ELEVEN: THE KINDLY ONES
NICK
It's been so long, and Nick has been so careful. He's spent years in planning, in careful research and strategising; he's gathered advice and resources from as far afield as Akala University's Dimensional Research Lab and as close to home as the Yellowbrick Department of Ghost Studies. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he's made this his life's work.
And yet, after all that, after ten exhausting years, it only took one night for everything to go to hell.
He thinks of it now, as he sits across from Jodi Ortega in the freezing conservatory of his sister's house. He was all set to stage his return from Alola: took the back roads east from the cabin and around the fringes of town, looped back on himself and drove in from the south, taking care to be spotted by Sam Spade out at the petrol station on the way. He even had the stub of his plane ticket from his real trip there a few months ago, carefully worn with a little folding and scraping to obscure the date.
And in his jacket pocket, the machine. His little contribution to history, safely wrapped up in waxed paper. Ready to put an end to things.
But none of that mattered, did it? Because that night, Tacoma died. And when he arose from his feigned jetlag the day afterwards, long after the cops had been and gone, Nick found a letter waiting for him in the kitchen.
Nick, my errant friend, I hope Alola has treated you well! As if sun and science weren't enough, I have an early Christmas present for you. No one will miss it over the holidays, so I've made the executive decision to lend you that spiritomb keystone I was talking about. If your theory about it being linked to a pocket dimension is correct, and you do succeed in working out how someone managed to seal that dimension shut, then let us know – although I must warn you, we've been poking the damn thing for thirty years(!), and to have our mystery solved by a member of another faculty would earn you a fair few enemies among the phantasmologists! I don't dare trust such a relic to the baroque incompetence of the Johtonian Postal Service, so I'll be sending it along with that bright niece of yours, Tacoma. I'll bet you our next round of drinks she's already opened it by the time this letter reaches you …
He didn't have to read more. He already knew. Tacoma came home with a rock that would have helped his project, and then before she made it halfway to her front door she was killed and her luggage vanished into the night. Dead at nineteen. Over some godforsaken rock that Nick didn't even need any more.
The way Nick sees it, he might as well have had Turing blast her in the back of the head himself.
Jodi's eyes bore straight through his skull and into his brain, making his guilty conscience writhe like a nest of snakes – and with a certain detached horror Nick hears the words slipping straight out of his mouth:
"I didn't do it. I mean that. But … it is my fault."
Fantastic. Didn't even last five seconds before she got him to confess. And she didn't use any psychic powers either, just sat there and judged him.
You're a goddamn mess, Nick tells himself.
Yes, he replies. You might have noticed, my niece died.
Turing drifts closer, cores twisting slowly through the air. Most people don't know it, but buried deep in those three silicon brains is something like emotion, if not the kind that humans are familiar with, and Turing knows when his partner is distressed, even if his idea of helping is to emit radio waves that Nick has no way of receiving.
Hell. Maybe there was never any chance he could resist. It's strange enough to be confronted with Jodi, with this attractive young woman who apparently used to be Tacoma's friend Alex Ortega. Nick always used to tease Tacoma about that, called him her boyfriend to fulfil his obligation as her uncle to embarrass her, but though he can't help but look for traces of Alex in Jodi's face he hasn't found a single one. For some reason, this is unsettling as hell.
"All right," says Jodi, her gaze unwavering. "So why don't you tell me all about it."
She folds her arms and leans back in her chair, cool as anything. Nick has a vague idea that psychics have to be calm, for their own safety and that of everyone around them, but that doesn't make her composure any less unnerving. Who walks up to a murder suspect and confronts them like that? Admittedly, almost everyone in town is watching Jodi at all times, so she'd be a hard target for a killer to isolate and pick off, but still: she's either very stupid or very brave.
Going by the look in her eyes, Nick's putting his money on brave.
"Uh, well." He clears his throat. How is he going to explain this one? Preferably without launching Jodi on a suicidal murder investigation. One dead girl is already too many – and besides, there's no point. Nick is going to end this himself. He just needs a little more time. "If you went to the cabin, you know I was working on something. Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Right. So … a colleague sent me something." Got to pick his words carefully here. Tell her nothing she couldn't have guessed from what she found in the cabin. "It was meant to help with my project."
"The one you lied to everyone about," clarifies Jodi, raising her eyebrows.
"Yeah. That." Her noivern is glaring at him, too. Eyes as sharp and bright as broken glass. These two don't pull their punches, do they? "So, uh, someone must have been reading my mail, because they knew it was coming. The package, I mean. And they knew Tacoma was carrying it. So …"
"So this person wanted your work stopped badly enough to intervene," finishes Jodi, her mask cracking. "God. I'm―"
She cuts herself off with a brusque shake of her head.
"You know I'm sorry," she says bitterly. "That's why I'm here."
Every time he talks to someone new, it hits him. You get someone killed, they don't go gentle. It's like uprooting a tree: you think you've got it under control, and then as the roots tear loose from the ground they rip up half the street with them. And the next thing you know, you're standing up there at the funeral and you are so overcome by how many pained faces you are looking at that you cannot even breathe.
"I'm sorry too," he tells her. They aren't the right words, but they are the only ones there are.
Neither of them speak for a while. Turing's eyes are all on the noivern, though it isn't returning the favour; either it hasn't realised he's alive yet, or it's just very dedicated to making Nick feel uncomfortable.
Good. Nick got his niece murdered. If he is ever comfortable again, there is no goddamn justice in the world.
"You really didn't kill her," says Jodi.
"No," agrees Nick. He thinks he should be relieved that she's said this, but he can't seem to feel anything at all right now. "I didn't."
Jodi unfolds her arms and leans forward on her elbows. She looks tired, he realises. Far too tired for a kid her age. That might be a psychic thing too, or maybe she just misses her friend.
"Why didn't they just rob her?" she asks.
Nick shrugs. He's been asking himself this same question all week. Do they really hate him that much? So much that they'd snuff out one of Mahogany's brightest young sparks? Surely not. Except as he always says to his students, beginning anything with 'surely' is a hack answer, because it means that the argument is already over in your head, and that's the worst possible starting point for any kind of discussion.
"I don't know," he answers. "I wish I did."
"Do you know who they are?"
He hesitates too long. Jodi sighs and straightens up again.
"Nick," she begins, but he interrupts:
"No, I – it's not like that. I don't know who killed her. I just―"
"Think it was down to the chapter house group?"
By the time Nick has picked his jaw up off the table, it's far too late to try and hide his shock.
"You, uh … you know about that?"
Her face gives nothing away.
"Just tell me, Nick."
God damn it. Nick can't exactly judge – it was being young and full of righteous fury that set him on this path in the first place; that kids are still angry about injustice is a good thing, in his book. But it's not hypocrisy to keep Jodi out of it, not at this point. Nick is ready. He has his machine, and his plan, and now he has a dead niece to fight for, too. There's just one more piece to fit into the puzzle, and then there will be nothing left for the bastards skulking around in the chapter house to protect.
"No," he says. Then again, more assertively: "No."
"I'm getting sick of people saying that," says Jodi. "What's your excuse? It's too dangerous for me?"
Oh, she's good. She knows exactly how to needle him, just as you'd expect from a psychic. But Nick's made up his mind; she's not getting another word out of him.
