knows how to do that, because of-"

"Careful!" I paused to look around. "You never know who's going to be listening."

"Sorry, yeah."

Michael went to the bedroom door, glanced out into the hall, then shut it. I waited to speak until he'd come back to the closet. He handed me one of Ari's shirts from the box on the bed. I put it on a hanger.

"She'll even need a new name," I said. "She can't use Lisa, because there's a Lisa already here who's just like her. Who is her, really."

"She knows that. And I meant to ask you, what if she did come here, and then ran into the other Lisa? If they met and like maybe shook hands, would they explode or something?"

"I've got no idea. I'll ask NumbersGrrl."

"Thanks, yeah, she might know. Lisa's always wished she was named Sophia, she told me. She read it in a book somewhere."

"She can read, then."

"Yeah, when the gang girls take in a baby, they try to raise it right."

Except, of course, for expecting these children to end up hustling on the streets or running some other scam, but I kept that thought to myself. What choice did they have, really?

"Anyway," Michael went on, "I thought maybe you could get her fake papers. Like, through the Agency."

"You do realize, don't you, that you're asking me to commit a felony?"

"A felony?" He gaped at me. "But if the Agency-"

"The Agency is not G.o.d. It has to operate within certain guidelines, for instance, the laws of this country. Getting fake papers for an illegal alien is frowned upon by your typical district attorney. As we all know."

"Well, yeah." He handed me another shirt to hang up.

"There's also a person whose permission you'd have to get."

"I already asked. Aunt Eileen talked about Mary Magdalene and then said yes. She'd never let a girl live like that when she could take her in and help."

"I should have known." I paused for a long sigh. "I take it Lisa wants to leave and come here."

"Who wouldn't?"

"You have a point, but look, if we do this, and I do mean if, buster, she's going to be the only one. You cannot bring your entire gang."

"I know that. Once she's here, I'll never go back. I promise. It's too dangerous. You were right about that."

"Occasionally, my aged brain comes up with the right answer, huh?"

"You bet. It's not just the rads, though there's that."

"You told me about the cops and the gangs. Life there must be pretty violent."

"Unless you're rich. But-" He paused again, frowning at the floor, thinking something through. "I don't know what this is, like, all about, but Jose's been making some weird hints, about something I could do and like maybe make a lot of money." He looked up. "I just keep changing the subject. I don't know why, but whatever it is creeps me out."

"That creepy feeling's a warning. Your talents are coming online, all right. Doesn't Lisa know what Jose means?"