Shades of Memory

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  His next words about made me fall out of my chair.

  “What can I do to prove myself to you?” His gaze gathered us all in, including Patti, who’d run off to retrieve more meals and now arrived with two heaping platters for Price and me. Hamburgers this time, loaded with all sorts of goodies like cheese, bacon, deep-fried onions, and avocado. “All of you,” Dalton added, to be sure we got his point.

  I shoved aside my empty soup bowl and grabbed my hamburger platter. Patti sat beside Taylor again, purple-black nails on the tabletop. Happy little skulls in pink decorated each one.

  The room got quiet. I wondered if any of the others were trying to think of something. I was, which shocked the hell out of me. Was there anything he could do to convince me to trust him?

  “Killing Vernon might be a start,” Taylor said finally.

  Dalton gave her an inscrutable look. “If that’s what you want.”

  Sold! To the two daughters of the bastard! But I didn’t say it. I’d killed and Taylor had, too, but we hadn’t murdered. Besides, if someone was going to kill dear old dad, we deserved the first shot.

  Taylor exchanged a look with me, her brows raised as if she also wanted to say yes. I gave a regretful shake of my head. Dalton caught it.

  “Then what? I’d really like to know. I’m sick and tired of living in limbo.”

  I gawked. He was pissed. Like pin-pulled-and-about-to-detonate mad.

  “Honestly? I don’t have a clue,” I said after swallowing the enormous bite I’d taken. “I admit that it would be nice to know that you aren’t going to hamstring us the first time we aren’t paying attention, or lead us into a trap, or kidnap us,” I said, with emphasis on the kidnap. After all, he’d already tried that with me on behalf of Vernon. Supposedly for my own good. God, but I hated that phrase.

  “And you?” he asked Taylor.

  She shook her head and then shrugged.

  “Could have a dreamer look in his head,” Patti suggested.

  I choked on my coffee and snorted it through my nose. I wiped my face with my napkin and looked at Dalton, who actually appeared to be considering it. I wouldn’t. I hated dreamers. The only one I trusted was Cass, and only because she’d saved my life and pulled Vernon’s fuckery out of my head. She’d proven herself.

  That caught me up. I distrusted dreamers about as much as I distrusted Vernon and Dalton. But her actions with me had made me trust her. Why couldn’t I trust Dalton’s recent actions?

  It came down to Vernon. He played the long game, and we couldn’t trust that he wasn’t cementing Dalton into our lives in order to fuck with us later. He’d messed with my head ten years ago and disappeared to let the seeds he’d planted grow. Hell, he’d married Mel after my mom’s murder, and from what I could tell, their entire marriage was part of his plan. Bastard.

  “Would you let someone have a look?” Taylor asked Dalton.

  His lips thinned to a straight line and his entire body stiffened like he was about to take a blow. “Yes.”

  I have to admit that all four of our jaws hit the floor. Even so, the cynical, self-protective gremlin in the back of my head couldn’t help wondering if Dalton was willing because he was so confident in Vernon’s brainwork. That he was sure Cass wouldn’t be able to see any tampering.

  If so, he was betting on the wrong horse. I’d bet on Cass against my dad any day.

  The front doors chose that moment to rattle. Patti leaped out of her chair and scurried into the front room. If a woman wearing five-inch-high Converse wedge heels could scurry. Who thought that was a good idea, anyway? Hey! Let’s put monster heels on athletic shoes!

  The front bells jingled as the doors opened, and a minute later, Patti led in Emily and Luis. Emily looked washed out despite the caramel color of her skin. Her eyes were puffy and bruised, like she’d been crying. Luis had his arm around her waist. His expression was stern and a little desperate. My experience was that as a rule, most men didn’t know what to do with a crying woman, and Luis wasn’t an exception.