"If you like," he says. "Look, I think we both know I've already said more than I meant to."
"Do you know where it is?"
Relentless, that's the word. Like Tacoma is. Was.
Was.
"Where what is?" he asks, trying not to think about it.
"The chapter house."
"If I did―"
"You wouldn't tell me, right."
"No," he says. "If I did, I wouldn't even be here."
Jodi stares, taken aback. The noivern tenses, its huge round ears moving in ways that Nick cannot interpret but which make Turing buzz with mechanical unease.
"What d'you mean by that?"
"Sorry," says Nick, and really means it: who wouldn't be? Jodi has a right to know. Tacoma was her best friend, after all. And everyone deserves to know what monsters are hiding in their hometown. It's just a question of timing. He's put in too many years and too much effort to risk anyone interfering at the last moment. "I can't tell you."
"Yes, you can," insists Jodi. "You know I could go to the police―"
"But you won't."
"I might."
He shakes his head. She's smart (like Tacoma, says the voice in his head that will not let his dead niece lie), but her inexperience is starting to show.
"You won't," he repeats. "Because you know I didn't do it. And more than that," he adds, seeing her open her mouth to argue, "you're not stupid enough to think the cops are on your side."
It's a bit of a gamble, but the look on her face tells him it's paid off.
"I'm sure you figured that out when they came to ask you for help with Nikole," he says. "Don't think you even need your ESP for that one."
"No," says Jodi, in a soft voice that makes Nick feel bad for saying it. "No, I didn't."
She make no move to leave, though Nick feels this has to be the end. Her noivern puts its head in her lap, and her hand wanders down into the thick ruff of fur around its neck.
"You know I can't leave this," she says, after a moment.
"Yeah," he says. "I think so."
Turing is very close now, close enough for Nick to hear the humming of his electric nerves. Magneton don't understand why humans like physical contact, but Turing has always tried to oblige anyway.
Nick sighs. Jodi isn't giving up, is she? And if he can't stop her, he might as well try to direct her, at the very least.
"Look," he says. "How about we make a deal?"
She scowls.
"What kind?"
"Give me a week," he says. "One week, and then I'll tell you everything."
The scowl deepens.
"What are you planning to do in that one week?"
"Tell you afterwards."
"God, Nick," she says, a trace of irritation showing beneath that empath calm. "A week, huh?"
"Saturday next," he agrees. "Hell, you're an adult now, I'll buy you a drink. Raise a glass to Tacoma and spill all there is to spill."
Jodi chews her lip for a while, sullen. Something about that gesture seems familiar, and then Nick remembers that he saw her do that years and years ago, back when she was Alex. There's one fragment of her past self, at least.
"Okay," she mutters. "Deal."
She holds out her hand across the table, and Nick shakes it, relieved.
"Glad to hear it," he says. "I promise you, Jodi, you're doing the right thing."
"Yeah, whatever," she says, grabbing her cane and levering herself up. "Just make sure you hold up your end of the bargain."
She doesn't trust him that much, then.
He'd be lying if he said that didn't sting, but at least he can take some comfort in the fact Tacoma knew how to pick her friends.
Pretty much as soon as Jodi has left, Nick starts making preparations. He's lost a lot of time this week. Hard to get up in the mornings. Hard to come back home at night, too. He's spent a lot of time and money in the Briar Rose since Tacoma's passing, though unfortunately that Gabriella girl was only there one other evening.
But things crystallised, after the funeral. It might have been seeing Tacoma go up in smoke, it might have been that stupid spat with Con – but something lit the fire again, gave him the kick up the backside he needed. He has the machine. It's time to make a stand.
Besides. If Jodi could find his cabin, the cops can too – and that means that sooner or later people are going to turn up asking questions about why he lied about being in Alola. Questions that Nick isn't sure he can safely answer.
So: there are certain precautions that need to be undertaken. It's fine; Nick is a past master at this kind of petty dissimulation. He goes out to the garage where his car is parked, times four minutes on his watch, then comes back complaining that it won't start.
"Take ours," says Annie, without looking up. She doesn't ask where he's going. Nobody asks many questions in this house any more.
"Thanks," says Nick, and leaves without bothering to see what's wrong. He's almost certain he already knows what the matter is, and there's nothing he or anybody else can do about it.
He takes the old car north on Bent Street, heading for the road gouged into the forest up to the Lake of Rage. The streets are clear right up to the mill – these roads are important; that lumber doesn't ship itself – but after that he has to slow down. Last thing he needs is to miss a patch of ice and smash Lucas' car into a tree. Nick isn't sure that Lucas is fully aware of how expensive Tacoma's funeral was just yet, but it didn't come cheap, and a busted car wouldn't help at all.
Slowing down makes the temptation to look through the mill gates almost irresistible. Time has been, the place would be buzzing with activity, trucks coming and going like ants swarming over their nest, but now three of them are just sitting there under oilcloth, mute testament to the bite of the recession.
Another year like this and we might not have a mill, Lucas told him in an unguarded moment. It mattered then, before Tacoma died; everything did. The whole reason Nick is doing this is to save his hometown, after all. Now, looking at the shrouded trucks outside the drying shed, Nick finds himself starting to care again.
It's not just vengeance. That's part of it now; they killed his niece, and a man can't forgive that kind of transgression. But there's some vestige of a noble cause there, too. Nick can't bring the money back, but he can make it so people don't have to be afraid of disappearing.
He finds it a comfort to think of this, if for no other reason than it takes his mind off Tacoma. Nick thinks about it for as long as he can, and only when the trees have closed in on either side and crowded out the weak winter light does the righteousness fade back into the cold void of loss.
Sometimes Nick wonders if he really was the only one who could see it, if Annie and Lucas really did just take her smiles at face value. Everett's ignorance he can buy; he and Tacoma have that space between them that Nick and Annie have and must constantly work to push past. It's not easy, being the one who goes away to university to fulfil your parents' dreams that their kids will be better than they were. Nick knows this firsthand, and he's always tried to make it easier for Tacoma, ever since it first became clear that she was coming top of her class without actually bothering to do any work. But still, she was unhappy, and nobody asked her about it. And now she's dead.
The thought has circled around so many times that by this point Nick has stopped trying to shake it off. He lets it ride with him in the car, breathing it in and out like poison spores, and drives on towards the cabin.
He gets out in the car park where the hiking trail starts – carving a trail through the snow on the road up to the cabin strikes him as a bad idea – and makes the last leg of journey on foot. It's further than he remembered, and the creaking of the branches is frankly alarming.
"Watch your step, city boy," he mocks himself, a fragment of his small-town childhood rising within him to stick its tongue out at his academic present, and as if this was some kind of omen he slips on a patch of ice and almost falls. "I'm okay!" he calls, as one of Turing's cores dives down to peer anxiously into his face. "'M fine."
Jesus. How did Jodi make it out here? Nick wouldn't have said that the noivern was big enough to carry a human, but then, there's nothing of her; maybe it could have managed. Either that or she walked, and that would make her intimidatingly tough. He's not even sure what the deal is with her leg, now he comes to think of it. She broke it on her trainer journey, he thinks – he remembers Tacoma coming home with her – but it must have been a hell of a bad break to leave her using a cane seven years later.
