Living with the Dead

ADELE

Never trust a boy to do a woman's job, Adele thought as she marched toward Robyn Peltier's apartment door.

Colm was sweet and useful, but he could be as thick as a board. Not stupid, just inexperienced. When his plan to steal a personal item failed, he was stumped. His only backup plan was to try again tonight. She couldn't wait that long.

When she told him what she planned to do, he'd freaked out. It was crazy, dangerous. Colm didn't understand that to get what you wanted in life, you had to make bold moves.

It wasn't his fault. They'd been raised to hide, not make waves. They were one of the most powerful supernatural races and what did they use those powers for? Pandering to the cult of celebrity. It was humiliating.

She still smarted from last night's meeting with the phuri. Portia Kane had been Adele's first assignment, and she'd done a damned good job, earning her keep and contributing extra to the kumpania coffers. Remarkable for what should have been a training exercise. Even Neala had been grudgingly impressed.

So how did they reward her? By giving her a true celebrity as her next target?

"You've done such a fine job with Portia, Adele, that we'd like you to continue that with Jasmine Wills."

Jasmine Wills? She could have spit in Neala's face. Was she going to spend her life chasing spoiled, empty-headed twits?

If it hadn't been for that photo, she'd be free of the group by now. It didn't matter. She still planned to be free, hopefully before she had to produce results on this new assignment. The others might have better jobs, but they had no hope of freedom. They were too indoctrinated in the kumpania's culture of fear to ever leave the kumpania – they'd certainly never have the nerve or the brains to think of actually going to a Cabal and getting a job on their own terms.

For most in the kumpania, that indoctrination began almost from birth. As toddlers, kumpania clairvoyants underwent "the lessons," which instilled a terror of the Cabals so deeply embedded that they'd need only to glimpse a face on the street to start sweating. Instinct would take over and they'd flee or fight, doing whatever it took to escape. By the time Adele got the lessons, though, she'd been six – four years older than kumpania children. They'd given her a healthy fear and respect for the Cabals, but not the gut-level terror the others felt.

"Perhaps we should not be doing this," the super said, huffing as he hurried to keep up with her.

She fixed him with a wide-eyed look and affected a honeyed accent. "Oh, I don't want to get you in any trouble. If you'd like those officers to escort me, I completely understand. But they said it was okay. I don't think they wanted to be disturbed while they ate their lunch…"

"I guess if they said it was all right…"

"Or you can call Portia's momma. She's awfully upset right now, but I'm sure it wouldn't be too much of an imposition…"

His eyes rounded, hands lifting. "No, no. That poor woman. She has been through so much."

"She'll be so grateful to you for helping us out like this."

The portly little man blushed as he unlocked the apartment door. He paused before swinging it open. "Miz Peltier's things should not be disturbed. She is a very nice lady."

Adele touched his shoulder. "I know exactly what it looks like. Poor Portia wore it the last time I saw her, at the breakfast after our cousin's wedding." Adele sighed. "She looked so pretty. That's how I'll always remember her. Miss Peltier was real sweet to dry-clean it for her, but Portia's momma is worried that with all this nasty business, she might not get it back."

The super ushered Adele inside. She'd hoped he'd wait at the door, but the nasty little man kept right on her heels, twittering away about her family's tragedy while making damned sure she didn't mess up his precious tenant's apartment.

She opened the closet.

"Are you sure you know -?" he began.

"Course I do. It's right here."

She grabbed a silk blouse that Portia Kane wouldn't be caught dead in, but looked expensive enough to pass muster with the super. As he bustled her out, Adele looked wistfully at the clothes hamper. Dirty clothing always worked better. But he wasn't going to give her any opportunity to snatch something. She could only hope Robyn was, like her, too frugal to send her blouses to the cleaners after every wearing.

Adele had been in her bedroom, clutching Robyn's silk shirt and staring at her photo for an hour, and all she knew was that Robyn was in a motel room.

Fucking lot of good that did. She didn't need the gift of clairvoyance to tell her that's where Robyn would be.

She watched the shimmering vision, trying to find a clue to which motel. Robyn sat at a computer, posture perfect, blond hair pulled back in a sleek, gleaming ponytail. Even on the run, her clothing screamed young urban professional. It made Adele want to shred the silk blouse with her nails.

It didn't help that she was trying to concentrate while listening to Lily and Hugh having sex in the next bedroom. Adele had grown up planning to marry Hugh. He was five years older than her and she'd been adopted by the kumpania for breeding, so naturally they'd pair her off with the only unmarried male close to her age. The fact that he was big and broad-shouldered and, in the right light, reminded her of a young Hugh Jackman only added fire to her fantasies. As for Lily, she was no competition. A silly ditz who had yet to successfully complete an assignment. Apparently, the kumpania disagreed.

Even after Lily and Hugh married, Adele hadn't given up hope. Kumpania law said that couples had a year to breed. Then they moved to "stage two," and if that ended with no pregnancy, the fault would be presumed to be the woman's. Lily would become a drone, and Hugh would be married off to the next available girl, which would be Adele.

