He didn’t see the wire in her hands, didn’t notice until it wrapped around his throat.
Harold started fighting then, but the curtains were thick, and the music was loud, and the more people fought, the faster they ran out of air.
June had always liked the garrote. It was quick, efficient, tactile.
Harold wasted too much energy clawing at the wire instead of her face. Not that it would have made a difference.
“Nothing personal, Harold,” June said as he stomped his feet and tried to twist free.
It was the truth—he wasn’t on her list. This was just business.
He slumped forward, lifeless, a thin line of spittle hanging from his open lips.
June straightened, blew out a short breath, put away the wire. She studied her palms, which weren’t her palms. They were marked with thin, deep lines where the wire had bit in. June couldn’t feel it, but she knew that the real Jeannie would wake up with these welts, and the pain to go with them.
Sorry, Jeannie, she thought, stepping through the curtain, flicking it shut behind her. Harold was a big spender. He’d shelled out for a full hour of Jeannie’s teen queen, which gave June a good fifty minutes to get as far from the body as possible.
She rubbed the welts from her hands as she started down the hall. At least Jeannie’s roommates were home—she’d alibi out. No one had seen June go into Harold’s room, and no one had seen her leave, so all she had to do—
“Jeannie,” called a voice, too close, behind her. “Aren’t you on the clock?”
June swore under her breath, and turned around. And as she did, she changed—four years of collecting everyone she touched had given her an extensive wardrobe, and in a blink she shed Jeannie and picked out someone else, another blonde, one with the same shade, same build, but smaller tits and a round face, clad in a short blue dress.
It was a bloody work of art, that shift, and the bouncer blinked, confused, but June knew from experience—when people saw something they didn’t understand, they couldn’t hold on. I saw became I think I saw became I couldn’t have seen became I didn’t see. Eyes were fickle. Minds were weak.
“Only dancers and clients back here, ma’am.”
“Not gunning for a peek,” said June, letting her accent trip rich and full over her tongue. “Just looking for the ladies’ room.”
Max nodded at a door on the right. “Back out the way you came, and across the club.”
“Cheers,” she added with a wink.
June kept her pace even, casual, as she crossed the club. All she wanted now was a shower. Strip clubs were like that. The smell of lust and sweat, cheap drinks and dirty bills, so thick it coated your skin, followed you home. It was a trick of the mind—after all, June couldn’t feel, couldn’t smell, couldn’t taste. A borrowed body was just that—borrowed.
She was halfway there when she knocked into a man, thin, blond, and dressed in all black. Not unusual, in a place like this, where businessmen leered alongside bachelors, but June reeled at the contact—when she’d brushed his arm, she’d seen . . . nothing. No details, no memories.
The man had barely registered her, was already moving away. He disappeared through a red door at the back of the club, and June forced herself to keep walking too, despite feeling like her world had shuddered to a stop.
What were the odds?
Slim, she knew—but not none. There’d been another, a few years ago, a young guy she’d passed on the street one summer night; knocked into, really—she’d had her head tipped back, he’d had his down. When they touched, she’d felt that same flush of cold, the same stretch of black where the memories should be. After months of taking on looks and forms with every touch, the absence of information had been startling, disconcerting. June hadn’t known, then, what it meant—if the other person was broken, or if she was, if it was a feature or a glitch—not until she followed the guy and saw him run his hand along the hood of a car. Heard the sudden rumble of an engine starting under his touch, and realized he was different.
Not in the way she was different, but still, miles from ordinary.
She’d started looking for them, after that.
June, who’d never before been a fan of casual contact, unwanted touches, now found every excuse to brush fingers, kiss cheeks, searching for those elusive patches of darkness. She hadn’t found another.
Until now.
June slipped behind a column, shedding the blond girl in favor of a man with a forgettable face. Up at the bar, she ordered herself a drink and waited for the stranger to resurface.