Not relevant, he reminds himself. Just clear out the cabin and get back to town, before anyone sees you out here.
The cabin itself looks untouched, but then, Jodi wouldn't have had to force entry; when Nick rented it, the owner didn't give him any keys. No lock, he said. Nobody out here to keep out. Turns out he was wrong about that.
Okay. Now he's just standing here putting off going inside. He shoves the door open harder than he intended, annoyed at his hesitation, and sees – well, nothing, honestly. It's all just as it was. Notes, books, the remnants of the machines he disassembled to build his device. Stuff he thought would be safe here, where no one would look.
"Turing?" he says, scrunching his notes together into one big mound. "Over there."
Turing buzzes, his prime core – in theory all three of his constituent magnemite are equal, but after all these years Nick has come to recognise that one tends to take the lead – diving to hover near the fireplace. The other two look at each other, bump surfaces in some inscrutable gesture, and follow.
"Here," says Nick, stuffing the wads of paper into the hearth. "Thunderbolt that, would you?" A sharp crack, a blinding flash, and as the smell of ozone fills the room the paper starts to smoulder. "Good."
He leaves the fire to take hold and starts gathering up the books and bits of metal, putting the former in his bag and tossing the latter at Turing, to whom they stick with a series of metallic clinks. Ten minutes later, he's out again, leaving behind a fireplace full of warm ash and a riverbed strewn with metal debris. The environmentalist in him isn't thrilled, but the wannabe vigilante in him is satisfied he's covered his tracks as best he can.
Won't hold them off long; this town being as small as it is, Nick couldn't really hope to go unrecognised and rent this place under an assumed name. Once the cops think to look, they'll know he was out here, and then so will everyone else. But at least nobody will know why.
He glances at Turing, cores turned outward to watch the forest for any approaching threats.
"Cautious as ever, eh," he says, flicking one of Turing's cores. It doesn't make the ping noise with his gloves on, but Turing doesn't hear high sounds anyway, and he knows what Nick means from the feel of finger on steel. "Look at the pair of us. Jumping at shadows."
Turing buzzes.
"Yep," agrees Nick. "Come on. I have an idea about where we should start." He feels in his pocket for the machine, still there, still safe in its cloth wrapping. "Annie's been kind enough to lend us the car," he says, closing his fingers around it. "Least we can do is fill it up."
The petrol station looks cleaner than he remembers. Who ran it back when Nick still lived in Mahogany? Earl Blackman, that was it. He wonders how Sam came by it – hell, he wonders what happened to Earl; it's only now that Nick realises he hasn't seen him in years. Maybe he's dead too, he thinks sourly. Or no, maybe not. Maybe just … retired.
Right. Like anyone retires these days.
Back in Earl's day, this place was a mess, in the best possible way; the garage at the side used to spill out parts and oil and music into the forecourt, and nobody stopped by without speaking to Earl himself, who would perpetually be just in the process of unbending himself from the guts of a broken car, wiping his hands on an oily rag. Now the place is clean and quiet, the garage door closed and the only sign of life a solitary wingull on the station roof.
It screams at him as he pulls in, keeping its head tilted to one side. Missing an eye, Nick notices. He's never seen a bird with a missing eye before. How does that even happen?
"Long way from home, huh," he tells it, getting out and holding the door for Turing. "Nothing for you here, sailor."
The wingull screams again and stalks off along the weathered red plastic of the roof. Nick shakes his head and applies himself to the pump. Dumb bird. God only knows how it ended up here in midwinter.
He fills the tank – just halfway; his florins go a long way in Johto, but even so, the price of petrol is nothing to joke about – and heads into the little shop to pay. As he opens the door, the wingull dives past him, wing ruffling Nick's hair and making Turing grind in agitation, and makes a break for the counter.
"What the hell―?"
"I see you've met my assistant," says a familiar voice, and Nick tears his eyes away from the bird to see that Gabriella girl from the bar, looking incongruously beautiful between the wingull and the cigarette display. "Sorry, Nick, Jack was at the end of the queue when they were handing out manners."
Nick blinks. There are several questions waiting in his mouth right now and none of them seem to be coming out.
"Oh," he says, in the end. "You … work here?
"Got to earn my keep somehow."
"And you have a wingull?"
"Yes, I get that a lot," she says drily. "What can I say, I have a soft spot for vermin."
Jack gives Nick an evil look and hops up onto Gabriella's shoulder. He looks far too big – and mean – to be there, but she doesn't seem to mind.
"Anyway," she says. "Petrol, right?"
"Right."
It's extortionate, honestly, but he can't complain; the fault lies with OPEC, or perhaps more accurately the goddamn mess that was the '73 war, not Gabriella. He asks how business is these days, and gets a shrug in response.
"We get by," she says, in that carefully neutral way that Johtonians have come to say it in recent years.
"Yeah," he says. "I, uh, get it."
She smiles the sort of smile that tells him he probably shouldn't be telling people much poorer than himself that he gets it in the same breath as flaunting his shiny Kantan florins. Damn it. Miles is always warning him about that kind of thing; the problem with left-wing academics like us, he says, is that we're still assholes to the people we say we're championing. Let's not be That Guy, huh?
Miles. Nick hasn't actually called him since he arrived here. He wanted to – still does – but hasn't. Nick has always made a point of keeping his Saffron and Mahogany lives separate, even after Tacoma followed him to Yellowbrick. He calls this self-preservation, though after meeting Jodi, he suspects that it might just be cowardice.
"Here's your change," says Gabriella, diplomatically not responding to what he actually said. "Anything else?"
Okay. Moment of truth.
"Yeah," he says, as casually as he can. "Your cousin around?"
Gabriella raises her eyebrows.
"Car problems?" she asks.
He considers lying, but doesn't see what good it will do; if she and Sam talk at all – and they've lived together for ten years, so he imagines they must do – then she'll find out what he was really after soon enough.
"Not so much," he says. "Need to talk to her about an old friend of hers."
Gabriella's face freezes, just for a second, and then her smile drains away as if a plug has been yanked out of the back of her head. Nick is startled to see how much of her charm is an act; she is beautiful still, but in an unapproachable kind of way. Now he can finally see the similarities between her and her partner. The last time anyone looked at him like that, he was ten seconds away from being mugged.
"Mae," she says. It's not a question. Nick answers it anyway.
"Yes," he says.
She scowls. Something about the way she does it reminds him of Jodi, frowning at him across the table in Lucas' freezing conservatory.
"We don't think they had anything to do with Tacoma," she says.
So she does know. This could be awkward; he was kind of hoping to do this alone. This is his quest, after all, his cross to bear. Best to keep everyone else out of it. When old Mick Field asked Nick politely if he was planning on staying in Saffron all those years ago, the subtext was clear: come back, keep interfering, and we will have to act. He's willing to bet Sam got a similar ultimatum. And yes, both of them did come back, eventually – Nick has always come home for Christmas, and apparently Sam got tired of wandering Johto in the end – but Nick's been sure to keep himself well away from chapter house business, and Sam's probably the same. If the group find out he's after them again – well, they'll act, just like Mick promised. And Nick is not going to drag anyone else into that with him, least of all other people who had the decency to stand up to injustice.
