Nightmare City: Book 1 Of The Nightmare City Series (Urban Fantasy)

by P. S. Newman

  “It’s professional. He won’t tell me about his confrontation with the doppelgänger. I think something embarrassing happened. Maybe that something holds the key to catching the doppelgänger.”

  “You think Taylor would keep something that vital from you?”

  “I’m not sure. He prides himself on catching every shade he’s sent to eliminate. Now he’s let two slip through his fingers multiple times within three days. That’s got to burn a crusader like him.”

  “Any suggestions on how to handle him?”

  “Don’t tell him you’re pro-shades. Especially not that you’re a member of SHAID.”

  “Sí, David mentioned that little episode. You realize that if we don’t catch this doppelgänger by the fundraiser gala in two days, David wants you and at least one more Order hunter to be on site.”

  Peachy. “Ganner will appoint Taylor for the job.” Which raised my motivation to catch the doppelgänger tonight another notch. Having Taylor at the gala where we would be showing Greyson’s video with his request for help was a recipe for disaster.

  “You have no new ideas on where the doppelgänger might be hiding out?” Cecelia asked.

  “None that your guys aren’t covering already.” The LAPD had sent out officers in plainclothes to every location the doppelgänger had ever been to.

  “We don’t have the resources to cover the entire city,” she said. “My boss isn’t going to give me more men than the ones already watching Sean's place, PharmaZeusics and the Andaz hotel.”

  My stomach growled. “When will you be at David's?”

  “I’m forty-five minutes out.”

  “I’ll have something ready for dinner. Might tame the mad beast before you have to poke it.”

  Cecelia laughed. “Sounds good.”

  <<<<>>>>

  Taylor seemed to take a liking to Cecelia. He was civil through dinner, despite David's presence. He even told me the pasta sauce I’d prepared was good. My eyes almost bugged out of my head as I stammered a thank you. But his face closed down when Cecelia told him what she was here for.

  “Can’t I just sign something that confirms that this doppelgänger shade exists?” he asked. “That should get Baptiste off the hook, shouldn’t it?”

  Cecelia shook her head. “It’s not just about acquitting Sean but about finding the real murderer. Since this has become such a public case, both the Order and the LAPD are investigating. I need to cover all my bases. And who knows, maybe you and Eden will glean something from your joint experiences that will help you catch this shade.”

  Taylor shot me an icy glare. He knew which direction that wind blew from. “What if I refuse?”

  Cecelia crossed her arms. “Then I’ll have to take you to the precinct for questioning.”

  “Fine,” Taylor said after a few charged seconds. “I’ll answer your questions. Although I didn’t confront that thing alone.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Cecelia said. “But I’ve been informed that your partner is still in a coma after a different shade attack.”

  A shadow crossed Taylor’s face. “Yes.”

  I looked away, afraid I’d burst out with an apology. It wouldn’t help to admit that the hellhounds who’d injured his partner were my shades.

  “I will get your partner’s statement as soon as he’s capable of giving one,” Cecelia said. “Until then, yours will have to do.” She pointed to the couch corner in the living area and pulled her phone out of her purse. “Let’s sit.”

  Taylor looked like he wanted to protest when I sat down with them, but Cecelia’s raised brow made him close his mouth. We made ourselves comfortable on the white-leather couch and armchairs around the coffee table. Cecelia switched on her phone’s sound recorder and laid it on the table between us, where it would catch the conversation. “Case number 5341, witness statement by Vaughn Taylor.” She looked at Taylor. “Start from the beginning. When did you get Sean Baptiste's call?”

  “I didn’t. He called the hotline,” Taylor began. “The operator patched the case through to my partner and me at around three twenty that morning.”

  “What did he tell you about the case?”

  This would be interesting - if Sean had lied to me again, I would find out.

  But Taylor wasn’t done being uncooperative. “You can just listen to the recording of Baptiste's call; the Order keeps them all on file for a year.”

