The Liminal People Read online

  “Alia.” I fill in the blank.

  “Purebred cunt.” She almost spits. “Didn’t think so at the time, you know. She looked cool, profiled like a retired movie star at age sixteen. Like she knew everything. Ran an underground club, too. Every other Tuesday and Friday. Bender, it’s called. It’s someplace new every time, right? Sometimes abandoned cinemas, sometimes posh houses. Doesn’t matter. It’s always packed. Always the dopest scenesters. I didn’t really believe Prentis when she said she knew Alia. I’d heard of Bender, and Prentis was cool but just seemed under the radar. But sure enough, she walked me right into this warehouse over in Dagenham and introduced us all proper like. Alia said she was from Brighton, moved up a couple of years ago, but even then I could tell something was off. . . .”

  “What can she do?”

  “She’s everything you don’t see.” The girl said it like it was supposed to shock me. “Me, I can do the thing I did to get us out of your hotel. I can blend in to the background of what people are thinking, yeah? They can look right at me but not see me, if I want. If I focus hard I can do what I did to you in the bathroom, like just pull up everything in a person’s head, all the muck and mire of it. More often than not I just catch strong stray thoughts from folks. Alia, she’s a surgeon in the mind. She crafts images complete with emotion, texture, all of it. She can make you feel, see, taste, touch, or hear anything she wants you to. Truth is, I don’t really know what she looks like. She’s always looking like someone new.”

  “So how did you hang out with her?”

  “Shit, like I wanted to? I was more down for Prentis. Felt bad for her, you know?”

  “Why?”

  “At the time she hadn’t been responsible for any badness, yeah? Plus, I don’t know, the way Alia talked about her, to her, made me feel more like the girl was her dog than anything.”

  “What did Alia want from you?”

  “Wanted me to tell her everything about my thing, you know? She got off on seeing it. Kept asking me how I felt when I used it. If I believed in God, the devil, all the typical overdramatic teenage shit. I would’ve marked her as mad if it hadn’t been for the Bender parties.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, yeah, she was nutty around me, but everyone kept talking about how cool Bender was and how everyone wanted to be close to Alia and all that. Here I was trying to gain distance from her—”

  “Yeah, but why? I don’t know teenage-girl talk, so when you say she was nutty around you, I don’t really know what that means.” She thinks for a while, considering her words for the first time. Her guard is down, and I’m seeing a little beauty that’s going to turn into a great one in time, if the tragedy of her parent’s death, or possibly her own, doesn’t overwhelm her.

  “It’s like she wanted to go lesbian with me but just kiss,” she says after a few moments of silence. “Had a girl in school not too long ago like that. Not my thing. Not against it, but the girl kept following me, telling me how special I was. Realizing now it might be part of my power, yeah? But back then it was right nutter. Alia never tried to make a move, but she’s—like blacks say in America—‘all in my grill.’”

  “I’ve never said that in my life.” She’s questioning with her eyes when I realize she doesn’t know I’m an American. “Keep talking, though. I understand.”

  “Not much to tell, really. I kept hanging with Prentis for a while. But she started pressuring me to kick it with Alia. I wasn’t feeling it, so I’d bounce. A couple of weeks ago, just to shut Prentis up, I agree to meet them for dinner at this curry spot in White Chapel. That’s where I meet Rajesh.” It takes me a second to put it together.

  “He blew up the car.” I’m still trying to keep my voice flat, emotionless. But now it’s clear I’m trying.

  “That’s his power. He focuses on something for a half a second and it explodes. He’s Asian, Paki, I think. I don’t know—he could be an Afghan. It was his parent’s spot we ate at. He sat us in the back of the restaurant, and before I finished my vindaloo he made a few of the empty bowls around us explode. Alia said that the three of them were forming a union of people like us. That we should be running things, not just keeping our skills to ourselves.”

  “What did you think about the idea?”

