Chapter TWENTY-SIX
Rebecca
Obi was waiting for me the day I knocked on the door to room number 341 at the Hotel Andra. I hadn't thought there would be anyone in the room at all, but I had been able to hear the television from outside the door. It was twenty-seven days after I had been exorcised by the Nicht Creidim. I had spent twenty-six of them as a disembodied spirit, a lost soul floating across the ocean at a speed barely faster than a walk.
He wasn't the Obi I had expected.
The door opened. He was standing there in a pair of striped silk pajamas, his head newly shaved, with a month's growth of beard framing his jaw. His eyes looked lighter than they had the last time I'd seen him, as if he were happy.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
I wasn't surprised he didn't recognize me. I was wearing the skin of a homeless woman, a vagrant I'd found sleeping in the park near the waterfront. She was dirty and matted, dressed in soiled rags, and her teeth were killing me.
"Obi? It's me, Rebecca."
He regarded me without recognition. "Did you say Rebecca?"
I nodded. "Yes."
Either he was fast, or I was rusty. His hand shot out from his side and tightened around my wrist. "I have a message for you," he said, smiling. "Sacerdos ab Ordinario-"
I still had a hand free. I brought it around and smashed him in the jaw, stopping him from going any further with the exorcism. I should have guessed by the fact that he was even here that I was walking right into a trap. Joe had gotten the Deceiver, and he'd used it to mess with Obi's head.
Obi stumbled backwards before recovering, getting his hand up to block my second swing. His face twisted into a scowl, and he used his bare foot to kick me in the gut. "Sacerdos ab Ordinario..." He started the rite again.
"Shut up," I wheezed. I pulled away, and he held my arms tight, just like I wanted him to. I shifted towards him, and he couldn't compensate in time. My head drove into his nose, and I felt it crumble beneath my host's skull. He let go of me, dizzy from the attack, and teetered back to the dresser where the Eagle was resting.
I jumped forward and took hold of his arm, straining to tug him away. He was too strong, and my shell was too weak.
I let him go and backed out of the room. I used the break to look around, to confirm that my pack was gone, the Box with it. I didn't need to be here, and Obi was useless to me like this. Where the hell was Max? Had he been caught by Joe, or had he escaped? I felt a moment's despair, but twenty-six days as a free-floating spirit had given me plenty of time to strengthen my resolve. As long as I was trapped in this world I was determined to either free Landon, or avenge his loss.
I pulled the door closed behind me and abandoned the bag lady. She looked around for a minute, confused, and then started wandering down the hall. I pushed myself from room to room, passing by an older man in a sweatsuit, a couple having sex, and a rich old lady with a poodle. The fourth try was the winner; a young man with blonde hair, dressed in a sharp three piece suit. He looked like a salesman, or a maybe a high-class drug dealer.
I took him with ease, discovering he was a marketing executive with a wife and a two year old daughter, that he loved baseball, and he was allergic to peanuts. Knowing he had a child made me hesitate to keep him, but I was in a hurry, and his meat suit was perfect for where I was headed next. I would drop him off unharmed once I was done with him.
I wasn't sure what my next move would be, but I knew I needed help, and there was only one person I could think of who might be available. I spent a few minutes getting a better feel for my new host, and then headed out of the Hotel, tracing my steps back towards the underground village where I had last seen Joe and Elyse. I walked past the alley and noticed the door I had entered was clearly visible now, though it had been chained four times over. I stifled the anger I felt at the memory, and kept walking. This time I wanted to go up.
"Can I help you, sir?"
The lobby of Madalytics was all silver, blue, and glass, with a semi-circular receptionist desk pressed against the back wall off the elevator and a massive flatscreen touting all kinds of data metrics behind the receptionist's head.
He was a scrawny man in his early twenties, with six or seven piercings in each ear, spiked blue hair, and a winning smile. It was a look, but it suited him. I glanced up at the cameras covering the area, and then returned his smile.
"I'm here to see Mr. Rutherford," I said. "I'm a college buddy. He told me I could stop by whenever I was in town."
Hearing I wasn't a customer, his formalities dropped. "Oh, cool. Yeah, sure. I think Brian's in a meeting right now, but I'll send him a message."
I closed my eyes and thanked God he was still in town and still alive. I could only guess the Nicht Creidim had more pressing concerns now than dealing with an angelic changeling.
The receptionist's phone buzzed a few seconds later, and he looked down on it, and then at me. "What was your name again?" he asked.
"Rebecca."
He raised his eyebrow at that, and then typed something into the phone. When it buzzed again, his eyes widened. I narrowed mine, prepared to have to either fight my way in, or run away.
"I'll show you to his office. He'll be with you in a minute." He put a little 'be right back' placard onto the desk and stepped out from behind it, leading me through a solid wood door to the left. The offices were open and organized, with rows of people sitting behind rows of computers, in various stages of work and loafing. Neon arrows guided employees to the 'Spa' and the 'Nap Room', as well as 'Stuffy Stuff: Jacket Required'.
We were ignored on our trek past the workers and into a hallway, through a section of spaces that contained a gym, a ping-pong table, and a masseuse. Brian's office was all the way in the back, a huge expanse in the corner decked out much like the subterranean bar had been. I recognized the juke box.
Brian showed up before the receptionist left. He was cautious in his entrance and expression, unsure of what to expect. When he was confronted with a man, he gave the hint of a smile.
"Thanks, Pete," he said to the guy with blue hair. Pete left, and Brian walked right up to me. "Is it really you? I thought you were dead."
