Page 87 of Concluded
Abe made a dismissive sound and let go of Achilles’ hands, but only so he could lie down beside him, Abe’s elbow resting against Achilles’ knee.“I don’t know anything.I’m just a tired alta kocker—an old shit—who got careless.”He sighed, loudly.“I didn’t truly know that much about Townsend.I didn’t like him, and to be honest, I felt guilty because I’m the one who made him.But Thomas and I, we avoided him as much as possible.”
“He was really creepy.It was weird.I never knew whether to believe anything he said, or whether anything he did was what it seemed.But I also trusted him to be on the right side, ultimately.Although maybe he was willing to experience casualties along the way.”
“I’d agree with that assessment.”
Now it was Achilles’ turn to sigh.“I wish he hadn’t gotten killed.Thomas makes a good chief under ordinary circumstances, but he doesn’t have Townsend’s… spooky ibbur gifts.”
At first Abe was very quiet, and then he sat up suddenly, startling Achilles.“Gotten killed,” Abe echoed.“Tell me more about how that happened.When you’re retired, the gossip isn’t as good.”
“Honestly, I don’t know all the details either.It was kept kind of hush-hush.”Achilles frowned as he tried to recall the most reliable information he’d heard, ignoring all the idle speculation.“So, Dash Cooke.Do you know him?”
“Met him once or twice.Handsome man.Not very chatty.”
That was a concise summary.“I’ve worked with him over the years.He’s the kind of agent who gets sent in when things really need to be obliterated, you know?Not much subtlety to him, but he can best anyone at the firing range.”Achilles had always thought of him as a goon—an enforcer—which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.Sometimes a goon was needed to get a job done.“Anyway, he got an assignment in Sacramento.A poltergeist, supposedly, except it wasn’t.It turned out to be Henry, a house spirit of a previously unidentified type.”
“That seems an odd assignment for someone like him.”
“Well, yeah.But you know Townsend.He always had his reasons.”The import of Achilles’ own words struck him as he said them.“This… this is significant.We’re onto something.I don’t know what.”It felt good, though.A step up from despair.He probably should have followed this train of thought earlier, except that Townsend had done so many inexplicable things that it was easy to simply shrug and accept.
“What happened with Cooke and this house spirit?”Abe prompted.
“Cooke brought him to HQ.And I don’t know whether the two of them became an item up in Sac or whether it happened in LA, but it happened.And the thing you have to know is that Henry is the sweetest, least dangerous person you could imagine.He dresses in bright prints and decorates offices and rescues spiders, for gods’ sake.”Achilles smiled at the memory.Then he grew serious.“But Townsend tried to kill Henry.Nobody knows why.Cooke shot Townsend to protect Henry.He was cleared of any wrongdoing, and last I heard he was still working for the Bureau.When we still had a Bureau to work for.”
Abe gave a dry laugh.“So the mamzer caught the bullet.It sounds as if Townsend deliberately orchestrated his own death,nu?”
It kind of did.“But he never struck me as the suicidal type.And if he was, why drag Cooke and poor Henry into it?Why not just do it himself?”Achilles really wanted to pace, which always seemed to help him think, but he was afraid he’d lose Abe if they separated.He didn’t want to risk not being able to reunite; that they’d connected at all might be a temporary fluke.
“These are good questions.The thing he became when Birdie possessed him—Birdie was the ibbur—was no longer human.I don’t know if a name exists for such a creature.He was that thing for nearly a century, gathering power over the years.Perhaps it was physically impossible for him to end his own life—directly, in any case.”
That made sense to Achilles.Especially since Townsend left clear directives for the future of the Bureau, including naming Charles as the next chief.Which implied that he’d known what was coming.
Instead of pacing, Achilles drummed his fingers on his leg.“Okay, so maybe after a hundred years or so, he was sick of it all and just wanted to retire.Like,reallyretire.I tried to retire myself recently, only less dramatically.”
“That doesn’t seem to have worked out well for you.”
“Not really.I couldn’t stay away, though.Not with Dee, and not with the stakes so high.Jesus, Townsend had been going on for years about how something really big and bad was coming down the line, but I don’t know if he did shit all to prepare for it.”
“Boychik, what if his deathwasthe preparation?”
Achilles gasped.“Townsend knew he’d be more useful dead than alive!He sacrificed himself for the cause.”
Abe patted Achilles’ knee.“Seems to be going around, doesn’t it?”
Shit.The key to this puzzle lay in figuring outhowa now-dead possessed creature could help.“Can we assume that a lot of the other things he’s been doing over the past decades—maybe stuff that doesn’t seem to make much sense—those were part of his grand plan too?”A rush of anger filled his veins.“He’s been moving us all around like goddamn chess pieces.”
“He may have set up the game, but I think we’ve moved ourselves.”
Achilles sneered.“Free will, huh?”
“Back when your… your great-grandparents were children, maybe, I held seances—they were in vogue then.I wasn’t bad at it.Between the seances and my stage shows, I made a living.The seances weremygame, nu?But I never forced any of my marks to do anything.I simply made educated guesses about how they’d behave, and I based my spiel on those guesses.Townsend did this on a larger scale.”
If this was supposed to make Achilles feel better about being manipulated, it didn’t.In fact, he was indignant on behalf of dozens of agents—maybe hundreds—whose personality traits and personal circumstances Townsend had capitalized on.
Except… recent events notwithstanding, things had eventually turned out well for a lot of those agents.They’d found meaning.In some cases, they’d found partners.Dash Cooke, for instance, was madly in love with Henry, whom he met only because of Townsend.
Achilles groaned.“I don’t know what to think.”
“How about if we deal with the moral crisis later and concentrate now on what to do?Can we use Townsend’s death to our advantage somehow?”
