Napier's Bones (11 page)

“And then?”
Jenna closed her eyes, remembering her mother and anticipating what was coming
next.

“I left.” He drained
his beer, waved at the waitress for a refill. “Walked out on my family and
never looked back. Been more than eight years since I last saw them. It still
took me a year or two to figure out what my numeracy meant; worked odd jobs for
quite awhile until I got the hang of it.”

“Have they
looked for you?” asked Billy. “I have a sense that in my first life I did no
such thing, but this is a story I’ve heard more and more over the decades.” He
stopped talking when the waitress arrived with another beer, who nonetheless
had likely heard him talking with the accent and different voice, based on the
look she cast back at him as she headed over to the noisy family’s table.

“Yeah, they
tried to find me. I know the cops were in it for awhile, but their numbers were
easy to avoid, especially since there was nobody involved who knew they
existed, much less how to control them, and every day away, I got better at
handling them. I finally phoned one day, when I knew my parents would be out.
Talked to my sister, told her that I was okay and that they should stop trying
to find me.”

“What was her
answer?”

“She
was pretty pissed off. Yelled at me, called me all sorts of names, then backed
off, told me she loved me and they wanted me to come back home. Tough language
from someone who was only eleven at the time.” He grinned at the memory, took
another swallow. “They were in a car accident a few months later. Dad’s in a
wheelchair now, and Mom and my sister were hurt pretty bad, but they got
better. I still arrange for some money to mysteriously appear in their bank
account whenever I can.”

It
had been hard for Jenna to lose her family the way she had, and must have been
even more difficult for Dom, walking away like that and then not being there
for them after the accident. It was appalling to think about, and for just a
second she wondered if she should get up and walk away, get off this path to a
life of hunting for numbers and secrets that Dom had buried himself in.
Perversely, though, she caught the look of despair that had ever-so-briefly
crept onto Dom’s face, and thought of her mother and what she had left behind,
chasing the numbers in the face of the same sort of loss, and realized that she
was in this every bit as deep as they were now.

That realization
didn’t answer everything for her, though. “Then why are you still away?” she
asked. “When all is said and done, how is it that you can’t just let your
family know that you’re still around, maybe show up for Christmas once or
twice.” Her voice caught, and for a second she was sure she was going to start
crying again, but she got a hold of herself and carried on. “The numbers spoke
to me, too, but I didn’t wander off and desert my father just because I could
see funny things floating through the air.”

Dom
frowned. “Jenna, I’m not your mother.” She felt herself flinch at this, but he
pressed on before she could argue the point. “I can’t speak for her, but I
imagine that the lure of these numbers is more extreme for some of us than it
is for others.”

“My mom, she was
pretty distant for a long time before she disappeared. I suppose when she did
go it didn’t come as much of a surprise, probably less to me even than to my
dad.” She bit her lower lip, thinking about those last days and remembering how
she blamed herself, but she blinked rapidly for a few seconds and carried on.
“I guess whatever numbers were speaking to her had her attention early on and
just needed some time to convince her to leave us behind.”

Dom took another
bite of pizza, followed it with more beer. “Well, that’s exactly it, and I
can’t stress it enough; the numbers, they call me. Whether I’m awake or asleep,
it doesn’t matter. Hell, once I even paid someone to put me into one of those
sensory deprivation tanks. The numbers were fluttering around like moths, bumping
against the ceiling of the tank, aggravating the crap outta me.”

“I see them all
the time, too.”

He shook his
head. “No you don’t, Jenna, I can pretty much guarantee that. I’ve watched you,
awake, even asleep when we’ve been in the car. The numbers do just the opposite
with you. They’re willing to be manipulated by you, but first they try to stay
away from you. It’s the damndest thing I’ve ever seen, but we’ve been so busy I
really haven’t had time to think much about it.”

“What do you
mean, stay away from me?” But even as she asked this she thought she knew the
answer.

