Deception Cove h-10

by Jayne Castle

  “That won’t be necessary.” She handed the card back to him. “I’ve seen you in the media a few times. You’re Drake Sebastian and, according to the business press, you and your family are still in the pirate business. The only difference these days is that you do your plundering legally.”

  He startled her with a wicked smile that sent another disturbing frisson across her senses.

  “You know, Alice, you aren’t in any position to insult my ancestor,” he said. “Your great-grandfather was Harry Sebastian’s business partner out there in the Amber Sea. They did their pirating together.”

  She raised her chin. She had known nothing about her family history until last year, but now that she finally had some knowledge of her roots she was fiercely determined to protect the North family honor. She was, after all, the last of the line.

  “They were partners in a shipping business,” she insisted. “But somehow, when the partnership ended, your ancestor came out of it a rich man. My great-grandfather got screwed.”

  “We can argue about ancient history later. It’s modern history that we need to talk about tonight. If our conversation goes the way I’m hoping it will, I’ll have a business proposition for you that I think you’ll find interesting.”

  Well, at least he wasn’t threatening to have her arrested for theft and/or murder, Alice thought. And evidently he was not in the employ of Ethel Whitcomb. Instead he had specifically used the words business proposition. But that still left a lot of questions. She did not know whether to be somewhat relieved or downright scared.

  “Damn it, I knew someone was watching me today,” she said.

  “Took me a lot longer to find you than I thought it would.” Drake sounded impressed. “You do a good disappearing act.”

  “I’ve had some practice.”

  “A few days ago I traced you to a magic act here in the Quarter, but when I got to that theater I discovered that you had vanished again. Took me another three days to figure out that you hadn’t left town like everyone seemed to think. Instead, you changed your name again and set up your own show here at this theater.”

  “Alien Illusions closed tonight. Mind telling me why you’ve been following me around?”

  “It’s a little complicated. Why don’t we go someplace where we can talk? Don’t know about you but I’m not keen on holding a serious business discussion in an alley in the Old Quarter at this hour of the night.”

  “Where do you suggest we have this business chat?”

  “I vote for your apartment.”

  “Forget it,” she said. “If you want to talk, we’ll do it in public. There’s a tavern a couple of blocks from here. I’m hungry and I could really use a drink.”

  “Okay, that works for me.” Drake studied Houdini. “Does the local Board of Health allow dust bunnies into food-and-beverage establishments?”

  Houdini chortled encouragingly, clearly aware that he was the topic of discussion. Alice took heart from the realization that he was not showing any indication that he viewed Drake Sebastian as a direct or immediate threat. Houdini’s instincts were reliable when it came to that sort of thing. He had saved her from a close encounter with more than one Whitcomb investigator during the past year.

  “In this neighborhood, the restaurant owners aren’t too particular,” Alice said. “Besides, everyone at the Green Gate knows Houdini. We always drop in for a bite after the show.”

  She started toward the alley entrance again, towing the suitcase.

  “I’ll take that,” Drake said.

  He gripped the handle of the suitcase and deftly slipped it out of her grasp before she could decide whether or not to accept the offer. Then again, it hadn’t exactly been an offer, she thought. More like an order. Nevertheless, the suitcase was heavy and she was tired. It had been a very long night and it wasn’t over yet. She released the suitcase without further argument.

  “I guess you probably aren’t going to steal a bunch of costumes and props,” she said.

  “Probably not,” Drake agreed.

  She glanced at the two men on the pavement. “What did you use on that pair? I thought I saw a little flash of dark lightning.”

  “I used a gadget that came out of one of the company labs. It’s still experimental. We’re calling it a light spear. It uses ultralight to temporarily freeze the target’s senses—all of the senses, normal as well as paranormal.”

  “Sounds useful.”

  “Not yet. It was designed as a law-enforcement weapon but it’s still in development. There’s a major hurdle that has to be overcome before we can go into production.”

  “What’s the problem?” she asked.

  “Currently only someone with our kind of talent can activate a light spear.”

  She gave him a searching look. “You’re a light-talent, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never met another light. I’ve heard there aren’t a lot of us around.”

  “No,” Drake said. “There aren’t. To further complicate matters, no two light-talents are the same, so each spear has to be individually tuned to the person who will use it. I’m the only one who can operate this particular spear. Once I’ve exhausted the charge it will have to be re-tuned.”

  “What happens to those two guys that you took down?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t give a damn. I’m not here on a mission to clean up the Old Quarter. I’ve got other things on my to-do list tonight.”

  “Clearly you are a man who knows how to prioritize,” she said.

  He ignored the not-so-veiled sarcasm. “That pair just happened to get in the way. Sorry I got here a bit late.” Drake looked at the two men without much interest. “Not that you weren’t handling things just fine all by yourself.”

  “My version of light-talent isn’t good for much, but occasionally it comes in handy.”

  “I noticed,” Drake said. “Same with my version.”

  She shot him a quick sidelong glance, trying to read his unreadable face. “You could see me when I did my invisibility thing. I’ve never met anyone who could do that.”

