Impostor Syndrome Read online

  6

  It hit me right about then that as bad as this was, it could have been much, much worse. If not for my freak-out about peeing in Arcadia, I wouldn’t have cornered Tjuan, I wouldn’t have begged him to come to that first meeting, he wouldn’t have insisted on coming to this one, and he’d have been behind enemy lines at Valiant when the security photo hit the news. The cops would be on their way to Valiant right now.

  “We need to get Tjuan somewhere safe, as quickly as possible,” said Caryl.

  Alvin glanced at Dawnrowan, then back at Caryl, frowning. “Caryl, I know this is bad, but—”

  “We need to secure his safety before the police have their paperwork in order. This may be our last chance to move him unobserved.”

  Alvin frowned, scanned the article on his phone. “Says the victim’s expected to recover. Wouldn’t it be better to cooperate?”

  “If I even make it to the station alive,” Tjuan said, “I’d be looking at ten, fifteen years.”

  A moment’s silence.

  “Go,” Alvin said then. “Caryl, take him. I’ll stay with the king and queen and try and sort this out.”

  “I know where we can take him,” said Caryl, “but I need someone to walk in with him while I find parking.”

  “I’ll go,” I said.

  “No,” said Tjuan. “I don’t need a goddamned chaperone.”

  “I’m going,” I said. He didn’t argue further, but he didn’t look at me as we all headed out of the hotel to the SUV.

  I had no idea what to say to Tjuan; they don’t exactly make greeting cards for this sort of thing. I couldn’t address the horror of it, so I just kept circling back to the specifics, the facts.

  I was used to him calling shotgun, but this time he got in the back. Lay down in the back. My stomach churned, and I got in beside him, nudging his legs. “Sit up,” I said. “Let’s not get pulled over because someone isn’t wearing a seat belt.”

  After a moment’s hesitation he did as I said, but still didn’t look at me.

  “Was it you?” I asked after I’d closed the door.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Tjuan, I’m not being unreasonable, asking this of someone who has been repeatedly possessed by evil spirits. If you did it, would you even remember?”

  “You just said I was at the Residence.”

  “Right. They’re sure this happened at noon on Saturday?”

  “That’s what the news said.”

  “So what does the law do when a man is in two places at once?”

  “They assume the camera and the victim are telling the truth, and the perp and his crazy friends are lying.”

  My gut churned harder.

  Tjuan’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it; I saw Naderi’s name. He put it away.

  “Then how did this happen?” I asked him.

  “Not really on my mind right now. Caryl, where are we going?”

  “La Brea and Washington,” she said. Elliott was still apparently on duty. “Abigail’s husband owns and runs a motel near there.”

  “Who is Abigail?” I asked.

  “The older woman at Residence One.”

  “Creepy lady, white hair? I remember her. She hates me. Has Tourette’s or something.”

  “Severe paranoid schizophrenia combined with Alzheimer’s dementia; medications can only do so much for her at this point. She was once one of our finest agents, and her husband, though estranged, still lends us aid on occasion.”

  There was a soft purring sound, and Caryl slipped her phone from her pocket. I looked over her shoulder, saw it was Naderi again. Like Tjuan, Caryl ignored it.

  “Magic,” I said, my brain finally snapping into gear. “This is some kind of fucked-up magic. Winterglass and Shiverlash both warned us. Belinda made this happen somehow; it’s got her stench all over it.”

  “Let’s not leap to conclusions,” said Caryl. “Once Tjuan is safe, we can decide how to proceed. Right now I need to focus on watching for police cars.”

  “Oh Jesus,” I said, eyes filling with tears. “What happens if one of them stops us? Are we accessories or something?”

  “I told you not to get in the fucking car,” said Tjuan. “So shut the fuck up if all you’re worried about is your white ass.”

  I couldn’t find enough air; I was breathing like I’d run up a hill. “How is this about me being white?”

  “Caryl,” said Tjuan, “stop the fucking car so she can get out and call herself an Uber. My temper is not going to hold for this shit right now.”

  “We’re nearly there,” said Caryl. “Millie, in the meantime, can you do something for me?”