  “I know they do,” Cecelia said, “and I’ve listened to it. But I don’t have a recording of what the operator told you. Maybe he left something out that you don’t know about. Something that could help you two—“ she pointed her pen at me and Taylor “—catch the doppelgänger.”

  “Fine. The operator told us that a doppelgänger of Sean Baptiste was on the loose, probably heading for the rooftop of the Andaz hotel because that had popped up as a second location in Baptiste's dream.”

  So far, so same.

  “He told us that the doppelgänger had manifested on Baptiste’s rooftop terrace at his house in Hollywoodland. It had escaped on foot about five minutes earlier.”

  “Why did the operator call you and not another team?” Cecelia asked, scribbling furiously.

  “We were already in the area. We’d just eliminated an ankle-biting Furby on Beachwood Drive, not two minutes from Baptiste's place by car. The operator said Baptiste would be staying at his place for the rest of the night, so that we couldn’t mistake him for the shade. We checked our maps and decided to follow the fastest route a man could take on foot to the Andaz from Baptiste's address.”

  “You didn’t drive right to the Andaz and wait for him there?”

  “Hell no. Who knows whom he’d run into and hurt along the way? Plus, who was to say he was heading to the hotel in the first place? That was only Baptiste's guess.”

  Taylor stopped talking. His fists clenched and unclenched.

  “Good thinking,” Cecelia said when he didn’t continue. “But you ended up confronting the doppelgänger at the Andaz after all.”

  “Sort of.” Taylor shifted in his seat. Cecelia's eyes narrowed. He shook his head and huffed out a breath. “We drove around for a while, trying out several possible routes. There are only so many ways a man can get from Hollywoodland to the Andaz. We got lucky on Franklin.”

  “Where on Franklin?”

  “On the corner of Argyle Avenue. Josh spotted him - he was the lookout since I was driving and had no clue what Baptiste looked like anyway. The shade was walking west down the sidewalk on Franklin, trying to hail a cab as if it didn’t have a care in the world.”

  “How did you end up at the Andaz?”

  “It’s where we lost it.” If Taylor clenched his jaw any harder, it would crack. “It ran as soon as it saw us; it’s difficult to be circumspect in a bright green vehicle with the Order logo on the side. We ended up pursuing it on foot from there and chased it all the way to the Andaz, where we managed to trap it on the roof. We thought we finally had it, but then that thing blasted us with fire. From its fingertips!”

  Taylor bounced out of his seat as if ejected by a spring. “It laughed while it blazed at us,” he said, pacing back and forth in front of the coffee table. “This unhinged cackle, like a mad genius scientist who’d just discovered a cure for sanity.”

  I shivered. I’d heard that cackle at David's house.

  “By the time we got our wits back,” he continued, “every plant, chair, and sunshade on that deck was on fire, and the doppelgänger had disappeared. We couldn’t find it again.”

  Cecelia finished writing on her pad and put the pen down to make a call. “Hey Jerry, it’s Cecelia. Can you get a unit to canvas the area on and around the corner of Franklin and Argyle? Our shady perp was seen there on the night he manifested. Gracias.”

  She hung up. Taylor stopped pacing and gave her a look.

  “Five days ago,” he said.

  “Five days ago what?”

  “Since we spotted the doppelgänger there. On its way to the Andaz
. It has no reason to return to that area.”

  “We don’t know that and we’ve got nowhere else to look. I’ve got people running around the entire city, looking for burn marks like the ones at the crime scene and the Andaz rooftop. If I can narrow it down for them by even a little, I’ll do that. Plus, you said it didn’t look like it had a care in the world. Like it wasn’t expecting Order hunters to find it right then and there.”

  “It’s a shade; they’re unpredictable.”

  Cecelia glanced at me. “Maybe, maybe not. Never hurts to check out every possibility.”

  “I agree,” I said. “This shade might be as unpredictable as any other, but he’s also more intelligent. He would have known that Sean would call him in. He should have been more on edge so close to his origin.”

  Taylor sighed. “That may be, but there’s nothing there, regardless.”