  “My version of the talent is as rare as yours.” Drake’s mouth quirked in a brief, humorless smile. “But not nearly as useful. It would be handy to be able to become invisible once in a while.”

  She pondered that for a moment. “I’m not so sure that yours is less useful. You see things that other people don’t see.”

  “There is that,” he agreed.

  He did not add the obvious, she noticed, which was that ever since the lab accident, he no longer saw things the way other people did. She wondered how the world looked to him.

  “Perpetual night,” he said.

  Startled, she gave him another swift, searching glance. “You read minds, too?”

  “Sadly, no. That would be another useful talent. But it was a good bet that you were wondering what the world looks like to me.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to get so personal.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first person to be curious.”

  “Perpetual night, huh? So the world is always dark for you?”

  He smiled slightly. “I said it was always night. I didn’t say it was always dark.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The night is illuminated with a million shades of paranormal energy,” he said quietly. “I see light from that end of the spectrum the same way you see light from the normal end.”

  “What kind of light-talent are you?” she asked.

  “Still trying to figure that out,” Drake said.

  They moved out of the alley and onto an empty sidewalk. Like all of the Old Quarters in the four major city-states on Harmony, the Colonial section of Crystal City dated back two hundred years to the era of the First Generation settlers from Earth. The founders had built the first towns around the ancient walls that surrounded the ruins of the large Alien cities.

  The para-archaeologists estimated that the Aliens had v
anished at least a couple of thousand years before the colonists from Earth had arrived, perhaps even earlier. But the unique green quartz the ancients had used to construct most of their urban sites as well as the vast array of underground passages that honeycombed the planet was virtually indestructible. And all of it glowed with an eerie green radiance that was noticeable to the human eye only after dark. There was no need for streetlights in the Old Quarters. The massive walls that surrounded the ruins cast an otherworldly radiance over the human-built scene.

  In addition to the glow, the currents of psi that emanated from the towering walls and wafted up from the underground catacombs infused the Quarter with a little paranormal heat. Most people, even those with a low level of talent, found the sensation to be a bit of a rush. Alcohol and music enhanced the sparkly, slightly euphoric buzz. The background energy in the atmosphere was one of the reasons why many of the trendy nightclubs were located in converted warehouses and other Colonial-era buildings near the walls. But in spite of the clubs and theaters in the vicinity, the Crystal City Quarter, like all of the Old Quarters in the city-states, had a distinctly seedy atmosphere.

  Drake surveyed the shuttered windows and graffiti-splashed buildings around them.

  “Rough neighborhood,” he observed in a very neutral tone.

  “Also a cheap neighborhood when it comes to rent,” Alice said. “And I don’t need a car. My apartment is only a few blocks away.”

  “Very economical. Do you always leave the theater through that alley entrance?”

  “Yes. But this is the last time I’ll be using that door.”

  “Because of what nearly happened in the alley?” Drake asked.

  “No, because the owner of the theater told me tonight that he has decided to cancel my lease. Alien Illusions closed this evening after only three performances.”

  “Why did the owner cancel your lease?”

  “He gave me the usual reason: low attendance. The magic business is very competitive. A new show, Catacombs of Mystery, opened here in the Quarter last week and it’s getting all the attention. Very high production values. Alien Illusions didn’t have the financial backing needed to compete. Actually, it didn’t have any financial backing at all.”

  “That must have made things difficult.”

  “Sure. Still, we were getting by, starting to draw bigger crowds.” She reached up to pat Houdini. “Thanks to the star of the show here. The audience loved Houdini. We were doing some very cool vanishing acts. I think we could have made it. I’m pretty sure the real reason the show got cancelled was because Ethel found me again and bribed the manager to shut me down. I’m certain she made it worth his while.”

  “In the course of tracking you down, I did discover that your ex-mother-in-law has spent a lot of time and effort making your life miserable this past year,” Drake said.

  “She thinks I murdered her son. In her position, I’d probably be obsessed with revenge, too. Just wish she’d focus on the real killer.”

  “Assuming there is one,” Drake said quietly. “According to the police report, Fulton Whitcomb died of natural causes.”

  “Ethel isn’t buying that opinion.”

  “What about you?”

  “I didn’t buy it, either. But since I’m the most likely suspect, I figure my best bet is to keep a low profile.”

  The lights of a beer sign hanging in a dark window sparked on Drake’s glasses when he turned to look at Houdini.

  “You said the dust bunny was the star of Alien Illusions?”

  “Right. He’s the magician. At least that’s how we billed him. I thought it made the act sound more interesting.”

  “If you gave Houdini top billing, what did that make you?”

  “Me?” She smiled. “I’m just the box-jumper.”

  “What’s a box-jumper?”

  “Old Earth word for a magician’s assistant. Comes from all those tricks that involve putting a woman into a box and making it look as if she disappeared or got sawed in half or pierced with knives.”

  “Got it,” Drake said, sounding satisfied. “The box-jumper is the only other person on stage who knows the magician’s secrets.”