  “Yes, anything! I don’t know what to do!”

  “I need you to remain absolutely, positively, completely silent unless I specifically ask you to speak.”

  I sank back against the seat, arms wrapped around myself, my dysphoria pumping my brain full of vicious inner monologue. I shouldn’t have gotten into the car; he was right. I was an idiot to think he and I were friends, would ever be friends. We couldn’t be. I could never be anything but white. He hated me, everyone hated me, I was useless, what if I just opened the car door and threw myself into traffic—

  I clenched my fists to keep from hitting myself in the head like a crazy person with Tjuan sitting right there.

  Fuck, Jesus, Millie, get ahold of yourself.

  My phone buzzed. Naderi was trying me, now. Some malicious, dysphoric impulse made me show the screen to Tjuan before putting it back in my pocket.

  “I need to get out of town altogether,” said Tjuan.

  “If we leave the perimeter,” said Caryl, “Barker can track you. If Millie is correct, and Belinda is targeting you for some reason, we’d be playing directly into her hands.”

  There was a whole row of motels on Washington between La Brea and Redondo, and none of them looked particularly promising. Sun-faded signs boasted COLOR TV and AIR CONDITION; the street-facing windows were guarded by an impenetrable fishnet of wrought iron. There were only a few spots where narrow apertures led traffic into motel courtyards; Caryl slowed the SUV near one of them. The parking lot was tiny and full, as all parking lots in central Los Angeles tend to be.

  “Millie, go in with Tjuan. Go straight to the office and speak to Gary. Do not act nervous or hurried, but do not linger long enough to let anyone get a good look. I shall try to find a place to park and join you shortly.”

  It’s amazing how hard it is to appear casual and inconspicuous when a man’s life might depend on it. I tried to match Tjuan’s pace, kept my mouth shut, walked at his side toward the little door with the neon OFFICE sign. The cracked pavement seemed to stretch for a mile and a half; beads of sweat appeared on my forehead despite the chill.

  After what felt like a week, we walked through the door of the office, Tjuan first, and approached the old black man doing sudoku behind the desk.

  He looked up, all bristling brows and crooked nose.

  “Gary?” I said.

  “Do I know you?”

  “We’re . . . friends of Caryl’s.” It occurred to me that Caryl hadn’t told me how much this guy knew. I had no idea what I was allowed to say.

  “Carol?” he said. “Carol who?”

  “Caryl Vallo.”

  Gary continued to stare at me blankly. This was not going as well as I’d hoped.

  “Arcadia,” Tjuan supplied tensely.

  Gary stared at Tjuan for three seconds, then made a sharp ahh sound, wiry brows climbing toward his hairline.

  “Martin’s little girl!” Gary said. “Right, right. What’s the Project need with me?”

  “A room,” I said. “For Tjuan here. He needs a place to lie low.”

  “What did you do, boy?’ said Gary to Tjuan.

  I looked up at Tjuan and found myself surprised at how hostile his expression was. I’d assumed they’d be pals, which I had the good grace to feel embarrassed about after the fact.

  “Tjuan,” I said as gently as I coul
d, “we’re asking this man for a favor.”

  “If he assumes I’m guilty he’ll be on the phone to the cops the minute we turn our backs.”

  I looked at Gary, since Tjuan didn’t seem inclined to mount a defense. “He didn’t do anything,” I said. “But I don’t know how much I’m allowed to explain. It’s all going to get worked out, but we need time, and Tjuan’s picture is all over the Internet.”

  “Jesus,” said Gary. “You Arcadians are nothing but trouble, every goddamned time. Drove Abigail crazy.”

  “I don’t think schizophrenia works that way,” I said. He gave me a dangerous look, so I floundered for social graces. “Last time I saw her she seemed comfortable. She was gardening.”

  He waved it away. “Take room two. I’ll put it under José Rodriguez.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Nobody, that’s the point. I’m saying I’ve got a Mexican guy in room two and he paid me in cash and that’s all I know about it.”

  “Thank you so much, sir.”

  Gary stared at me.

