CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“What you want to do is hit them just before closing time,” Tommy said. “That's when they've got the most cash. It's easier to escape late at night, too. No traffic.”

“That's when they expect to get hit,” said Booker, one of the two guys with whom Tommy was drinking. They were at Jack's Spot, a filthy little bar with several pool tables and extremely cheap beer. “You want to go sometime they don't expect. Like first thing in the morning.”

“Yeah, he's got a point.” Booker's friend Chucky nodded. “They don't expect shit right when they open.”

“They don't have any goddamn money yet, either.” Tommy jabbed his index and middle fingers at Booker. The Marlboro between his fingertips had grown a long ash. “You have to let them make sales all day so the cash register's stuffed.”

“Ought to hit a Korean place, too, 'cause they can't tell white people apart,” Chucky said. He was about three hundred pounds, close to thirty years old, with a kerchief featured flaming skulls tied onto his head. Chucky scratched his beard stubble reflectively. “Or an Arab. Nobody gives a shit about Arabs, right?”

“I'm not robbing some Arab,” Booker said. “They'll come back and suicide-bomb your ass.”

“Forget it.” Tommy downed his plastic cup of Milwaukee's Best. “I'm not doing a job with anybody as stupid as you two.”

“Stupid?” Booker slammed his cup on the table, next to the empty pitcher. “Let's go outside and see who's stupid.”

“You go first, I'll be there in a minute,” Tommy said.

“You'll be there now!” Booker shouted. Heads turned. The crowd was looking to see if there was a fight, and which guy they'd bet on if one broke out.

“Fuck off, Booker,” Tommy said. “You're shitfaced. You'll probably pass out before you make it to the sidewalk.”

Chucky laughed, and Booker bared his teeth at him.

The crowd grew quiet. Tommy looked up and saw four uniformed cops entering the front door. One of them pointed at Tommy, and the other nodded. Tommy stood up and glanced toward the restrooms, where the rear exit was located. Two more cops were coming in from that direction.

“Shit,” Tommy whispered.

“You! Stay right there!” one of the cops shouted at Tommy. “Keep your hands where we can see them.”

“Well, boys,” Tommy said to Booker and Chucky. “Playtime's over. It's been nice drinking with you scumbags.” He took a deep breath.

“You calling me a scumbag now?” Booker stepped closer, swerving unsteadily on his feet. He raised two meaty fists.

Tommy exhaled a cloud of blood-red spores that filled the room like mist. People stood up, shouting, as spores landed on their skin and dissolved, and more spores disappeared into their mouths and noses.

“Look!” Tommy shouted, pointing at the four police officers. “Terrorists! Terrorists disguised as cops! They're going to kill us all!”

The crowd turned on the police, looking frightened.

“We can stop them if we all work together!” Tommy yelled. “Let's get these fuckers!”

The mob closed in around the police. At the same time, the police turned on each other, beating each other with fists and nightsticks. Then the mob fell on the police, punching and kicking at them from every side.

Tommy made his way through the small riot to the door, dodging flying bottles and broken table legs. He stepped out into the street, put on his sunglasses, and walked to his motorcycle.

He knew what had happened. Tommy was too small-time to bring on a nationwide manhunt. Plus, he'd been careful, staying at Esmeralda's mother's apartment, never telling anyone his legal name, Thomas White.

Except for Esmeralda. And Esmeralda wasn't really Esmeralda, and she never had been since she let Ashleigh take over her body in Charleston. The entire time they'd been in California, it was Ashleigh, tricking him.

Tommy had watched Ashleigh manipulate, use and discard one person after another. She'd pretended to be Jenny's friend in order to control her. She'd taken over Esmeralda's body, and she was never giving it back—a very sneaky kind of murder.

Now it was Tommy's turn to get screwed by Ashleigh. She was clearly done with him, had been done with him for weeks. Too wrapped up in her new politician boyfriend. Too concerned that it might “look bad” if she were seen with a lowlife like Tommy. Now she was kicking him out of her life the easiest way she could. As wicked as she was, Tommy hadn't expected Ashleigh to narc him out to the cops. He'd only broken out of prison in the first place because of her ghost harassing him in his dreams. Now she wanted him back there, out of her way.

Tommy pulled onto the freeway and gunned the engine. He wasn't going to get out of her way at all. He knew well enough what Ashleigh was after, and where he would eventually find her. He even knew the fastest way from Los Angeles to South Carolina.

***

Alexander glanced out the side at the Great Plains sprawling below in vast green and tan squares. It was a clear day, great for flying.

Ashleigh was beside him, catching up on the newspapers she'd downloaded to her Kindle before takeoff. She was keeping tabs on Eddie Brazer's campaign. It looked like the love-charmer intended to make the congressman her pet and her stepping stone, and naturally she was doing a fine job of it. He hated the charmer, but he respected her. You had to respect her, or you could find yourself with a poisoned dagger in your back.

For that matter, the plague-bringer had stabbed Alexander in the back, too, after he'd gone to all the trouble of saving her life and then waking her up to her own past lives. That had been a complicated, multi-stage process, which required her to get in touch with her power, just when she'd decided to never use it again.

So, step one had been to make Jenny use the pox in self-defense. He'd arranged that by having Jenny and Kisa attacked in the city, by a couple of toughs who had been instructed to kidnap and rape the two girls. They'd been paid a lump of cash and told that the attack was meant to be a “message” to somebody. Alexander had assumed that nobody would get too far with trying that on Jenny. And it had worked.

Then, step two: have Jenny kill someone out of vengeance. That was easy enough. Alexander had Manuel kill Kisa and her brothers, and one of Manuel's people picked up a random man from the barrio to blame for the crime. Jenny had killed an innocent man, but the most important thing was that she'd done it out of anger instead of self-defense, putting her in closer touch with who she really was.

Step three: once she was loosened up, blow the doors off her mind with the psychedelics. The more memories she could access, the more like herself she could become.

Step four had been to have Jenny kill someone in cold blood. Unfortunately, the healer had acted with greater speed, intelligence, and resourcefulness than Alexander had predicted, so Alexander had attempted to combine step four with step five: have Jenny kill the healer.

If she'd done that, it would have severed Jenny and Seth's connection for this lifetime. More importantly, it would drive a wedge through the strange, eerily human relationship they'd been forming in their last few lives. They'd spent so long incarnating as humans that they were close to going native, letting their humanity overtake their ancient nature. They were like wolves who'd stalked the sheep until they believed they were sheep themselves.

Instead, she'd betrayed him and left with the healer. For that, he would have to make her suffer. Alexander smiled.

“What are you thinking about?” Ashleigh asked. She was giving him a coy, flirty smile, which he knew better than to trust. He kept his gloves on for a reason.

“How much I look forward to destroying those two,” Alexander said. “I like your ideas. We're going to use them.”

“See, I can be useful.” She leaned closer to him and laid her hand on his arm, her smile faltering a little when she realized it was completely covered by his jacket sleeve. “We would make a powerful alliance, wouldn't we, Alexander? The world would be ours.”

“We've tried it before, my sweet little charmer,” he said. “We always end up trying to kill each other.”

“We could try it again.” She gave him another coy smile, and now he felt a sudden surge of desire for her. He hated her. She fascinated him. He wanted to take her to bed, dominate the powerful little bitch, but he'd already made the mistake of trying that in past lives. Not this time.

“We'll see,” Alexander said, and she pulled back, frowning and staring at him.