Robert Crane - Untouched

Byerly had left a few hours earlier. It was awkward after he woke up. Clary leavened the moment with a few choice jokes that were fairly graphic and involved my powers and how they’d affect someone in an intimate setting. Needless to say, Byerly didn’t laugh and neither did I, and when Perugini pronounced that he was in fine form after Forrest’s ministrations, no one was more relieved to see him gather his clothes and dart out than me.

“You wanna get something to eat?” Clary asked me as we cleared the Headquarters building. “I’m starving. I didn’t get my lunch before we got into it, y’know.” His earnestness would have been endearing if he hadn’t been trying to beat the daylights out of me only a few hours earlier.

“I’ll pass.” I left him behind, walking back toward the dorm. I was hungry too, but I doubted I’d be welcomed in the cafeteria for a while—assuming it was even operable at this point. I had a feeling that the below-zero temperatures I’d encounter would make any sort of meal eaten there a chilling experience. And that was just from the pissed-off people. We’d broken a lot of windows, which meant it’d also be literally cold in there.

I went back to my room, closed the door, and dug into the stash of food I’d gotten from my apparent burglary of the cafeteria a few days earlier. There was no doubt in my mind that Wolfe had done it, taking my body for a joyride while I slept. Now that he’d taken control during my waking hours, that was even more worrisome. I could tell Ariadne and Old Man Winter, I suppose, but only at the risk of being locked away and never allowed out again. I didn’t enjoy the thought of a cell of my own in Arizona, so I’d decided to play the whole incident off as me being reckless. I assumed it worked. It was hard to say.

“How do I get you out of my head?” I asked the question aloud, but no answer was forthcoming from inside or out. I chewed on a piece of beef jerky and sat down on my bed. No one but another succubus could answer my question, and the only one I knew of was Mom.

It occurred to me that I had a few powers to go along with the fatal touch of my skin, one of which was something Wolfe had called “Dreamwalking”—the ability to touch the minds of others while sleeping. I’d had conversations with Reed and Wolfe by doing that, and all it took was a willingness to fall asleep while concentrating on the person I wanted to talk to.

I was a little afraid to sleep after the control Wolfe had exerted on me, but I was more afraid of having to admit to Old Man Winter and Ariadne that I had him in me and that he was taking control. I finished my beef jerky, chewing slower and taking more time than was necessary even for that tough stuff.

When I was done, I lay my head down on the pillow and clicked off the lights. I thought of Mom, of the house, of the old days when we were a family. I could feel the tug of fatigue on my eyelids, but I lay with them wide open in the dark, worrying over what might happen when I closed them. Wolfe was a monster, a beast that I had once hoped I could put down like a rabid animal. Instead he was cohabitating with me in my own body.

It was bad enough when I only heard his voice. Now he’d set free a crazed man who could explode with the force of a bomb and turned even more of the Directorate against me. If I took the job they offered me, there would be no doubt it was going to be a hostile working environment. Most of the metas I encountered in the halls had done a swift direction change when they saw me coming as I walked back to my room.

I lay there in silence, the only noise coming from the warm air rushing through the vents above me. I could hear a tap-tap-tap of metal in the ventilation system somewhere as the ductwork vibrated from the furnace-heated wind that pushed through it. I could smell that clean, sterile scent that lacked the authentic aroma of a house. The whole room felt less lived-in and more generic, as though it was a room made for anyone. My room at home was mine, made for me. I looked at the blank walls, lit by the glow of lights outside, and thought that maybe I should get a painting or something.

The sheets were cool against my skin. It was comfortable, neither warm nor hot. The spice of the beef jerky lingered on my tongue and I thought about getting up to brush my teeth, but now I was drifting and it was too late. I tried to bring my thoughts back to Mom but things were hazy.

I woke to an insistent knocking on the door. The drowsiness was overwhelming, a fog hanging around my head. I tried to ignore the sound, but the thumping grew louder and the interval between it shorter and shorter until I finally shook off my covers, pulled on a pair of long gym pants and a t-shirt and threw it open. “What?” I wasn’t kind about asking.

Zack was waiting outside, Kurt behind him, leaning against the wall. “Get dressed. We’re going.”

“Going where?” I was so bleary eyed at that point that my thoughts were coming in fits and starts. For a fraction of a second I wondered if they were there to try and dispose of me.

“We got a vague report of a meta causing some trouble at Eden Prairie Center—the mall we were at the other night, you remember? Ariadne wants you to come along.”

“What?” I blinked twice and rubbed my eyes, still trying to shake off the sleepiness. “I don’t work for you guys.” I shook my head and added, “Yet.”

“She still wants you to come along. She said to call it a ride along, and if you didn’t like that, to call it penance for the cafeteria because M-Squad is busy chasing down a lead on Gavrikov a hundred miles south of here.” He chucked his thumb back at Hannegan, who waited, staring out the window in the hallway. “We’ll wait for you out here. Think you can be ready in five minutes?”

I looked at him with great pity. “You don’t know many girls, do you?”

He cracked a smile. “Ten minutes?”

I shut the door on him. Thirty minutes later and after some insistent knocking at one point, I joined them in the hall, wearing what was probably my eight hundredth black turtleneck and jeans since coming to this place. I’d pulled my hair back in a ponytail and someone had left another coat for me in the closet, the same kind of black, heavy wool that I’d been wearing all along. I was growing a little tired of the flimsy boots they’d been giving me and made a mental note to ask Ariadne for some with a steel toe if I was going to keep fighting people bigger than I was.

“I don’t get it,” Hannegan said as we walked toward the garage. “What took you so long? It’s not like you’re wearing any makeup.”

I blushed. “Shut up.” I had actually been trying to get my hair to lay flat, but after sleeping it was a mess, which is why it ended up in a ponytail. Again. “What are we going to investigate?”

Zack frowned as he opened the door to the garage and held it for me. Hannegan darted his bulk through first, drawing a look of acrimony from me. “There was some sort of altercation earlier today, some local youths tried to get tough with a guy and he smeared them all over the pavement.” Zack looked over at me as he let the door swing shut behind us. “Literally. Two of the youths died, and the others said the guy moved so fast that it was like he was blurry.”

“Why are we doing this now? Isn’t it Saturday night?” I opened my own door to the car and got in the backseat as usual. “I thought people only worked 9 to 5 on Monday through Friday?”

“Most people do,” Zack said. “But you don’t wanna be normal, do you?” He winked at me and put the car in reverse, backing out of the parking spot.

I ignored the leering grin from Hannegan. “Perish the thought.”

When we got to the mall we circled, passing a department store with a roll of police tape staked out in a circle on the sidewalk. “That must be where it happened,” Kurt said.