  I smiled tentatively.

  “Mr. Rodriguez paid me in cash, I said.”

  “Oh!” I reflexively fumbled in my pockets, but I knew there were only about eleven dollars in there. “Tjuan do you—”

  “I don’t carry cash.”

  We waited awkwardly in the office for a while. Someone came to check out; Tjuan got really interested in the cheap sailboat painting on the wall while the gaunt, malodorous woman at the desk argued with Gary about the state of the soda machine. I stood with the scarred side of my face toward the wall, but even so, the woman eyed me with great suspicion on her way out, making my stomach flip.

  I was too memorable. I was going to lead the cops right here. I felt as though a huge, cold hand were closing around my lungs. I went to Tjuan, touched him lightly on the elbow. He drew away.

  “What do you need me to do?” I asked him softly.

  “To not ask me shit like that.”

  I clenched my jaw, turned away. Caryl, finally, entered the office.

  “I apologize for the delay,” she said. “Gary, I trust they filled you in on the situation?”

  “Not really,” he said, “but I get the gist. That’ll be a thousand dollars. Cash up front.”

  “What the—” I started.

  “I am happy to support a local business owner,” said Caryl as she produced a wad of hundred-dollar bills from the pocket of her blazer and began counting them out.

  I gaped.

  “Just know,” Caryl said tranquilly as she handed over ten of them, “that if my employee is harmed or harassed or even mildly inconvenienced during his stay here, I will sink this building into the foundations of the earth with you inside it.”

  Gary gave Caryl a once-over, seemed to decide she was sufficiently terrifying. “The boy will have no complaints,” he said. “Martin could tell you: I’m a greedy bastard, but I’m a man of my word.”

  Martin couldn’t tell him anything, as he’d been dead for five years, but Caryl didn’t seem inclined to correct him on this technicality.

  Room two was as far from the street as the rooms in this motel got, and it was clean, at least. The chestnut marbled bedspread was faded from too many washes but had no noticeable stains. The towels felt like sandpaper, but they were blindingly white, and a smell of bleach hung over the bathroom.

  “What are you doing in there?” said Tjuan. “Why are you touching my towels?”

  “I’m going to bring you some better ones.”

  “Stop it, all right? Settle down.”

  “I don’t know how else to help.”

  “Millie,” said Caryl in a warning tone. She stood leaning against the front door.

  “Just leave me alone,” said Tjuan. “Both of you, go back to the Residence. I’ll stay here with my door locked. Come back when everyone’s stopped panicking.”

  I squinted at him. “You’ll really—you’ll be okay here alone?”

  “I feel more alone with you here.”

  The blow felt physical; I couldn’t catch my breath for a minute. As soon as I could move, I nodded, turned, and left the room. Caryl was not far behind. I let her walk ahead of me, since she knew where the car was. Her next words took me by surprise.

  “It’s good to see how much Tjuan has come to trust you,” she said.

  “Are you out of your mind?” I said. “Did you not hear him in there?”

  “I heard him say ‘I feel.’ Out loud.”

  That shut me up.

  • • •

  Caryl decided to drop me off at the Residence before returning to the Omni, and frankly I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t going to be much use. My plan was to head straight up to my room and have a good long cry, but the second I walked in, there was Phil. His beard was looking a little scraggly. He’d been helping orient Alondra to L.A.’s procedures on top of the rest of his work, and the stress had not been kind to him.

  “Where’s Tjuan?” he asked.

  Shit.

  “Uh,” I said. “He’s . . . not coming back for a while.”

  “How late’s he gonna be? The senior agent needs to sign off on all these damned I-LA4s.”

  “Great news,” I said. “I think you’ve just been promoted.”

  “The fuck?”

  “Talk to Caryl,” I said. “I’m not touching this one.” And with that, I pushed past him to the kitchen, grabbed a Mountain Dew, and went back out to sit on the porch.

  “Hey, little spy,” I said to the crow as I settled into a rocking chair and opened the can with a f-chk!

  “Caw,” the crow said conversationally, and hopped right up onto the porch.

