And really, how did she know for sure this was Jeffrey Whitcomb in the first place? She’d never seen a photo of the man in question, had only had Michael confirm the resemblance when she described the specter who’d been standing out on his backyard lawn and staring at her through the kitchen window.
Michael….
Audrey sat up as straight as the seatbelt would let her, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Did Michael put you up to this?”
One straight black bar of an eyebrow lifted slightly. “I beg your pardon?”
Triumph surged through her. That had to be what was going on here, and she was glad she’d figured out the ruse so quickly. Maybe it was only that she would much prefer this to be a setup of some sort, a way to get a rise out of her for the cameras, than to contemplate that she might actually have a dead man as her back-seat companion. “Michael hired you to kidnap me from the parking lot so he could get some good reactions for the new episode of Project Demon Hunters.” She paused and peered up at the roof of the car, at the dome light there. “Is that where you’re hiding the camera?” she asked, pointing toward it.
Now Jeffrey — or whoever he was — actually laughed. “I had no idea you would be so amusing, Ms. Barrett. But no, I regret to inform you that the light you’re pointing at is only a light, and I most certainly was not hired by Michael Covenant — or Michael Stanek, if one wants to be precise about his actual identity.”
The flush of triumph faded as quickly as it had come. Because as much as Audrey would have liked to believe this was all some sort of elaborate charade, she knew there was no way in hell Michael would have allowed anyone to know his real name, especially not someone he’d hired for a short part-time gig like pretending to be a kidnapper.
But the real Jeffrey Whitcomb…or the ghost of Jeffrey Whitcomb, to be more precise…might have known all sorts of things, even facts Michael would have preferred to keep hidden. Her fingers began to tremble, so she laced them together and held her hands in her lap. She desperately needed to stay calm. If she allowed panic to take over, then she might not recognize an opportunity for escape if one actually presented itself to her.
“All right, then,” Audrey said. “How is it you’re still alive?”
“‘Alive’ is possibly not the most precise term,” he replied. A pause as he glanced out the window next to him; it was heavily tinted, but Audrey could still see that they were leaving the parking lot, the big Town Car easing its way out onto a wide, fairly busy street. It looked as though the car was pointed toward the mountains, which she thought meant they were headed east, although she didn’t know the area well enough to tell for sure.
Once again, panic wanted to flare. She took a deep breath, willing herself to push back the sudden flash of fear. Not that she’d felt particularly safe in the parking lot of the airport, either, but if Jeffrey Whitcomb whisked her away to some hideout of his, how in the world would Michael — or anyone else — be able to track her down?
“What is the precise term, then?” Audrey asked. Thank God her voice sounded cool and clinical, as though she was talking to one of her research subjects back at the Rhine Institute rather than to a man who should have been dead for almost a century.
His head tilted to the side. Some silver glinted at his temples, although the rest of his hair was still very dark, almost black. “‘Borrowed,’ possibly. You see, the person everyone thought was Jeffrey Whitcomb ceased to be himself long before he moved into the mansion in Glendora.”
Ice ran down her spine, a chill that had very little to do with the refrigerated air coming out of the Town Car’s A/C vents. Audrey shifted as best she could with the seatbelt holding her in place, putting a little more distance between her and the…thing…that sat less than a foot away. “If you’re not Jeffrey Whitcomb, then who are you?”
“I’ve had many names. You don’t need to know any of them.”
My name is legion. No, she didn’t think this being sitting next to her was the Devil himself, but she also was beginning to realize that he wasn’t exactly human, either. “I thought Jeffrey Whitcomb died in a sanitarium.”
“No, Whitcomb’s son Henry died in the sanitarium. A simple spell of illusion. I took on Henry’s persona for many years, but once his life had run its course, I resumed Jeffrey’s shape. It suited me better.”
Dear God. No wonder “Jeffrey” had died raving in that sanitarium — he hadn’t been Jeffrey at all, but his unfortunate son. Part of Audrey’s mind wanted to reject the story in its entirety, but after what she’d seen in the basement of the Glendora mansion, she knew there were far darker forces at work in the world than she’d previously believed.
“You’ve been living as Jeffrey Whitcomb ever since?”
“No,” the thing sitting next to her replied. “I’ve used several names during my time here, but it was easier for me to retain this form. There’s no need for you to know which name I am using now.”
No, probably not. He wore an expensive suit, and while the car could have been a rental, Audrey guessed it wasn’t. Well, if he’d taken on Henry Whitcomb’s identity for a time, then he would have inherited his share of the family fortune when Henry’s mother passed away, even if said fortune was depleted from what it must have been at its height. Careful investments of that money over the next fifty years could have amassed considerable wealth. Of course, she was getting ahead of herself. She didn’t know for certain that he…it…whatever it was…had done anything of the sort.