  “Riley!” Emily launched herself at me. Price had scooted out of the booth to let me up. She grabbed my hands in a frigid grip as she looked pleadingly at me. “I need your help. Please.” She closed her eyes and swallowed, then gave me a watery smile that was more like a grimace. “My cousin, Cristina, is gone. We think—” She broke off and bit her lips together as tears started flowing again.

  Luis came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, pulling her back against him. It was a brotherly move, comforting and supportive. “Cristina disappeared last night from her bedroom. She didn’t leave a note, but took some clothes, a toothbrush, comb, makeup. We think she’s run off with this guy she’s been sneaking around with. She’s fifteen. He’s twenty-three and a bad guy. Mixed up with a lot of illegal stuff. Rumors say he’s killed people. He beats his girlfriends. Some disappear when he’s done with them.”

  With his explanation, Emily had straightened. She pushed the loose strands of her black hair behind her ears with shaky fingers, her chin coming up. “Crissie’s a good girl,” she said. “We didn’t know she even knew him. Aunt Rosa and Uncle Steven would have grounded her, taken away her phone and laptop. She’s been e-mailing and FaceTiming him.” She bit her lips, fury darkening her eyes. “She sent him pictures of herself.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Without clothes.” She started fumbling with her purse. “Please, you’ve got to find her before he . . . he . . . hurts her.”

  I was pretty sure Emily was about to try to pay me. Not a snowball’s chance in hell I’d take money from either one of them. “Have you got something that belongs to her?”

  Emily looked up at me, her hands going still on her purse, hope breaking through the despair on her face. “I’ve got this,” she said, taking a charm bracelet from her pocket. “I don’t know why she left it. She loves it.”

  I took it from her and dropped into trace view. Everybody has a trace—living or dead. It’s as unique as a fingerprint. A person’s trace is laid down everywhere they’ve been and on everything they’ve touched. Most tracers can only see the ribbons for maybe a couple of hours at best, before the traces fade away. Not me. I don’t even know if there is a limit on what I can see. That may or may not have something to do with being in the Kensington blood line, a fact I’d only learned recently from my dead mom. My life is a bad horror movie.

  Dozens of ribbons wrapped the bracelet. More than dozens. Anybody who’d ever touched it left trace behind. All the same, picking out Cristina’s was pretty easy. Hers tangled them all, weaving through and around, making a massive tangled knot around the bracelet.

  Her trace showed lime green with hodgepodge splatters and streaks of magenta. It was vibrant and healthy, so whatever else she was, Cristina was alive. I said so. Emily made a noise and pressed her hands to her mouth, relief making her cry again.

  “You can find her?” Luis asked.

  I looked at Price. “Ready to go?”

  He nodded, his expression taut. He’d gone into cop mode.

  “We’ll all go,” Taylor said.

  I shook my head. “No.” I held up my hand before she could protest. “The fewer the better, right now. We have to find out what we’re up against—if we’re extracting a starry-eyed girlfriend or a scared victim. If we need help, I’ll call. I promise. But I have something else I need you to do.”

  “What?” She looked skeptical, like I was just trying to keep her out of the way and safe.

  Taylor’s a highly skilled pilot and has mad fighting skills, plus she’s smart as hell. All the same, the rest of the family had gotten into the habit of pushing her to the sidelines like she didn’t have anything to contribute since she didn’t have a magical talent. When Price had been taken, she’d given me a come-to-Jesus meeting about that. I was working on changing my habits, but she still didn’t
trust my motives. The truth was, I hated sending her anywhere dangerous, but I didn’t have a choice these days. We lived in a dangerous world, and hiding in a closet from all the bad guys wasn’t an option for any of us.

  “Vernon knows about all the safe houses. He helped plan and build the tunnels and he obviously remembers how to access them. We need to move our headquarters to my place. He doesn’t know where it is and he doesn’t know about any of the entrances or tunnels leading in. We need food and water supplies, weapons, ammunition—anything you can think of.”