  I drew my arms in toward my body, glad I didn’t have anything tender at beak level for him to peck at. “You’ve crossed a line this time, Creepy. Back in the yard with you.”

  He went. The damn thing went, and I swear he was glaring at me. I drank my soda and glared back at him until a car arrived.

  Sleek and out of place, the black Mercedes purred its way into the cracked driveway. I knew that car. I remembered watching for it, like a dark omen, when I was working as Inaya’s assistant at Valiant.

  Parisa Naderi had arrived.

  7

  “Shit, shit, shit,” I said. I was already preparing my responses, weaving lies like a little spider.

  But I never got to use any of them. The moment Naderi stepped into the yard, the angry stripes of scar tissue on her right cheek lending a truly terrifying aspect to her scowl, Creepy the crow went apeshit.

  He launched himself into the air as though he had been faking a broken wing for three solid months and began flapping around Naderi’s head at such perilous proximity that his wings stirred the grizzled ringlets of her ponytail. She screamed and covered her head with her forearms, possibly having a PTSD flashback to my siren pal’s talons ripping her face open.

  “Stop that!” I yelled at the bird, but its attack had already begun to subside the moment she started screaming. That’s when I realized it wasn’t an attack.

  All at once I began to suspect that my reaction to the crow was not entirely paranoia. Its agitation, the way it continued to hop back and forth, its eyes more intent on Naderi than they had ever been on me. . . .

  “Brand?” said Naderi to the bird, her arms falling limp to her sides.

  “Brand,” I whispered. Her Echo. “What the actual fuck!”

  The crow launched itself into the air again, long enough to do a strange aerial happy-dance, but its injury must not have been entirely feigned, because it crashed back down to the ground in a heap.

  I watched Naderi’s anger drain away like bathwater; what was left looked strangely vulnerable.

  “I knew he wasn’t dead,” she said, and sank to her knees on the patchy grass in her A-line skirt and hose.

  For a moment it looked as though the crow was going to let her pick him up, but at the last minute he shied away.

  “Something’s wrong with him,”
she said, still kneeling. “Why won’t he let me touch him?”

  “That is the least of my questions,” I said, happy to skip the interrogation she’d undoubtedly come here to conduct. “I saw Winterglass kill the hell out of the body Brand was using. That should have killed his real body too. He should be extremely dead.”

  “I know, I know,” Naderi said irritably. “Caryl tried to explain. The bodies are linked or something.”

  “Well . . .” I tried to think back over the whole messy situation. “They’re supposed to be. But this was a rush job; maybe Shock forgot to—” I stopped, my mind racing.

  “Who’s Shock?”

  “Prince Fettershock,” I said absently. “The king’s son, the kid who made Brand’s facade. Maybe he cut some corners, and when the dog exploded—”

  “Too much information, Millie.”

  “Sorry,” I said. But my mind was already racing down another track. Shock. Winterglass had been so furious when we’d enlisted Shock to make a facade for a manticore. The boy was important to him.

  “Can you get Shock here?” said Naderi. “Can he fix whatever the fuck this is?”

  “He might be able to, but . . .” An incredibly talented facade crafter. Someone Winterglass would never abandon, even for Caryl’s sake. Someone who could make fake people.

  “But what?” Naderi demanded.

  “I have a sinking feeling,” I said, “that he’s not on our side anymore.”

  • • •

  No matter how much I promised Naderi, over and over, that I’d figure out what was going on, I couldn’t seem to convince her to get the hell out of my yard.

  “I’m not leaving without Brand,” she said.

  “Well, he doesn’t want to go with you,” I said, scanning the street for signs of Caryl’s SUV. I’d texted her about Brand and told her that we needed to meet with Tjuan immediately to discuss a theory of mine.

  “Why would he be afraid of me?” said Naderi. “That makes no sense!”

  “Nothing about this makes any sense!” I exploded. “All I know is that you’re chasing him in circles, and if you keep it up, you might scare him somewhere we can’t find him. He’s been living in this yard for three damn months. If you quit freaking him out, maybe he’ll still be here once we figure out how to help.”