No Humans Involved

by Kelley Armstrong

  "I fear so. You know what we must do, then, don't you?"

  "Yes. We have to--"

  "--avoid that garden at all costs. I wanted to warn you earlier, when I realized you were spending so much time out there."

  "But--"

  "Claudia, however, felt I was overreacting." Another pointed glare her way, then he reached for my hand. "Fight the urge, Jaime. For the sake of your soul, don't let evil win. We'll be gone from this place soon, but until then, we must all avoid that garden."

  "But--"

  He stood. "Now, Claudia and I are going into town for tea. Would you and Jeremy care to join us?"

  DAMN, DAMN, damn!

  I'd been so sure Grady would take the bait. The more I thought of it, though, the more I saw that my plan had one very big hole--it presumed that Grady's "hunt for evil" was pure showmanship. Yet when I'd heard him talking about the possession and seeing the wolf out back, I should have realized that his fervor was fueled by the passion of a true believer. Not unlike May Donovan and the group, he'd searched for some sign of the paranormal, but had always been disappointed. When the real supernatural world reared up in his face, he'd looked it in the eye and realized he wanted nothing to do with it.

  Now, once again, I'd tipped my hand. I'd asked him to come outside, and he'd refused, an exchange that had probably been caught on the hidden cameras. So how suspicious would it look now if I went outside and found the body?

  "Jaime?"

  Angelique was coming down the stairs. I darted into the back hall, hoping to avoid her.

  "Jaime?" Her voice sounded right behind me.

  I turned and flashed a wide smile. "There you are. I thought I heard you. What's up, hon?"

  "I wanted to thank you for trying to keep the show going."

  "The fight's not over. Now, I have a call to make--"

  "One more thing. There's this huge revival meeting in Nebraska next month and I was wondering if you might go with me. I know it's not your thing, but it attracts thousands of people."

  "Nebraska? Um, sure, why not? Now, if you'll excuse me."

  From her expression, she knew she was being brushed off, and I hated to do that, but told myself I'd make it up to her later.

  I LOOKED across the patio for Jeremy. No sign. He'd probably overheard me with Angelique and slipped back to guard the burial site.

  I was about to follow, then stopped. If I went back to that site, I had to be prepared to find the body. Was that wise? Or should I call Jeremy first and make sure we didn't have an alternative?

  No. The more fussing we did now, the more likely we'd be caught trying to stage the discovery.

  I headed into the garden.

  "Jaime?"

  Grady. I turned as he rounded the corner. I opened my mouth, then took one look at that gliding, almost feline gait and amended the greeting.

  "Aratron."

  He smiled, brilliant blue eyes twinkling. "I believe you wanted Bradford Grady. For a small matter of corpse discovery?"

  I hesitated. "I'm not sure this--"

  "--is a wise idea? Not the sort of thing to accuse me of, child. I am nothing if not wise." He motioned for me to continue walking and joined me. "It is clear that these people you chase are patient--this magic is not something they could have mastered overnight. From Eric Botnick you learned how careful they are to avoid the limelight, and how decisive they will be in ridding themselves of a potential threat. If you are surrounded by attention..."

  "They'll stay clear until it dies down, then strike...after I think I'm no longer in danger. Which is why I wanted Grady to do the discovering."

  "That is the obstacle, which I am generously offering to help you overcome."

  JEREMY WAS back at the site, standing guard with Eve and Kristof. He heard--or smelled--me coming and rounded the corner.

  "Had some trouble with Grady," I began.

  "Aratron, I presume," Jeremy said. "Hello."

  Aratron smiled. "I'd extend my hand, as I know is the proper greeting among humans, but not one so welcome among your breed, so I'll settle for a respectful 'well met' to the Alpha of the North American Pack."

  No surprise that Aratron knew who Jeremy was. As for Jeremy recognizing the demon, I suspected it had to do with those extrasensory abilities he didn't like to discuss.

  The demon turned to Eve and Kristof. "Eve. Mr. Nast, sir. Keeping out of trouble, I presume."

  "Within reason," Eve replied.

  As Aratron passed Eve, he reached out and gave her shoulder a fatherly squeeze, his fingers even seeming to make contact. Then he peered down the path on the far side.

