by T. G. Ayer
“What?” he asked, playing innocent. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t need to. Just the look on your face is enough.”
“What look?” he asked leaning so close his lips almost touched mine, “Oh, you meant the look that says I’m not exactly happy to know someone else might have probably-maybe-once-upon-a-time been my woman’s main squeeze.”
Then he pushed me back down on the sofa and kissed me, and I forgot the room, forgot all my problems. I even forgot about my evil spirit who was probably enjoying some soft porn viewing right now.
The one thing I did remember made me smile against his mouth.
His woman indeed.
Chapter 9
“Will you two please get a damned room? There’s a whole bunch to choose from if you move up to the first floor.” Steph’s unimpressed voice shattered my passion into minuscule pieces, and Saleem and I both sprang apart.
I scrambled for my blouse and bra and ignored the djinn as he buttoned his shirt and pants.
When I turned to glare at her, Steph’s expression remained unapologetic. “What? This is the living room, ya know,” she turned on her heel and walked off saying, “I have info, in case you’re interested.”
I hurried after her, but not before glancing over my shoulder and sending Saleem a sheepish glance. He winked, and disappeared. And only then did I realize he hadn’t told me his reasons for coming in the first place.
Upstairs in the comms room, Steph sank into her chair and tapped the keyboard to pull up a few files on the screen.
“I know it’s been ages and you need to get your lady bits oiled once in a while, but please . . . not on the sofa. I watch TV on the sofa.” Then she stiffened, and swung around to stare at me, “Have you two done this before? On the freaking sofa?”
I sank down beside her, and cupped her face. “I’m sorry Steph, but if you can’t tell a make-out session when you see it, then maybe you need a refresher sex-ed class.”
She snorted. “Denial won’t get you anywhere. You get your groove on all you want. Just keep it off the sofa.”
I grinned.
I hadn’t missed the small smile at the corner of her mouth, or the way her eyes twinkled. She’d been rooting for Saleem and me for months.
Now, she focused on her keyboard and then pointed at the screen without looking, “This is all I got for the Phaser. And that,” she pointed to a larger black screen, “is a record of everything over a period of two years.”
The larger flat-screen showed a map of the North American continent, complete with dozens and dozens of little red dots spread out across all the states, from Alaska to Mexico and Cuba.
“He sure was busy,” I said, a little in awe. The other screens flashed news articles in slow-mo, photographs of the vigilante from surveillance and witnesses.
“The Phaser is mostly known for saving people using his powers. He stops bank robbers and murderers and wife-beaters. Law enforcement all over the country are happy he’s around. The only ones complaining are criminals. And those paid by criminals.”
I inhaled, studying the almost-endless relay of information. “For a kid, he’s impressive.”
“You can say that again. He’s been incredibly busy over the last two years. Emerged in Chicago, then traveled across the states. There were reports of him in London, Geneva, the Caymans, South Africa and Australia, but he seems to keep regular activity to this continent.”
Steph sat back and staring at the screens, biting her lip. “Why are we looking for this guy? Are we apprehending him? Or joining him?”
I sighed. “His mother wants to stop him.”
“From doing all the good he does?” she raised her eyebrows, “Selfish bitch.”
“Gets worse.” I sat on the edge of the desk. “She thinks he’s out to sabotage her. That he feels her money is blood money.”
Steph lifted a finger. “Yes. Elise Garner was once accused of being involved in the blood-diamond trade, even after the accusations against her husband. No evidence ever found. She claimed all her diamonds are from legitimate sources, and from what the press said, she managed to prove it too, because the authorities dropped the case.”
“Or were paid to drop it?”
Steph nodded slowly. “Okay, let us say she is guilty. And that her son has a legit reason to damage her financial estate. How will he achieve this?”
I shrugged. “He’s a phaser. And a partial teleporter. Manipulates the frequencies of solid objects which allows him to move through metal and stone. My guess is, he’ll attempt to deplete her income one step at a time.”
I stared at a photo of Erik and his mother standing in front of a Garner’s Diamonds store in Milan. “Starting with the diamonds themselves.”
Steph was already tapping away as she spoke, “I love the way your mind works.” Within seconds she brought up a world map with blue dots that identified cities where Garner’s Diamonds had stores. “Twenty sites in total.”
“Not as many as I would’ve expected.”
“Nope. But just enough if you want to remain super-exclusive. New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, London, Paris, Rome, Hong Kong. They have reach, so they’d also have pretty tight security.”
“Even so, it can’t keep me out.”
“What about Erik?”
I stared at the screen again.
“Why hasn’t he attacked her where it hurts. In all the time he’s been saving people, helping people, why hasn’t he done something substantial about his mother other than a handful of seemingly random breaches?”
I gave a weary sigh as I recognized his pattern. “Because all this time he was assuaging his own guilt, trying to make himself feel better, trying to make amends. And now, finally he wants his own vengeance.”
Steph tapped away again, and a photograph of a young boy, his forehead creased as he stared at a chessboard. “This is Erik Garner. Chess-champion at eight, won a scholarship to Yale at twelve, research physicist at a lab after completing his degree at fifteen. Lived at home until he disappeared without a trace.”