"Spirits are hard to kill," I replied. For all I knew, I was impossible to fully destroy in this state. Not that it mattered. Throwing me hundreds of miles away was more than effective enough to put me out of play. "I know Joe got the Deceiver. He used it on my friend and took something from us, something he can use to do a lot of damage to the world." I looked into his eyes. "Something that will either change all of mankind the way you've been changed, or kill it."
Brian was still for a moment, and then shrugged. "I don't know how I can help you with that. I told you, I'm not a fighter, and I don't even have the sword anymore. That man, Joe, he killed all of them. I only escaped because of you." He walked over to his desk, and opened one of the drawers. He placed the ward stone down in front of me. "He didn't even bother taking this. I've spent so much time staring at it, waiting for it to turn, waiting for them to come back for me."
"You'd rather live in fear than fight back?" I asked.
"I don't want to fight."
"I know, it's a choice between crappy and crappy, but I need your help. I need to stop him."
He stared at me. "I can't."
"Do you think God made you an angel so you could just tuck your wings in and hide when things didn't go your way? Do you think you were made unique to hang out in a dungeon and drink beer?" I walked up to the desk and picked up the ward stone. "If you do, you don't need this." I threw it to the ground, breaking it into two pieces. "I'm going to kill you myself."
He was afraid, that much was clear, but he was afraid of the wrong thing. Most of the changelings were demons. If Joe had his way, he would be even more screwed than he already was.
His face was flushing, and I thought he might either start crying, or yell back at me. Instead, he closed his eyes, reached up, and pulled off his shirt. His wings unfolded in freedom, and he lifted a few inches off the ground.
"Okay," he said. "You're right. The Lord didn't make me this way to run a software company. What do you want me to do?"
I smiled, leaned over the desk, and kissed him on the cheek, causing an embarrassed blush. There were two things I needed. To find out what happened to Max, and to get a new partner, even if it was an unwilling one.
"You have a lot of nerds out there, don't you?" I asked. "I need to get my hands on surveillance recordings for the Hotel Andra from the day we met, and the week after."
"Easy enough. Most of the hotels downtown use the same ISP, and they stream their surveillance to offsite data centers for security." He lowered himself to the ground, tucked his wings, and sat down at his desk. His hands were a blur along the keyboard. "I just sent an e-mail. We should have results in a couple of hours."
"I knew you were the right person to come to."
He glanced over at me. "I'm not certain I won't regret this, but hiding hasn't helped much."
"Next request. Can any of your employees do anything with cell phones? I need to find someone's number, and all I can give you is a starting location from a month ago."
He lowered himself back to the ground. "I've got a guy working remote in Australia that can probably do it. I'll send him an e-mail."
He typed it out and sent it off. A few seconds later he pointed at the screen. "My contact at RainierNet is better than I expected." He swiveled the screen so I could see. "Login credentials for the remote surveillance service the Hotel Andra uses."
"Let's see what we can see."
He copied and pasted his way into the remote interface, and entered the date range I had requested. The hotel had a camera in the lobby and a few in the hallways on each floor. It was a lot of video to look through.
"Start with the lobby. Just keep going until Joe turns up," I said.
He started pulling it up, but a notification popped up on the screen. He tabbed back to his e-mail, and then pushed the keyboard over to me. "Put in the address and the date. No promises, but he'll do his best."
I entered the data and he sent the reply back, then returned to the videos. He scrubbed through the lobby on the day we'd lost the Deceiver, turning up nothing until one o'clock in the morning. It wasn't Joe that walked into the hotel lobby.
It was Elyse.
"He got her too," I said. "She was on my side." The camera angle was wide enough to show her going into the elevator. "Can you find the third floor cameras, around the same time?"
He complied, searching for the right clips. "Rebecca, can I ask you something?"
"What?"
"How did you get lost?"
"What do you mean?"
He looked at me. "In my Source, you said you were lost. I could see it in your eyes, you didn't just mean there. You're lost right now too. You must be, to be a spirit."
He wasn't wrong, but the question made me uncomfortable. "It's complicated."
He laughed. "I would imagine it would have to be. Still, maybe when we have more time you can tell me about it? People tell me I'm a good listener."
There was a part of me that wanted to spill the whole thing right then and there. To confide in someone and unleash the torrent of mixed emotions I was holding onto. "Maybe." I winked at him.
He half-smiled and returned his attention to the screen. "Here you go," he said.
Elyse was walking down the hallway. She stopped at Room 341 and knocked. The door opened. Obi. He said something, she said something. He looked back into the room, and then left, closing the door behind him. He followed Elyse to the elevator at a run.
"Is that your friend? What did she tell him?"
"That's Obi, yeah. I don't know what she said. Maybe that I was in trouble?" I had no idea, but it gotten him moving in a hurry.
Brian was ahead of me, seeking out the lobby camera. He found it fast, and we watched Elyse and Obi leave together. Two minutes later Obi came back in, with Joe right behind him.
"What are you hoping to find?" Brian asked.
"I was with two people. Joe got to Obi, but my friend Max is missing. I needed to know if he was killed, or if he got away."
We found the third floor video. We watched Obi and Joe go in, and then Joe come back out with my pack. He glanced up at the camera just before the elevator doors closed.
"It looks like he got away."
It did look that way, but I remembered what Max had said. Deceit and trickery. Was there any way to know if Max had planned for this to happen? I couldn't rule it out. At least I knew he was still out there, somewhere.
The e-mail notification popped up again. Brian switched over to it.
"There's your number," he said.
"Do you have a cell I can borrow?" I asked.
He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. I dialed the number, trying to calm my nerves as I did. I was sure this was probably a bad idea, but I was out of alternatives.
It rang three times before it was picked up.
"Hello?"
It was the voice I had been hoping for, and dreading.
"Hello, Sarah? This is Rebecca Solen."