Ten minutes later, he did, carrying a black briefcase. He slipped out into the dark.
And June followed behind.
* * *
THE streets weren’t empty, but they also weren’t crowded enough to hide a tail. Every time she dipped out of streetlight, she shifted form.
What would June do if the man in black noticed her?
What would she do if he didn’t?
June didn’t know why she was following the man, or what she planned to do when he stopped walking. Was it a gut feeling pulling her along, or just curiosity? She hadn’t always been able to tell them apart. Before . . .
But June didn’t like to think about before. Didn’t want to, didn’t need to. Dying might not have stuck, but her death itself had been real enough. No point in prying open that coffin.
June—that wasn’t her real name either, of course. She’d buried that with the rest.
The only thing she’d kept was the accent. Kept was a strong word—the stubborn thing didn’t want to go. A wisp of home in a foreign world. A memory, of green, and gray, of cliffs and ocean . . . She probably could have shed it, scrubbed it out along with everything else that made her her. But it was all she had left. The last thread.
Sentimental, she chided, quickening her step.
Eventually June stopped shifting, and simply followed in the stranger’s wake.
It was strange, the subtle way other people veered around him, leaned out of his path.
They saw him, she could tell by the way they shifted, sidestepped. But they didn’t really notice.
Like magnets, thought June. Everyone thought of magnets as having pull, attraction, but turn them around and they repelled. You could spend ages trying to force them together, and you’d get there, almost, but in the end they’d slide off.
She wondered if the man had that effect on the world around him, if it was part of his power.
Whatever it was, she didn’t feel it.
But then again, she didn’t feel anything.
Who are you? she wondered, annoyed by the man’s opacity. She had been spoiled rotten by her power, by the easy knowing that came with it. Not that she saw everything—that would be a short road to long madness—but she saw enough. Names. Ages. Memories, too, but only the ones that really left a mark.
A person, distilled into so many bites.
It was disconcerting, now, to be deprived.
Ahead, the man stopped outside an apartment building. He stepped through the revolving door into the lobby, and June stood in the shadow of the building’s eaves and watched him get into the elevator, watched the dial ascend to the ninth floor and then stop.
She chewed her lip, thinking.
It was late.
But it wasn’t that late.
June turned through the wardrobe in her mind. Too late for a delivery, perhaps, but not a courier. She selected a young woman—more disarming, especially at night—in navy cycling gear, scooped up an undelivered envelope from the lobby, and pushed the call button on the elevator.
There were four doors on the ninth floor.
Four chances.
She put her ear to the first door and heard the dead silence of an empty apartment.
The same with the second.
At the third, she heard footsteps, and knocked, but when the door swung open she was greeted not by the man in black, but by a girl, a large dog at her side.
The girl was on the small side, with white-blond hair and ice blue eyes. The sight of her caught June off guard. She was twelve, maybe thirteen. Madeline’s age. Madeline belonged to the Before—before, when June had had a family, parents, siblings, one older, three younger, the youngest, with those same strawberry curls—
“Can I help you?” asked the girl.
June realized she must have the wrong place. She shook her head and started to back away.
“Who is it?” asked a warm voice, a big guy with tattooed sleeves and a friendly smile.
“Delivery,” said the girl. She was reaching for the package, her fingers nearly brushing June’s, when he appeared.
“Sydney,” said the man in black. “I told you not to answer the door.”
The girl retreated into the room, the large dog trailing behind her, and the man stepped forward, his eyes, a colder, darker blue, flicking down to the package in June’s hands.
“Wrong address,” he said, closing the door in her face.
June stood in the hall, mind spinning.
She’d expected him to be alone.
People like them, they were supposed to be alone.
Were the others human, the big guy and the young girl? Or did they have powers too?
June came back the next day. Pressed her ear against the door and heard—nothing. She knelt before the lock, and a few seconds later the door swung open. The apartment was empty. No signs of the girl, or the dog, the big guy, or the stranger.