“How you feeling, man?” he said.
Dags leaned back in the driftwood chair, making a so-so gesture with one hand. “I’ve been better,” he admitted. “How about you?”
“I’m good.” Karver glanced at the blond, and smiled.
Dags couldn’t help noticing that the smile softened his whole face.
It definitely made him look like less of an asshole.
“This is Cristina,” he said. “Cris… Dags. Dags… Cris.”
Dags leaned over the table, offering her a hand, which she took, her eyes showing a flicker of surprise. She shook his hand cheerfully enough once she’d recovered.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, releasing his grip and glancing between him and Phoenix. “So you’re the mysterious private investigator who’s been convalescing in Phoenix’s room, I take it? The one who’s been sleeping for five days?”
“That’s me,” he said.
There didn’t seem to be much else to say.
He hoped she didn’t bug him for details.
Luckily, she didn’t seem all that curious about him.
Winding her fingers into Karver’s, she asked her boyfriend in a soft voice, “When do you have to be on set?”
“I’ve got a few hours,” he said, glancing at her. “We don’t start shooting for real until next week. It’s just meetings and bullshit.”
“Can we go down to the beach? Go surfing for an hour or so?”
He smiled, leaning closer to kiss her on the cheek. “Sure thing, peaches.”
Cristina glanced up, as if remembering the rest of them, and blushed. “You can all come,” she added. “I just hoped he could come, too. Before work.”
Phoenix smiled, nudging Dags with an arm. “I might be up for that. We’ll see how much of a pain in the ass this one is today,” she said.
Dags didn’t bother to respond.
He could feel the others staring at him and Phoenix still.
He couldn’t quite decide why they were staring.
Was it really because he’d been out for five days? Or was there another reason?
Shoving it out of his head with an effort, he looked at Phoenix.
“I need to make a phone call,” he said. “Can I borrow your phone?”
“Can we eat first?” she said mildly.
“It really can’t wait. I need to call Uri. You know. My friend. The one from school. The one whose girlfriend I was following that night. He’s probably losing his mind.”
Her expression changed at that, just before he saw her wince.
Dags saw sadness touch her eyes, enough to know she remembered Dags wouldn’t be calling Uri with good news.
Looking at her, he realized he could still see that strange light around her skin⏤that light that wasn’t an aura, but something else. He’d already grown almost used to it, but when it caught the sunlight just right, she really seemed to glow.
Sitting up, she pulled her phone out of a back pocket and handed it to him.
“The password is ‘Bad Angel,’” she told him, deadpan. “One word.”
He tensed, giving her a darting, sideways look.
Her expression remained flat, impossible to read.
Nodding, he walked away down the long deck, in the direction of the hot tub. He hit in Uri’s number from memory, praying it was the same one he’d had in college.
It was.
It only rang twice, when a familiar voice picked up.
“Hey.” Uri yawned as he spoke, his Russian accent more prominent than usual, even under the California one. “Uri speaking. Who is this?”
“Dags.”
There was a silence.
Then the other man’s voice burst out, holding utter disbelief.
“Jesus Christ! Where the hell have you been? I thought you were dead! I really thought you were dead this time… even more than in the desert. I’ve been calling for days, man. The cops are looking for you. That Kara chick from high school. She called me⏤”
“Kara?” Dags’ voice sharpened. “Kara Mossman called you?”
“Yeah.” Uri exhaled, his voice holding relief. “I just talked to her⏤”
“You just talked to her? This morning?”
“Just now. I just hung up with her.”
“She was looking for me?” Dags said. “Why? Did she give you a reason?”
“Well, yeah… the first time. She called asking if I’d seen you, if I had any idea where you were. She was worried about you. She couldn’t tell me much, but you’d been ID’d as part of some violent thing that happened⏤”
“When was that, Uri?”
There was a silence.
Dags bit his lip, forcing himself to remain silent while Uri thought.
“A few days, maybe? Like, Tuesday?” Uri fell silent, obviously still thinking. “Yeah. Four mornings ago. She asked about you, and I told her I hadn’t seen you since Saturday. I told her about Jade, about hiring you to find her⏤”
“Why did she call back?” Dags said. “This morning. What did she want? Just to check in? Or did she give you another reason?”
“Oh! Yeah, you’re not going to believe this, man, but she called about Jade. She only asked about you as a side thing. They found her. They found Jade. Turns out you were right. She was drugged or hypnotized or something. They found her wandering the streets in Brentwood, just this morning. They were going to check her out… medically, I mean. But they said I could come pick her up in like an hour. I guess Jade started to remember enough to remember me. She was asking for me. I was just on my way out the door⏤”
“No,” Dags cut in. “No. Absolutely not. No, Uri.”
There was a silence.