  "Speaking of trouble, I was hoping to meet Lucifer's daughter at this gathering. She's not here?"

  "Lucifer's...?" I began.

  "The half-demon girl," Eve said. "Hope. No, she's not. We didn't see much use for her powers here."

  "Then you're underestimating them," Aratron said. "Which is not only shortsighted, but a dangerous thing to do with an Espisco. The most fascinating subtype of the half-breeds. And exceedingly rare. Lucifer is most particular about where he spreads his seed. Her mother must be a remarkable woman." He turned to Eve. "I'd like to meet the girl sometime. You'll arrange it, I presume."

  A look crossed Eve's face. If I didn't know her so well, I'd chalk it up to jealousy--having Aratron take an interest in a more interesting half-demon. More likely Eve just didn't like being ordered to do something, no matter who was doing the ordering.

  Not waiting for an answer, Aratron stepped up into the garden and stood over the shallow grave.

  "So the child lies here. We'd best get on with it, then, before Bradford Grady's woman begins to wonder about his protracted bathroom visit."

  He crouched, cleared his throat and affected Grady's tone. "Here, Jaime? Is this where you sense it?"

  He switched to an eerily accurate imitation of my voice. "Yes, Bradford. Don't you feel it?"

  "Yes, I believe I do. Evil, great evil permeates this place." A dramatic shudder. "We must uncover the source of these demonic emanations. Only then will the tormented spirits be at rest."

  "Enjoying yourself, Aratron?" Eve said.

  He cast a haughty glower in her direction. "I'm a eudemon. We are incapable of enjoyment." Back to my voice. "It looks as if the dirt has been disturbed here, Grady, but I'm afraid to--"

  "Never fear, sweet lady. I will dirty my hands for you."

  He sifted his fingers through the dirt. "What's this? It looks like a finger." More digging. "A finger attached to a hand. Mother of God, Jaime, we've found a body. We must alert the authorities at once."

  "I think you'd better leave that part to Jaime," Eve said.

  "I have a better idea." He glanced at me. "What is his woman's name?"

  "Claudia."

  He cleared his throat and gave a bellow worthy of Marlon Brando. "Claudia!"

  Two more shouts, then from the patio, a guard's voice. "I think it's Mr. Grady. He sounds like he's in trouble."

  "I'll get help," someone answered.

  Aratron smiled. "Two minutes to a suitably dramatic discovery, one with enough witnesses to ensure it can't be covered up. Now, I'm going to return Bradford Grady to his body, but I will remain close by, should he fail in his duties."

  "Thank you."

  A gallant nod. Grady's body stumbled back, almost falling in the bushes before Jeremy caught him.

  Grady blinked. "Where--? What--?"

  "You just found a body," I said.

  WHEN GRADY saw what he'd "done," I'm sure his first thought was to get the hell out of Dodge before the cops arrived--or the evil forces sucked him into that grave. But by then, the guards were there, along with Claudia, Becky and Will, and he quickly sized up his options. If he played along, he'd headline the local papers as a hero. If he claimed he'd discovered the body under the thrall of a demonic force, he'd headline the papers as a nut-job. Astute man that he was, he went with number one.

  COVER STORY

  THE POLICE
CAME. They saw. They called for backup.

  Excavating the body would have to wait until the scene had been processed. The detectives interviewed me first, with a warning that there would almost certainly be more questions to come.

  They weren't happy with my "lured into the garden by psychic vibes" explanation, but I toned down the spiritualism angle, feigning reluctance to put a name to whatever had drawn me there. Still, I think they would have been more comfortable if they could make the most logical deduction--that I'd "found" the body because I put it there. But even a cursory look proved this was no day-old corpse. There was little chance that I'd killed and buried this person months ago, then just happened to be billeted in the same house where, driven by my guilty conscience, I'd coerced Grady into uncovering my victim.

  I'm sure they'd still consider that angle; without it, they were left with a possible true case of a spiritualist responding to the calls of the restless dead.

  HOPE BROUGHT Zack Flynn over as planned, and ducked past the crowd surrounding Grady to the sunroom, where Jeremy and I were lying low.