  “Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?” She gets up, angry. I want to say something, but I feel her jaw relaxing and her throat clearing so I stay quiet. “I mean, shit, it would’ve been easier to just go along with them, yeah? Probably what I should’ve done. I didn’t tell Mum everything, but I told her enough so that even she knew it was a bad idea to be around them anymore. So I stalled for time. I told them I was thinking about it. I even started going to Bender more often so Alia wouldn’t get too suspicious. But Rajesh, he just kept pressuring, saying I was either for or against them, right? I’m all ‘What, I can’t be neutral?’ And he’s all ‘For what we’ve got planned, there is no neutral.’ They started threatening Mum and Da. I knew Da couldn’t even have a hint of this type of thing around his career.”

  “So you left.” I nod in approval.

  “But how do you hide from someone who could look like anyone else, sound like anyone else?” the girl says, finally feeling like she had someone who could understand where she was at.

  “You hide in plain view.” I open my hands to indicate her current abode. “No animal droppings or scent in here for some time—means Prentis hadn’t lived here for a while. Maybe not since this Alia found her, took her in, made the girl her dog.”

  “Yeah.” Tamara is surprised. “Prentis never took me here. Only described it to me. Told me she’d been by her ‘old place’ and it was bricked up. I took note ’cause it was the only time she ever spoke about having a place to stay. Peeked in her head, almost by accident, to see where it was. Are you a real detective?”

  “I’ve done this before. I’ve chased down people like us before.”

  “For what cause?” I’m uncomfortable answering the question so I don’t. She doesn’t let it go. “What do you do for a living, Taggert?”

  “I work for a man that makes Alia look like the punk child she is. I’m not important here. You are. Tell me the rest. They threaten, you run. Then what?”

  “Nothing. I stay low, trying to figure out my next plan, and they couldn’t find me. There was no need to do anything until . . .”

  “I showed up.” Now it’s my turn to stand and pace.

  “I don’t blame you,” she says quickly. “I mean I did at first when I thought maybe you worked for Alia. But I know who you are. Mom never told me, but she thought of you often. I’d catch traces in her mind. Images of you two together, happy. That’s why, once I saw your face, I wasn’t scared of you . . .” She stops talking, and I realize I’ve got tears. Damn it.

  “She thought of me often?” The girl nods her head. She wants to step close to me, but I back away before she can. Water across my face just masks the tears. But even that helps. “Tell me about this Rajesh.”

  “He’s a bully.” She spits for real this time. “A big stupid Paki bastard bully. He pushes his parents around. I’ve heard he’s raped girls. Prentis never admitted it, but I’m sure he’s raped her. He doesn’t just blow things up—he likes to break things. People, souls, possessions— don’t matter so long as he sees it break. I always hated him. I think Alia brought him out to intimidate me. You sit across from him, knowing what he does, what he can do, means you’re sitting across from a loaded gun. He told me one time he made a man’s head explode just because he saw it in an old movie. The man hadn’t done anything. He was just sitting in his own living room, minding his own business, and Rajesh could see him and so he made the old man’s head explode. He’s a savage fucking brute who you can’t take unless you grab him by surprise because if he knows you’re coming he’ll explode your heart and then rape you.” It takes her seconds to say it all. Huge, saucer-like pupils have taken the place of the bullet holes Tamara usually has for eyes. Her pulse is through the
roof, her lungs feel like they’re running a marathon, and there’s a massive buildup of carbon monoxide in her blood. She’s getting hysterical. There’re better ways to do this, but I don’t know how.

  “They didn’t suffer. Your dad didn’t even know what hit him. I cut off your mom’s pain centers before I crawled back to her.” It’s a necessary lie. Nothing is holding her tears back now. I haven’t done this since her mother and I were together; I haven’t been called upon to comfort anyone. That’s not Nordeen business. I hold the girl in my arms, tight. She sobs and beats against my chest. She screams those inarticulate sounds you can only make when you’ve lost everything. She empties it all into my chest and mind. While her hands are clawing at my wrecked button-up, her mind is unconsciously trolling mine for a sense of comfort connected with her parents. It’s not intentional or malicious, it’s just what baby psychics do.