“No?” Uri’s voice grew a few shades colder. “What do you mean, no? It’s Jade, man. Didn’t you hear me? They found her⏤”
“Whatever that thing is, it’s not Jade.” Dags’ jaw clenched. “You need to listen to me, Uri. You can’t go over there. I mean it. It would be extremely dangerous for you to do that.” Pausing at the other’s silence, he said, “Wait for me. Wait for me at your place, okay? I’ll come over. We can talk⏤”
“You want me to leave Jade? At some rando dude’s house in Brentwood?”
“I want you to wait for me,” Dags growled. “Don’t do anything until I get there. We’ll go get Jade together, all right?”
“No.”
Dags could almost see his friend shaking his head.
“No, man. I’m sorry… but no.” Uri’s voice grew louder. “I’ve been freaking out for days. Jade disappearing. Then you. And now you call me, tell me you’re fine, all’s fine, that you just, what? Bailed on me for a week? And now you don’t want me to go pick up my wife?”
His voice hardened to ice.
“No. No way. I’m not leaving her there. No.”
“Uri⏤”
“Be seeing you, Jourdain. Thanks for nothing.”
“Uri, wait⏤”
But the other man had already hung up the phone.
Chapter 18
Back To Brentwood
Dags handed Phoenix back her phone, fighting to think.
He could feel the eyes of all of them on him again, but he couldn’t really take the time to deal with that, or even to pretend he cared how he looked, or what their problem was with him now.
He focused on Phoenix alone.
“Do you have a car I can borrow?” he said.
“What?” She stared up at him in disbelief. “Absolutely not. Sit the hell down, Dags. You haven’t eaten in five days. I’m surprised you’re even standing⏤”
But he didn’t have time to argue with her either.
He set her phone down on the driftwood table, and walked away. Reentering the house through the open sliding glass door, he glanced around long enough to orient himself in the maze-like house, then aimed his feet for the stairs.
By then, he even had the bare bones of a plan.
He’d collect his things and call a cab from the landline he�
�d seen behind the bar.
“Wait!” she snapped, as he walked away.
Dags didn’t slow his steps.
He heard her chair screech as she shoved it back on the stone deck, but he didn’t look back. Making his way through the bamboo corridor between the kitchen and the living room, he walked with long strides through the living room itself, then vaulted up the stone stairs.
Hanging a right at the top, he half-jogged to her bedroom, darting into the bathroom long enough to scoop up his phone with the broken face, the matchbox, and the vial. He didn’t know why he bothered with the last two things, except that they were there.
He looked for his keys.
Then he remembered. Damn it. Phoenix had his keys.
She probably wouldn’t give them to him now.
He’d have to leave without them.
He looked for his boots, but didn’t see those, either.
When he couldn’t find them in her bedroom or her enormous walk-in closet, he decided to go without those, too. Walking back towards the stairs, he tried to turn on his phone. The battery was dead, which wasn’t really a surprise.
He wondered if it would work even if he charged it.
Shoving the phone into the back pocket of the brand-new pants, he gritted his teeth, heading barefoot for the stairs.
He’d just have to find the place from memory.
He vaulted back down the staircase, taking the steps two at a time, and turned for the front door⏤
⏤only to find Phoenix standing there, waiting for him.
Unlike him, she’d found shoes.
She also gripped a set of car keys in one hand. Not his. A different set.
In her other hand, she held what looked like⏤
“It’s a burrito,” she said flatly, holding it out to him. “And you’re going to eat it. Now. I’m driving. Wherever the hell you have to go in such a damned hurry, I’m taking you.”
“No,” he growled, coming to a dead stop.
“I’m taking you, or you’re not leaving,” she said, angry. “You can waste time arguing with me, and possibly getting tasered by my security team… or you can get in the damned car. I’ve already alerted Cal,” she added flatly, referring to her head of security. “My guys aren’t letting you near anything in the garage unless I’m with you. I also instructed them to shoot you with a tranquilizer dart if you try to walk up the driveway without me.”
Dags stared at her, fighting a tangled mass of conflicted feelings as he took in the expression in her green eyes.
She meant it. She meant every word.
Moreover, she was right. He didn’t have time to fight her.
He might already be too late.
Exhaling in angry frustration, he stepped forward, taking the burrito from her outstretched hand. Unwrapping one end of it, he took a large bite, chewing pointedly in her general direction, even as he motioned with his jaw for her to lead the way.
She was already jerking open the front door.
As he walked towards the opening, she bent down to pick something up, something he hadn’t seen on the stone tile behind her.
It was his motorcycle boots.
Luckily, she drove damned fast.
She also drove well.
She drove better than he would have expected, truthfully.
He figured rich people like her probably didn’t drive themselves around all that much, not in L.A., not when they were also easily-recognized celebrities.
He did his best to guide her back to the house in Brentwood.
He got a little lost, partly because it had been night when he followed the McLaren through the winding neighborhood, and partly because he’d been looking at the McLaren’s tail lights more than he had street signs.
Also, it turned out he’d remembered the cross-street wrong.
He found it eventually, recognizing an unusual, castle-style house, then another with a particularly elaborate black gate with iron dragons perched on the posts.
Dags saw his car a few seconds later.