  She waved Zack into the room. "She's all yours. An exclusive interview for the L.A. Times. Be nice to her."

  Zack thanked Hope far more fervently than the situation warranted, then stood there, puppy dog eyes following her from the room, turning to me only when she was out of sight.

  "Great girl," I said.

  "She is, isn't she? She's got what it takes to play with the big boys, but she isn't interested. She's having a blast chasing alien abduction stories and doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks about that."

  His gaze slid to the spot where he'd last seen Hope, his expression a mix of envy and infatuation. Aratron's words came back to me. Lucifer's daughter. From what little I knew of demonology, Lucifer was just another lord demon, no more powerful or "evil" than any of the other lord demons. But the name still gave me a chill. I wondered what Zack would think of having Lucifer for a father-in-law. Convenient for any "my soul for a Pulitzer" ambitions, though.

  The interview went well. Like the police, he seemed to appreciate that I wasn't going off on an "I hear dead people" rant with this. Unlike them, though, he did press that angle, journalistic instinct backed by a personal interest in the paranormal.

  I spoke with reluctance, as if I knew more, but wasn't comfortable admitting it. I said I sensed that the victim was young and female and had likely come to a violent end.

  "Though," I added with a wry smile, "one could probably guess the violent-end part by where she ended up. Not exactly a psychic feat."

  Zack jotted down my words. He had a recorder, but seemed to use it only as backup. As he wrote, I leaned back in the armchair, catching a ray of late-day sun across my face.

  "Did you get a sense, as you call it, of anything else? The girl's age? A name, perhaps?"

  I shook my head. "Preteens, maybe, though I could be judging that based on the size of the hand. As for female?" Another self-deprecating smile. "Well, I have a fifty-fifty shot there, don't I?"

  "Anything more?" He studied me, as if certain I was withholding something.

  "I...sensed more, but it's out of context and I may embarrass myself if, let's say, I gave you Holly as a name and it turns out to be that of her cat."

  "Holly?" he said, pen poised over his paper.

  I shook my head. "Just an example. If I had to..." I toyed with a strand of hair hanging over my shoulder, then looked up at him. "R. S. That's all I'll say. It could be her initials. It could be the initials of her school or the street where she lived. I don't know."

  He nodded and wrote. A few more questions, then Hope rapped at the door.

  "Interview's over, Flynn," she said. "My turn now...and quite possibly the only chance I'll ever get to show you up, which, by the way, I intend to do."

  He grinned. "Think so, do you?"

  "Know so."

  She sauntered past him. There was no sway in her stride, but his gaze was glued to her every step of the way.

  "How about a wager?" he said. "Whoever's story gets more inches gets dinner at Patina."

  Hope laughed. "You think I can afford Patina on my salary?"

  "Oh, right. Forgot. Hmm. McDonald's, then?"

  Another laugh and she shooed him from the room. He was too busy bantering to notice she hadn't agreed to the wager.

  "Not your type?" I asked when Zack was gone.

  "As a friend, yes. But I don't--" A cloud passed behind her eyes, then she forced a wide smile. "Between playing weird-tales girl for True News, girl Friday for the council and chaos demon-in-training, my life is pretty darned full. I'm trying to set Zack up with a preschool teacher at our gym--a nice normal girl who doesn't see death and destruction on every street corner. More his speed, I think."

  I glanced around. "Being here...is that okay for you?"

  "If you mean because of those poor kids, I'm not seeing anything, so I'd presume they weren't killed here. I'm exaggerating with the 'every street corner' thing. On average, I get maybe a couple of visions a day and most aren't so bad. Though I did notice something in the dining room when I passed."

  "The hanging guy?"

  "You can see him too?"

  "Every time I sit down for a meal."

  "And you eat in there? Seeing that?" She shook her head. "I've got a lot of work to do before I hit that stage. They still catch me off guard. Sometimes badly off guard. Like when I met Karl. Hugely embarrassing."

  She stopped there.

  I tapped my watch. "We have about another twenty minutes to make this look like a real interview. Spill."