"I still need to speak to Sam," he says, maintaining the casual tone of voice. "There are some things I want to know."
Gabriella studies his face for a long time. Her eyes are every bit as sharp as that of the wingull on her shoulder. Like she can see straight through him to the morass of inadvisable ideas within.
"You might as well tell me," she says. "If you don't, I'll just ask Sam once you've gone. And I think you're more than sharp enough to know that she won't lie to me."
On her shoulder, Jack glares and snaps his heavy beak. Nick isn't sure what it's like to be bitten by a wingull, but he's absolutely certain he doesn't want to find out.
"The chapter house," he says, reluctantly. "I need to know where the entrance is."
He's expecting a fairly dramatic reaction, but Gabriella just raises her eyebrows.
"And you think either of us know?" she asks, cool as anything.
"You live here," he says. "And you know about it. Who else am I going to ask?"
It's not like they would be the first to figure it out, after all. Nick got in once, back when he first started investigating this. That's how he knows what he knows; he followed that hooded figure from Mae's trailer, saw the door in that crypt behind the church, and came back late that night to break in and see what the chapter house group were protecting with his own eyes. He ran from it then, of course – no shame in admitting it; the man who could have stood his ground in the face of that would be a hero straight out of a comic book or an old myth – and when he got up the courage to return, the door refused to open even to his crowbar. A couple of days later, workmen arrived to conduct 'repairs', shrouding the crypt in plastic sheeting, and when they left there was no door there at all.
There have to be other entrances. More people have gone missing since then, and as far as Nick knows someone at the post office is still reading his mail: the group is definitely still active. And since its members themselves aren't going to volunteer the information, Sam is the only lead Nick has.
Gabriella sighs.
"Try to understand where I'm coming from here," she says. "My friend Annie, she recently lost her daughter." (And I lost my niece, screams a dark, bitter voice within Nick, but it is buried too deep inside him for the sound of it to escape his ribs.) "And now her brother comes in here asking how to do something suicidally misguided, and I have to ask myself, Gabbi, are you really going to be the reason Annie loses a brother as well?"
Nick sees her point. He really does. These people are killers, and they have made it very clear that people who persist in interfering with their business will have to leave town, either on a train or in a coffin.
But that's exactly why he has to do it. This has got to end. God only knows how long it's been going on – the chapter house is centuries old, and its secret burden could well have been there all that time – but it's nineteen seventy-fucking-six and this kind of thing has no place in the world any more.
He looks Gabriella dead in the eye.
"Yeah," he says. "Annie lost her daughter. And someone's got to answer for it."
"We don't think it was them," repeats Gabriella, but she doesn't sound as certain now. "They don't go for Mahogany kids."
"Unless they have a reason," he says. "Is Sam in or not?"
Gabriella takes a deep breath. It's the kind of breath that seems to signal some kind of action, but for some time afterwards she just stands there, looking at him. Nick looks back, glad that Turing is here to stay with him while he does it, and then after what feels like a generous slice of eternity Gabriella sighs again and flips up the end of the counter to join Nick on the other side.
"I am not encouraging this," she says sharply. "And I don't think you're going to get what you want, either. But okay, Nick. Let's go talk to Sam."
He breathes out. Christ. And he thought Jodi was tough.
"Thank you," he says. "I appreciate it."
"Oh, I'm sure." She prods Jack with the kind of confidence that looks like it loses fingers. "You stay here and shout if anyone comes in, okay?"
He squawks and jumps from her shoulder to the counter, strutting back and forth like a cockerel surveying his yard. Gabriella runs her fingers absently over his head and motions for Nick to follow; with one slightly nervous look at Jack – he wouldn't put it past him to attack even with a magneton there in the room – he does, across the snowy forecourt and through a door around the side of the garage. In here, at the centre of a tangle of tools and pieces of metal that probably mean something to people more practically minded than Nick, Sam Spade is doing something to the underside of a car.
Her clefairy is standing nearby, holding a screwdriver between its stubby paws. When Nick and Gabriella enter, it mews and pokes its partner with it.
"Oi," she grumbles, sliding out from underneath the car. "What was that― oh. Uh. Hi."
She gets up, sweeping her hair back across her forehead with one greasy hand. Nick has seen her before, of course, but it's always hard not to stare. She's not the only butch he's ever met, but she's one of very few, and definitely the only one outside of Saffron. Why she came back is beyond him. He would have thought she'd have settled down in the Kantan or Johtonian capitals, where she might actually find kindred spirits, but no. Out here in the sticks it is.
"Miss Spade," says Gabriella. "Nick Wroth's here to see you."
"Yeah, I noticed." Sam spreads her hands in a here I am sort of way. "So. Nick?"
Ready? Ready. He's said it once, he can say it again. The time for nerves is past: they killed Tacoma, after all.
"I want to get into the chapter house."
At least Sam reacts. Gabriella might be able to take this without batting an eyelid, but Sam starts and clenches her fist around the wrench in her hand.
"Didn't have you pegged for a fool," she says. "Look. It weren't them who got Tacoma―"
"You don't know that," he tells her. "And even if they didn't, is that any reason to let them keep getting away with it?"
Sam's brows knit together, and she tugs thoughtfully at the edge of her lip.
"Hmph," she says. "So what, you have a plan?"
"Yes."
"And it is?"
"A good one."
Sam snorts. Her clefairy jumps up onto the bonnet of the car in what looks like slow motion, beady eyes locked distrustfully on Nick's face.
"You ain't givin' me much here, are you?"
"You don't want to be involved," says Nick. "Look, Sam, I got run out of town too, right? I know what they do to people who trouble. When you came back, you must've known you could only stay here if you kept your head down. Same as me."
He has her attention now, he can sense it; she didn't know about this, did she? Stands to reason. No one did. Even after he got into that fight with Con about his apparent inability to bring a single member of the group in.
"You have a life here," he says, pressing the advantage. "I can get in, do this and leave. All I need to know is where to go. Do you see what I mean?"
Her arm swings to and fro, the wrench moving back and forth with a hint of suppressed violence. Nick doesn't think she knows she's doing it, but he can't help but watch it and worry. It's been a long time since his wrestling days, and he has softened considerably over the last ten years; Sam, on the other hand, looks like she could quite comfortably split his head open with that thing.
"Yeah," she mutters. The clefairy lays the screwdriver down carefully on the car bonnet and shifts on its feet, motes of light gathering around its little fists. What a pair they make. "Guess I do."
Silence. Gabriella takes a deliberate step around Nick to stand at Sam's side, and joins her and the clefairy in staring judgementally at him.
He's been getting a lot of that today. It's fine. He probably deserves it.
At least with Turing he can glare back with almost as many eyes.
"You knew about Mae?" asks Sam, after what seems like half an hour.
"Yeah," he says. "That's what got me started."
"Right."
It's hard to tell if that look on her face is illness or anger. Gabriella puts a gentle hand on her arm, and in the moment that she turns to look at Sam's face it all suddenly becomes clear: this is why Sam hasn't gone in search of other women like her. She already found one, ten years ago. And for some reason she brought her home again.
God, but he's … how did Nick not notice? He isn't even sure Sam's parents have any brothers or sisters. She doesn't have a cousin. And he's willing to bet everyone in town except him has known that ever since Gabriella arrived here.
