Water to Burn

by Katharine Kerr

  “Who’s your friend?” I said. “Brother Belial?”

  Caleb turned as white as the seafoam. The presence rose up, flowed my way, and vanished. I might have heard a very high-pitched, very faint bubbling sound as it rushed by.

  “Uh, well, yes,” Caleb said. “He wanted a look at you. Because of the venture, I mean, and all that.”

  “I see.” I smiled, but I doubted if it was a nice smile. “Well, I hope he approves.”

  “How could he not approve of someone like you?”

  If I hadn’t wanted to pry more information out of Caleb, I would have thrown my coffee into his face. Flattery wasn’t going to cover his gaffe, summoning his spectral friend to size me up! As it was, I had a sip of the coffee and put the cup down on the saucer. “I’ll have to think about your offer, of course. My partner will probably have something to say about it.”

  “Ah, yes, the boyfriend.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “Where is he today, anyway?”

  “Probably working out at the gym.”

  “He struck me as that type. What does he do for a living? I hope it’s something that lets him support you in style. A woman like you shouldn’t have to worry about money.”

  “Oh, I love being in charge of my own finances.” Something twitched in my mind. I paused to look around and saw Ari striding down the ramp by the hostess station. “Er, no, scratch my remark about the gym. He’s right here.”

  As Ari stalked across the dining room toward us, Caleb gulped down a hot mouthful of whiskey and coffee. He nearly choked, grabbed his water glass, and drank. Ari was scowling at us, his mouth set in a thin line, but his SPP told me that he was frightened more than angry. Something had come up, I figured, and I’d better play along. I could count on Caleb being too drunk to run an SPP of his own.

  “Oh, God!” I said. “He’s really furious. Uh, thanks for the lunch! I’d better go.” I grabbed at my bag and pretended to nearly drop it, then picked up the sunglasses. “Sorry.”

  Caleb got up, wobbling, just as Ari reached us.

  “Business lunch, huh?” Ari said. “Wine. Whiskey. Some guy.”

  “Look, darling,” I said, “I told you—”

  Ari grabbed my nearer arm. “Let’s go,” he snapped. “You can make your excuses in the car.”

  “Now, here!” Caleb managed to put some authority in his voice. “I’m Jack Donovan’s business partner. You’ve met me. You know that I’m making Nola a job offer.”

  Ari looked at him, merely looked, but Caleb sat down. I was aware of Brother Belial again, floating somewhere above the middle of the dining room, and watching us. He wasn’t alone in that activity. The other lunchers were turning in their chairs and staring.

  “Let’s go,” Ari snapped again. “I’m sick and tired of this! Stepping out on me every chance you get!”

  A horrified squad of waitress, busboy, and maitre d’ was making its way over to us. I felt a stab of guilt for upsetting them for nothing.

  “Ari, for crying out loud!” I said. “I am so sick of you being so jealous. All right, let’s go home! We can fight about it there and not ruin everyone’s lunch.”

  The line of potential allies relaxed. Caleb summoned enough courage to say, “You have my cell phone number. Call me if you’re interested in the job.”

  Rather than spoil the effect, I let Ari half-drag me out of the dining room and up the ramp to the lobby. As soon as we were outside, he came out with one of his half-smothered chortles.

  “Nice bit of acting,” he said.

  “Yours, too. What’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you in the car.”

  In case Caleb had followed us out, Ari stayed in character by berating me in what was probably Farsi while we walked back to the car. I had no idea of what he was saying. I concentrated on looking oppressed. A scattering of people were walking downhill as we walked up. Most looked away and walked faster. Just as we reached the car, we passed a well-dressed older couple. The woman had covered her hair with a beautiful silk scarf in teal and deep purple, which is why I noticed them. The silver-haired gentleman, however, had noticed us as well.

  He reached out and caught Ari by the arm. I yelped aloud. Startling Ari that way could prove fatal. Ari spun around just as the man began talking to him in whatever language Ari had been using. Much to my shock, Ari ducked his head and stared at the sidewalk, a subservient gesture that surprised me further, mostly because it seemed so wellpracticed. Ari shook his arm free, but he muttered something that sounded apologetic. The fellow nodded in satisfaction, said a few stern words, and the couple continued on downhill.