  "It was in a buffet line, which probably isn't the strangest place to meet a werewolf. I'm minding my own business, eyeing this nice roast duck centerpiece. Then everything goes black and I'm running through a dark forest. I snap out of it and there, on the table, is the duck--now freshly killed, blood and entrails everywhere. I freaked."

  "Don't blame you."

  "I spun around and hit the guy behind me. Knocked the plate from his hands. Snagged my bracelet on his sleeve. Generally made a fool of myself. Being Karl, he was as cool and suave as could be, which only made it worse."

  She shook her head, but the smile playing on her lips told me she hadn't taken it as badly as she pretended.

  "And the vision was Karl...chasing someone?"

  "Nah. Just a general 'hi, I'm a werewolf' image tag."

  "You can tell what kind of supernaturals we are?"

  She waggled her hand. "Iffy. The stronger the power, the more likely I'll get a vision. It's like detecting chaos. If that hanged guy was jumping off the table right now, I'd probably get a flash. If he was just thinking about it, I have about a twenty percent shot."

  "You can read thoughts?"

  I must have looked worried, because she lifted her hands.

  "No, no. Not like that. I pick up chaotic thoughts. For example, if you're sitting there thinking my shirt is god-ugly, I wouldn't know. If you're thinking about wrapping your hands around my neck and strangling the life from me, I may pick it up."

  "Handy."

  "The key word is 'may,' I'm afraid. Not as useful as it sounds."

  We chatted for a while longer, swapping stories.

  As for the interview, she might still do a story, but that would come later. True News came out weekly, meaning it wasn't a timely way to get the group's attention. But if Zack's interview and the other media bits didn't lure them out, Hope's article would run next week, with more damning details that would definitely spark their interest.

  AFTERWARD, I gave some sound bites to the biggest TV news crews--just enough to ensure they knew whose vibes had led to the body--then slipped away in search of peace and Jeremy. As I passed the living room, I heard someone being pelted with questions. Those crews who hadn't been lucky enough to get an interview with Grady or me had tracked down a substitute.

  "Um, yes," Angelique was saying. "I have picked up some, uh, feelings in the yard."

  "You mean the gar
den, don't you?" someone said.

  "Have you heard voices?" another voice asked. "Or seen anything?"

  Angelique stumbled through an answer. The kid was just too young to give a full improv performance. She'd been kept out of the loop on all this, and now microphones were being shoved in her face. As much as I wanted to find Jeremy, I felt guilty.

  "Hey, guys," I said as I walked into the living room. "Are you boys pouncing on this poor girl? We just found a body in the garden. She's a wee bit shaken up, aren't you, hon?"

  I put my arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. Angelique shot me a grateful look.

  "I've never seen a dead body before," she said, her honeyed southern accent pitch-perfect again. She shivered. "I only hope that poor child has gone to a better place. She'll be in my prayers--"

  "Jaime," a hook-nosed man cut in, motioning for his cameraman to swing the camera to focus on me. "You led Bradford Grady to that body. What did you sense?"

  I tugged Angelique on camera with me. "We've all sensed things in this house, for days now--"

  "But you helped discover the body. What was your experience?"

  I kept trying to steer the questions back to include Angelique, but they were having none of it, and it soon became apparent that I was only hogging any camera time she might have received. So I made my excuses and fled.

  I found Jeremy in the kitchen, where he'd cornered Becky. Being Jeremy, he didn't make it obvious--none of that werewolf posturing. Instead, he'd taken a spot a few feet away, out of her personal space, as she fixed a coffee. To leave, though, she'd need to shoulder past him.

  "I presume you don't expect Jaime out of the house by tonight," he was saying. "Under the circumstances, packing has been the last thing on her mind. And, in speaking to the officers outside, they made it clear they'd prefer everyone to stay where they are."

  "We haven't made any decisions yet."

  "No? Perhaps the staff is receiving inaccurate information, then. They've apparently been told they're staying on for another day or two."

  "They are, but the actors--"

  "You told Jaime she had to be out tonight because the staff wouldn't be here. If they're staying on, I see no reason to hurry her departure, particularly under the circumstances. I'll tell her we're here for the night."

  He turned to go.

  "We?" Becky said.