Deja Who Read online

  And that was the thing. He was dying to meet her, dying to talk to her, dying to ask a hundred questions, dying see if he could get her to flash the grin that was rare as rubies and lit up her face, turning plain to pretty and, when the grin widened, pretty to extraordinary.

  He was supposed to watch her, he was supposed to take the money and keep an eye, and not for the first time he was very, very glad Insighters couldn’t see him. Because if Leah could see him, she’d see all the way into him, and how do you defend against that? With the disaster of his father’s life as the gateway to a chaotic childhood and his cousin’s Insighter entitlement, all that as the background in a world where just about everyone knew they’d lived before, his type was ignored and overlooked and invisible.

  Thank God.

  FIVE

  “Brought you more of that chicken.” Leah held out the bag, and Cat set aside the newspaper and took it with the delicate greed of her namesake.

  “Thanks. Tough one?”

  Cat had recognized the detectives at once; fortunately, Chart #6116 had been easier to fool. “Not really.”

  “S’why you take all those judo lessons, right? Sometimes they don’t like what you tell ’em.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Judo, no. Aikido and Eskrima, yes. She carried an expandable baton in her purse and a balisong in her bra, which was fine, since on a good day she was maybe a thirty-four B. All that in this lifetime’s attempt to avoid being murdered again. Eskrima had been the easy one; in one of her former lives she’d been expert. Relearning hadn’t been akin to relearning to bike-ride, but still, she’d been able to shave a couple of years off her training.

  Enh. Old habits. No need to burden Cat with any of it.

  “So check this,” Cat began, nodding at the newspaper neatly folded beside her on the bench. “They got enough votes to move the graveyard.”

  “Yeah, I know, and a day before you did.”

  “Don’t start,” Cat warned.

  “Nobody reads newspapers made from paper anymore. It’s so much quicker, more accurate, and better for the environment to just—”

  “Oh, Jesus spare me from a grumpy eco-terrorist.”

  “I am not! Well, yes, I’m grumpy, but the rest of it isn’t true. And you know the library lets you have online access whenever you want—”

  “Do not get me started on libraries!”

  Ah. Shit. That was a definite lapse on Leah’s part. It was never good to bring up anyone’s wildly passionate/destructive love/hate relationship, especially one as tempestuous as Cat’s with libraries. “Sorry. Sorry.”

  “And it isn’t about getting news.” At Leah’s pointed silence, Cat elaborated. “It’s not entirely about getting news. Newspaper is good for so much stuff! Insulation, windows—”

  “Windows?”

  “Yeah, it gets your windows wicked clean.”

  “Do you have windows? Somewhere?”

  “You can use it for kitty litter, you can stick a sheet on your windshield and it won’t get all iced up . . .”

  “You don’t have a car.”

  “And if you do the same thing in summer your car doesn’t get so hot.”

  “You don’t have a car.”

  “Eventually, of course, it’s great for compost.”

  Leah blinked and considered her response. Finally: “You don’t have a compost pile.”

  “Who said it was for my compost pile?”

  “You’re like those people who clip coupons for cat food even though you don’t have a cat.”

  “Yeah, but everyone else does. Seems like it, anyway. And when they need a coupon, I’ll be ready.” She took a long look at Leah’s expression and added, “Maybe we should let the newspaper war go for a few more days.”

  “I’m on board.”

  “Subject change?”

  “Agreed. It’s so sad,” Leah said, looking into her sack. “I pack my own lunch, but I keep hoping to be surprised. But no. It’s exactly what I packed for myself. I don’t even like carrots.”

  “Not even a love note,” Cat teased.

  “No.” Leah unfolded the note she’d left for herself: don’t forget to get more milk and keep a sharp eye out for your killer and also your ass looks huge in those shorts. She looked down at herself. “I’m right. It does.”

  “Does not.”

  “No boobs, too much ass.”