  I unlocked the car. As we got in, I made sure to take the driver’s seat.

  “What was all that about?” I said.

  Ari buckled on his seat belt while he told me. “I was being reminded that the Qu’ran teaches us to respect our wives, not yell at them in public.”

  “It does? Maybe I should read it sometime.”

  “You should. The actual text is quite different from the Taliban’s interpretation of it. You Americans seem to think that all followers of Islam are fanatics. That’s not true.”

  “Well, yeah, I’m sure it’s not. Besides, we have our share of gun-toting fanatics, too.”

  “So do we. I have to admit, however, that there are a great many more of theirs than ours.” He smiled briefly. “Which is why we’re glad to have some of yours on our side.”

  “I take it you’ve read the Qu’ran. Probably in Arabic.”

  “Of course. It always pays to study your opposition in any political process, particularly in a war.” Ari sounded abruptly exhausted. “And that’s what we’ve got on our hands, these days, a war, whether the rest of the world chooses to see it or not.”

  “We? You mean Israel, right?”

  “Of course. I always mean Israel.”

  Behind us on the street a car horn sounded in staccato bursts. I glanced at the rearview mirror and saw an enormous SUV blocking the lane while it waited for the parking spot.

  “Let’s get going,” I said, “before Caleb finishes lapping up his booze and staggers out.”

  I turned on the engine and backed out under cover of the SUV, then drove on downhill. As we cruised along the Great Highway, I noticed that the ocean had reached high tide.

  “So how was lunch?” Ari said.

  “Good food,” I said, “but a nutcase for company.”

  “Caleb, you mean?”

  “He believes that spirits are helping him search for Drake’s treasure.”

  “A total nutter, then.”

  “Yeah, for sure. Where were you, anyway?”

  “Upstairs in the cheaper restaurant. It was too sodding cold to sit outside, so I had a sandwich while I watched the monitor.”

  “Why the jealous boyfriend act?”

  “Because of that white thing that showed up on the monitor. I don’t know what it was, and I wasn’t sure if you knew it was there. So I decided to get you out of that room.”

  “You saw it? Brother Belial?”

  “Is that what it was?”

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t see him. I just sensed him.”

  Once we got back to the flat, I changed into my flannel-lined jeans and the rust-colored sweater. Although the flat had a decent gas heater, the wind had picked up. It whistled around the building as it drove the fog inland. Before I put my shoulder bag away, I returned the sunglasses to Ari.

  “Did you record that video?” I asked.

  “I did, and I’m glad now. The sound quality’s not very good on these things, though. Here, I’ll show you.”

  We sat down together on the couch. He took an oblong unit, all shiny black plastic, out of his shirt pocket. It looked something like an old-fashioned PDA, but it had no logo or ID marks on it. He pressed a few buttons, then clicked play. On the tiny screen the lunch table appeared in black and white. An image of Caleb followed; he sat down but was partially hidden by his wineglass. I could see about half of the empty chair next
to him.

  “I need to learn how to aim those things better,” I said.

  Our conversation began, though we sounded like mice with sore throats. The waitress came and went as we talked about the coven and Brother Belial. Finally, in the other chair a form appeared.

  “Pause it!” I snapped.

  Ari already had. “There,” he said. “Nola, what is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Brother Belial seemed to be made of white smoke, translucent rather than solid, roughly humanoid with a chest, two arms, and a strangely cubical shape for a head, pocked with little depressions and slits. Thanks to the table, we could only see him from the waist up. Ari advanced the recording a few frames at a time, until my mouse voice squeaked, “Who’s your friend? Brother Belial?”