"Why did you even come back?" he asks, and Sam's face twists like a dying snake.
"Why did you?" she asks. Definitely anger now. "This is home. And I … we got tired of fightin'."
Nick nods.
"Yeah," he says. "I understand."
"No," says Sam coldly. "You don't."
I do, he wants to say. I know: I was in Saffron in the sixties, and I know the way the cops watched certain bars and car parks, and if they saw a man there – never mind who or why – then they would take him for a long ride in the cruiser and talk and insinuate and threaten until he pleaded guilty and paid whatever they wanted just to make it go away; and that was the best you could hope for, because there were also the undercover cops and visits to the station that broke bones and spirits and we all knew someone who had been destroyed by those; and by the time the riots started in earnest I had retreated back into the lab at Yellowbrick, too afraid of losing my position to stand with those I used to love, and Miles and I watched from the window of his apartment as the riot cops and their arcanine met them in a welter of shouts and blows that shook the very street on its foundations.
"No," he says, instead. "I probably don't."
Can't tell her. Mahogany and Yellowbrick stay separate, no matter what. Sure, he can probably trust them – hell, if people know about them and don't mind he could probably trust more people in town than he thinks – but there's no sense courting unnecessary danger. Let them think he's just another asshole.
It hurts, but of course that doesn't matter. His niece was killed because she got too close to his plan; any pain that Nick can gather he has to hang onto. Like an old Kantan saint wrapping himself up in his hair shirt.
"I'm sorry," he says. "None of my business. But – will you help me?"
Sam and Gabriella look at one another, asking and answering questions with their eyes. After a moment Gabriella turns away with a sigh, and Sam returns her attention to Nick.
"I would," she says. "For Mae. For Tacoma too, and all the others." He can hear the but coming, like the first rumble of an oncoming train resonating down the tracks. "But I don't know," she says. "Sorry, Nick, but I just don't know how you'd get in."
That's real regret in her voice. It's unreasonable to be upset, he knows this, but he is anyway. This was his best lead. Without an answer from Sam, he might not even have time to find the chapter house before the cops find the cabin. And once they do – well, he's probably looking at some time in a cell, and honestly he can't say he doesn't deserve it. He got Tacoma killed, didn't he? He might not have pulled the trigger, so to speak, but he deserves to take some of the flak.
"Okay," he says. He and his voice seem to be on opposite sides of the room. "I guess that's it, then."
"Guess it is," mutters Sam. "Don't think you should stay, Nick. But if you think you can do this, then good luck to you. Give the bastards hell."
"I'm going to give them a hell of a lot more than that," he says.
Her face creases into something not quite like a smile, cold and painful. Gabriella squeezes her arm for a moment – so subtle he'd have missed it if he didn't know – and steps away from her, motioning for Nick to follow.
"I'll be back in a moment," she says. "Come on, Nick."
He follows her back out into the cold of the forecourt, where a few fat snowflakes are beginning to drift lazily down beyond the edges of the roof. Once there's a good few yards between them and the closed door, she sighs again and shakes her head.
"I told you that you wouldn't get what you want," she says. "You're not the only one hurting, Nick."
"I know," he says. "That's why I have to―"
"Save it for someone who buys into that lone wolf macho bullshit," she says, with an edge to her voice that cuts like a murkrow's talon. "I know how this works, Nick. I don't have a lot of patience for heroes."
It takes him a moment to respond, taken aback by her anger and her readiness to curse. He'd have thought she'd be happy about this. She knows what's going on; isn't it a good thing that someone wants to stop it?
"Okay," he says, voice slow with surprise. "I'm … you know I can't leave this. Right?"
"Of course you can't," she says, in a tone that suggests he has said exactly the wrong thing. "Bye, Nick. Good luck to you."
She doesn't wait to hear his response. Nick watches her stalk off back to the garage, unsure why he's being judged but fairly certain that he deserves it, and turns to Turing.
"Come on," he says. "Starting to snow. And we've got work to do."
Turing rattles two of his cores together and floats over to the car, waiting patiently for Nick to open the door.
"Least you're on my side, huh," says Nick, and gets in.
Forget Sam and Gabriella, forget however it is that he's failed. He's got a cult to destroy.
Without any easy answers, there's nothing for it but to burn some shoe leather. Nick takes the car back home – that petrol was expensive – and heads straight back out again with a notebook and his backup pen. The cops still have the gold one; apparently it's evidence. Thinking back, he probably shouldn't have lied about when he lost it, but he was panicking at the time, and admitting that it had only gone missing the day before Tacoma was due home would have had Con asking about how he lost a pen in Alola and had it turn up in Three Pines.
That's going to come up when they arrest him, isn't it? Yes. It definitely is.
"Never mind," he tells himself, closing the front door behind him. "Cross that bridge when we come to it."
For now, he has a plan. The chapter house is old – very, very old. Everyone in town knows Mahogany's history: centuries ago, before there was a town, there was a hidden fort buried under the earth, where the nameless tribe that occupied this slice of the world before it was Johto hid to wait out the wars between the bigger clans, occasionally emerging under cover of darkness to claim a few heads. Generations of kids have gone looking for the secret tunnels that they're sure are still buried beneath the town somewhere. None have found them – or at least, if any have, they've never talked about it. Because those tunnels are still occupied, possibly always have been, and the chapter house people keep a close eye on anyone who comes or goes.
But, leaving aside the danger, it means Nick has an idea of where to look. Old buildings, centres of civic activity – these are the kinds of places that might house entrances to the chapter house. He can't imagine it's easy to dig more without arousing suspicion, especially now that Mick Field is dead and his building company dissolved. So, if he can just compile a list of likely places … well, if he can do that, he'll still have to poke around, maybe stake them out for a couple of nights. But it will be a start. And that's enough for right now.
Once in town, his first stop is the store, which he circles slowly, searching the surrounding streets for doors whose purpose he cannot immediately identify. Sarah's part of the chapter house group, after all, and the store is an old enough building that it might house an entrance, but he remembers from his part-time work at the store as a teenager that the only doors inside lead to the loading bay and the stairs up to Sarah's flat. If there's a way in here, it isn't in the building itself.
He finds three unidentified doors: one beyond the gate in the alley behind the bank; one around the side of the butcher's; one half-hidden by a piece of aluminium siding leaned up against the back wall of the hardware store. Of these, the last seems the most likely: that gate isn't locked, and Steven is far too soft to be part of the group. Nick writes down all three, draws a star next to the third – who owns the hardware store these days? He needs to check that – and moves on.
The library is an iffy proposition. Lorna strikes him as the kind of person who would refuse any involvement with the chapter house, but that's not to say that there isn't an entrance there, left over from an earlier era. Once he's managed to get rid of Lorna and her condolences, Nick makes a quick circuit of the library's upper floor, just in case there's a hidden stairwell or anything (there isn't) and then more thoroughly investigates the ground floor, trying to ignore the way that Simone Weller glares at him over the top of her beekeeping book. He'd forgotten about her, honestly. From the lady of the manor to boarding-house landlady to living unofficially in the library. It makes Nick uncomfortable. He's all for the redistribution of wealth and the removal of the ruling classes, but, well. Not like this, he supposes.