But she remembered how Michael had spoken briefly of Jeffrey Whitcomb’s son, how he had lived a solitary life, had never married or had children. If his identity had been taken over by this being, if he truly had been possessed all that time, she could see why he’d remained so relentlessly alone.
“What do you want with me?” she asked, the faintest tremor entering her voice. She swallowed, then made herself add, “I’m no one.”
“On your own, perhaps,” he said calmly. “In combination with Michael Covenant…you are more dangerous than you know, Audrey Barrett.”
Dangerous to demons, she guessed. She thought of how she and Michael had destroyed the spell circles in the basement of the Glendora house, how the demons had fought to keep them from taking away their portal to this plane. Could Michael have done all that by himself? Hard to say. Audrey knew she would never have attempted such a thing on her own, wouldn’t have even known where to begin.
Maybe it was crazy for her to even ask the question, but she had to know. “If I’m so dangerous, why kidnap me? Why not kill me and bury my body in the desert somewhere?”
Those questions earned her a thin smile. “Are you suggesting I should do that?”
“Well, no, but — ”
He cut her off. “Murder is messy and leads to far too many questions. It’s much easier to remove you from the equation instead. This foolish endeavor of Mr. Covenant’s will fall apart with your continued absence. There will be no Project Demon Hunters, no further threat to my existence and my work. Once I know the show has been canceled, I will let you go.”
“And you think I won’t tell him what you did?” Audrey demanded.
“Possibly you could, if you remembered anything of it,” he said, his tone careless. “I assure you that it will be very easy to ensure that all your memories of me will be gone. You will only recall that you realized you were far too angry with Michael Covenant to work with him, and so remained away until you knew the show would no longer be a viable project.”
Thus opening her up to all those lawsuits Colin Turner, the producer, had threatened her with. However, Audrey doubted the being who sat in the back of the town car with her cared much about her finances, or whether she could lose her house in a lawsuit settlement.
Then again, being homeless was better than being dead.
The car turned onto a freeway onramp. Audrey caught a glimpse of a sign as they passed by it — 10 Freeway Eastbound. That told her a little, but not enough.
“Where are you ta
king me?” she asked.
“A safe place.”
“Safe for you, or for me?”
He’d been wearing a faint smile this whole time, as though he was pleased with himself for pulling off her kidnapping without any complications. Now that smile broadened slightly, deepening the lines around his eyes. Looking at that smile, Audrey felt more cold inch its way down her spine. She’d seen more human expressions on a shark.
“It is a place I own. You don’t need to know anything more than that.”
“But — ”
Abruptly, the smile disappeared. Whitcomb’s black eyes glittered, and he said, “Enough. I don’t need your chatter distracting me.”
Before she could move, try to pull away, he’d reached out and touched a finger to her temple. A bolt of searing pain went through her body, and she cried out. Immediately after the pain came darkness, and the world — and the thing living in Jeffrey Whitcomb’s body — was gone.
Thank God Colin was nowhere in evidence when Michael climbed out of Susan’s car. The last thing he felt like doing was trying to explain to the producer why their co-host was a no-show, especially since there was no real evidence to explain what had happened to her.
Something bad, though. Something wrong.
Michael murmured a thank-you to Susan for driving him to the airport and back, then slipped into his room. No need to press his luck by wandering around the grounds, even if they were quite beautiful, and might have offered him a quiet place to sit and try to figure out what in the world he was supposed to do now. However, avoiding Colin took precedence over any solace the fountain in the courtyard might have provided. While his producer would discover Audrey’s absence sooner or later, Michael thought he might as well maximize his private time now while he had the chance.
His room at the B&B where they were filming the current episode of the show was actually a suite with a sitting area separate from the bedroom. He sat down on the couch, closed his eyes, and did his best to recall what he’d experienced in the parking lot at the airport. Cold, but localized, as if it had been connected to a car that had occupied the space where he stood. Had someone dragged Audrey into a car and then sped off with her? He supposed something like that could have happened, but he couldn’t figure out why she would be in the parking lot in the first place. Even if she’d taken it into her head to rent a car rather than wait for Susan to show up, the car rental kiosks and parking lots were located in an entirely different part of the airport complex. It didn’t make sense.
Michael would never have described himself as a true clairvoyant; he got impressions from places and people, but he didn’t experience visions, didn’t have the ability to conjure clear images of events that happened in separate places and times. Still, he strained for that kind of sight now, hoping against hope that the inner eye in his mind would suddenly open and grant him the information he so desperately needed.
Nothing, of course. He could still feel the cold of that one particular spot, the sense of evil that had pervaded it, but he couldn’t pick up anything more than that. And the thing was, he had a hard time imagining Audrey being forced into a car against her will. She would have put up a fight, and there were enough people coming and going in the parking lot that surely someone would have noticed something, would have called security even if they didn’t want to get involved themselves.