For the last year, Adele had been feeding Lily birth control pills in her morning coffee. Ironic, then, that Adele herself should become pregnant. But when she did, she'd looked at her options and decided, as fine as Hugh was, there was a better life out there for her. Yet she'd kept giving Lily the pills. It never hurt to have a backup plan. The downside, though, was that the longer it took Lily to get pregnant, the harder they tried and the more Adele had to listen to it.

That soundtrack made watching Robyn at the computer all the more frustrating. What the hell was she doing? Her client was dead. She was wanted by the police and there she was, calmly working like it was any other day.

After another fifteen minutes, Adele stood, the vision evaporating.

Enough of this bullshit. It was time to take a shortcut.

On Saturdays, sandwiched between their two busiest nights of the week, most of the others slept. There would be activity only in the main building, where the drones worked.

Drones was Adele's word for them. When Neala once overheard her using it, she'd been sentenced to the worst punishment inflicted on kumpania youth: a month caring for the seers.

The drones were those whose clairvoyance never developed enough to take their place as full-fledged members. So they'd been given the menial jobs that kept the community running – cooking, cleaning and caring for the children.

The chores with children were most popular, especially with the women, probably because drones were sterilized – the surgery performed by a human doctor who, like his father before him, was paid very well to service the kumpania and ask no questions.

A drone's offspring were certain to have powers even weaker than their parents' and there were only so many menial tasks to go around. Just last year, when the phuri finally agreed that twelve-year-old Suzanne would never be a true clairvoyant, the leader – their bulibasha, Niko – had declared there wasn't enough work for seven drones. So fifty-four-year-old Lizette, showing signs of rheumatoid arthritis, had quietly passed in her sleep. Everyone knew what had happened. No one complained. It was in the best interests of the kumpania.

Adele snuck out back to the tool shed. She moved aside the barrel in the corner, found the keyhole in the floor and inserted the stolen key. The trapdoor sprang open, steps below disappearing into the darkness.

She turned on her flashlight and started down, closing the hatch behind her. At the bottom, she inserted a second key, then pressed the buttons on the ancient code lock. The lock disengaged, and she opened the inner door and headed down the tunnel.

Inside was the bomb shelter. Or that's what the kumpania had called it in the fifties when they'd taken advantage of nuclear hysteria to hire a group of workmen who thought nothing of building a fully operational shelter under the old farm.

The hum of the generator was the first thing Adele heard. A few more steps and the raucous shouts and musical sound effects of a cartoon seeped through the next door. Tom and Jerry, Adele guessed. That was Thom's favorite.

When she opened the final door, it was still almost dark. They kept the lights low to save generator fuel. The seers didn't complain. They'd never known anything brighter, and would scream in pain if they stepped into the sunlight. Or Thom and Melvin would. For the third, Martha, the world was eternally dark.

Martha's crib lay just inside the door. She reminded Adele of the grubs she'd sometimes turned up doing garden work, white and wriggling, blind and limbless. Martha didn't wriggle much – only when her diaper was dirty and starting to chafe, and she'd twist and mewl, the loudest sound she could make, her white face thrashing back and forth, smooth pits where her eyes should have been. If she got agitated enough, she'd dislodge her feeding tube. When Adele had been sentenced to her month caring for the seers, she'd learned to check Martha regularly or she'd have an extra week tacked on if someone needed to reinsert the tube.

Inbreeding made stronger clairvoyants, but every now and then, a seer was born – a very powerful, deformed clairvoyant. To the kumpania, they were revered as gifts from the gods… just not a gift they cared to be blessed with too often. A seer required constant medical care, and the kumpania didn't need more than two or three good ones. Seers were like dishwashing machines, Niko had explained. Having a couple lightened the kumpania's workload immensely. More than that would be an unnecessary expense.

Martha's albinism was one known condition with seers. As for her missing limbs and eyes, Martha's mother had blamed the drugs she'd been taking for morning sickness, their effect made worse by a genetic predisposition to mutations. Or so Niko had told Adele when he brought her down here. She didn't care about the reason for Martha's condition. All that interested Adele was that this slug was the most powerful clairvoyant in the kumpania.

Unlike the other two seers, Martha's brain was unaffected by her condition. Adele had thought about that – what it would be like to spend your life in a crib, sightless, limbless, unable to communicate except through visions.

She'd mentioned that to her kirvi, Lizette – the drone who raised Adele after her mother sold her to the kumpania. Lizette had held Adele and rocked her and comforted her, talking about pity and empathy and the unknowable will of the gods. Adele had listened, and thought Lizette a fool. She didn't feel anything for Martha. No more than she felt for Lizette, smothered in her sleep when she outlived her usefulness.

Her only interest in Martha was in how she might access the powers of that trapped mind, but that secret belonged to the phuri. That was how they guarded themselves against ambitious younger members. Only they could use the seers.

Or so they thought.

She glanced at Melvin, sitting in one recliner, his vacant eyes fixed on the flickering colors of the cartoon. Veggie Boy, she called him, though not in front of anyone. Niko said Melvin was severely mentally retarded. And he wasn't a boy, but a man in his thirties. He looked like a child, though, with his hairless plump body, and his round, smooth, wide-eyed face.