  Cecelia and I exchanged a glance. “How can you be so sure?” she asked.

  “Because I’ve been looking. I’ve been searching that area between Baptiste's home and the Andaz every day.”

  Something about his insistence kept me asking questions. “Captain Ganner asked you to do that?”

  He started pacing like a caged tiger again. “No.”

  “You’re doing it in your free time.” I should have been more surprised.

  “I finish my hunts,” he ground out with another glare in my direction. “Always.” He was probably doing the same for Greyson and the surviving hellhounds, but I didn’t dare ask. If I showed too much interest in this other unfinished hunt of his, he might connect the dots at the gala, when SHAID showed Greyson’s video.

  “Let’s hope we manage to finish this particular hunt together,” Cecelia said, just as David entered the living room after cleaning up in the kitchen. “I’d like this to be over by the gala on Saturday, or we’ll have to worry about extra security there, too.” She’d turned towards David, so she didn’t see my slashing-across-the-throat motion.

  Taylor, however, caught it just fine. His eyes narrowed. “What gala?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  "So this is what you do as a hobby."

  I couldn't help the snark. Taylor and I were exiting an apartment complex on Bronson Avenue, a road perpendicular to the street on which he and his partner had first spotted the doppelgänger. "This is crazy," I added when he didn't react to my taunt. "We're never going to find the doppelgänger this way."

  He gave me a look reserved for the lowest scum on Earth. "And you call yourself a shade hunter."

  "I'm pretty sure searching every house in the entire city for a vanished shade isn't in either of our job description. Even Ganner told you no when you asked her for a backup search team."

  He'd called her after his blow-up about the very real possibility of having to attend a fundraiser of the organization he loathed most in the world. Once again, she'd flat out refused his request to send someone else. Or to send a backup search team to help us search for the doppelgänger.

  "Only because we currently don't have enough manpower."

  "So you rooked me into this fruitless endeavor instead.” I still didn’t quite understand how he’d done it. “Can we at least split up? That way we'll cover more ground at once." And I could find a shady spot to take a nap. It had been a long night. How Taylor retained enough energy for bodyguard duty at night and search parties during the day, I couldn't fathom. He had to be running on obsession alone. Always a comforting thought.

  "Two sets of eyes see more than one," he said. He pointed at the neighboring building, a detached bungalow with a small, manicured lawn in the front yard. "This one next."

  He strode down the sidewalk. I dithered, trying to come up with an excuse to turn around and go home, when my phone rang. Thank God. But my chest constricted when I saw it was David. They were supposed to be filming Greyson's video today. Something must have happened.

  I didn't want Taylor to know it was David, so I answered with "this is Eden Maybrey".

  "Eden, it's David. We've hit a bit of a snag in our shoot."

  "What is it?"

  "Your man is reluctant to go through with it. Says he doesn't think it's a good idea anymore. Do you have time to come over and try to... reconvince him?"

  "It must be dire if you’re making up words,” I said, caught between worry and mirth. “I'll be right there."

  "I'll text you the address," David said. Only he, Mr. Kellerman, and now Greyson knew the location of the shoot. The other chairmen of SHAID had wanted nothing more to do with this illegal matter than giving their verbal consent.

  I signed off. Taylor stopped and turned around, fists on his hips. "You're leaving.”

  "That was a client with a shade problem," I lied. "I promised her she could call me anytime."

  He didn't look convinced. "Convenient for you."

  “What are you implying?”

  "Nothing. I'm saying that you're full of shit," he said. "Look me in the eyes and tell me that wasn't like one of those fake emergency calls you ask a friend to make in case a blind date goes badly."

  "How would you know about those?" I shot back. "No self-respecting woman would ever go on a date with you."

  Wham.

  I wanted to take the words back as soon as they flew out of my mouth. Sometimes, a facet of Bella's teenage impulsiveness bled into my actions, taking me by surprise. It wasn't a good enough excuse to go so far over the line that I should have needed a spacesuit to breathe.