I frowned. “Impressive. But what changed? What was the catalyst to making him abandon it all?”
“The death of Jeb Garner? Erik was sixteen.” Steph enjoyed the thrill of a case that required a little more thinking and strategizing.
“How did he die?” I asked staring at Erik’s most recent photo. He looked young for his age, gangly, compensating with a stubbled, longhaired, slouchy look. His gray eyes were piercing bits of silver and it almost felt like he could see through a person’s soul.
Steph’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Plane went down.” Her expression fell. “There’s something else.”
How much worse can this get?
“My searches on the mother are picking up a trail leading to Sentinel. Files are high-level. Top secret.”
I groaned. “Don’t tell me the mother is a mage.”
“Not sure how relevant that would be to our case,” said Steph as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
“It would be pretty relevant. It means she may know about the DarkWorld. It means she may know about my abilities. It means she likely knows her son has powers—not suspects as she claims.”
Steph swung her chair around and stared at me.
“Which means she’s trying to protect more than just her money.”
I sighed and stared at the screen showing a photo of Ms Garner’s face. Her features were strong, her tan fading, her hair a dark pixie-cut, laugh-lines marking her face.
“You know something, Steph?” She quirked her eyebrow in question. “I have a nagging suspicion that in this particular case we are clueless.”
Steph grinned. “Ah. Yeah. That was a good movie.”
“Shut up, Steph,” I said, already out the door as she ran through the highlights of another of her many favorite old movies.
I gritted my teeth and headed to my bathroom.
Knowing what was wrong and being unable to do anything abou
t it was a different kind of hell.
I hated being clueless.
Chapter 10
At times like these—when cases are stressful—the days seem to blend together.
Time feels like it doesn’t exist much. Add in the jump to Hong Kong and it made time more difficult to assimilate.
It’s nothing new though, as the different planes—like the demon realms or the dragon world— also exist within their own time zones, and I’ve traveled to them enough.
I tossed and turned, sleep hard to obtain. I eventually nodded off to a deep dreamless place of rest from which I awakened acceptably refreshed and a little too oblivious.
Yawning wide and loud, I headed into the bathroom and narrowly missed stepping on the broken shards of glass covering the small rug in front of the washbasin.
I’d been so careful, keeping anything dangerous out of the bathroom, but I’d totally forgotten about the large white glass shade around the above-the-mirror light bulb. Unfortunately for me, the tokolosje was an intelligent guy, albeit a very much dead guy. A combination that made my stomach turn.
He was unpredictable, serving up only a slight nosebleed on landing in Hong Kong and one in front of Saleem. I had to wonder if distance from home affected the strength of his hold on me.
I scrounged around in the hall closet for a dustpan and broom, cleaned up the mess and then washed up, my mind on Samuel.
The only way that I was going to get access to him again was to be in the same physical place as his physical body, and for my projected self to be with his projected essence.
Using his body would allow me to gain better access to his essence giving me a stronger feedback while in the ether.
Not only did I need to find Samuel because of Ari, but I also had to do it because Darius required it, because of the Dark One that spelled our doom.
All that end-of-the-world stuff was weighing my shoulders down.
After slugging a cup of coffee from the machine in the kitchen, I grabbed my keys and headed out to the truck. The day was gray, the low-hanging clouds burgeoning with a storm.
A flock of blackbirds drew uniformed patterns, dark splotches against a dull blue sky, a second warning of the coming storm.
I put the car in drive, and slid into the street. A glance over my shoulder confirmed that the street was empty of any local law enforcement of the prying kind. Detective Pete Fulbright had been absent of late. After our last encounter a few weeks back—when he’d delivered the news that my client was in the hospital and likely dying—I’d seen very little of him.
Not that I wasn’t grateful that he wasn’t dogging my every step, it was just strange to look over my shoulder and not see him there.
The thought of Fulbright had my head snapping up. Someone who knew me, that may want to do me harm? Those closest to me, and those who were my enemies.
Could I consider Pete Fulbright, with his decade-long vendetta against me, as a potential spellcaster?
I’d be stupid not to.
I thumped my head against the back of the car seat and considered my next move. How in the holy hell was I supposed to obtain a DNA sample from Fulbright when he’d left me in peace for so long? Surely bumping into him or arranging a meeting with him, could rekindle his desire to stalk me again.
Sucking in a deep breath I decided to take the cowardly way out and ask Saleem to obtain said sample for me. He worked with Fulbright at CPD. I doubt it would be hard for him to get me a strand of hair or a fingernail.
Making a mental note to talk to Saleem as soon as I got back from Samuel’s, I tried to shut it out of my mind for the moment. I rolled down the window, inhaling the electric bite of the air and drove off.
Parking outside Samuel’s old antebellum mansion, I stared up at the curtain that shaded his room. The white drape billowed in a sudden gust of wind, reminding me that the storm was going to come sooner than I’d expected.