“Slow down,” he said, motioning towards the Mustang.
He did feel a lot more mentally clear. Eating the burrito definitely helped not only his body but his mind. Truthfully, he now wished she’d brought two.
He probably could have eaten four of them.
As it was, his brain seemed to be moving again, well enough that he had her pull over to the curb a few houses away while he scanned the length of the street, noting the different cars parked there, scanning through the few auras he could see in the front yards of houses. He noted a few others jogging and walking on different blocks of the street.
All of them were human.
No demons.
“So?” Phoenix said, gripping the steering wheel and peering over the edge of it. “What now? Do you think they booby-trapped your car?”
She said it as though she were kidding, but Dags could hear the edge of tension in her voice.
“You’re insane for coming here with me,” he said, glancing at her with a frown and a cocked eyebrow. “I thought you would have learned your lesson from the last little ‘adventure’ we had together⏤”
“Me?” she retorted, glaring at him. “You’re insane for coming back here. Or did you forget they almost killed you the first time?”
At his silence, she exhaled in annoyance.
She continued to peer over the steering wheel, scanning the street.
“So why are we just sitting here?” she said.
“We’re waiting for Uri.”
“Didn’t he say they were looking for you?” she muttered. “That female cop, the one you went to high school with… didn’t Uri say she was looking for you? You said she was one of the demons who wanted to kill you, right?”
Dags shared his conversation with Uri on the drive over, more or less word for word. He hadn’t told her about Kara, though. He must have done that while he was in his delirious state, at some point over those five days.
Now he wondered just how much he’d told her over that time.
Whatever he’d said, it wasn’t enough.
That, or it was way, way too much.
“Yes,” he said simply, throwing up a hand.
“So why are we here?”
Dags scowled, folding his arms. “I meant it when I said it was stupid for you to come here. You should have stayed home.”
At her angry stare, he shrugged a second time, conceding,
“That said, I really don’t think they will hurt us.”
He craned his head as he spoke, looking back the other way down the street. He frowned, looking over the auras of a guy with a leaf-blower and two women who were out power-walking in neon latex.
“They made it pretty clear they couldn’t kill us. At least not yet.”
He gave her a grim look.
“They seemed particularly worried about moving on you. But whoever’s really in charge⏤not that Mara-demon, or Molokai, or Kara, but whoever they take orders from⏤that person doesn’t want us dead. At least not yet.”
“Why?” she said.
“I have no idea. They didn’t tell me that part.” He squinted out through the windshield at the sunny morning. “They might not know themselves.”
She frowned at him from behind dark sunglasses with pale pink rims.
“What does that mean?” she said. “What did they say?”
He thought about that, then shrugged with the same hand.
“Honestly?” he said. “I don’t really remember. I was pretty out of it. They’d already hit me pretty hard⏤” Seeing her wince, he cut himself off. “⏤I only have impressions. Which really aren’t much better than guesses.”
“So what are your guesses?” she said.
He looked at her, fighting to hold onto his nonchalance.
In the end, he told her the truth, his voice blunt.
“They’re afraid of awakening you,” he said. “They don’t want you becoming more like me. Not yet, anyway. They want you to
stay like how you are now⏤a kind of ‘un-activated’ version of yourself. Like a regular human.”
She stared at him.
He couldn’t see her eyes because of the sunglasses, but he saw her mouth harden.
“Are you saying I’m like you?” she said.
He threw up his hands. “Haven’t we covered this?”
She snorted, her voice incredulous. “If by ‘covering this’ you mean not talking about it once, and barely referring to it, even in passing, then sure. Sure, Dags. We covered it.”
He turned, staring at her.
“Are you telling me the thought never crossed your mind?”
“Of course it crossed my mind!” she snapped. “I’ve wondered if we were the same since I first laid eyes on you. That’s hardly the same as ‘we covered this.’”
At his frown, Phoenix shook her head, still inscrutable behind the sunglasses.
“Jesus, Dags,” she muttered. “You appeared in my life, confused the hell out of me, then ghosted me… after telling me absolutely nothing.”
“What makes you think I know any more than you do?” he growled.
“You have wings,” she hissed, turning on him. “You get that, right? You get that that’s not normal? To have enormous wings that spring out of your back?”
There was another silence.
In it, Dags kept an eye on the road.
He was now worried they’d already missed Uri, that Uri was already inside the mansion. That, or Kara instructed Uri to go to a different part of Brentwood altogether. Dags should have gotten the damned address before the Russian hung up the phone.
He found himself turning over the “wife” comment Uri made.
Had that just been a figure of speech? Or had the two of them actually gotten married at some point in the last eight or nine years? Would Uri and Jade really have done that without inviting Dags to the wedding?
Without even telling Dags about it?
Frowning, he shoved the thought from his mind.
He could see the end of the driveway just past where he’d parked the Mustang.
He wondered why no one had the car towed. They just left it there, collecting dust, for over five days. That wasn’t exactly normal, either. Especially not in this neighborhood.
Bad Angel Page 15