“I’ve seen
numbers come close to you, but unless you are planning on using them or if it’s
something like the search numbers that were sent after us, then they leave you
alone.” This was Billy talking. “It’s almost like there is a bubble around you,
and none of them want or are able to pass through it.”

Dom nodded.
“Remember when I stuck you with the wire?” He pointed at the makeshift bracelet
on her wrist. “The numbers didn’t do what they were supposed to. Normally they
would’ve crawled right in, but instead we had to convince them to do so,
instead of them just melting off your skin.”

Jenna stared
back at him, worried that he was trying to tell her that he couldn’t teach her
what she needed to know. Dom frowned at her, then turned and with a gesture of
his finger brought some numbers from the noisy family’s credit card down from
the ceiling. They coasted down, dropping momentarily near the floor before
rising again, behaving like a flock of ducks thinking about landing on the
water and searching for the best spot. They flew right at Jenna’s head, then
broke off in two directions while still several inches from her, some heading
back up to the ceiling, others fluttering around Dom’s head, some even slipping
in through his skin, just folding up and squeezing their way through the pores,
more random numbers to join in his blood.

“I’ve . . . I’ve
never noticed that before.” She was watching the numbers that were back up by
the ceiling, eyes open wide.

Not saying
anything, Dom pulled some more numbers from the air, but these ones he set in
place so that they hung in front of her. “Take them in,” he said.

“What?”

“Take them in.
Bring these numbers into your body.”

Jenna was
confused. “How do I do that?”

“I dunno.” Dom
shook his head. “Remember, everyone has a different style. Maybe you have to
grab them, maybe you have to lean over and swallow them. You have to experiment
a little, see what way is best for you.”

“Why do I need
to learn how to bring numbers into my body?”

“Every once in
awhile you’ll come across some feral numbers that will be able to serve you to
good purpose,” replied Billy. Dom took another swig of beer, then let him
continue. “Sometimes it’s spillover from someone else’s mojo, although that
sort of thing doesn’t happen too often, since people guard those numbers very
carefully. Other times they might be numbers that you recognize as a part of a
pattern you’ve been searching for.”

“And,” added
Dom, “probably the most important one, or at least so I have been led to
understand, would be numbers from artefacts.”

“As I was going
to say,” said Billy. “When someone finds an artefact, it isn’t just a matter of
standing there and hoping it all works out. There are some rather devious numbers
to ingest if you want to take advantage of what has been placed inside.”

“Okay, I get the
point.” Jenna frowned, staring at the numbers as they spun about in a fidgety
ball of Brownian motion. She reached forward and tried to grab them, but the
ball broke apart, numbers spilling like black mercury from an invisible force
field that surrounded her fingers. As soon as she removed her hand they
re-congealed, picked up their orbits as if she had never been there to perturb
them.

Feeling
bewildered, Jenna pulled at the numbers again, and again they slid away. For
more than a minute she worked on them, once even leaning forward and trying to
gulp them down like a pelican sliding its lower beak through the water as it
gathered up fish for its meal. Nothing worked, and the last move elicited some
very strange looks from the waitress and the couple other patrons, as well as a
stifled snort of laughter from Dom.

“Look for a way
that works for you,” said Billy, obviously trying to avoid laughing as well.
“The numbers don’t come to you, but you’ve proven to yourself and to us that
you can interact with them.”

“How?” She said
this with frustration in her voice, and hoped the look she gave Dom told him
that it was partly to do with his laughing at her.

“Good question,”
he responded. “How did you make that phone call happen, when we were still down
in Utah? You can control the numbers, so just control them into your system. I
think you had the right idea when you tried to get a mouthful there . . .” He
paused to fend off another chuckle, and then carried on, carefully ignoring the
glare she gave him. “You’ve controlled them doing other things for you, so now
just ask them to enter your body.”

She arched an
eyebrow. “Ask them?”

“Sure. Why not?
Invite them on in.”