I locked the car and hurried to the front door, using my key to let myself in. Thankfully, Samuel’s niece was otherwise employed and we’d ended up hiring a caregiver for him instead. It felt rather peaceful not to be bombarded with sarcasm and biting criticism before I met with him.
As I bounded up the stairs—a habit my mom had tried and failed to rid me of—my foot slipped and I almost tripped.
“Fuck,” I caught myself just before I cracked my forehead open on the edge of the top stair, remembering too late that the damned tokolosje was still around.
Guess if I killed myself before the poltergeist did, then technically I’d win.
Idiot.
I got to my feet, took a deep breath and waited until my heartbeat returned to something near normal.
I straightened my spine, took another breath, then headed toward Samuel’s room, where I stood on the threshold for a moment. Samuel sat in the rocking chair at the table beside the window.
To an onlooker, he’d appear to be staring out at the view of the expansive grounds of the estate.
My stomach twinged knowing he wasn’t seeing a damned thing.
I drew closer and set my bag on the floor before taking a seat in the chair opposite Samuel. The table held a glass vase bearing three drooping daffodils, and an empty teacup.
Poor Samuel.
I was pretty certain he wouldn’t have been able to drink that on his own.
Ever since he’d fallen into this catatonic state, we’d had to spoon-feed him everything. Technically, he belonged in a full-time care facility, but since he still retained breathing and cardiac function, his family wanted him kept at home. Like me, they still waited for the day that he would return to us, the day he’d open his eyes, and give us that bright smile he reserved for those he loved.
I leaned closer and took his hand in mine, feeling the press of his bones through thin, fleshless skin. I spoke to him, soft words, reassuring him more on the off-chance that he could somehow still hear me.
He’d woken a few times, once to give me a message that sent me searching for him. And finding him lurking in a different plane.
Samuel was lost in a permanent projection, physically in two places at the same time. And until he fulfilled whatever goal he sought, he wasn’t about to come back home. My deepest fear was that he’d return too late, because his poor frail body was beginning to fail him.
Holding his hand, I settled against the backrest and sank into the ether.
Samuel’s biofeedback was confusing. It seemed to be pushing me in two separate directions. One back toward his unconscious body, and then in an entirely new one.
The different worlds, the various planes and realms that comprised the DarkWorld, existed not side-by-side, but almost in the same place at the same time. I’d never understood the dynamics of time and the different worlds, but I’d never needed to. Because traveling through the ether had distilled the confusion for me, into a semblance of sense that I’d accepted a long time ago.
But right now, I encountered a sense of a new and unusual presence, a tether to the feedback that made my stomach tighten.
This time, I didn’t speed along attached to Samuel’s feedback. Instead I moved slowly, carefully, a deep sense of anxiety making me expect something to go wrong at any moment.
The further along I went, the stronger the sense of unease grew, until I finally reached the location in the Veil where the ether met a different plane. A world to which Samuel’s feedback beckoned.
Still keeping a tight hold on the essence that guided me to Samuel, I slipped through the gap in the Veil and projected into a cave.
One of the strangest caves I’d ever been in, the ground was covered in red dirt, and the walls constructed of red crystal.
Flickering lights emanated from crevices and narrow ledges all along the length of the tunnel, and I squinted at them, looking closer.
Someone dropped oil and wicks into convenient little wells made by the projecting crystals. The lights only served to make the tunnel more eerie, with its red glow casting demonic shadows
in front of me.
Footsteps pounded along the tunnel floor and two uniformed men hurried toward me. They wore dark leather pants and close-fitting leather jackets. I frowned at the construction of the garments, noting there was no continuous piece of fabric to be found. Both articles of clothing were constructed of irregular-sized pieces of leather stitched together haphazardly with thick twine. I frowned, but dismissed their fashion sense for the moment and focused on the men themselves.
Jagged curved blades jutted from scabbards at each of their hips, and the sight of their faces would likely haunt my nightmares for weeks to come. Not that I was new to demons—having seen my fair share—but these two were positively monstrous.
With their long canines, and yellow horns erupting from tufts of hair on each of their bald heads, they looked like something straight out of Dante’s Inferno. I shifted aside—more instinct because I was only projecting and there was no way they’d have seen me—and studied them for weaknesses as they passed.
I could see none.
Giant muscles in both arms and legs, stern and unrelenting expressions on their faces, they both looked terrifying enough that if confronted with an army of these creatures I wouldn’t be surprised if most people laid down their swords, or turned and ran.
I headed in the opposite direction, keeping an eye out for more soldiers. A low rumbling echoed in my direction and at first I thought it was conversation.
But as I drew closer I recognized the sound of drunken singing and raucous laughter. Within this strange and nightmarish place, someone was having a lot of fun.
But the place itself was irrelevant.
Samuel was my goal.
Chapter 11
His biofeedback throbbed within my grip, much stronger now. He must be close for his energy to be almost tangible against my senses.
I hurried along, following the feedback so fast I’d glided swiftly past a large doorway before finding myself turned around by the pull of his power.