  “Nope.” Cat had shamelessly read over her shoulder, and not for the first time. Cat was ten years older, twenty pounds heavier, and almost a foot taller. “You don’t have an ass to look bad. You’ve got nothin’ going on back there.”

  “Plaid. What was I thinking? Rodney Dangerfield and circus clowns, they can pull off plaid Bermudas. Sometimes I wish my mystery man would hurry up and kill me again already.”

  “Yeah. Speaking of.” Cat peeked into the lunch bag, smiled at Leah, and pulled out a chocolate pudding cup. Then, horribly, she helped herself to Leah’s abandoned carrots and began dipping and eating. “You’ve had that guy sniffin’ around you for a few days now.”

  “Mmmm.” She couldn’t look at the other woman. Carrots on their own were dreadful enough. She didn’t think it was possible to ruin a Jell-O pudding cup. Wrong again, dolt. “He is definitely taking his time this life.” The quickest he’d ever killed her was when she was nineteen. The longest was this life—she had just turned twenty-six, and was thus far unperforated.

  “Can’t believe you just wanna let it happen. Whad’ya take all the classes for? Huh?”

  “The confrontation,” she corrected her. “That’s what I want to have happen. I’m tired of feeling him get close but not knowing if today’s the day. And he might not kill me this time. I’m supposed to keep learning, yes? Maybe in this life I have learned enough. Maybe I’ll kill him this time.” Wait. That didn’t sound like the lesson karma was trying to teach her . . .

  “Mmm, yeah, that’ll teach him.”

  “Well. It might.”

  “You couldn’t kill a tick.”

  “Could, too.” Lie. Leah always set them free, to the fury of whoever observed the behavior. Her mother used to burn them in ashtrays. Her mother burned everything but cigarettes in ashtrays. Ugh. Even a parasite did not deserve to be burned alive. “They are serving their function. They suck away at the lifeblood of various mammals which is what God made them for. Insert witty commentary on politicians and/or Hollywood agents here.”

  “Will not. Heard all the ‘all politicians are dirty har-har-har’ cracks I need. And you! Gettin’ too lazy to come up with your own jokes, hell with ya, you’re getting wicked lazy in your old age.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed our lunch today, Cat, but duty calls.”

  “You liar, you’ve got half an hour left. Listen, call the cops on that guy.”

  “To tell them that I have never actually caught him doing anything illegal but he might be killing me soon, so could they take a break from actual criminals and please arrest him on no charges?”

  “Cops do it all the time for Insighters.”

  “Cops do it sometimes for Insighters when they have more on the arrestee in question than I do.” For example: #6116. The cops had her on attempted assault. They could search her car now, her home, and her person based on what Leah had found out and what had happened in her office, legally taped and documented. Thanks to the Twenty-Eighth Amendment, and the waiver all her clients signed as a matter of course, Leah was not bound by confidentiality issues as a doctor or lawyer was. If anything, she was closer to a mandated reporter like a teacher or social worker: it was her duty to inform the state of potential homicidal shenanigans. Thus, anything they found in #6116’s car or home was now considered fruit of the poisoned tree. Beyond that, the police and the DA were on their own.

  You couldn’t arrest for murder someone who had killed in his last life. You c
ouldn’t bring a civil suit against such people, either. They could only be legally penalized for what they did this time around—and what a dark circus the legal system had been before that legislation passed! (It was still a dark circus, but perhaps not as dark.) But you could spot them, and watch them. You could set traps for them. Sometimes, with people like #6116, it was easy. Sometimes, as in the case of Leah’s many-time murderer, it was impossible.

  “If he would just kill me already, they could arrest him. What can he be waiting for?”

  “There’s something wrong with you,” Cat said without a trace of judgment, which was one of many reasons Leah ate lunch with her.

  “I’m an Insighter who hates Insight,” she agreed. She didn’t know what to do with that; she’d never known. She didn’t know whom to ask, either: every one of her colleagues felt the same. “It’s such a silly trope, too: starry-eyed newbie ready to change the world slowly turns into jaded jerk. Boring-boring-boring.”