Besides, the hostility in her eyes feels like a judgement. And yes, he got Tacoma killed, yes, he deserves it, but this is the fourth woman today to stare at him like she wants him dead and frankly it's starting to wear on his nerves.
He doesn't even find anything for his pains. After a while, he gives up and leaves to see that the snow that was threatening earlier has begun in earnest, blurring the air like static on a TV screen. Nick pauses on the threshold to pull up the hood of his coat and tug his scarf tighter around his throat. God. You just don't get weather like this in Kanto. Not even in south Johto, actually. So many of his visits home are for Christmas that he sometimes struggles to remember what Mahogany even looks like without its heavy white coat.
He stares out into the whirling snow for a moment, turning over the idea of going home to wait out the weather, and then he feels the pressure of Tacoma's ghost on his spine and trudges on out into the cold.
Town hall, church, Briar Rose. There really are a lot of doors in town, when you really start looking. Nick stomps through the steadily thickening snow, trying to ignore the chill eating into the few inches of his face between the top of his scarf and the bottom of his hood, and envies Turing his complete indifference to the cold. Magneton have something like a nervous system, tiny wires threading the inside of their cores, and all cold weather does to them is make whatever thoughts they have move faster than normal through their brains.
Three Pines. Post office. The old line of houses on Back Road. Everywhere he goes, he finds a few doors that don't seem to lead onto anything, testament either to the fact that old buildings are full of strange nooks and crannies or that this town is riddled with entrances to a secret network of tunnels.
Maybe it's looking at all these doors, wondering what's hidden behind them, but he's starting to believe he can feel eyes on the back of his neck. He manages to resist the temptation to look around, for a moment or two, and then he caves and sneaks a glance over one shoulder. No one there. Of course.
"Get a grip, Nick," he mutters, and refuses to look back again.
On he goes: from one side of town to the other and back again. His route makes no sense; he winds back and forth in ludicrously inefficient loops, cursing the fact that he didn't stop to plan his itinerary before he left. Christ. And he calls himself a scientist. He'd expect this kind of sloppy methodology from a student, but he should know better.
He has plenty of time to think, though. Too much, even; the more he criss-crosses Mahogany, the more familiar the places he passes come to seem, until things come to mind that he hasn't thought of in years: there, on that corner, he once broke Mr Mead's window with an inexpertly lobbed ball; here, outside what was once a tower sacred to Ho-oh and which is now the primary school, he looked up with Daniel Goldberg to see something huge and indistinct moving through the sky to the north, and by the time they had recovered enough to shout and point it had disappeared behind the mountains. Nobody believed them – just a skarmory, said Miss Smith, when they went back inside after break – but they did see it. Whatever it was.
Here, in the street whose name Nick can't remember that runs behind the post office, Tacoma once tripped and broke her nose running after Nikole. That was back when Nikole had just discovered that rubbish bins made a delightful clatter if she headbutted them hard enough to knock them over; Annie had been threatening to send Nikole back out to the woods all week if Tacoma couldn't keep her under control, and so Tacoma was desperate to stop her. She'd wanted to show Nick something she'd found in town – he can't even remember what now, a murkrow nest or whatever; in those days she found all kinds of things, and on his visits home he always encouraged her curiosity – and he was walking with her and Nikole to go see, and then …
He remembers picking her up and running to the medical centre while she pressed his handkerchief against her face and cried. It's been a long time since she was small enough to be carried. But he can't forget how she felt in his arms.
When was the last time he hugged her? Too many years ago. And now he never will again.
He stops in the middle of the street. The houses seem different somehow, as if he's taken a wrong turning somewhere that led him into a different town altogether. All at once he is no longer sure what he is doing, why he is here or what he hopes to achieve. Does he really think he can end this? With amateur detective work and a machine that may or may not even work, when it comes down to it?
Turing encircles him, cores orbiting his head and staring inward at his face. Nick reaches out to touch him, struck by an irrational fear that his hand might go straight through the steel and shatter the illusion of company, and is relieved to find steel beneath his gloved fingers.
"Think it might be time to go home," he murmurs, but he carries on and visits the place where the mill used to be all the same.
When he finally gets back, nobody comments on his absence. Nick doesn't actually give them a chance – he comes in and goes straight upstairs – but he has a feeling they wouldn't anyway. He shuts his bedroom door on the world, moves to close the curtains, remembers he never opened them that morning, and collapses into bed, half-frozen and more tired than he has been since the killer flights to Alola and back. Sleep is waiting impatiently for him – he's finding this happens now, from time to time; apparently you don't get to stay young and energetic forever – but he fights it off just long enough to set his alarm for half five, and then melts into the dark beneath his eyelids.
He wakes to the shrilling of the clock, and perhaps it's the weird time throwing him off, but for a long and blissful moment he remembers absolutely nothing except that he is home for Christmas. Then the fog clears, and everything settles back onto his shoulders once more.
Nick takes a slow, deep breath. Turing drifts closer, pinging softly. Two eyes on him, one on the door, just in case.
"We're okay," says Nick roughly, forcing himself up. "Hang on. Let me get my coat."
This one takes a little planning. In the kitchen, Nick makes a pot of coffee, and while the water is boiling runs through his notes. He circles some of the likelier candidates, pours the coffee into a thermos, and sticks his head into the living-room to ask if he can borrow the car again.
"I filled it up," he says. "So don't worry about petrol."
Lucas shrugs. No Annie tonight, notes Nick. No Everett either, but that's to be expected. Since Tacoma died, he has either been in his room or non-specifically 'out'.
"It's fine, Nick. Did you speak to Sam about yours?"
That's a little more lively than Nick expected. Maybe he isn't the only one for whom the funeral was a help.
"Yeah," he lies. "She'll come take a look next week."
Lucas nods.
"All right," he says. "All right."
He turns back to the TV without another word. Nick watches him for a few seconds, observing the stillness of his face as the studio audience laughs at the Kantan actress onscreen, and then forces himself to pull away. He has a job to do tonight. Watching his brother-in-law attempting to vegetate his way out of loss is not it.
He takes the car down dark, silent streets, marvelling at the transformation – it isn't even half six and everyone's already home. Afraid, maybe. There's a killer on the loose, after all. Or, as Nick knows, a few of them.
Maybe they aren't afraid. Maybe it's just that this is Mahogany, and here even Saturday night is a quiet affair. That's much more comforting, and it has the advantage of being at least half true.
Was that something moving, over the rooftops?
No. Probably not.
Five increasingly tense minutes later, he parks just down the road from the big houses where the old mill used to be. Back before bread came in bags on the shelves of the store, this was where people brought their wheat to be ground into flour; the mill itself was a victim of the turn-of-the-century rush to modernise, back when Johto could still pretend to compete with Kanto, but Nick is almost certain that whatever as under its foundations is still there. Earlier, he found a bolted door in a strange, isolated shed on the footpath that leads around the back of the houses. It was plastered with signs warning people of high voltage, but Nick is more or less certain that the electrical substation for this area is between Dane and Mallard Streets, a block to the west.
He learns back into the shadows and unscrews his thermos, eyes on the entrance to the footpath.
"Gonna be a long night," he remarks.
