Deja Who (Insighter #1)(11)

“Mmm, yeah, that’ll teach him.”

“Well. It might.”

“You couldn’t kill a tick.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Cops do it all the time for Insighters.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re a sad kiddo.”

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

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

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

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

“As long as it’s not about money.”

Cat just stared at her and masticated carrots and pudding.

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