Jeremy Robinson - MirrorWorld

Between the cold air from the air-conditioning and the plastic wrap, the room shouldn’t smell like death for a few days, and, even then, most people won’t think to check the ceiling vent. I pick up an old room-service tray, pile on some plates, and head for the door. Before leaving, I turn the thermostat down and take a look back. There isn’t a hint of the Dread, but I don’t think it’s actually gone. Just hidden. I flip it the bird one more time and leave next week’s crime scene, and my career as an assassin, behind.

“Daddy!” The kid runs like a wide receiver and hits like a linebacker, despite being eight years old and sixty-five pounds. The tackle turns into a hug as Simon, whose undying affection for me is dwarfed only by his never-ending reserve of energy, wraps his arms around my waist and squeezes. I return the embrace and lift him off the ground, spinning him in a circle before depositing him back to the oriental rug in our home’s foyer.

“How was school?” I ask.

“Boring,” he says. “Duh.”

“Duh?” I reach to tickle him but stop when the door upstairs slams shut. I look at Simon. “Where’s your mother?”

“In the basement,” he says.

We both look up. “That been happening more often?”

He nods. “Kitchen cabinets, too. And cold spots in the house. I don’t go in the basement anymore.” He pretends to shiver. “Are you sure it’s not ghosts?”

While I am most definitely sure it’s not ghosts closing doors, making rooms chilly, and turning nights into nightmares for Simon, I’m not about to tell him what it really is. Ghosts would be preferable to the Dread, who have been harassing my family for months. In a few days, it won’t matter. We’ll be living in the Neuro apartment full-time. We would be already if the moving company hadn’t screwed up the scheduling. Not that it’s all bad. We weren’t ready anyway. Boxes waiting to be filled litter the house. Maya’s not happy about the move. Doesn’t know about the Dread, and so my fabricated reasoning—closer to work, to family, and free—doesn’t make a lot of sense. She wants a normal childhood for Simon, but what kid wouldn’t want to live in a top-secret laboratory? She’ll understand when Lyons gives me the green light to tell her everything. “I told you before: the house is drafty. If you’re feeling cold air, that’s why.”

He rolls his eyes. “It’s okay if you’re afraid of ghosts. I won’t tell anyone.”

“You won’t?” I say, reaching out to tickle him again. He shrieks as my fingers find his belly.

Maya appears in the doorway, frying pan in one hand, knife in the other. She’s panicked. On edge. She sees me and lowers her weapons. “Dammit!”

“You swore!” Simon shouts, still laughing.

“Sorry, baby,” I say, and kiss her cheek. She’s been on edge these past few weeks. The Dread taunting is getting to her. Moving will be a good thing.

“I wasn’t expecting you for another hour,” she says.

“I know…”

“But?”

“I have to go back in. Going to be a late night. We’re close to a breakthrough.”

“And then maybe you’ll tell me what you two have been working on?”

“That’s up to him,” I say.

“You’re my husband!”

“And he’s your father, and my boss.” I want to tell her she’s safer not knowing, but that will just make her feel less safe. I suspect that’s the reason why Dread activity in our home has remained docile for the most part. They know I can’t be affected, and they tend to leave the ignorant alone. Until they don’t.

Simon leaves the room, sprinting through the living room.

“I don’t feel safe here,” Maya whispers. “It’s getting weird. Seriously. You know I’m not one to cry ghost, but—”

I point in Simon’s direction. “Did you tell him that?”

“No!” She’s still whispering, but on the verge of not. “You know I wouldn’t. He’s having enough trouble sleeping.”

“Look,” I say, putting on my perfectly calm smile. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

Her laugh is brief and sarcastic. “Easy for you to say.”

I take her face in my hands. “You’re safe.”

“Promise?”

I kiss her lips. “I promise.”

Grass tickles the back of my neck. I smell lilacs. The sky above is nearly intolerably blue, the late-afternoon sun low on the horizon, deepening the tone. Spring has arrived, at last, and I’m at the park with Maya and Simon. I can’t see him, but I can hear him chirping away and laughing when Maya tickles his belly with her nose. The past six months have been transformative for me. I’ve been so accustomed to taking life and watching death that being part of the formation of something new, alive, and delicate never occurred to me as something worth pursuing.

But here I am, lying in the grass, hands behind my head, enjoying… everything.

Simon’s face hovers over mine, the wetness around his smiling, toothless mouth threatening to drip down on me.

“Dadu,” Maya says, doing her imitation of what Simon would sound like if he could talk, wiggling him back and forth. “Dadu, you must hold me now. Hold me, Dadu. Mamma wants to lie down.”

I reach up and take the boy, holding him above me while Maya lies down beside me and snuggles in.

I’m still getting used to all this. I’m not a natural with babies. With gentleness. At first, I pretended he was nitroglycerin. Shaken too hard, he would explode. But I got better at holding him. I treated his dirty diapers like live mines and learned how to disarm the worst of his bombs. But the silly-voice strangeness that possesses most people when holding a child is still foreign to me. I haven’t mastered it yet, but I try, and his smile helps.

“Who’s a funny boy?” I say, lowering him to my face so our noses touch for a moment. Then I lift him back up and repeat. Repetition seems to be the key to eliciting a laugh. They don’t usually find humor in something the first two or three times, but after that each repetition gets a bigger reaction. I repeat the up-and-down motion, saying, “Who’s a funny boy?” three times before he squeals with delight, kicking his legs and flapping his arms, saying, “Ooh, ooh, ooh!” Then he stops, wide-eyed, and turns to watch a dog walk past with its owner, that openmouthed smile locked in place.

While he watches the dog, I turn to his mother and find her eyes just inches from mine. I kiss slow and gentle, interlocking our lips. I hang there for a moment, feeling a crazy kind of closeness that I now share with two people. When we part, I say, “Thank you.”

“The kiss was that good?” she asks.

“For him,” I say, glancing up to Simon, who’s once again trying to fly away as he says “Ooh, ooh, ooh!”

“You helped. A little.” She squeezes my arm, and in that moment I decide I’ve had enough killing. Enough fighting. I might not be afraid to die, but there is no way I want to risk not being around for Simon or Maya. Her father hinted that Neuro might have a place for me. As a fellow company man, he knows what I do, more than Maya does, and if he says I can leave behind my days of violence, I might just take him up on it.

I turn back up to Simon. He’s somehow managed to grab a fluffy white dandelion. He blows on it twice, mimicking what he’s seen Maya do several times already, and then stuffs the thing into his mouth. He looks down at us, a little shocked when his open mouth is suddenly full of clinging debris. The smile fades and tears quickly come. Laughing, Maya and I sit up, working together to clear the dandelion bits from his mouth, while distracting him from the confusing feeling ratcheting him up to a high-pitched scream.