  “Expecting a siege?” Patti asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t even know what to expect, but if we have to lay low and hide out for a long time—whether from the FBI or Vernon or anybody else—we need to be ready. I also need you to work on getting all the stay-away charms and protection spells renewed. Have the boys work on the tunnels. All of them. We need to booby-trap all of them so Vernon can’t use them, and we need to be able to remove the booby traps if we need them. Maybe have them shut down the cars. I don’t know. Leo and Jamie can figure it out.”

  Taylor’s skeptical look had turned thoughtful. “We’ll want to bring in some furniture too—beds especially. We might need to expand your place.”

  “Then we will. The boys built it, they can expand it easily enough.”

  “I’ll get on it.”

  “Be careful,” I said.

  She laughed. “I think that advice is better given to you. I’ve been in a war zone and you’re the one who keeps getting shot.”

  “Then let’s both be careful.” I looked at Dalton. “Watch her back.”

  His jaw knotted. “I always do.”

  “What about us? What should we do?” Emily asked. “We could come with you. Crissie might listen to us.”

  I took her hand. “Go home. We’ll call if we need you. I promise she’s all we’re going to focus on until we get her back, okay?”

  She nodded, turning her hand to grip mine tightly. My heart ached for her. This was the reason God had given me this talent. I was supposed to help the helpless, to find the stolen and lost and bring them home.

  “What’s the asshole’s name?” Price said. “Where does he live? Hang out? Who does he hang with?”

  He had a pad of paper and a pen. I had no idea where he’d pulled that from. Maybe Taylor had given it to him.

  “He goes by the name Ocho,” Luis said. “His real name is Michael Lawson. Spends a lot of time down in the Calvera neighborhood. He’s got a pretty big crew. They scrounge work from local Tyet bosses. They’ll do anything for a buck. They like the rough stuff.”

  “Any particular place they like to go?” Price asked.

  “The Hard Luck Bar. Pino’s Griddle. Some warehouses and stores that are closed up.”

  Price wrote things down before he looked at Luis again. “You know a lot about this guy.” It wasn’t a question, but his comment demanded an answer.

  Worry carved age into Luis’s handsome face. He had big brown eyes, black hair he wore in a short ponytail, and a normally dimpled white smile. Now he bit his lower lip. “My cousin runs with Ocho.”

  “Your cousin? Have you talked to him? Does he know anything about Crissie?” Price pounded out the questions like hammer strikes.

  “He told me to mind my own business and stay out of the way or I’d get hurt.” Luis’s arm tightened around Emily. “I told him to fuck off.”

  “What does Ocho look like?”

  Luis described a young man with a rangy build. He had short brown hair and a soul patch. His left arm was a complete tattoo sleeve, while his right arm was mostly bare except for two knife scars on his forearm. He wore a heavy gold chain with the number eight hanging off it.

  Price took the description down, then looked a silent question at me. He was done. Did I want a turn? I gave a micro shake of my head, and he turned back to the agonized couple, handing Luis the pad of paper. “Give me your phone numbers.”

  Luis wrote them down and returned the pad.

  “We’ll find her,” I said.

  Emily nodded, and then Patti led them away. I heard the bells jingle again and then the doors clack shut. Patti swept back in.

  “Finish your burger,” she ordered me. I’d managed about half of it before Emily and Luis had arrived. I started to protest, but she cut me off. “You don’t know when you’re going to eat again. Half the city is shut down. Stoke up now while you can.”

  I couldn’t argue with her logic, though the burger tasted a lot like newspaper now. Price and I sat back down. Taylor and Dalton were already done. I waved at them.

  “Go on. You’ve got work to do. I’ll call when I have news.”

  Taylor nodded, then looked at Price. “Take care of my sister.”

  “I’m not letting her get into trouble.”

  I snorted. Try and stop me. “I’m sitting right here. And I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, thank you very much.”

  “I’m not saying you aren’t capable,” Taylor said as if explaining things to a particularly slow child. “I’m saying you don’t bother. I wish you had a healthier sense of self-preservation.”

  I grinned. “If only the bad guys weren’t such meanies.”