Zzt, replies Turing, all cores watching the street. Nick smiles at his zeal, castigates himself for anthropomorphising, and pours himself a measure of coffee. If someone's using this door, then he wants to know about it.
Turing rests his cores by turns, keeping two active and alert at all times. He watches, and Nick watches, and then at around nine thirty they give up and move on to the next door. If the group was going to meet tonight, they'd probably have arrived by now – but he might be able to catch them leaving, if he switches location. They must use more than one door, after all. It would be suspicious to have all the members pour in and out of the same one.
All of which assumes they do meet at night, and on this night in particular. Not a safe assumption. And yet here he is, staking out mysterious doors in the frozen dark of Mahogany in midwinter.
He's had better Saturday nights, that's for sure. Most of his old haunts are closed or full of young people he doesn't recognise any more – as it should be; they fought hard for the end of police entrapment, and they deserve to reap the rewards – but he still likes a quiet drink in the Blue Moon of an evening, with Miles and a couple of the others who have stuck around long enough to become the old guard. Sitting around in a poorly-insulated car doesn't quite have the same appeal.
Christ, it's cold. The coffee helps, as does the shot of whisky he slipped into it before he left, but even so. After all these years in Saffron, he's just not used to this any more.
At least he won't fall asleep, he consoles himself, and pulls up just down the road from the town hall for another few hours of watching. So passes the night: long, and cold, and punctuated with awkward pee breaks as the coffee starts to make itself known to Nick's insides. He doesn't catch anyone coming or going – of course; this is a stupid damn idea – and has to retreat back to Annie and Lucas' guest room by three in the morning, conceding reluctantly that not even the most devoted members of the group are going to still be there at this hour.
It's been a long day. The next morning, he wakes very late, and finds a note on the kitchen table to say that the others have left for church. Looks like they're starting to put their routines back together. He isn't sure how he feels about that; some obscure feeling tells him that the wound Tacoma left should bleed forever, should turn septic and rot until the whole family follows her into the hereafter, but he is aware that this may not be the most rational thought he's ever had.
He stalks disconsolately around the house for a few hours, uncertain if or when he should resume his stakeout; when Annie finally snaps and tells him to stop pacing, he snaps back and storms out in a huff, only to regain his senses the instant the frigid air hits his face and sucks the moisture from his eyes. But it's too late to back down now, so he keeps on storming all the way to the end of the street, at which point he is safely out of sight and can therefore slow to a walk as he makes his way over to another one of the suspicious doors.
Four cold and fruitless hours later, he slinks back into the house and creeps straight up to the guest room to sleep till dusk again, avoiding Annie so that neither of them have to go through the pain of apologising. Asking for the car again feels like a bit much, so all he takes this time is the spiked coffee and an extra layer, and settles down to lurk in a dark corner by the florist's and watch for anyone using the door behind the hardware store.
The shadows deepen, swallowing the street inch by dusky inch. In his hiding place, Nick shifts from foot to foot, trying to stave off boredom and the ache from standing up all day. He hasn't really been in shape since he left the wrestling team back in '66, though he still has some of that bulk and strength. It's a Wroth thing: Spearings are tall, Wroths are tough. Everett only got the Spearing genes, but Tacoma has both.
Had. She had both. And then someone took them and everything else away from her forever.
In the cold depths of the night, it becomes harder and harder to ignore the feeling that she is still here, somehow. Like if he looked over his shoulder he'd see her there, standing by the trash cans full of dead flowers at the back of the alley. Looking back with her mismatched eyes. He tells himself that this is ridiculous – just the grief and the paranoia and the whisky ganging up on him in an unguarded moment – but he can't bring himself to look back and prove it. Better to think she might be there than to know she's not.
"Fucking idiot," Nick diagnoses, disgusted with himself, and glares out at the street as if he could make a target appear by sheer force of will.
Time passes. The ache in his legs deepens. His feet would hurt, but they're too cold to be anything but numb. He wiggles his fingers one by one, and isn't sure he can actually feel the movement.
At his side, Turing hangs in the air like a low-flying constellation, his patience stretching out without end. He could wait here with Nick for the rest of their lives, probably. As long as he got struck by lightning every once in a while.
Nick sighs and stamps his feet. Okay. Probably Sunday night was the wrong time for this, if there even is an entrance here. There's every chance that the door is just that, a door, and frankly if he doesn't head back soon he's probably looking at frostbi―
The sound of a door closing. Nick twitches back onto full alert, cold and fatigue forgotten, and pulls back further into the shadows just as Harry walks past his hiding place, whistling cheerfully.
"… on the feast of Ste-phen!"
Moments later, a huge, humped shape limps painfully after him, paws dragging on the snowy pavement. Jacob stops at the mouth of the alley, and though Nick can't see him clearly with the streetlight at his back he can make out the tilt of his head and the pricking up of his antennae as he senses something lurking nearby.
Nick holds his breath―
Jacob peers into the shadows―
"Come on," calls Harry. "Too cold to be playing silly buggers like this."
Jacob lingers for just a moment, a faint crimson light showing in his eyes – and then Nick sees the turning of his heavy head and he lumbers off down the street.
Okay.
Goddamn.
Nick breathes out, as slow and silent as he can manage. If Jacob had grabbed him – well, Turing's loyal, and judging by the way he's watching Jacob wouldn't need much encouragement to go for him, but even a crippled electivire is a force to be reckoned with, and there's not much a magneton can do to make one let go of something it wants to keep hold of.
But Harry, huh? Well, his brother Dick might be a part of the group; he works at the post office, and there's definitely someone there who reads Nick's mail. Harry could be in on it too. Maybe he didn't actually do it – Jacob couldn't sneak up on a piloswine, let alone a young woman walking alone after dark – but he could have called ahead from the station to let someone else know Tacoma was en route.
Think, he commands himself. You're jumping to conclusions. Are there other reasons Harry might be out here at this time of night? He could be visiting someone. He and Sarah are, after all, the worst-kept secret in town; even Nick knows they've been seeing each other for years now. But why would he bring Jacob, if that was the case? Hell, why would he bring Jacob anywhere, if he's too arthritic to move properly?
Too many unknowns. Here's a question he might actually be able to answer: which door did Harry come out of, anyway? It wasn't the one Nick was watching, or he would have seen him. Nick edges closer to the corner, peering through the inadequate streetlight to try and make out where the footprints lead, but it's impossible to be sure. It might be Sunday, but this is still the busiest street in town; the snow has long since been trampled into an indeterminate slush.
Nick curses under his breath. Trust his luck. He finally sees something and he can't even make any damn use of―
He hears the door close again, and from around the side of the store comes Deb Franklin, her pidgey huddled inside the hood of her coat. She walks briskly past Nick's alley without so much as glancing at him, and disappears around the corner.
Turing looks at him. Nick looks back.
"Yeah," he whispers. "Yeah, I think we … shit."
They wait there another half hour, but see only one other person leave, again just long enough after Deb for it to seem coincidental: a man Nick doesn't recognise but who looks uncannily like Aaron Lockwood without the moustache and with a few extra pounds – his brother Max, presumably. As far as Nick's concerned, this clinches it. Three people from this one place? Only one of whom is a person Sarah might actually invite to her place for dinner? Yes. It's not conclusive, but it's a hell of a strong suggestion. There was a meeting in the chapter house tonight, and some of the members left via an exit hidden in the store.