  “In plaid, even,” Cat added around a mouthful of chicken tender. “You look like Rodney Dangerfield with boobs.”

  “Yikes.” So: disillusioned, and trapped in a lame trope. In plaid. Ugh.

  “Can’t you ever just . . . you know . . . turn it off?”

  Leah shrugged. There was no use telling Cat that every time they ate lunch together, she saw another sliver of Cat’s past lives. Enough lunches and the sliver eventually formed the full stake. Over the weeks and months she saw Cat’s father beat her mother until the police came again, and did nothing again. She saw Cat in an earlier life, as a child trying to claw his way past a locked door until his fingers were red to the wrists. Went back further and saw Cat as a grown man crying over two fresh cemetery graves; the vision was so clear she could make out the years: 1867–1875. Twins? Dead sons, daughters? Went back further and saw Cat alone, alone, alone.

  Can I turn off being five-foot-five? With no ass and no chest and (almost) no friends? Can I turn off having brown hair? Wait, bad example . . . Garnier alone has eighty shades. “No,” she said after a while. “I can’t just turn it off. I can’t turn off being right-handed and deeply distrustful of mothers, either.”

  “You’re a sad kiddo.”

  “Almost always when I watch you eat,” she agreed, but was warmed by Cat’s sympathy. She might only have one friend, but Cat was a good one, not least because she looked homeless and wasn’t, seemed unbalanced and wasn’t, sounded indifferent and wasn’t. Leah liked dichotomy; Cat more or less defined the term.

  “Speaking of eating,” the other woman began, “you don’t have to bring me lunch every day. I’ve got mon—”

  “Shut up about giving me money, we’ve been over this.” In every lifetime, Cat died alone. In every lifetime, Leah had a roof over her head and never missed a meal. God was a lunatic who needed to be beaten to death. “Don’t talk about money again.”

  “I’ll talk about what I like, this is a public park.”

  “As long as it’s not about money.”

  Cat just stared at her and masticated carrots and pudding.

  “Another change of subject?” Leah suggested. The inviolable law of their friendship: either party could suggest or demand a subject change at any time. It’s like our version of a safe word, she thought, and had to smile.

  “Quit leaving yourself mean notes.”

  Leah shrugged. “I decline.”

  “Or I won’t eat your carrots tomorrow and you can just worry about them being in your lunch all day.”

  “. . . deal,” she finally said. Outwitted again by a woman who uses last year’s swimsuit as underwear.

  “Ha! Sucker.”

  They finished their meals in the closest thing to a comfortable silence Leah knew. That, too, could be considered weird or problematic if she thought about it.

  So she didn’t.

  SIX

  Archer hurried to intercept Leah. This was dumb, this was crazy, this was not what his client was paying him to do. This was the sort of shit that led to his father being locked up.

  Watch and report, he had been told. And he’d been happy to take the money. Then.

  “I have to know what she’s doing,” the client had commanded. “It’s the only way to know when the time is right.”

  “Okey-dokey.” Being in a—there was no other word for it—lair made Archer want to check himself for ticks. Stacks of People and Us and Entertainment Weekly. Dust. Packets and packets of Sugarless Bubble Yum and packs of orange Tic Tacs filled clean ashtrays. And everywhere, pictures of Leah. Worse, pictures of his client. Worst of all were the pictures of Leah and his client together, feigning humanity while Leah grimaced at the camera in a variety of humiliating costumes. “What did you do to her?”

  “That’s none of your concern. And she did it to me. Now. The time is almost right.”

  “Are you trying to sound like a comic book villain on purpose?”

  His client hissed at him like an irked housecat. “You will watch, and you will inform.”

  “A Nazi comic book villain?”

  “Then, when I’m ready—”

  “—you’ll spirit her to your lair and make her your bride?”