Jenna concentrated
for a few seconds, staring hard at the spinning ball, and then, accepting the
situation but irritated that she was having to do something so stupid, she
said, “Numbers, please come in.”

Across the table
she saw Dom look blank for a brief second, and then shake his head as if he’d
blacked out for a second and just come too. But then the ball shimmied back and
forth a few times, and broke into a thin stream, soared across the tiny space
separating her from them, and melted into her, a brief darkness of numeracy
covering her like a robe and hood before dissolving away and into her body.

She jumped and
shrieked, her chair tumbling back and slamming into the empty table behind them
before falling to the floor. Dom, looking shaken, even frightened, turned and
looked briefly to the waitress, already on her way over, and waved her away,
then stood and walked around the table, put a shaking hand on Jenna’s arm, and
said, “Hold yourself together. Let me settle up, and we can discuss this more
after we’ve left.”

She nodded,
breathing hard and staring wildly at the spot above the table where the numbers
had floated. Dom pulled some bills from his pocket, tossed enough on the table
to cover a good thirty percent, then picked up the chair and set it back in
place. He had one last swallow of beer and then he led Jenna out and onto the
street. Behind them she could feel the eyes of the waitress, the other diners,
even the cook, on her back.

“Did you do
that?” asked Jenna, after they had walked in silence for a block.

Dom shook his
head. “Not me. You, Billy?”

Once again, his
head shook, this time controlled by the shadow. “Certainly not. Jenna, that was
just your way of controlling the numbers.”

“But I’ve never
done that before.”

“Which is why
you’re with me. With us,” said Dom, correcting himself. “Remember, everyone has
a different way of handling the numbers, just like everyone perceives them in a
different fashion.” He rubbed his chin, obviously thinking. “Jenna, did you
feel anything funny when you took in the numbers?”

She looked at
him, right eyebrow raised. “Of course I did. That’s why I freaked out.”

Dom shook his
head, and Billy asked, “Did it happen again, Dom?”

He nodded. “Just
for a second or two.”

“Did what
happen?” asked Jenna.

Dom stopped
walking and looked at her. “You really didn’t feel anything?”

She gave him an
exasperated look. “Of course, I felt something, I just told you. But the way
you’re sounding, maybe I didn’t feel what you think I should have. So no,
nothing beyond the weirdness of taking in the numbers like that. Tell me what
you’re talking about.”

“A few times
now, I’ve found myself looking at things from your eyes.”

“What, like a
shadow, like Billy?”

“I don’t know,
since I’ve never been one. All I know is I’ve been inside your body, and I don’t
know how it happened.” He frowned, and they started walking again. “To be
honest, at first I thought I was just hallucinating.”

“Each time it
happened, Jenna was using, or trying to use, numbers,” said Billy. He spoke
slowly, like he was thinking it out. But after a few seconds of silence he
shrugged and said, “I see no answers. Not yet, anyhow.” They walked on in
silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

The sidewalks
were more crowded now, people off work and out on the town for the night. Many looked
like university kids, numbers of exhaustion from papers and exams and too many
late nights spilling from them as they sought solace and short-term energy from
an even later night boozing it up in one of the many bars here. But there were
also families, older people and couples, more buskers, and a fair number of
bums, staggering from person to person, Pachinko ball-like action taking each
one further down the sidewalk as they looked for a jackpot, most people
brushing them off with a curt “No” or, even more likely, just ignoring them.

Except one.
Jenna looked like she was about to say something, but Dom held up his hand for
silence, watched as this man ricocheted from person to person, and each one he
approached reached into a pocket and pulled out money to drop into his open
hand, although it looked to Dom like none of those people were even paying
attention to the fact that they were giving him money.

“What are you
thinking?” asked Billy.

“Shh. Keep
watching for a sec.”

By now the
streetlights had flickered to life, doing nothing to add to the light already
spilling onto the street from storefronts, but prepared nonetheless for when
twilight finally faded enough to blacken the sky overhead.