  She glared at me. “It’s not funny.”

  “Well, you know the saying: If you can’t laugh in the face of danger, you’ll end up in the loony bin.”

  “I don’t think that’s a saying,” Taylor said, rolling her eyes.

  “It should be.”

  “You need to be in a loony bin.”

  “Maybe next week. I’ll see if there’s time on the calendar between finding missing girls, fending off psychotic fathers, fighting and surviving a Tyet war, and doing that job for Arnow.”

  Taylor grinned and headed for the door, followed closely by her grim shadow.

  Patti slid into the seat across from us. “What do you need from me?”

  The way she said it, I could tell it wasn’t as simple a question as it seemed like on the surface. This wasn’t about the next few hours or days. It was about how she was going to fit into my new life. She didn’t want to be on the sidelines. She loved the diner, but she loved me too, and she didn’t like not being involved.

  I decided I’d answer the less obvious question, since I didn’t want her to kick me in the head. She’s got several black belts in different ways to kick ass and had demonstrated several times that she could do just that. Since I was a quick learner, I felt this was the smartest choice.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. Price shifted beside me, alerted to the serious turn of the conversation by my sober tone. “Things are up in the air.”

  “That’s crap,” Patti snapped.

  “Not crap. With Touray free and Vernon on the scene, not to mention all the other players in the game, I have no idea what’s going on. None of us do.” I sighed in frustration, drumming my fingers on the table. “Right now, we’re playing catch-up.”

  Her blue eyes glittered. They were lighter than Price’s, and often shifted to more gray than blue. “Don’t feed me a line of shit. I’m not a mushroom and I don’t plan to eat crap and live in the dark.”

  “I know. I’m not asking you to. I’m just saying I don’t know what the fuck is going on and until I can get more pieces together, I won’t have anything like a full picture of how I fit, much less how everyone else fits. Trust me on this, though. Whatever Taylor says, I’m not stupid enough to walk into the middle of the minefield, and I’m over working alone. I have no intention of shutting you out.”

  She digested my words, her steely gaze not letting me look away. “Okay. I’ll be patient. For now. But I’ll expect an invitation to the table. I don’t want to hear everything second or thirdhand anymore. I’m sick and tired of my best friend running off to f
ight battles and I don’t get to hear anything until days or weeks after. That’s going to stop now.”

  “I hear you,” I said.

  “Good,” she said, standing up. “Now give me a hug so I can clean these plates and you go find that poor girl and bring her home to her family.”

  She came around the table and hugged first Price and then me. “Don’t let her kill herself,” she told him over my shoulder.

  “I won’t.”

  I pushed back and looked at both of them. “You, too? I mean, I’m not that bad.”

  “Yes, you are,” they said in unison.

  “You aren’t any better,” I groused a few minutes later when Price and I were headed for the bike. “You got arrested and tortured and then nearly died when your talent exploded. Twice, if you count earlier today. And that doesn’t even take into account when Savannah shot you. I’ve only been shot twice.”

  Price started the bike. “If you want it to be a contest, then you’ll lose. Let’s see. Leaving aside getting shot twice—though the first time got you into my bed, so I can hardly complain about that—what else is there? Oh, right. Getting burned all over your arms with cigarette butts. Having your thumb cut off. Having your brain nearly fried and almost dying as a result. Trying to save me from my magic—you did actually die that time. Then there was when my magic blew up in the cell. I nearly crushed you under a pile of rubble—”

  I stood beside him, not yet having gotten on the bike. I rubbed his shoulders as he broke off and looked away. Mel had been crushed. Not his fault. He’d been out of his mind with pain, both physical and mental. Part of his torture had been hallucinations that I’d come to rescue him. Plus he’d kept the rest of us all safe until he’d emptied himself of power. Mel’s death had been an accident, pure and simple.

  “And there’s another one,” I said, poking a gloved finger into his chest, not willing to let it go yet. “You got shot by your mom.”