(no subject)

[ladyfirestarter]

Kate Welker is calling ahead to the airport to arrange tickets, and to make sure there'll be a skycap on hand with a wheelchair.

Eric's driving. Charlie's sharing the passenger seat with Susannah.

"...So we got a call from Tet about an hour and a half ago, saying Rose had regained consciousness and she was saying you were in a place called Milliways."

Comments

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"Wandering," Susannah says. "Between life and death and wandering."

She doesn't like that. There's a whole lot of reasons she doesn't like that. "And somehow she found out." Either she saw, or someone told her.

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie nods, and her voice is steady. "She should be able to tell you that part of it herself, when you get back."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"How did they get out?" That's one that's been nagging at her. "If there were six of them, and the wires were cut."

[ladyfirestarter]

"...well."

A beat.

"When I said no one was dead, I wasn't counting the attackers. Rose apparently took one of the guns in the panic room, and ... made a sortie, I think the term is."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"Do you have anymore details than that?" she asks, her fingers curling on the armrest.

[ladyfirestarter]

"She shot three of the gunmen; one in the groin, one along the neck, and one in the thigh. All but the last are dead now. The other three apparently fled the scene."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

The picture refines, but does not gel; at any rate, a gruesome smile tugs at the edges of her mouth. At war with everything else Susannah feels, Detta is highly amused.

Blew out his little white candle for good, did she? Knew that chile had to be good for somethin.

Two men dead. "Does she know?"

[ladyfirestarter]

"...about the deaths, you mean? I don't know if anyone's told her."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"I never wanted this for her," she says, as New Mexico goes by out the window.

(It's annoying to be reduced to cliches.)

"I didn't know you had a permanent door there," she says. "I don't think I knew that. Where did it come from?"

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie's glad Susannah's asked a question on a different subject. Having to address I never wanted this for her in the light of that smile is not something that appeals to her in the slightest.

"From Milliways, actually. Dr. Stantz built it for us, a while ago."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"Dr. Stantz. That's right. Very clever man."

The kind of cleverness that is both useful and dangerous.



"Hell," she says flatly, after a moment's beat. "Do you have any paper?"

[ladyfirestarter]

"I'm not ..." She digs into her jacket pockets, then her jeans pockets, and breathes out in annoyance. One hand goes up to touch the button that lowers the partition between driver's seat and passenger compartment.

"Eric, there should be a notebook in the glove compartment. Could you pass it back here, please?"

He does, neatly steering one-handed for the few seconds it takes.

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

She scribbles three notes, then neatly tears the sheet of paper into three. "Can you leave these at the bar, please, Charlie?" she says, sighing. "For all the folks I saw again."

[ladyfirestarter]

"Will do."

A pause, and her gaze falls to her own knees.

"I'm sorry," she says, low. "Sorry we didn't pick up the warning sooner."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"Ka laughs," she says, stone-faced, "and the world moves on."

Then she softens, and sighs. "It isn't your fault, Charlie. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I let my guard down. We thought we were so--safe," she says, as if it's a dirty word.

[ladyfirestarter]

Her father, good old Andy McGee, would have understood that. Understood how the house in the suburbs, the mortgage, the normal civilized life can lull you into thinking like a fool that you're safe.

Until the little tickle (something's wrong at home) starts, the one that tells you everything's about to come crashing down. And it doesn't always arrive in time to let you do anything about it.

"Fault or no," she says, and that's all.

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"Ka," she says again. "That's all there is, in the end. It's just ka."

[ladyfirestarter]

Ka. The destiny that shapes our ends. Well, and that's true enough for things like the visions and the flickers and the hunches, the things you can't call and can't control, but ...

They're nearly there. Eric's pulling in at the end of a line of cars, slowing down.

Charlie raises her head and looks Susannah in the face. "Anything I can do," she says.

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"Of course." Susannah nods.

There's no question that if she has a use for the psychics of Taos, she'll make the call.

[ladyfirestarter]

Don't let me down, Susannah wrote once, in the letter that gave Charlie the permission -- the duty -- to go after the thing in 1408. The chance she'd been hoping for.

It's hard not to feel that she has.

The car pulls to a stop, and the skycap's waiting with the placard reading TOREN, and there's no time to say anything else.