Other than the hairlessness, the brain damage was his only birth defect, but it also made him the weakest of the seers. Adele had heard the phuri debate Melvin's ongoing care, whether he was enough of an asset to warrant keeping alive. But his father was Niko, and while they were supposed to abandon and disavow their blood relations to the seers and drones, as long as Niko lived, so would Melvin.

" 'Dele…"

Adele turned to Thom, who watched her with a sloppy smile, his blue eyes glowing with doglike devotion. Just like his brother.

Thom was a year older than Colm, who knew nothing of his sibling. Colm was supposed to have been introduced to the seers at thirteen, but Neala had convinced Niko that under the circumstances, he should wait a few more years. He needed more maturity to prepare for the shock. He was too sensitive, Neala said, blaming his father's genes. Rhys had been a durjardo – an outsider like Adele – who'd introduced fresh blood into the kumpania. It hadn't worked with Thom, but at least they'd gotten a seer out of it.

When Colm and Thom met, there would be no way for Neala to hide who Thom was. His features were so like his brother's, he could be his reflection… viewed through a funhouse mirror.

Thom had an oversized head, bulging and misshapen. His chair was specially fitted with a contoured headrest to support it. Unlike the other two seers, Thom could leave his seat, though he needed the help of a walker, as his legs were shrunken and twisted.

He was what Lizette had called "slow." But he wasn't nearly as bad as Veggie Boy and could communicate, though he usually chose not to. The phuri had high hopes for Thom. At sixteen, he was already a more powerful clairvoyant than Niko. In a few years, he might even surpass Martha.

Being able to communicate through speech made him already more useful than Martha. There was no real secret to using his powers. If he granted a clairvoyant access, they could use him. But getting that permission was harder than it might seem.

Here was where Thom and Colm differed. Colm tripped over his feet trying to help others. Thom was mule-stubborn, and when pushed where he didn't want to go, he'd throw a tantrum, locking down his powers, refusing access to everyone.

Fortunately for Adele, though, she'd discovered that Colm and Thom shared something else in common, though it was probably less related to genetics than to teenage hormones. The moment she stepped into view, Thom's sweatpants tented.

She walked over and bent to rub him through the fabric. He made a noise in his throat, like the rough purr of a cat, again reminding her of his brother.

"How are you today, sweetie?" she asked. "Miss me?"

He arched his hips in answer and reached for her shirt front, balling it in his fist and lifting.

She laughed and slapped his hand away. "Not yet."

The purr hardened to a snarl, Thom's eyes narrowing.

"Oh, all right," she said. "Just a little."

She slid her hand into his pants and stroked him. He closed his eyes, that rough purr returning. After a minute, she dropped her fingers to his balls and fondled them.

"Please, sweetie? I really need your help."

One blue eye opened, his lips curving in a smug smile. Thom might be slow, but he had an animal cunning and an ego his little brother lacked. She had to deal fairly with him and let him know how special he was, how much she needed his help and how grateful she'd be for it.

In the beginning, she'd tried to toy with him, as she did Colm. It didn't work. When she'd realized she'd need to follow through, she'd been repulsed by the thought, only her ambition propelling her through those first few times. But she'd gotten used to him, to the point where, if she was being honest, she didn't mind at all.

She'd been well rewarded. It was Thom who'd made her training assignment with Portia Kane such a success. Whenever she'd been unable to get a lock on Portia, she would come to Thom and he'd show her where she was. While Lily struggled with her first assignment, Adele had shot past her, impressing the phuri. Everyone agreed that Adele was the most powerful clairvoyant they'd had in years. Fat lot of good it did her – still destined to wed a boy five years her junior, still given the lousiest – if most profitable – assignments…

Yet again it was Thom who saved her. He had, albeit inadvertently, provided her with the treasure that would buy her way out of the kumpania. Now he'd help her safeguard that dream by finding Robyn Peltier.

She settled onto Thom's lap and handed him Robyn's shirt and photo. He held them a moment, then let out a derisive snort.

"Oh, it's too easy for you, is it? I'm sooo sorry. Next time I'll bring you a tough one." She reached down to squeeze his cock. "You're just too good, sweetie. You know that, don't you?"

He didn't answer. He rarely did. She rubbed him, listening to him purr. When she tried to stop, he held her hand in place, making a warning noise deep in his throat. She only laughed and complied for another minute. One final squeeze, then she wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning toward his ear.

"Can I see, sweetie? Please?"

A grunt. Adele closed her eyes and concentrated. After a couple of minutes, the darkness cleared. This was the true gift of the seers. They could not only see better and farther, but project those visions to other clairvoyants.

Again, Adele saw Robyn Peltier. Still at that damned computer.

"Show me more," she whispered. "Help me find her."

With an ease that made Adele ache with envy, Thom pulled his mental eye back and panned the room.

"Slow down," she said, as she took it all in, making mental notes. Then, "Okay, take me outside."

They passed through the door into a parking lot. Adele guided him to the front of the office, noting the name and address.

"That was exactly what I needed," she murmured, lips to his ear. "You're too good, you know that?"

A hoarse chuckle. He knew it very well. And he knew what was coming.

She stood and pulled off her shirt.