  The smoke form rose up from the chair, as I remembered the presence doing. Now, however, I could see his legs, or rather, his single leg. Belial flowed toward the camera with a flip of the leg like a dolphin’s tail. The image disintegrated into a drift of “snow,” like on an old-fashioned TV set, then disappeared. For a moment the screen stayed blank. Another snowstorm filled the little square, then resolved itself into the shape of the smoke-being once again, flying straight up and out of range. I could hear the bubbling fish tank noise more clearly on the recording than I’d done at the table.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

  “What a surprise,” Ari said. “Shocking.”

  “I mean, this is a digital recording, not camera film. Aura-based phenomena shouldn’t register on it, not if they can’t be perceived normally, at any rate. I couldn’t see Belial in the moment, though I knew he was there.”

  Ari looked at me slack-mouthed. “I don’t have the slightest idea of what you mean by any of that,” he said.

  “Okay. Let’s start at the beginning. I saw nothing at all in that chair, and I was right there. I did intuit that some kind of presence had joined us. When I said ‘Brother Belial,’ I felt it leave.”

  “Very good, so far.”

  “Do you know what an aura is?”

  “I know what it’s supposed to be, yes. Reb Ezekiel was keen on them. He was always looking at the air next to a person and announcing something about their aura.”

  “Okay. Well, some people believe that in certain circumstances you can capture an image of an aura on a particular kind of film or plate. Whatever Belial is, I’d assume he’s made up of the same substance as an aura. A magnetic field is the closest analogy. But the sunglasses don’t use film. So that’s why I don’t know how the image ended up in your recorder’s memory. Uh, did you follow that?”

  “It’s enough to get on with. What’s that kind of photography? Krill—no, that’s what whales eat.”

  “Kirilian, you mean. A person has to be in contact with the photographic plate to get an image out of that.”

  “Doesn’t apply here, then.”

  We stared at each other, baffled.

  “The only thing I can think of,” I said, “is that we’re not dealing with a psychic phenomenon, but a technological one.” My mind issued a hazy prompt. “Or maybe it’s both. I know that doesn’t make any sense. It’s just all I can think of.”

  “I thought you said you sensed a presence.”

  “I did, yeah, which generally means a consciousness. Huh. I wonder if old Bro here has some kind of gadget that produces a wave or ray or something that can carry his mind.”

  “I still don’t understand how that would produce an image in a digital memory chip. Or wait! You said something about a magnetic field. Do you know how a digital image recorder works?”

  “No.”

  “Those little decorations at the corner of the sunglass frames contain a lens and a microphone. The lens is fairly decent, unlike the microphone. It focuses light on a CMOS imager that converts the light into voltages. The stronger the light, the larger the voltage. Those measurements are numerical, of course, and the monitor then converts that information back into a pattern of light and shadow.”

  He might as well have spoken in Farsi for all that I understood him. He recognized my blank stare.

  “Let’s put it this way,” Ari said. “The CMOS process in those sunglasses could respond to his electrical field, or magnetic field if that’s what it was, more directly and more easily than your eyes could. He must have been producing a field of varying strengths that could activate the imager in a similiar way to light.”

  “I think I get it,” I said. “Since you were watching on the monitor, you were seeing that captured image, not him directly. “

  “Exactly! And captured is the word we want. When you startled him, he flew toward the device, and it sucked him in for a moment.”

  “That says to me that he’s a consciousness attached to some kind of magnetic or electric field.”

  “That flickering distortion we saw? I suspect it was Belial fighting to get free. What I wonder,” Ari continued, “is what sort of field he’s riding. It’s nothing I’ve ever heard of before.”

  “Qi, maybe?”

  Ari shrugged.

  “Damn!” I said. “It would be Saturday! I need to run this by my handler and NumbersGrrl, too. Could you download that video onto my desktop, do you think?”

  “Not directly, but I can copy it onto a DVD, and you can download from there.”

  “That’ll do, yeah. I’ll send it to them when I file a report, and it’ll be waiting for them on Monday. We can use all the speculation we can get.”

  “Speculation? Yes, solid information would be too much to hope for.”

  Ari took the monitor into the bedroom, where he was using an end table as a temporary desk for his laptop. I scribbled a note on a post-it, “get more furniture,” stuck it on the refrigerator, then took out my phone to call Kathleen.

