lot.
“Can I call Mom? I won’t tell her where I am, just that I’m okay.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
I took my phone out of my pocket and then it was gone. She grabbed it with the speed of a lizard snaring a bug. Before I had even quite realized what was happening, she had opened her window and dropped it onto the highway.
“Why did you do that?” I shouted. “That was mine!”
“I’m glad you reminded me about your phone.” Now we were following signs to I-87, the Thruway. “I totally forgot. They don’t call it dope for nothing, you know.” And she laughed.
I punched her on the shoulder. The car swerved, then straightened. Someone gave us a honk. Liz whipped another glance at me, and she wasn’t smiling now. She had the look she probably got on her face when she was reading people their rights. You know, perps. “Hit me again, Jamie, and I’ll hit you back in the balls hard enough to make you puke. God knows it wouldn’t be the first time someone puked in this fucking beater.”
“You want to try fighting me while you’re driving?”
Now the smile came back, her lips parting just enough to show the tops of her teeth. “Try me.”
I didn’t. I didn’t try anything, including (if you’re wondering) yelling for the creature inhabiting Therriault, although it was now theoretically at my command—whistle and you’ll come to me, my lad, remember that? The truth is, he—or it—never crossed my mind. I forgot, just like Liz forgot to take my phone at first, and I didn’t even have a snoutful of dope to blame. I might not have done it, anyway. Who knew if it would actually come? And if it did…well, I was scared of Liz, but more scared of the deadlight thing. Death, madness, the destruction of your very soul, the professor had said.
“Think about it, kiddo. If you called and said you were fine but taking a little ride with your old friend Lizzy Dutton, do you think she’d just say ‘Okay, Jamie, that’s fine, make her buy you dinner?’ ”
I said nothing.
“She’d call the cops. But that isn’t the biggest thing. I should have gotten rid of your cell right away, because she can track it.”
My eyes widened. “Bullshit she can!”
Liz nodded, smiling again, eyes on the road again as we pulled past a double-box semi. “She put a locater app on the first phone she gave you, when you were ten. I was the one who told her how to hide it, so you wouldn’t find it and get all pissy about it.”
“I got a new phone two years ago,” I muttered. There were tears prickling the corners of my eyes, I don’t know why. I felt…I don’t know the word. Wait a minute, maybe I do. Whipsawed. That’s how I felt, whipsawed.
“You think she didn’t put that app on the new one?” Liz gave a harsh laugh. “Are you kidding? You’re her one and only, kiddo, her little princeling. She’ll still be tracking you ten years from now, when you’re married and changing your first kid’s diapers.”
“Fucking liar,” I said, but I was talking to my own lap.
She snorted some more of her special blend once we were clear of the city, the movements just as agile and practiced, but this time the car did swerve a little, and we got another disapproving honk. I thought of some cop lighting us up, and at first I thought that would be good, that it would end this nightmare, but maybe it wouldn’t be good. In her current wired-up state, Liz might try to outrun a cop, and manage to kill us both. I thought of the Central Park man. His face and upper body had been covered with somebody’s jacket so the bystanders couldn’t see the worst of it, but I had seen.
Liz brightened up again. “You’d make a hell of a detective, Jamie. With your particular skill, you’d be a star. No murderer would escape you, because you could talk to the vics.”
This idea had actually occurred to me once or twice. James Conklin, Detective of the Dead. Or maybe to the Dead. I’d never figured out which sounded better.
“Not the NYPD, though,” she continued. “Fuck those ass-holes. Go private. I could see your name on the door.” She briefly raised both hands from the wheel, as if framing it.
Another honk.
“Drive the fucking car,” I said, trying not to sound alarmed. It probably didn’t work, because I was alarmed.
“Don’t worry