  In a sense I’m envious that she can still hurt so deep. But I can’t let her into my hurt places. She can’t see what I am, or what I may have to do. So I set up my white wall of defense in my mind as gently as I can. It makes her feel alone again, cut off from anyone who could understand her. So she wails on me viciously, sobbing, knowing it’s all unfair. And I let her. She breaks the hold some ten minutes after the crying begins. But I don’t let her go totally. I hold the back of her elbows so she can’t gain much distance.

  “We’ve got to put this pain away right now, OK? Fuckers that did this have to pay. They’re powerful, but they’re not very smart. Me and you have to use our brains. That means emotions get put someplace else right now, you with me?” She nods. “And let’s get it clear now. Rajesh is mine. I know you want him gone, but that bastard blew up the car with me in it. I know you loved your parents, but he made it personal on me. Plus, I made a promise to your mother. So that blood debt is mine. The other two I’ll help you track down. You get to decide what to do with them. If you’ve got a killer’s stomach, and that’s your leaning, I won’t try and put you against your nature.”

  “I’m only fourteen,” she says trying to pull away from me. I’m not letting her.

  “Not anymore. This is your blood rite. You’ll never be ‘only’ anything again. You’re . . .”

  “But you called Alia a punk child.”

  “That girl hides behind masks and uses rapist emissaries to get people on her side. You take the responsibility of your family’s safety on yourself and gain distance.”

  “For all the good it did.”

  “You don’t have control over the world, Tamara. Only yourself. And what did you do when you thought I was the one that hit your parents? You came for blood. So stop acting like this Alia bitch is someone to be feared. You’re the one standing tall while she’s lurking in the shadows. Why do you think she was recruiting so hard? She wanted your strength.” It’s only when the girl nods slowly, contemplatively, that I let her go.

  We don’t talk for a bit. She puts her headphones on. Not out of disrespect—it’s just the way she thinks. She’s been through a lot, and I don’t have a clear plan yet, so I give her space.

  There’s not much to do in a walled-up tube station. I go to the other end and check my body. I find a metal bar braced above the stairs that currently lead nowhere and decide to do some pull-ups. I exercise for the sake of it. Push-ups. Normal. Upside down. One-handed. Clapping. Sit-ups. Regular. Upside down. Left-oriented. Right-oriented. It’s all a distraction. I could get the same effects with my mind. But this way I can stop feeling her severed arm in my hand. I can stop hearing the explosion. It’s okay I can let the images, the sensations, go. I’ve got a new fuel for my rage. A name. Rajesh.

  I’m grunting upside down, half tranced out, when Tamara approaches me. My biological clock tells me two hours have passed.

  “There’s something I don’t understand.” She’s genuinely confused. I don’t stop my upside-down sit-ups. “What can you do? I mean, what is your—”

  “I told you. I’m a healer,” I say on instinct. “I play bodies like a musician plays his instrument.”

  “But you said you worked for a man that made Alia seem like some punk kid.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “And you said you’ve tracked down people like us before.”

  “I’m still waiting for your point.”

  “It didn’t sound like you tracked them down to heal them.” My trance is gone. So is my exercise. I unhook my legs from the bar.

  “Best healers are the ones who know how to hurt” is all I’ll say. I’m ready now. I’ve got a plan. At least, enough of one to get me away from the hard questions this kid has only taken two hours to get to. She’s following behind me, a little too close. She must have sealed up her entrance to this place when I was asleep. “I need you to let me out of here and seal yourself back in.”

  “Where are you going?” Genuine panic.

  “Remember that boss? Well, he sent me an invitation that I can’t ignore.” She’s given me authority enough to not clock my eyes on a regular. If she did, or if her mind started straying into mine like it did before, I might not be able to hide what I suspect about Nordeen . . . or what I felt for her mother.

  “But what about all that ‘taking Alia down’ talk?” I’ve got to flood her system with dopamine just to counteract the adrenaline she’s pumping through her blood. She calms down a little. A little.

  “It’s all true. I’ve just got to make sure he’s not involved with your girl in any way.”

  “And if he is?” Damn good question. I reach in my pocket and pull out my remaining cash. Thirty thousand quid. I take one thousand off of it and throw the rest on her bed.

