Mind Prey

company public and probably get you, I don’t know, something between eight and ten mil.”
    “Holy cats,” Lucas said.
    He’d never said that before, in public or private, but now it bleated out and Hunt jerked out a quick smile. “If we borrow the eight mil, and hang on for another five years, it’ll be thirty mil. I promise.”
    “All right, all right, we’ll talk,” Lucas said, starting down the hall. “Give me a week. Thirty mil. Holy cats.”
    “Say hello to Weather,” Hunt said. He seemed about to say something else but stopped. Lucas was halfway out the door before he realized what it was, and walked back. Hunt had just sat down in his office, and Lucas stuck his head in. “This Manette thing can’t last for more than a couple of weeks, so set a meeting with the bank. And lay out the stock thing we talked about—the share plan.”
    Hunt nodded. “I’ve been meaning to bring it up.”
    Lucas said, “Now’s the time. I told you if it worked, you’d get a piece of it. It seems to be working.”
     
    W EATHER .
    Lucas toyed with the engagement ring: he should ask her. He could feel her waiting. But the advice was rolling in, unsolicited, from everywhere, and somehow, it slowed him down.
    Women suggested a romantic proposal: a short preface, declaring that he loved her, with a more or less elaborate description of what their life together would be like, and then a suggestion that they marry; most of the men suggested a plain, straightforward question: Hey babe, how about it? A few thought he was crazy for tying up with a woman at all. A park cop suggested that golf would be a complete replacement for any woman, and cheaper.
    “Fuck golf,” Lucas said. “I like women.”
    “Well, that’s the other half of the equation,” the guy admitted. “Women are also a complete replacement for golf.”
     
    “A NYTHING?” W EATHER ASKED as soon as he came in the door. He could feel the ring in his pocket, against his thigh. “With the Manettes?”
    “Bizarre bullshit,” he said, and he told her about the oil barrel. “Elle’s coming over at six-thirty; I promised her steak.”
    “Excellent,” Weather said. “I’ll do the salad.”
    Lucas went to start the charcoal and touched the ring in his pocket. What if she said no, not yet …? Would that change everything? Would she feel like she had to move out?
    Weather was bustling around the kitchen, bumping into him as he got the barbecue sauce out of the refrigerator. She asked with elaborate, chatty unconcern, “Do you think you and Elle would have gotten married, if…”
    “If she hadn’t become a nun?” Lucas laughed. “No. We grew up together. We were too close, too young. Romancing her just wouldn’t have seemed…right. Too much like incest.”
    “Does she think the same way?”
    Lucas shrugged. “I don’t know. I never know what women think.”
    “You wouldn’t rule it out, though.”
    “Weather?”
    “What?”
    “Shut the fuck up.”
     
    S ISTER M ARY J OSEPH —Elle Kruger—still wore the traditional black habit with a long rosary swaying by her side. Lucas had asked her about it, and she’d said, “I like it. The other dress…it looks dowdy. I don’t feel dowdy.”
    “Do you feel like a penguin?”
    “Not in the slightest.”
    Elle had been a beautiful child, and still ran through Lucas’s dreams, an eleven-year-old blonde touched by grace and merriment: and later scarred by acne so foul that she’d retreated from life, to emerge ten years later as Sister Joseph. She’d told him that her choice was not brought by her face, that she had a vocation. He wasn’t certain; he never quite bought it.
    Elle arrived in a black Chevrolet as Lucas was putting the first of the steaks on the grill. Weather gave her a beer.
    “What’s the status?” Elle asked.
    “One’s dead, maybe; the others aren’t yet,” Lucas said. “But the guy is cracking open and all the gunk is oozing out of his head. He’s gonna kill them soon.”
    “I know her—Andi Manette. She’s not the most powerful mind, but she’s got an ability to…touch people,” Elle said, sipping the beer. The smell of steak floated in from the porch. “She reaches out and you talk to her. I think it’s something that aristocrats develop. It’s a touch.”
    “Can she stay alive?”
    Elle nodded. “For a while—for longer than another woman could. She’ll try to manipulate him. If he’s had therapy, it’s hard to tell which way he’ll jump.