Page 29 of Soothsayer

Sören shrugged. “What’s the saying? Never judge a book by its cover.”

A faint wail started up behind us. I glanced back and saw the flashing lights of a police cruiser coming up fast. “Fuck. Pull over.”

“No.” Sören pulled the wheel back and forth, weaving us all over the road. We had to look like the drunkest car in creation. “This is fun!”

“If you’re not going to pull over, at least lose the cop.” I didn’t want to get into a car chase, but it didn’t look like we had much of a choice.

“Tempting, but no,” Sören said. Suddenly he slammed on the brakes and pulled the wheel hard to the right. The Electra spun out, doing donuts down the highway. I clutched the dashboard and the edge of my seat, almost but not quite sick enough to throw up, and watched as we headed for the concrete retaining wall. Shit shitshit—

We stopped maybe two inches from the wall, facing the wrong direction. Sören beamed at me like a mad thing. “I love driving,” he confided to me. The air turned red and blue as the cop pulled up, sirens still blaring. At least he didn’t get out with his gun pointed at us.

He’d have to come to my side of the vehicle; the driver’s side was blocked by the wall. I’d get a chance to talk to him first. Achance to manipulate him. I’d have to do it if I wanted to keep us from getting arrested, because that was what the look on the guy’s face promised.

I turned to Sören. “Keep quiet.”

“Are you going to use your magic on him?”

He sounded way too excited about that prospect. “I’m going to have to,” I snapped. “Now shut the fuck up and let me talk.”

The cop rapped hard on my window, his flashlight illuminating the interior of the car. I rolled the window down. “Hi, Officer.”

“I assume you know just how fast you boys were going down that last stretch,” he said flatly, not looking at me but at Sören. I needed to catch his attention.

“Yeah, sorry, my cousin’s not from here. He’s still getting the hang of driving on the right side of the road.”

“This wasn’t a traffic violation, sir. This was reckless endangerment.” He straightened up. “Both of you get out of the car.”

“Officer, if I could just—”

“Get out, turn, and face the car, hands on the hood, now!”

I sighed and glanced back at Sören. “Stay here,” I mouthed. He nodded agreeably. Great,nowhe was obedient. I opened my door and got out, but instead of turning around, I held my hands up and looked the cop in the eye. “If you’d just let me explain.” We were too far apart for a good capture, but I was starting to get images now, bits and pieces of his future. Grief that big was easy to read.

His hand went to his sidearm. “Turn around!”

“Shouldn’t you be home with your mother? I get that you need to work, but leaving her with a hospice nurse the night before she dies…that’s just cruel.”

“What? She—what?” Flustered, good, I could work with that.

“Your mother. The Alzheimer’s, the hospice nurse, you bringing her to stay with you for the last few weeks of her life… What use was it if you aren’t going to stay with her?” I took a careful step closer, very conscious of the whir of cars as they passed to the left of us, slowing down to rubberneck.

“It’s the smell, isn’t it?” I said as I got a better view. “That sour, dry smell. Kind of like dust and urine mixed together. You hate it, can’t bear it, in fact. When your mom was in the nursing home, it was okay because they bathed her all the time. You could visit and she smelled fresh as a daisy, but now that’s your job and you can’t even do it. The hospice nurse is only there at night, but you’d rather let your mother lay in her own filth all day than change the pad and wipe her clean.”

“That’s…that’s not true,” the cop stuttered and then recovered. “I don’t know who you think you are, but—”

“I’m not Mary Henley’s eldest son. You are, and Mary is dying in your living room, right now. And you know the worst part? All this work you did to make her love you, years and years of it, and you were so bad at it that your mom favored Jimmy all this time. Little Jimmy, who you hate.” Oh, how he hated that favored son, favored by both parents even whenhewas the one who’d gone into law enforcement like their father.

“You’ll split the property on the lake, but she left him all her stocks, the ones you aren’t even supposed to know about but you do, and they’re all going to Jimmy. A year from now, he’ll be sitting pretty on vacation in Aruba, and you’ll still be plain old Officer John Henley, one step up from traffic but never the detective you thought you’d be by this time in your life. No wife, no kids, and now no parents.” I stepped close enough to whisper into his ear, “Your mother just died, Officer Henley. My condolences.”

I could hear his personal phone start to buzz somewhere on his body. I moved back as he reached for it, completely lost now, brought to the edge of his sanity by my cruelty.

“Hello?”

I didn’t want to hear the rest of the conversation. I got back into the car. “Happy now?”

Sören wasn’t beaming anymore. Instead he leaned over and kissed my cheek, cold and tender. “You’re a worthy competitor, Cillian. Thank you.” He kissed me again. “I’ll move to the back. You can drive now.”

In front of me, Officer Henley had just sat down on the hood of his cruiser, one hand on his cell phone, the other covering his eyes as he sobbed.Worthy.I didn’t feel very worthy of anything. I wished I could make it better for him, but the longer we delayed, the likelier it was that reinforcements would show up.

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