It was a good look for her. The dye had settled evenly across her skin and looked unexpectedly stunning against her blue eyes. Hillary had achieved her cool status as an eye-candy interviewer for a certain music-video cable channel. Her features were as blue-blooded as her social connections, and although she'd always looked way too commercial for my liking, turning purple had lent her a certain downtown credibility.
"How come you're normal, Hunter?" she said as Jen and I stepped out into the sun. I heard the servant who'd ushered us through the immense, many-floored apartment retreat quickly behind us.
"Normal how?" I asked.
"Not purple!"
I held up my hands, which still bore the stain of my brief exposure to Poo-Sham.
"Wait, that's right…." Her purple brow furrowed, as if she was through a thick hangover to remember the night before. "I asked you about your hands last night."
"Right," I agreed, wondering what her point was.
"Hunter! You already had that crap on your hands when I saw you last night. Why didn't you warn me?"
I opened my mouth, then closed it. Good question. I suppose I'd been more worried about joining Mandy in captivity than saving a bunch of Blue Bloods from purple heads. (But frankly, the concept of raising an alarm hadn't crossed my mind.)
"Well, things were kind of complicated last night, and—"
"We were working undercover," Jen said. "Trying to figure out who's behind all this."
"Undercover?" Hillary raised a purple eyebrow. "What the hell are you talking about? Who are you, anyway?"
"You met me the other—"
"I know where we met, but where did you come from? And why is everything so weird since you showed up?"
Hillary's violet fury brought me up short. Things had been odd since I'd known Jen—I'd already noticed that myself once or twice. But in a moment of mental clarity, I realized that this would all be happening far away from my little world if I'd never met her. I never would have gone to) the launch party or snuck into Movable Hype. For that matter, if Jen I hadn't brought up the missing-black-woman formation at the meeting, Mandy wouldn't have taken us to the abandoned building. Maybe Mandy [wouldn't even have gone herself that particular morning and might stilclass="underline" be around, running focus groups and taking pictures of guys in berets instead of… being gone.
But Hillary's purple features weren't actually Jen's fault. The Hoi Aristoi party had been planned for months. Jen wasn't a bad-luck charm making all this stuff happen; she was more like a compass, unerringly guiding me toward the weird. Or something like that.
I decided to work it out later. "Like Jen said, we were working undercover. Mandy disappeared yesterday, and we've been trying to find her."
"Mandy?" Hillary lifted a Bloody Mary from the table beside her lounge chair and emptied it. Hair of the dog. Even dyed purple, Hillary was looking a little green around the gills, probably the result of too much Noble Savage, "what's this got to do with her?"
"We're not quite sure," I said. "In fact, we're completely not sure."
Hillary rolled her eyes. "Gee, Hunter. I'm so thrilled you guys are on the case."
"Like I said, it's complicated. But we think we can track down the people behind Poo-Sham. We just need some information from you."
"But you didn't even…" She blinked, and for a moment I thought she was going to cry. I looked away, past exotic plants and potted trees, across the park to the jagged Midtown skyline, looking like broken teeth rising out of a forest.
Hillary sobbed once. "You just walked away from me, Hunter. You must have known it was dye."
"Well, yeah, I guess. But I really didn't have any idea what was going on. I mean, all those flashing lights were freaking me out—"
"Let me ask you one question, Hillary," Jen said. "When you stepped out of the shower and saw yourself, did you immediately sit down and call all your friends to warn them?"
"I—," she started, but her words dissolved into purple bemusement. "Maybe not right away. But that was this morning. Hunter knew there was something up last night at the party."
"And your point is…?"
She waved away Jen's question as though it were an annoying mosquito. "You wouldn't think this was so funny if you were purple."
"I don't think it's…," Jen started, then spread her hands. "Well, aspects of it are funny."
Hillary groaned. "This has been fun, Hunter. But I think you two are leaving." She stabbed at a wireless intercom next to the empty Bloody Mary glass, and a distant buzzer sounded from within the apartment.
"Listen," I said, "I'm sorry I didn't warn you about the dye, Hillary. But we can find the people who did this to you."
She glared at me. "Too late to help."
"But if we find these guys," Jen said, "we might find the antidote."
The servant returned, hovering at the door to the garden while Hillary's narrowed eyes tried to burn a hole through Jen.
"Antidote?"
Jen shrugged. "Maybe there's a way to wash it off."
"Another Bloody," Hillary commanded, shaking the ice in the empty glass, her gaze still locked on Jen. The servant evaporated.
After a moment of purple calculation she said, "What do you need?"
"To learn the names of everyone who paid for the Hoi Aristoi subscriber list," I said.
"The mailing list? Okay, I'll make some calls." She leaned forward, removing the straw from her empty drink and pointing it at me threateningly. "But this time around you better keep me in the loop, Hunter. Or you're going to wake up with something worse than a purple head."
Chapter 28
WE WAITED FOR THE CALL DOWNTOWN, BACK AT OUR FAVORITE
coffee shop, sitting on our musty couch, shoulders touching. It should have felt wonderful.
"What's bumming you out?"
I looked down at my purple hands. "Hillary being right. I should have told someone about the shampoo last night after I found out it was dye. The whole party was a trap, and we just let everybody walk into it."
Jen leaned her weight into me comfortingly. "Come on. We were too busy not getting caught. And I mean really caught, not dyed purple or photographed behaving badly. Didn't you have to run for your life?"
"Yeah, twice in one day. But I still wish I'd said something to Hillary."
"You feel guilty about Hillary's purple head? News update, Hunter: She'll live. We went to that party to investigate a kidnapping, not rescue a bunch of spoiled rich kids."
I pulled away to get a better look at the smirk just visible on Jen's lips. "You like these guys, don't you?" I said. "The anti-client."
"Well, I wouldn't say I like them." She leaned back into the musty couch and sighed. "I think they're probably dangerous, and I'm worried about Mandy. And I definitely don't want to get caught by them."
"But…?"
"But I do like their style," she said, then smiled. "Don't you?"
I opened my mouth, then closed it. It was true: the anti-client did have style. They were cool, and they were using cool in a strange new way. I'd spent years studying how Innovators changed the world, and the process was always indirect, suggestive, filtered through cool hunters and Trendsetters and ultimately giant companies while the Innovators remained invisible. As in an epidemic, Patient Zero was always the hardest guy to find. So there was something fascinating about an Innovator taking direct action. The anti-client was shooting advertisements, taking over launch parties, creating their own weird marketing campaign.