FINGERS OF DESIRE

Leila was shelving a coastal cookbook when a voice that was not Mrs. Adeyemi's said inside her skull, "She is awake." Nobody in the bookstore had spoken. The ceiling fan ticked against its loose screw and a customer flipped pages near the window, and at the counter Mrs. Adeyemi was counting change into a man's palm. "Mrs. Adeyemi, did you say something?" "Me? I am busy counting, my dear, not talking to you." The old woman glanced up with her usual worried smile. "You look pale again. Did you sleep?" "Not really." "You never do." Leila turned back to the shelf and her hands were not quite steady. The man who had stared at her across the street that morning, motionless in the traffic, flashed through her mind, and the flat-handed pressure he had put against her chest. She had told nobody. There was nothing to tell that would not sound like madness. "She carries the mark," the voice said. She stepped back so fast she knocked three paperbacks to the floor. "Stop," she whispered, pressing two fingers to her temple. "They are close." "Leila?" Mrs. Adeyemi had come around the counter. "Child, you are shaking." "I am fine." She was not, and they both knew it, and the voice had paused as if it were listening to them. Then glass exploded outside, and screaming followed it. Leila reached the window before she had decided to move. A black car had ploughed through a vendor's stall, oranges rolling across the road, people scattering in every direction, and four men were stepping out of it with a calm that made her stomach turn. They did not look at the wreck or the wounded. They looked at faces, one after another, like people working down a list. "They have found you," the voice said. "Ah ah, who are these people?" Mrs. Adeyemi had joined her at the glass. "Are they robbers?" "Lock the front door." Leila's voice came out steadier than she felt. "Then go into the storeroom and stay away from the windows." "And you?" "I have to go." "Go where? Leila, what is happening?" There was no explanation that would fit in the time she had. Leila snatched her bag from under the counter and put her hand briefly on the old woman's arm. "I am sorry," she said, and ran for the back door. The alley behind the shop smelled of damp concrete and old rain. She took the first turn and then another, down passages so narrow her shoulders scraped brick, and behind her came footsteps that were nothing like the crowd's panicked scattering. They were even and unhurried, the steps of people who had never once lost what they were chasing. Her lungs burned. Her sandals slapped through a puddle. She turned again, and again, and each time she thought she had gained distance the sound drew a little closer. A hand closed around her arm. She cried out and wrenched sideways, and the grip broke with a strength she did not remember learning. She stumbled back against the wall with her bag raised like a shield. The man in front of her was not one of the hunters, she saw that at once. He was tall, in a dark shirt with the sleeves pushed past his wrists, and his face gave her nothing at all while his eyes took in every angle of the alley in a single sweep. "Do not touch me," she said. "Then stop running toward a dead end." She looked over her shoulder. The alley ended in a blank brick wall ten paces behind her, with a drainpipe and a stack of broken crates. Her pulse jumped. "Who are you?" "Damien Cross." He said it as if the name should mean something. "You have about a minute. Left at the crates, over the low fence, and the gate beyond it is open." "I do not trust you." "You should not." He was already turning her by the shoulder, his hand firm and oddly warm through her sleeve. "Move anyway." The name did something to her. It was not recognition, exactly, more like pressure, as if her body had read a sentence her mind could not yet see. She went still under his hand. "Wait. How did you know to find me here?" "Leila, left." She stopped dead. "I never told you my name." For the first time his calm slipped, only a fraction, and what showed behind it looked very much like fear. "I know," he said quietly. "And whatever it says to you in the next few minutes, do not answer it." "You can hear it?" "Not yet." His eyes went past her shoulder. "Now." Boots hit the wet ground at the mouth of the alley. Leila turned her head and counted five of them, shoulder to shoulder, men with empty faces and steady hands, every one of them looking at her and nobody else. The man in the center spoke without raising his voice. "That is the target." Damien stepped in front of her. "Run," he said. "I will hold them." "Hold them with what?" "Run, Leila." The first hunter lunged. Damien caught his wrist, turned it until something gave, and drove him into the ground so hard that a loose drainpipe rang. The second reached for Leila and she did not wait for Damien this time. She slammed her bag into the man's face, got a hand on the crates, and heaved herself up toward the fence. A third man caught her ankle. Something deep in her chest uncoiled. It was like a long breath finally let out. The air in front of her shimmered, faint as heat over a road, and the man holding her ankle let go and dropped to his knees with both hands clamped over his head, his mouth open on a sound that never came. Leila fell off the crates and landed hard on the concrete. "I did not do that," she gasped. "You did." Damien had one hunter pinned and another trying to circle him. He did not look at her, but his voice was suddenly sharp with something that sounded like hope. "Do it again." "I do not know how I did it the first time." "Then think about what you want." "I want to go home." "Then think about that." The two remaining hunters had stopped moving. One of them reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small metal device. He pressed it, and a low vibration rolled down the alley and into her teeth. Her knees went soft as wet paper, and the shimmer in the air went out like a candle. "Psychic dampener," Damien said, and swore under his breath. He hauled the hunter off the ground by his collar and flung him into the crates. "Leila, we are leaving." He caught her wrist, firm but not painful, and pulled her toward the fence. She stumbled after him with the world spinning. Behind them the man with the device was already shouting into a radio. "Why are they after me?" she panted. "Because you are not meant to exist openly." They vaulted the low fence together and his hand tightened on hers as she nearly fell. "Keep your head down. Do not look at their faces." "That is not an answer." "It is the only one that matters right now." Beyond the fence was a quiet side street and a dark car parked between two larger ones. Damien yanked open the passenger door and Leila stopped with her hand on the frame, every instinct telling her to turn and run the other way. "If I get in, you tell me everything." "If you get in, you live long enough to ask." His eyes held hers. "That is the only promise I can make." Footsteps pounded at the end of the street. She got in. The engine roared and the car shot forward, and Leila twisted around to look back through the rear window. The hunters were standing in the middle of the road, not chasing, simply watching her go with the patience of men who knew where she was headed. Then she looked past them, over the rooftops, and saw a thick column of black smoke climbing into the sky from the direction of the street where she had spent the morning shelving books. "Mrs. Adeyemi," she whispered. Damien's hands tightened on the wheel. "They set it to draw you back." "She is still in there!" "Leila." "Turn around!" "If I turn around, they win." His voice cracked on the last word, and he drove on. She pressed her palm to the glass. Somewhere very deep inside her the voice that had been whispering all day laughed, low and pleased, as if it had been waiting years for exactly this moment.