Page 9 of Soothsayer

“Not fighting dangerous,” Phin said as he led the way to the door. We had to detour around several prone bodies; Phin hadn’t been fucking about. I could barely tell that the guys were still breathing. “He doesn’t need to be usin’ his talent right now is all. The more people he’s around, the harder it is to make sure he stays in control of it. Mac!” he yelled out the door, and a moment later, the guy who’d been washing the wall earlier appeared. “Help these two upstairs, someplace he can lie down. Siobhan’s already called for the doc.”

“Move fast, lads,” Mac said, making room for us. “The cops are on their way.”

“Bloody fuck…” Phin muttered.

“Any dead?”

“No, he’s the worst of it.”

The conversation continued, but I didn’t really follow it any more. There were stairs, a trip down the alley, the brick walls as red as my own blood in the light of the setting sun, up more stairs, and finally into a dark room with a leather recliner that Roger did his best to dump me into gently. He was panting like a dog by the time we got up there.

“Thanks,” I grunted, shifting around so I was on my side, away from my wounded arm.

“You won me close to ten grand. A little help’s the least I can do for a friend like that.”

I chuckled. “We’re not friends. You were convenient, and I was lucky for a while. That’s all there is to it.”

“Not for me,” Roger said staunchly. “Man takes a bullet for me, he’s my friend after that, like it or not. You mighta saved my life.”

“I made the trouble for you in the first place,” I pointed out.

“That little brawl? That was no trouble; that wasfun, boy. Hell, back in Texas, we’d call that a warm-up! Nobody ever needs to die in a bar fight, as long as the dumb fucks keep their weapons out of it.” He shook his head. “Damn fools, the gamblers here.”

“People care a lot about their money.”

“People need to remember that money ain’t the most important thing,” Roger said. “It’s important, I grant you, but I bet some of those dumb fucks downstairs wish they’d just walked away instead of escalating things. That bouncer was breakin’ bones.” He glanced at his watch and sighed. “My plane’s come in, and I can’t keep my missus waiting much longer before she comes lookin’ for me.” He leaned toward me. “Give me your arm, Cillian.”

I was just groggy enough to extend it without asking why, but startled when he uncapped a pen and began writing on the inside of my forearm. “Foreplay, finally?”

“Aw, you wish,” Roger shot back. “Here.” He scrawled a second line beneath the first and then recapped his pen. “That’s my contact info. You need help, you call me?day or night. If you can’t get me, I wrote down my secretary’s number too. She’ll answer as Ace Industries.”

“Ace…” I looked up at him, suddenly confused. He took the phone from me and stuffed it back in my pocket as I stared andthen checked to make sure my bandage was still uncomfortably tight. “Your company is called Ace?”

“Childhood nickname. I never quite outgrew it,” Roger said as he stood up. “I mean it now, Cillian. Don’t let your pride get the better of ya.”

“I won’t,” I said blankly. Ace…I wondered suddenly if I hadn’t mistaken my Ace of Cups earlier. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure, boy. Apart from the shootin’, this was a real pleasant way to spend the day.” He ruffled my hair and then straightened his hat—how he was still wearing his hat after the day we’d had, I didn’t know, but there it was—and headed out the door.

I drifted for a while, wanting to think but not quite able to. Shock. It was a weird thing. I could handle all sorts of pain and privation and keep going, but one little bullet wound and I was fainting like a corseted Victorian on a hot summer day. It was so tempting just to close my eyes and sleep, and I’d never been one to resist temptation. The darkness behind my own eyes beckoned, and the deeper I got, the less I felt the throbbing pain of my arm. I could just?

“Cillian!” Warm hands gripped my own, and I was pulled out of the welcoming black and back into the bright, painful world of the waking. Marisol stared down at me, her expression a mix of worry and fury that was very familiar. “Cielito, honest to Goddess, I thought you might be dead! You!” She let me go and rounded on Phin, who took a step back. “You let him get shot, you leave him here alone, and then you summon this damnmeth cookerto tend to him! What it wrong with you?”

“He wasn’t alone when I left him, and I had my own mess to clean up,” Phin said, scowling at her. “At least he’s a real doctor, Mari.”

“Who is addicted to his own drugs as well as who knows how many illegal ones!”

“It’s not likeyoucould do the doctoring, woman. A bullet wound can’t be cured with a bundle of sage and some chanting!”

The tall black-suited man in the background slid around them and crouched next to the recliner, opening the briefcase he’d brought along. I recognized him as the go-to doctor for “unmentionables” on Colfax and tried to relax as he loosened the bandage to take a look. His face was ascetically thin, fine-boned and high-cheeked, and he worked with brisk disregard for my pain. That worked for me. I didn’t need any more coddling.

“Straight through,” he murmured. “But I need to clean it before closing it. Chew and swallow this.” He handed me a Valium, which I took, cringing at the bitterness of it as it went down. He injected something numbing into my arm and got to work.

Fifteen minutes later, I was stitched up with half a liter of orange juice swimming in my stomach. The doctor had taken off after being paid by Phin, leaving me with a pocket of antibiotics and painkillers that were definitely not over the counter, and Marisol was still furious enough to spit fire. She chewed me out for being an irresponsible bastard, chewed the doctor out even though he wasn’t there, and then went back to Phin, who endured it stoically this time.

This could take a while. I groped awkwardly for my phone—learning to use my left hand instead of my right for the foreseeable future was going to be tough. My fingertips brushed something ragged. I recognized the feel of a wad of bills and smiled dopily to myself. Roger had left me with cash?a lot of it, apparently. Guess he really did feel bad. I finally got my hands on my phone and opened up my email. There was one from my mother, with a copy ofModern Parapsychiathat featured my interview attached to it. I opened it up, skimming through the other articles as I went to indulge in reading about myself.

Something about aligning chakras, something about opening the third eye, something about some rich guy angering the Icelandic government by moving a sacred site—literally moving it, the ground, the rocks, the trees, everything—from Iceland to America…huh, weird. The only picture was of a shipping container flanked by two bodyguards dressed in military fatigues and carrying very illegal submachine guns—P90s, I thought. There was something kind of familiar about one of the guys, but my eyes were blurring by this point, and I could barely keep them open.

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