29. Clark
TWENTY-NINE
CLARK
We landed with a thump, and I grabbed their hand, and they gave me that endearing crooked smile.
But it fell off their face fast, as they replied, “Don’t assume anything.
Lesson number one in your new life as a psychic.
Beings from other realms—beyond the grave, if you want to be theatrical about it—may still have intense power.
I mean, look at Thomas. He maintains that little stretch of world he’s in with his own power.
He’s like a battery that keeps the whole joint running.
Did you know that?” Olly tightened their flannel hospital sheets around her, and I shouted out the helicopter door to Robert,
“Is that flashy car for us? Olly’s cold, I want to get her inside.
” Robert replied by waving his arm in the universal ‘come here’ gesture, so I took off my helmet, and climbed out of the helicopter.
I turned to reach Olly and help them down, and slowly, they were on the ground beside me.
I took their strength as a good sign, and held their hand, gently stroking their arm as we walked to the black car.
I felt some discomfort that I knew wasn’t mine, so I looked at them and said, without really thinking about it, “Is this okay?”
I heard a curt laugh, and then a “Do you mean you touching me after knowing all you’ve done, or talking to me mind to mind?” All I’ve done? That can’t be good.
“Um...both?”
“It’s not good, Clark. When we get settled inside, and I have had a shower, my own clothing, and some food in me, we are going to have ourselves a cozy fireside chat.
While we are at the hospital, waiting for our turn.
We’ll find a quiet corner somewhere and discuss the future of your new role in The Organization. ”
I refused to hang my head in shame, but I wanted to, so badly. “I’m sorry, Olly. A lot happened in four months, and I tried my best to—” They stopped at the car, but didn’t get in.
“Oh, I know, Clark. You always try your best. But it doesn’t follow that the best outcome naturally occurs.
I feel frustration, anger, even spite. And the worst of it is, it’s not your fault, really, so I can’t take it out on you, and the man who did this, all of these things to all of us, is dead so I can’t even have the pleasure of watching him die!
” One hand of theirs covered their mouth, and the other slapped the top of the car.
“You can’t mean that, Olly. You know there’s no pleasure in seeing death.”
They opened the car and practically threw themselves into the backseat, mindful of that huge belly that consistently surprised me. They weren’t having twins, were they?
“No, no twins, just Beatrice is turning out to be a rather large Bumblebee, and I haven’t been used to walking around in quite some time. Get in so we can go home?”
They didn’t have to ask me twice.
We rode in silence to our apartments, me doing my darndest to understand Olly’s hostility toward me, and to think of what more I could have done to try to locate her.
No, not ‘her,’ them. I know it wasn’t my place to out Olly under any circumstances, but in my own thoughts at least, and when it was just the two of us, I could damn well learn to use their proper pronoun.
After all, I loved them, and they surely would see that again.
And I just hoped that they would understand that no hospital was going to disclose whether or not they had a patient of a certain name without me being on their list of who it was legal to give out information to.
And that’s if I even had access to a phone, which I did not during my captivity in the fancypants Westmount chateau.
Olly, from what thoughts were leaking around them, and from the bruising I could see, combined with the imagined bruising I could not see, had been living in hell.
“What would you like to do?” I asked her, uncertainty clouding my tone and making me sound like a lost child.
“I want to go up to my apartment, assuming it is still my apartment, and have a bath, slide on a flannel nightgown, and get some sleep. But I can’t do that, now, can I...
?” At this point, they said something else, but it was lost to me, and they had leaned over and put their head on my shoulder and a hand on my chest. They swatted at my arm playfully, or with as much playfulness as they could possibly muster under the circumstances.
“I was saying, I can’t go up and relax, because I need to get my ass to the hospital.
Find out what was being pumped into my body and if Bea is still...
Clark, I haven’t felt her move in a while. ”
“Robert,” I said in a low tone. He stepped over toward the open door on my side of the car and asked what he could do. “Are our apartments still ours? And if they are, have they been bugged to the nines? Answer me honestly, because I can tell when someone is lying to me now.”
