“Those are pretty much all the same thing, you know. Ummm. Are you okay?” the Kid asked. “You sound kinda . . . I don’t know. Happy.”
“I’m always happy. Tell me something I don’t know. And say hi to your brother.”
I held the phone out so Eli, who was easing into the SUV, could hear.
“Yeah. Sure. Hey, Eli. Whatever. Is she okay?”
Eli closed the door on the traffic, looked me over, and shook his head, bemused. “She looks like a homeless person who spent the night in the back of an unsecured SUV, wearing a bacon shirt.”
“Yeah? Get a pic. Jane, the car tailing you was a lease that came back to Florence Falcon. Florence is a false ID, with a social that originated at the same birth month and state as Paul Reaver. Florence works for Paul Reaver. Whoever created the fantastic IDs did a pis—uh, a poor job of separating the locales and the timelines. You want me to send this to Jodi?”
“Yeah. Tell her I was being tailed. And that they boxed me in and tried to kill me.”
“What? Are you okay?” Alex sounded weirded out, which didn’t make much sense because people were always trying to kill me. “Eli?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m ducky,” I said. Eli grunted agreement. “Jodi might want to—wait,” I said. “Send the info to Jodi and to the ATF officer in charge of the bomb delivery. What’s his name?”
“Special Agent Stanley. Got it.” I could hear bewilderment in Alex’s voice. “Eli, is she really okay?”
“She looks fine but the SUV is damaged.”
“Later, Kid.” I hung up and looked at Eli. “What’s up?”
“We lost track of you on the far side of the river,” he said, mildly. “It took us four hours to find you, and when I did, you were asleep.”
“Oh. That was . . .” I realized he had been worried. Both of the Youngers had been terribly worried. Thinking I was hurt. Or dead. Which was really sweet, and would probably insult them if I said so. I settled on, “That was horrible of me.” I crawled back into the driver’s seat, explaining. “I was talking to Soul and she said she could find me in the gray place of the change, so I went into it. And I was attacked by vamps. And they beat me up and were planning to kill me or kidnap me. Then I think . . .” I pulled the tangled memories back into place, and examined the different scent patterns from the attack. “I think, maybe, an arcenciel came—not Soul—and the vamps did something to it or tried to, but it got away. And they knocked me out.”
Eli was staring at me with an indecipherable expression. “Unconscious.”
“Yeah. Mostly. I think the vamps were chasing the arcenciel and that’s why they left me. And then Soul came and woke me up. And attacked me, maybe because she thought I should have saved the other arcenciel? Or maybe because she thought I had attacked the arcenciel? Anyway, then I shifted into Beast. And that’s when it got strange.”
“That’s when it got strange.”
I had a feeling that Eli was making fun of me and I squinted at him in threat. “We fought and she turned into a three-or four-hundred-pound tiger and I bit her throat and swallowed her blood. And then she took off. And then I shifted back to me. Only her blood left me drunk as a skunk, ’cause she’s an arcenciel too and their blood’s really tasty.” I chuffed a laugh. “So, anyway, I got dressed and back in the SUV.” I looked around me again at the traffic. “I think I drove here and fell asleep. Because of the druggy blood. But I’m sober now. Mostly.”
Eli shook his head slowly, still looking me over. “I thought I’d be bored in civilian life, out of the service. I had no idea.” Eli got out of the SUV and bent back in, his head low enough to see me. “Check your messages.” He closed the door, took the traffic ticket in his fist, and walked down the street. He got into his own SUV, a battered, unarmored, older model, and drove into traffic. He didn’t look my way as he passed.
I checked my messages, sixteen from Alex, each increasingly more panicked as he called and pinged my location. And one from Bruiser. I returned his call and left a message, ending with, “I’m bringing lunch. I’ll be there in an hour if the traffic is willing.” I tossed the cell into the seat, wondering whether he would be there at all. I was taking all sorts of chances. How weird was that? I wondered whether it was the drugged blood, and decided that it wasn’t, as I was now starving, moderately anxious about visiting Bruiser, and not feeling the least intoxicated.
I pulled into the stream of cars and turned on the radio to catch the Doobie Brothers singing “Black Water,” which was appropriate in so many ways. I was solving problems, identifying bad guys, discovering that things were much weirder than they seemed, and protecting the sorta innocent. Things were starting to happen here on the Mississippi. Oh yes, they were.
Only, not all of my conclusions were correct.