  Chapter 3

  DRAKE WAS A LITTLE SORRY TO SEE THE SIGN ABOVE THE entrance of the Green Gate Tavern. He realized that he had been savoring the combination of the psi-rezzed night and the woman at his side. He could have walked with Alice through the Quarter until dawn.

  Viewed through his mirrored-quartz lenses, the light of the illuminated sign was a sharp, bright green. He knew it was also the wrong shade of green, or, at least, not the same shade that Alice saw. He no longer saw colors the way other people did. There were limits to the technology of his lenses.

  He was fine with the psi-lit atmosphere of the Quarter. The energy that emanated from the Dead City Wall was mostly in the paranormal range, the part of the spectrum that he could see clearly. True, the glow of the ruins looked different to him than it did to most other people—he could detect a much broader spectrum of colors in the wavelengths generated by the ancient green quartz, for one thing—but it wasn’t painful to look at.

  A simple tavern sign, on the other hand, like the light over the stage door, would have temporarily blinded him if he had attempted to view it without his glasses. When it came to sunlight, he might as well have been a vampire. True, the light of day wouldn’t kill him but it literally dazzled his senses, rendering him blind.

  Alice stopped in front of the door. “This is the place I told you about. We can talk inside.”

  He studied the entrance. “Inside where you have friends.”

  She gave him what he was pretty sure was a fake smile. But it looked good. He would take any smile he could get from Alice North.

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “I have no problem with that. Doesn’t matter where we talk.”

  He really needed to keep reminding himself that he had a goal here in Crystal City and that time mattered. Normally he had no difficulty maintaining his focus on whatever objective he had set for himself. Various members of his family, including his mother, claimed he did that to a fault. But something about Alice was proving to be distracting.

  He was well aware that she did not trust him. He was almost certain she was not just wary of him but flat-out scared, although she hid it well. She had every right to be nervous. He knew from what little he had found during the course of a hasty background check that she had been on her own ever since leaving an orphanage at seventeen. She had managed to survive and make her way without family ties in a world where family was the most important building block in the social structure. Among the descendants of the colonists, family was everything.

  Life could be very hard for those unfortunate enough to find themselves utterly alone. For the past year life had been especially harsh for Alice. It was bad enough to be stranded in the world without any family connections. To be alone and on the run from the wrath of a powerful woman like Ethel Whitcomb would have been a thousand times worse. A lot of people, male or female, would have been crushed by the experience.

  He opened the door. The deep, throbbing rumble of a heavy rez-rock tune playing on a cheap sound system spilled out into the otherwise silent street. Houdini chortled, clearly excited.

  “He’s a fan of rez-rock,” Alice said. “He also loves the bar snacks and pizza here.”

  Drake heightened his senses a little as Alice slipped past him into the shadowy tavern. She was so close that she brushed against him. She seemed unaware of the brief physical contact but he got a hot, heady thrill that left him on edge.

  He told himself that he was still gathering information about Alice, still analyzing the situation and evaluating possible strategies. Maybe, on some level, that was even true. But he knew that in reality he’d been fascinated from the moment he had seen her illuminated in a thousand shades of paranormal light, hauling a suitcase through an alley while she out-maneuvered two knife-wielding assailants.

 
In that moment he’d seen everything he needed to know about her—she was the kind of woman who would never give up, regardless of the obstacles. No matter what life threw at her, she would just keep going.

  That inner fire marked her in subtle ways. There was a fierce, vibrant energy about her that called to his senses. She was striking rather than beautiful; intriguing rather than glamorous; strong-willed rather than flirtatious. She radiated an interesting mix of innocence, irrepressible optimism, and savvy, street-smart intelligence. Her dark brown hair was caught in a ponytail. Dressed in a sleek, long-sleeved black turtleneck, black jeans, and black sneakers, she looked like a cat burglar heading out for an evening’s work.

  He followed her into the moderately crowded tavern. The khaki-and-leather gear worn by several of the men occupying barstools identified them as members of the local Ghost Hunters Guild. They were drinking beer and Green Ruin whiskey. A man and a woman sat in a nearby booth. The man looked as if he was trying to convince the blonde to go home with him. The blonde looked bored.

  Another booth was filled with a gaggle of young women dressed in flirty little dresses—expensive flirty little dresses—and stilettos. Definitely not from around this neighborhood, Drake thought. The women were drinking colorful drinks and trying to look as if they weren’t aware of the ghost hunters at the bar who were eyeing them in turn. It was a familiar ritual in the Old Quarters. Taverns like the Green Gate were popular destinations for bachelorette parties, coeds out for a little fun, and ladies from the more affluent suburbs who wanted to party.

  The large, middle-aged woman working behind the bar was busy filling a beer glass. She looked up when Alice walked in.

  “Hey there, Alice, you’re early tonight,” the bartender called in a hearty voice. “What happened?”

  “The act closed, Maud.” Alice plunked her tote down on a seat in an empty booth and slid in beside it. “The owner of the theater cancelled me. Houdini and I are now unemployed. Again.”

  There was a low chorus of commiserating responses from the crowd at the bar.