Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(77)

Detergent was secured. Clothing was sent off again. The hotel’s fan was noisy. Could they switch rooms?

Now Farooq-Lane understood. She was being punished for calling in the old Zed.

Lock called. “Good work. What are you doing now?”

She glared at Parsifal, who sat on the end of his sofa bed in his bathrobe and shoes, face expressionless behind his glasses.

“Waiting for inspiration.” It annoyed her too badly to look at him, so she put in her earbuds and went to stand by the window, looking down at the city below.

“Nikolenko or Ramsay will be coming to debrief you about that Zed you’ve found,” said Lock.

“Oh, not Ramsay,” Farooq-Lane said. She didn’t really want Nikolenko, either, but she knew which she’d prefer of the two.

“Whoever I can pull off the trail over here,” Lock said, not seeming to hear her reluctance. “Also I think we’re getting some agency help soon, so maybe I’ll be able to send both. I’ve got my eye on a Zed here that seems promising. Ask Bauer to keep an eye on his visions. We want to make sure—”

Something jerked one of her earbuds out of her ear. Farooq-Lane jumped a mile.

“I cannot wear clothing that smells like this,” Parsifal said.

“Parsifal,” she snapped. Lock was still talking. “Hold on, I’m …”

“I can’t wear this,” Parsifal continued.

This was beyond the pale. “I’m on the phone.”

“I can hear you’re busy,” Lock said. “Ramsay will let you know when he’s in town.”

With annoyance, Farooq-Lane hung up and faced Parsifal. He didn’t smell like anything unusual. Possibly like shampoo and fresh laundry. “You are being absolutely impossible today.”

“Did you tell them to not kill her?”

She was losing her temper. She could feel it leaving her. Very soon it would be leaving for good. “You heard exactly what I said. How much power do you think I have in this situation, anyway? You and I both knew that not every Zed we brought to them was going to be the one. Why are you slamming on the brakes now?”

She didn’t even know how much of what she was saying she really believed. She felt like she was being forced to be the devil’s advocate, and that made her angry, too. What did she believe? She believed something bad was coming to the world, and she believed she knew where it was coming from, generally. She believed most people didn’t get a chance to make a difference. She believed that she did. She believed that she didn’t know what else she would be doing now if she wasn’t doing this.

She believed deep down inside that wasn’t really enough to believe in, and that made her even angrier.

Parsifal was very agitated now, twisting his long, knobby hands around each other. He was rolling his shoulders, too, aggravated with his clothing in every way. She remembered Ramsay telling her once that you couldn’t trust the Visionaries, not really. They were more on the Zeds’ side than the humans’, he said, because they had more in common at the end of the day. Plus they spent all day dreaming of the Zeds. Couldn’t trust them. She hadn’t given it much thought then, but she remembered it now, as Parsifal rubbed his hands over his arms as if he was cold and worked his fingers into many shapes.

“The easiest way to save her is to find the Zed who’s actually going to end the world. You can’t do that here in your bathrobe. You can either have another vision, or you can come with me in the car and look for things from your last one.”

He didn’t agree with her. He just didn’t disagree.

In the car, they battled again over opera. Parsifal wanted the window rolled down because of the smell of the laundry detergent. He was hungry. None of this looked familiar to him. He was going to be sick. He didn’t like the crackers she got him to settle his stomach. She’d gotten the BMW vehicle registrations printed out, but none of the names rang a bell and it was making him sick to read them while they were moving. He didn’t want to look out the window for a little bit. These houses still didn’t look familiar. No, circling the burned-down hotel again was not going to help. He needed to buy a new shirt. He needed one that was not going to prickle his skin like this one. No, he could not just ignore it. He—

“I’ve had it,” Farooq-Lane said. “You’re a terrorist.”

She pulled into a florist’s empty parking lot and wrenched the car into park. He eyed her mulishly.

“Do you think I want to be doing this?” she demanded. “Don’t you think I wanted life to be different than this?”

He just sat that way he always did, tall and rigid.

“My family’s dead, too, you know! And I’m not over here making everyone else’s life impossible!”

Parsifal’s gaze was heavy on her, and for a minute she thought he might actually say something sympathetic, something un-Parsifalish, but he said, “I’m very tired of you.”

“You’re very tired of me?”

“I can’t think with your driving,” he said. “It’s making me sick. I can’t think with you talking to me. If I’m to recognize anything from my vision, it can’t be with you around. It is too much. You’re always so you all the time. You have your drink and your hair and your clothing and your voice and the way you sit with your hand on your leg like that and it’s too much. I’m getting out.”