  “That’s disgusting.” For a creature who lived in a mansion out of Great Expectations and paid strange men to follow cute Insighters, the client was ironically judgmental. “I would never. You have a filthy imagination. Now get to work, but use your imagination on your own time. Everything you need to know is in that folder.”

  “Not everything,” Archer had replied, taking another long look around the mansion of horrors. Who knew such monstrosities lurked in Chicago’s Lincoln Park? “Are you dressed as a birthday cake in this picture? Why is Leah dressed as the candle? And what’s the dog for? Where is this taking place? I have questions about at least ten other pics, too. I’d like to take pics of your pics and take them home and sort of fret over them. And when I’m done with the questions about the pics, I have questions about your house, starting with the fish. And when I’m done with the questions about your house and your fish, I—”

  “Get to work!”

  “Please,” he begged. “Just one question. Any question. What’s with the gum and Tic Tacs? At least tell me that much. You eat them together, don’t you? And then spit the Tic Tacs–y wads of gum into the ashtrays? Because I can’t help noticing there’s no cigarette smoke in here. Or cigarettes. Or things to light cigarettes. So please, in the name of God, tell me, what are the ashtrays for?”

  “Out! Go work for a living, stupid boy!”

  “Don’t call me a boy!” Anyway, off he went, and after days of lurking it was time to warn Leah. Which probably broke some sort of Pee Eye rule: don’t rat out your client to the person you’re following for said client. Yeah, that was probably definitely a rule. Oh, well. He could always get another job. And maybe Leah would be glad. Maybe she’d agree to grab a coffee. She could bring her homeless friend if it made her feel safer. She could bring five homeless friends, a dozen, and guns, too, if that would help her feel safe, and/or knives. He just wanted to see if he could get her to smile.

  She hardly ever smiled. Archer thought that was the saddest thing ever, and he’d been surrounded by bubble gum and dusty packets of Tic Tacs and squeaky-clean ashtrays in a cigarette-free house full of fetish photography. Although perhaps that was more creepy than sad.

  “Excuse me,” he called, hurrying to catch up. She was done eating, she didn’t want to go back to work, it was broad daylight, so she maybe wouldn’t spook . . . it was as good a time as any, and maybe better than most.

  “Finally,” she said, which should have scared him but didn’t. (He’d have time to ponder all that should have terrified him, and didn’t, while being stitched up in the ER with a local that should have dulled the pain, and didn’t, while being scolded by Leah who should have been contrite, and wasn’t.)

 
“Yeah, hi. Listen, you don’t know me.” She’d allowed him to catch up to her, had stepped off the sidewalk and into the little alley between her office building and the CVS. The alley was well-lit and clean and not remotely like the kind Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed in. Comics had given alleys such a bad rep.

  He had hopes she’d led him off the street because she wanted to talk to him in private, and tried not to pant. She could really move when she wanted; it had been tricky keeping an eye on her while keeping up with her. God, she was so cute! Even her scowl was cute. And she was definitely scowling at him. Probably thinks I want to sell her something. “Pardon me, miss, are you satisfied with your life insurance coverage?” Could not quit part-time job number nineteen fast enough.

  He liked her dark hair, falling like a sleek curtain to her shoulders. He liked her dark eyes, big and wide-set, like a sexy hammerhead shark.

  Sexy hammerhead shark? Dude.

  Yep; he had it bad, and that was fine. His last serious girlfriend was over a year ago, and he hadn’t gotten laid in eight months, a boss-with-benefits thing at part-time job number twenty. He hoped Leah would help him break his dry spell. Lately he’d been making excuses to himself to not masturbate.

  Not tonight, right hand, I’ve got a headache.

  You’ve always got a headache! When was the last time you took me out?

  I take you out all the time! You’re a part of me!

  Don’t you try to sweet talk me. You’re seeing that whore of a left hand, aren’t you? AREN’T YOU?