  “If he’s involved that means I’ve got to go through him. I may not walk out of that one. So if I don’t come back within 24 hours, take that cash and leave London. Fuck it, leave the UK. Stay out of Marseilles, Malaysia, and, Morocco while you’re at it.”

  “Any other M place I should cross off my running-scared list?”

  “This isn’t a fucking joke, Tamara.”

  “The fuck it’s not! You say it’s me and you versus Alia and her people, but first you’ve got to check in with your boss and make sure it’s OK with him? And, what, if he says no then forget the whole deal and just start running? Sounds pretty queer to me.”

  “Girl, I have purposely kept this man’s name from you so that if you ever encounter him—”

  “Nordeen Maximus.” Shit! She’s a better mind reader than I thought. Fuck! I didn’t even feel her in my head. I try not to break concentration.

  “I was trying to keep his name from you so that you could claim ignorance about him. If you know anything about him, he treats you like a threat. And trust when I say you don’t want him in your life at all. You don’t know him.”

  “He doesn’t know me.” Fair point, but the passive telepathy makes her dangerous. She’s the type Nordeen would have me take out. But she is Mene’s daughter, full of the same fire and drive as her mother. I will not let him get her.

  “Point made,” I say, going over to the money. I face all the bills again and try and hand it to her. “This is the way it goes.”

  “This is the way you want it to go.” I’m ignoring that one.

  “Without trust, we’ve got nothing. Smartest thing you’ve done since this all started was disappear. I’m not you. Smartest thing I can do is make sure my feet are one hundred percent clean before tracking more mud through your already disheveled house.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means give me twelve hours. I’m not back by that time, I’ve got no call to tell you what to do with your life. My hope is that you’ll run. But you want to use this money for a vengeance parade, I’ve nothing to say about it.” She looks confused. “For fuck sake, girl, I’m giving you thirty thousand quid to do the same thing you’ve already been doing. You’ve brains, OK? Wicked smart girl who has instincts for days. Your instinct said hide and you did, right? Well, just stay hidden.”

&nbs
p; “I don’t want your money!” She’s yelling and crying at the same time. The dopamine has worn off. “I want the fuckers who killed my parents.” For the second time in under a day, I hold her. Her body responds like it’s what she wanted all along, someone sturdy and strong to rely on. But that’s not me. That’s her father she wishes she was holding, a man I couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of. I’m standing in for someone I hated, trying to be a better man than I can be. This can’t end well if I play the way I usually do.

  “Me, too,” I say in hushed tones. “But I want you to survive the experience. I’m begging you, Tamara. Just give me twelve hours.”

  “There’s no food.” Don’t think I’ve ever heard a teenager whine like that before.

  “Six hours. Grab some food as soon as I leave. I’ll be back in six hours and we’ll plan.

  “Or you won’t.”

  “Or I won’t.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I’m heading the opposite direction as Tamara in the tube, following human heartbeats to find my way out. She can secure food. I keep telling myself that over and over. As I angle past small-monkey-sized rats and other nonhuman denizens of London’s deep, I’m convincing myself I know what I’m doing leaving a traumatized fourteen-year-old alone. She survived just fine without me. She knows the city.

  I’m worried for her. I’m having a hard time finding my way back up to surface streets, and I’m scared she’ll get caught, that this Alia will find her and she’ll never make it back to the cement cave. The fact that this is running through my mind as I’m on my way to pick up Nordeen’s more appropriate conduit for communication—or a trap by one of Nordeen’s enemies-—tells me a lot about myself.

  I see the light of a station a few feet head of me, and I’m already missing the cement cave, the fiction of it, that it blocks us off from the rest of the world. I really like that little girl. And I feel for her. I’ll protect her for as long as I can. So long as this Alia isn’t protected from on high, I’m confident I can take her. It’s early morning, and the station only has three people in it. I wait until all their eyes are fixed on the train coming in on the other side of the tracks before I jump onto the platform. I make sure to avoid the ever-present cameras as I make my way up to the street, the dark, gray, cold street.