  I hesitated with my finger poised over her speed dial number. Jack had mentioned that they were leaving town to visit his folks for a few days. If I told Kathleen about Caleb’s record now, I figured, she’d never be able to keep the secret until they returned. If Kathleen did blab, Jack would want to have it out with Caleb right away. I’d lose my chance to pry more information out of the little slimeball. I unpoised the finger and put the phone back in my pocket.

  Ari came out of the bedroom and handed me a DVD in a paper sheath. I put it on my desk beside the keyboard and sat down on the chair, then swiveled around to face him.

  “I should warn you,” I said. “I want to string Caleb along for a few days to see if I can get more information out of him.”

  “Of course. Is he lusting after you?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I’m warning you.”

  “Mata Hari in blue jeans, that’s you.” He stepped back out of range before I could kick him.

  “I’m not real good at the vamp routine. If I was going to be seductive, I should have started at lunch.”

  “And I shouldn’t have frightened him. What about flattering his superior occult knowledge? Judging from what I heard of the conversation, he thinks he has some.”

  “As you like to say, brilliant! I’ll try that.” I made a sour face. “But later. A little Caleb goes a long way.”

  Before I downloaded the captured video, I ran a check on the DVD with our special Agency software. I wouldn’t have put it past Ari to have loaded some kind of Trojan horse onto it along with the video of Brother Belial, just so he could browse on my computer if he felt the need. I’d maligned him. At least as far as the Agency’s detection programs knew, the disk was clean, and the Agency had very good software at its disposal.

  Life intervened and made it imperative that I keep in touch with Caleb sooner than I wanted. Detective Lieutenant Sanchez called Ari later that afternoon. Since I was concentrating on filing the report about Brother Belial, Ari went into the bedroom to take the call. I’d just finished sending the file and video off via TranceWeb when Ari walked back into the living room. He shook his head in annoyance.

  “What’s wrong?” I sai
d.

  “Too much pressure on Sanchez,” Ari said. “He’s calling the Evers case suicide and ending the investigation.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “Imagine this scene. I sit in the witness box in front of a jury and tell them, swearing on the Bible, that someone used a flood of Qi to ensorcell Evers, then drowned him by scooping up a rogue wave with his or her psychic powers.”

  “Oh.” Ari blinked at me. “Quite right. Not much use in pursuing the matter, then. But the thought of letting that sodding little bastard off—”

  “He’s not off the hook yet,” I said. “And for all we know, it wasn’t Caleb who killed Evers. What we need to do next is find out if he did. He knows something about it. I’d bet on that.”

  I picked up the receiver of my landline phone and punched in Caleb’s number. Four long rings, and then his answering machine clicked on with a simple name, number, please leave message. I started talking in case he was screening his calls, but no luck. I left a fake apology for Ari’s behavior and hung up.

  “Where does he live, anyway?” Ari said.

  “I don’t know.” I rummaged through the papers on my desk and found the business card Caleb had given me at the party. “This only has a phone number on it. Jack must know, if it matters.”

  “Not at the moment. I just wanted to enter it into my files.”

  I heard a tapping sound on the bay window. When I walked over, I saw Fog Face hovering just outside. In the dying light of late afternoon, he held out gray and misty hands and mouthed a single word, help, before he melted back into the murky sky.

  Caleb never returned my call that night. I made several LDRS attempts, which failed. Either he was asleep, or his location was pitch-dark. Either way, I received only black scribbles. When I tried an SM:P for him, I ran into his psychic shield. I received a faint impression of terror, but the shield held steady enough to prevent me from discovering if he was afraid of me or of someone else.

  CHAPTER 11

  EARLIER IN THE WEEK, ARI HAD CONTACTED the local gun club over by Lake Merced, a short drive from our new building. Although they lacked the kind of firing range he wanted, they had put him in touch with a police-oriented facility a little farther south in San Mateo County. For his first lesson in handling a lethal weapon, Michael drove over to the flat on Sunday morning, arriving well before noon. Uncle Jim had taken the family to early mass, he told us, to get a start on the day.