Robert looked uncomfortable as he lowered his shoulders a bit and adjusted where his glasses were sitting on his face.
“Your apartments appear untouched from when you last lived in them. The security team did add cameras. I am assuming you want to have them all accounted for and removed? Even though their purpose was to make your homes safer?”
I felt heat from anger rising to my face and knew that I would be an unflattering shade of red at the moment.
“Their purpose was to spy on us, and you know it, Robert. I want the work orders for the company to see how many cameras and what else they were contracted to do, and I want every camera in a box and off the property before I climb into bed tonight. Considering how tired I am, I’m giving you two hours. ”
“Two hours! Don’t be ridiculous, I can’t even get the team out here in that amount of time.”
“Then I suggest you find a way to manipulate time and space and bend it to your will, because you have two hours, and the clock is ticking.” Robert reached out, thrust something into my hand, and then ran off, his cell phone already glued to his ear.
I opened my hand to find a copy of his business card, and on the reverse was written, “Thursday, 1 p.m. Jeff’s boardroom. Invitees only for reading of the Will of Edward Evans.”
Lovely. Just where I wanted to be. I wondered if I could bring Olly, and if they’d want to go. “Hey, Olly?” I said fairly quietly, and kissed their cheek. “Would you like a bit of help getting settled in at your place? You’ve been through a lot tonight, and I wouldn’t mind helping you.”
“I’m still mad at you,” they replied, even though I wasn’t entirely sure why.
Quick as a lightning bolt, images of them in solitary confinement ran through my head, like a trailer for the world’s worst movie, right up to them being chemically restrained, more so the larger they grew.I reached out my hand that wasn’t trapped under them, and placed it on their bump.
“If she’s hurt at all, I will never stop hunting down every person who was involved in the hierarchy of The Organization, even if it takes me the rest of my life. ”
She patted my hand. “I believe you. Now, let’s get this show on the road.
I want a bath like you cannot imagine, and I was just about to strongarm you into coming with me to the hospital to get me checked out.
And tomorrow, I need us to talk. There’s so much that I saw when I was in your mind, and I have... questions.”
“As long as you don’t hate me right now, I’m more than happy to answer any question you have, or let you go back in.
My feelings haven’t changed in the last four months.
If anything, I want you more. But I understand if you can’t reciprocate now, after everything that’s happened.
I promise not to pressure you. And I agree that we should talk about this tomorrow, after we’ve both had a chance to rest from the all-nighter we will probably have to spend at the hospital. ”
“Thank you.”
As soon as Olly had a bath and then a shower to sluice off the sweat and general yuckiness of being in bed for months in a hospital, with nothing but a bed bath to keep you relatively clean, they asked for help getting one of their maternity outfits on.
They had bought a few things in sizes ahead when they first had feelings about maybe keeping the baby, or we would have had to wait until stores opened tomorrow.
Hand in hand, we made our way to the front door, and Olly was insistent that we wouldn’t drive their red car.
They wouldn’t explain why, just that neither of us, and most definitely not Bea, were ever driving or being a passenger in a red car.
That something terrible was going to happen to someone we knew, sometime soon, and the car involved would become a red squashed-up accordion.
Therefore, it was my orange hybrid until Olly could arrange to have their red one traded in for black.
When I suggested just repainting theirs, they shook their head.
“The past would still be there, just buried under a thin layer of something else. It wouldn’t really be anything but the red car I bought not long ago. ”
I had lost track of the time, and just as Olly was slipping on some ballet flats, there was an urgent-sounding knock on the door.
An hour and forty-five minutes after our talk, a sweaty Robert thunked a box of cameras and spy equipment down on Olly’s kitchen counter.
“The original paperwork is in there, too, so you can count the equipment along with the work order for what was to be placed where.” He was panting, so I stood, walked over to the fridge, and told him to sit down at the breakfast bar while I grabbed him a drink.
I chose apple juice because there was plenty.
That was when I noticed Olly’s fridge was clean and full of new, healthy foods.
Someone had gone grocery shopping for her.