Devil's Bargain

“Then I guess the fact that Wendy’s dead in the morgue is proof that you’re all insane,” Jazz said grimly. Lucia, next to her, was oddly quiet, watching Laskins. “If we’re so important, why the hell haven’t we made any difference? You know what? This is useless. You’re all crazy, and I’m out of here.”

She shoved on Borden, trying to get him to move, but he was more solid than he looked, and she was hampered by the close confines of the car. He didn’t look at her.

“You have made a difference,” Borden said. “Jazz, listen to me. I know what we’re saying sounds crazy—”

“Let me out!” Jazz was half-standing now, furious, reaching over Borden for the door handle. He grabbed her hand and held it, trying to get her to look at him; she flatly refused. She was shaking all over. “Dammit, I’m done, do you hear me? Let me the hell out now!”

But it wasn’t Borden who stopped her from getting out, it was Lucia. Lucia’s quiet voice, u

“If you hadn’t been there, yes. At least, we think so.”

“So we put the chaos in chaos theory,” Lucia said, leaning forward, hands clasped between her knees. “It’s like chess, isn’t it. You move us like pieces on a board. We’re pawns, protecting your bishops and knights and castles.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Laskins grunted in reply. “Pawns don’t rate this explanation. And although Wendy Blankenship had the potential to become important, she wasn’t a castle.”

“If you’re any good at chess,” Lucia continued, “then you know there are a limited number of outcomes when you have three pieces interacting—especially if the point is to take one of the pieces off the board. Why didn’t you warn Jazz and let her save Wendy?”

“None of this is an exact science, Ms. Garza. Every action, by any of the Actors at the moment, can turn events. We can’t warn against specifics, because we only are sure of generalities. We knew Ms. Blankenship was marked for death, and indeed, we couldn’t find an outcome in which she didn’t die. But we chose the moment most likely to make a difference. If events had gone a bit differently, if their Actor had made an error, Jazz would have saved her. But sometimes it isn’t possible.” To his credit, Laskins sounded almost as if he gave a damn. “Chess is my specialty. And the focus is not upon pieces that will inevitably be lost, but on making that sacrifice meaningful.”

“You used Jazz to take out the killer, after the fact.”

“We put her in a position where she could provide the police with a vital lead, yes, without placing her in danger. She’s already taken far too many risks.”

Jazz parted her lips to fire off a response, but nothing came to mind.

“As I said,” Laskins continued, “chess is my specialty. And while this isn’t the outcome we’d hoped for, it’s far from a lost cause. Jazz can safely come forward with her information, and we achieve our goal in a different way. We stopped a serial killer, who will shortly leave the chess-board himself, and we did it with only inevitable losses. It isn’t always about bullets and bombs, you know, Ms. Garza. Or lying.”

There must have been a hidden message in that. Jazz saw a flicker in Lucia’s eyes, a downright flinch in her body language. “If you’re playing chess,” Lucia asked, “who do you play against? And don’t tell me God. I don’t believe you’re quite that good.”

The privacy screen between them and the driver suddenly eased down with a whir, and their ex-Marine chauffeur turned to look back at them. “Excuse me,” he said, “but you wanted to know when the other car left. It’s leaving now.”

“Thank you, Charles,” Laskins said, and checked his expensive watch. “Right on time. I’m sorry, Ms. Garza, but we’ll have to cut this meeting short. Some things simply won’t be postponed, as I’m sure you can appreciate.”

“Answer my question first,” she said.

“No.” Laskins nodded toward the door. “Charles, if you please—”

Lucia, without seeming to be in a big hurry or doing anything important, reached around and pulled out her gun. She pointed it directly at Laskins. “Nothing personal,” she said, with a hint of a smile, “but I’d really like an answer to my question first. And Charles, don’t do anything foolish, please, because two of us shooting in here really won’t help the situation.”

Laskins threw out a warning hand to the Marine. “Interesting. There was only a very small chance that you would do that, you know.”

“Unless you’re wearing bulletproof armor under that Hugo Boss suit, I don’t think that means much,” Lucia replied. They exchanged cool little smiles. “How is it done?”

“How is what done?”

Jazz jumped in. “The fortune-telling. What do you have? Tarot cards? A crystal ball? Twelve thousand monkeys with calculators?” She knew she sounded sarcastic, and didn’t give a damn. This was scary. The fact that Lucia was buying it downright terrified her.

Laskins gave her a narrow, sour smile. “No. We have a few people who do these things—freaks of nature, if you will. But the rest of us apply science, not superstition. It might surprise you to know there are solid, scientific methods that can be applied to the problem of alternative realities. String theory, for instance.”

“You have a psychic,” Lucia cut in. “Right?”

“Yes. You could say that.”

“Then why all the chess?”

“This is what happens,” Laskins said irritably, “when you have two psychics who both want to win.”

Lucia glanced aside at Jazz, who hadn’t quite figured out a move, either. At least, nothing that wouldn’t compromise Lucia’s. “You believing anything he’s told us?” she asked.

“I believe that I’m going to report seeing Wendy Blankenship buzz herself into that apartment,” Jazz said. “I would have done that, anyway.”

“You’ll need a cover story. Some reason you were on the street and saw her,” Lucia replied. “I can handle that part, back-engineer an assignment you were on. It’ll check out.” She transferred attention back to the two facing them—not, Jazz suspected, that it had ever really wandered. “Mr. Laskins, you have ten seconds to answer me before my partner and I exit this vehicle and your plans, forever. If you know anything at all about me, you know that I mean what I’m saying.”

“Yes,” Laskins said sourly. “I know you mean it, Garza. But use your common sense. The Cross Society is giving you information, and you’re acting upon it. Do you really think you can just walk away?”

“Oh, yes, I think I can. And should.”

“From the moment our psychic—”

“Max Simms?” Jazz asked. Laskins cut his steely Paul Newman stare her way.

“Yes, fine, Max Simms. From the moment you appeared in his visions, you became important. We got to you first. That made you targets—low-priority, at present—for the opposition. You will be targets for as long as you continue to be Actors.”

“How do we quit?”

It was a perfectly good question, but Laskins’s smile got wider. “You can’t, Ms. Callender. Not of your own accord. For as long as the greater forces of the universe—God, the devil, or chance—deem you an Actor, you will remain one. But don’t worry. Eventually, it will be over.”

“Yeah,” Jazz snapped. “Eventually we all die.”

Laskins didn’t bother to deny it.

Laskins said, “We’ve reached a hard stop, Ms. Garza. You can either shoot me, which would have a less than pleasant outcome for both you and your partner, or you can exit the limousine and refuse to take any further support or information from us. But if you do that, you cut yourselves off. You’ve been marked as Leads, both of you. What you do matters. Everything you do matters, one way or another. You’re targets, as surely as Wendy Blankenship, and you’ll end up just the same if we don’t help you.”

“I don’t like threats.” Lucia almost purred it.