  I opened my mouth to apologize, but he waved it off. "Run along to your fake emergency. I don't need your help with this."

  He turned on his heel and marched up the footpath to the house. I fought down the overwhelming urge to call an apology at his retreating back. But nothing could unsay, redeem or alleviate my words. Judging by the tense set of his shoulders, he was primed for a fight and not ready to listen, anyway. I'd have to try when he'd cooled off a bit in a couple of hours, or maybe days. Possibly years.

  Alright, probably never.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I had the cab drop me off three blocks away from the address David had texted me and walked the rest of the way. If we wanted this to work, we couldn’t be too careful about leaving traces that might indicate anybody at SHAID had been involved with Greyson before the recording was shown. The fact that I was walking through Burbank, the so-called Media Capital of the World, where many of LA’s film and media companies had their headquarters, didn’t exactly comply with that approach. But Kellerman had suggested this location as one he deemed safe. I’d have to trust his judgment.

  I reached the building forty-five minutes after David's call and was pleasantly surprised. Instead of the ginormous high-rise I’d been expecting, it was a house on a long road of private homes. It looked abandoned. The shutters were closed, no car stood in the driveway, and the yard was bare of even a single plant. I didn’t want to be seen standing in front of the door, so I kept going down the sidewalk and gave David another call.

  “I’ll be there in a minute, will you let me in?”

  “Sure thing.”

  A little later, I was surprised to find David opening the door.

  “No bodyguards?” I asked, slipping inside.

  “I snuck past them. They think I’m at the office. We couldn’t risk bringing them here. They can’t witness what we’re up to.”

  “I thought they signed non-disclosure agreements with you.”

  “Those won’t hold up in court if I’m charged with treasonous acts against the country. Which, technically, is exactly what we’re doing.”

  “So you’d rather risk your life by running around without protection?”

  “If my bodyguards don’t even realize I’m gone, how is the doppelgänger supposed to know?”

  I wanted to drop my face into my hands with a groan, but the damage was already done. I stabbed a finger at David instead. “I’m sneaking you back in when we’re done here.”

  “That could be a while if you don’
t get your man to cooperate. He’s this way.”

  I followed him into a dimly lit living room. It was empty of furniture, but the shuttered panorama windows in the back indicated modern beauty. A white-and-chrome gleaming kitchen branched off to the right. This was a chic, pricey, and very empty house.

  “So we’re breaking into abandoned places now?” I asked, half in jest.

  “This is Kellerman’s old home from before he became quite so filthy rich.”

  “Everything looks brand new.”

  “He has the upstairs renovated every decade or so.”

  “For tenants?”

  David shook his head. “Nobody has lived here in years. He still uses it sometimes.”

  “Uses what? The invisible couch to watch invisible TV?”

  David walked over to a door beyond the kitchen and opened it. Light spilled up from a tiled staircase. “There’s a little film studio in the basement.”

  Okiday. “Won’t this be the first place the cops look when we publish that recording?”

  “There are no records that the studio is here,” he said. “And they’d have to dig deep to find this specific property amongst all the others Kellerman owns. Almost all houses on this and the parallel street belong to him. He sometimes uses them as film sets.”

  “It’s good to be rich.”

  David's lips twitched in amusement. “Everybody’s downstairs.”

  I laid a hand on his arm before he could head down. “What’s up with Greyson? Why is he being difficult?”

  “He won’t tell us. He just keeps asking for you. Says he has something important to tell you. Judging by that look on your face, you don’t know what he’s talking about, either.”

  “I have no idea.” I brushed past him down the stairs. “But I’ll find out.”

  There was another door at the bottom. I walked through - and on to a tiny little film set. A large black canvas covered the back wall and some of the ground. Several fluorescent lamps stood on stands in different corners, pointing at the screen. Three microphones hung from the ceiling. In the middle of the room stood a giant camera on a tripod in front of a folding chair that had ‘Kellerman’ stitched on the back. The camera was one of those ancient affairs with two reels on top and an over-sized lens screen at the front.