"We got 'em," mutters Nick. "We got 'em, Tur!"
His partner hums softly, and at this reminder of the real world Nick comes out of himself, realises once more how much his legs hurt and how cold he is. He swears again, shakes the thermos to see if it's empty, and – finding that it is – slips out of his hiding spot to hurry quietly back home.
Tomorrow, he tells himself. Tomorrow, he's going to end this; tomorrow, Tacoma sees justice; tomorrow, he will gouge out those eyes that he still half-believes are following him, even now.
Tomorrow, maybe, he can finally go to sleep and not wake up more tired than before.
After all of that, Nick sleeps even later than he did on Sunday, and only wakes when Turing swoops down low over his bed and grinds loudly in his ear.
"Knock it off!" he snaps, pushing him away and forcing his eyes open. "What in the goddamn?"
Zzt, says Turing urgently, nudging Nick with one core and sending another to tap against the window. Zzzt zzzzt zzzzzz―
"Okay," grumbles Nick, tossing off the covers. "Okay, I'm coming."
He stumbles over to the window – forgot to draw the curtains again, he realises – and stares blearily out at a mess of light and colour before remembering his glasses. With some effort, he retrieves them from the bedside table, and then on returning to the window he finishes waking up very, very fast.
Police car. Parked outside, with a flash of orange in the back seat that means Con and whatever his current raichu is called must be here.
Did Jodi …? No. No, she wouldn't. They must have just found the cabin. And then the owner. And then the booking.
Bloody hell. Nick stands as still as he can, straining to hear, and yes: there's Annie's voice, coming from the hall.
"… isn't up just yet," she's saying. "What's this about, Con?"
"We're going to have to ask him some questions," comes the reply. "We've found evidence that suggests he may have kept some facts back from us the last time we spoke …"
Time to think fast. They'll search his room, right? But – but they've already searched Tacoma's.
"Turing, I think you just saved us," he says, and snatches his jacket up off the floor. In here – one of these pockets – there! He pulls out the machine, its metallic contours fitting familiarly to the shape of his palm, and sneaks across the landing to Tacoma's room. Stepping in gets him for a moment, the smell of spilled perfume and old memories bringing tears to his eyes, but there's no time for grief and Nick does his best to sidestep the feeling, to let it rush past his shoulder while he stuffs his machine into the drawer of Tacoma's bedside table. Then it's back across the landing and into the guest room, to climb quickly into bed and feign sleep while footsteps sound on the stairs.
"Nick?" Annie's tone and knock are less than friendly. "Nick, get up. Cops are here for you."
He allows a second to pass, as if frozen in shock, and then jumps up and opens the door.
"What's that?" he asks.
Annie's gaze could freeze a slugma.
"What did you lie to the bloody cops for?" she asks. "I swear to God, Nick, if you've―"
"If I've what? Killed my niece? Annie, I can't believe you'd―"
"You said that," she snaps. "You said that. Not me."
They glare at one another for a few moments, and then it falls to Nick, as ever, to take the blame and fix things.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean … that."
"Really," says Annie.
"Really." Nick sighs. "Look, I'm sure this is a misunderstanding. I was jetlagged out of my brain; I probably just got mixed up. I'll get dressed and come down, we can straighten all this out."
"You are dressed," says Annie. She's right, of course; he didn't bother undressing last night. Honestly, he just wanted a few more minutes to figure out a plan of action, but it looks like that's not going to happen. "Sort this, Nick. Now."
He raises his hands in a placatory kind of gesture that she does not accept.
"All right," he says. "All right. Come on, Turing. Let's go find out what they want."
Con is waiting in the hall, looking ill at ease; at his side is a uniformed woman that Nick doesn't recognise. He's surprised: female cops in Mahogany? It's not so long ago that a woman on the force was news in Saffron, and that's probably the most progressive town on the peninsula. Still, he kind of figures that she's not here for her feminine touch; there's a dragonair at her side, twelve feet of scaled muscle with eyes like liquid jet, and though it has curled up and rested its head on its coils Nick figures it could kill everyone in the room as easily as blinking, if it wanted to.
Dragon clan, then. Con's brought the big guns, it seems. If Nick doesn't want to come quietly, he's betting the dragonair will rear up and he will be asked politely to reconsider. Turing will defend him – he's already moved his cores into an aggressive stance, vibrating with more than usual anxiety – but he's not much of a fighter, and a police dragonair is going to be much more than a match for him.
Nick's not going to pretend he thought much of Con to begin with, but this is low, even for him. Intimidation tactics, huh? Model policing, right there.
"Con," he says, attempting to be civil. It's not a very good attempt, but it is an attempt.
"Nick," replies Con. "This is Byrne Winter. I don't know if you've met."
"Morning," says Nick. "Annie says you had some questions for me?"
"Yes." Con glances at Byrne. "You drove in from the airport, didn't you, Nick?"
Well. Nick can't say he wasn't expecting it. He just thought he would have a little more time.
"That's right," he says. "There a problem with that?"
"There might be," replies Con. "You mind showing us the car?"
Nick opens his mouth to reply, but Annie gets there first.
"What is this, Con?" she asks. "What are you getting at?"
"It's all right, Annie," says Nick. "Just a minute." He reaches deep inside himself, looking for a smile, but he can't manage it. He was there. He was right there, he had the opportunity, and now―
No. Keep it together, Nick. Annie is right here, and you might have lost a niece but she lost a daughter, and this weekend is the first time she's looked even halfway alive, and you cannot take that away from her. Not yet.
"Appreciate it, Nick," says Con. He looks a little confused; Nick imagines he probably expected him to deny everything. But what would be the point? It's not like he can run from this. All he can do is― actually, he has no idea what he can do. He supposes he'll have time to figure that out in prison.
Christ. If Tacoma's death hadn't blindsided him like that, if he'd just been a little quicker to get his head back together …
"Let's go," he says, as brightly as he can. "This way, officers."
Confidence, that's the thing. Confidence will get him through the next few minutes, if no further than that.
Outside, the day is bright and cold. Nick, Turing and the cops assemble before the garage door, the dragonair slithering out to coil itself behind them. The snow turns to steam on its flanks, Nick notes. Dragons aren't snakes: they run too hot to hibernate.
He sighs, looks away to see Annie watching from the front step. She is asking a question with her eyes, but he pretends not to see it.
"Open her up, Nick," says Con, gesturing at the door. "If you don't mind."
Nick waits for a second, his confidence draining away like blood from a slit throat, and then because there is no alternative he opens the door and looks with everyone else past Lucas' brown Škoda to see a shiny blue Crowne, tucked safely away from prying eyes at the back of the garage.
Con looks at Nick.
Nick looks back.
"Are you arresting me?" he asks.
"Not unless I have to," says Con. He looks calm, concerned. He looks like a man who is ready to bury the hatchet.
He'll have to pry it from Nick's cold, dead hands first.
"I think you'd better come down to the station," Con tells him. "We're going to have to talk about this."
"Yeah," says Nick, slowly, all his energy spent. "I … I guess we are."
Gabriella has no patience for lone wolves, he remembers. He has a feeling he's just figured out why.
It occurs to him that he really should have called Miles after all.