The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(31)
New Life had a cheap little lobby with a couple of overstuffed chairs, a reception desk on rolling casters, and a potted fern drooping in the corner. It looked more like a doctor’s office waiting room than what I imagined a homeless shelter would look like. I wished I could have brought Pixie along for some color commentary—she would have known in a heartbeat if the place was wrong.
The frizzy-haired woman behind the desk had a bright smile and glassy eyes that read like two big blue Vacancy signs. I would have pegged her for a pill popper, but Valium didn’t have anything on New Life’s brand of chemical bliss.
“Welcome!” she said, a little too friendly to be real. “How can we help you? Are you looking for a place to stay?”
I nodded, scrunching up my face, putting on my burnout routine.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Guy gave me a—a card and a sammich. Said I should come around, you’d help me out.”
“Absolutely! Let’s just have you sign in.”
She gestured to a clipboard on the edge of the desk. The sheet on top was filled with scribbled names, just two vacant spaces left at the bottom of the page. Judging from the dates, they’d had more than a few visitors in the last couple of days. I wondered where they were right now. I reached for the pen, then froze.
The plastic glistened. It was wet, a trap waiting to be sprung.
I looked up at her and gave an apologetic shrug. “I, uh…I don’t know how t’write so good.”
“It’s okay! Just do your best, sweetie. You can even just draw a little X if you want.”
Picking up that pen meant getting a dose of the Missionary’s zombie juice straight through the skin of my fingers, just like when I’d taken his business card. On the other hand, the effects from my first exposure had only lasted about fifteen minutes. If I kept myself together, I could probably ride it out. The receptionist wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and I was about five seconds from blowing my own cover.
I picked up the pen, scribbled an X, and dropped it as fast as I could. The familiar tingling numbness hit me in seconds, making my fingers go slack.
Remember the numbness, I told myself. If you’re numb, you’re not yourself. Remember that!
Strangely, though, it didn’t seem as important as it had a minute ago. I couldn’t remember why I was so worried. The receptionist leaned over and clicked a little white button on her desk intercom.
“That’s perfect, sweetie! Now you just wait one second, right there, and somebody will come along to help you out.”
I waited. It felt like a good idea.
The door behind her desk swung open, and the Missionary came out with a big smile and a hearty “Hey there, buddy!” He’d traded in his street ensemble for a pristine white lab coat and thick white latex gloves. I thought, on some level, that his new outfit should concern me, but I couldn’t figure out why. He was such a nice guy, why worry about it? His tranquil blue eyes, so big and expressive, welcomed me in.
“I am so glad you came,” he told me. “Are you hungry? It’s almost lunchtime! Come on back with me. Let’s get you taken care of.”
He led me down a green-walled corridor lined with crisp white tiles. The air smelled like Listerine and mothballs. We paused by a rolling cart stocked with supplies from a clinic: cotton swabs, tongue depressors, bandages, and a glass jar with a shiny chrome lid.
“Just one last thing, buddy,” he said. “Stand right there, real still, okay?”
He pulled back the lid on the jar. Green glittery dust sparkled inside, like ground glass from a church window.
My thoughts squeezed through my brain like molasses, my reactions confused, like a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car. I had just enough time to realize what was coming, but not enough time to stop it. He dipped his gloved fingers into the jar, raised them to his lips, and blew. The dust hit my face and I impulsively jerked back, inhaling sharply, pulling it in through my mouth and nose.
The world turned into an oil painting. Colors faded and blurred and ran like melted wax. My body went numb, and under the numbness came a wriggling itching feeling all over my body, like centipedes under my skin. My ears rang with a slow dull droning like a wordless lullaby.
“That’s better, friend. Let’s put you with the others,” I heard the Missionary say as he put his hand on my back, steering me up the corridor. Sure. Put me with the others. That sounded fine.
Steel bars rattled. A cell door slid open. Bodies moved all around me, drifting aimlessly or just standing still, wavering on their feet. I walked until I came to a cinder-block wall, and then I stopped and stared at it. The block in front of my face had so many tiny ripples, imperfections in the concrete, and I wanted to count them all. That seemed like a fine thing to do.
“His mind is not in his mind,” a voice whispered off to my side. It echoed, the reverb bouncing around inside my cotton-candy skull. I looked to my left and squinted.
The smoke-faced men hovered before me, their polished black leather Oxfords dangling an inch above the floor of the cell. The rest of the room was a blur of blobs and smears, but they stood out as if drawn onto the skin of the world with a calligrapher’s pen.
“Yes,” the other said. “He can hear us now.”
Fifteen
I’d only seen them once before, in the tortured memories of Eugene Planck’s dreams. They’d appeared to Lauren Carmichael in Nepal, taught her the arts of a sorcerer, and handed her the Ring of Solomon. They’d groomed her for twenty years, guiding her pursuit of power, but it was all a long con: she would have accidentally jump-started the apocalypse if we hadn’t been there to stop her.