Which meant…what? That she’d known the person in the car?
That didn’t make any sense.
Reluctantly, Michael opened his eyes, then got up from the couch and retrieved his laptop from where it rested in its case in the closet. He had basically nothing to go on, but he thought he might as well check to see if there had been any reports of human traffickers working in the parking lots at the airport. Again, though, if Audrey had been the target of someone like that, she would have fought back.
Unless she was drugged somehow….
He fought to clear that image from his head. The situation made him fear the worst, but he needed to stay sharp, to keep his wits about him as best he could. That was the only way he’d be able to figure out what had happened to her.
There was a small bistro set in one corner of the sitting area. Michael opened up his laptop and set it on the table, then sat down. Almost as soon as he logged in, he saw that he had more than a hundred unread emails in his inbox.
His first instinct was to ignore them and go on with the business at hand, but something stopped him, made him click on the icon for his mail program. Mostly junk, as he’d feared, but his gaze landed on an automated message from the contact form on his website. In general, he wouldn’t have placed much importance on getting such a message, since he routinely received around a dozen every day, and yet this one seemed to jump out at him from among all the other unread emails.
He clicked on it, saw that the return address was [email protected]. At first it didn’t quite connect, but as soon as he began reading the message, he realized who the email was from.
I had to use your contact form because I don’t have your phone number or email. Audrey said she would call when she got to Tucson, but it’s after four now and I haven’t heard anything. Her phone keeps going to voicemail. Please call and let me know if she’s okay…626-555-2289.—Rosemary McGuire
At any other time, Michael might have been annoyed by what he viewed as interference from someone who really didn’t know what they were dealing with. Now, however, he realized he probably could use Rosemary’s help. They might have had their differences of opinion in the past, but she was a strong psychic, might be able to see where Audrey had been taken.
If she’d been taken at all. She still could have simply gone off on her own. As for not answering her phone, well, if she was still angry enough with him, she might have put her phone in “do not disturb” mode in order to avoid any intrusive calls.
But that didn’t sound like Audrey. She was too responsible to indulge herself with those sorts of petty games, no matter what her personal feelings toward him might be.
He got his phone out of his pocket, called the number Rosemary had given him. It rang three times, and he worried it might go to voicemail. But then he heard her voice, and music in the background, quickly muted.
“Rosemary here.”
“Rosemary, it’s Michael Covenant.”
A pause. Then she said, “Is Audrey with you?”
“No. We know she got off the plane, but she disappeared after that.”
“Shit.”
Exactly, he thought, but he only said, “We can’t seem to find any trace of her. She left the terminal and just…vanished.”
“Have you called the police?”
A logical question, but he had a feeling this was something the police wouldn’t be able to help them with. And besides…. “Not yet. They’re not going to want to talk to me until Audrey’s been missing for longer than a couple of hours.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.” She seemed to hesitate, then said, “Do you need me to help?”
Trying to keep some of the relief out of his voice, he replied, “I was hoping you could.”
“Of course. I’m on the road right now — I had a retreat in Idyllwild this weekend — but I’ll do what I can when I get home.”
“That would be a big help. I tried, but I couldn’t see anything.”
“The great Michael Covenant admitting failure?”
Obviously, she’d asked the question to get a rise out of him, but he was worried enough right now that he didn’t want to waste energy by taking the bait. “Clairvoyance isn’t my particular strength. I just figured I might as well make the attempt and see what happened.”
“Got it. I should be home in another half hour or so. I can reach you at this number?”
“Yes, I’ll be here.”
“Okay. I’ll call you then.”
She ended the call, and Michael set his phone down on the table next to his laptop. It was a little disappointing that he would still have to wait a
bit until Rosemary got home, but he supposed it could have been worse — she could have still been up in Idyllwild rather than halfway back to Glendora.
In the meantime…well, in the meantime, he might as well go over his notes on the bed-and-breakfast, get himself prepared for the upcoming shoot. He’d walked the grounds soon after he got here and hadn’t seen or felt anything particularly out of the ordinary, but both ghosts and demons could be slippery prey, appearing at their own whim and no one else’s.
As he pulled up the file on his laptop, he hoped that Susan had also been able to slip quietly into her room without encountering Colin…or Daniela, who was certainly friendly enough but who also had a tendency to gossip. There was also the added complication of her newfound relationship with Colin. Of course, Michael would never ask either of them outright, but he got the distinct impression that Colin and Daniela had also hooked up the night of the celebratory wrap party at The Bahooka.
Hooked up. Such a trite phrase to describe what he’d shared with Audrey that night. He’d been with enough women to know that what the two of them had experienced had been extraordinary, a connection he’d never felt with anyone else before. To have that promise before him, and then to have it snatched away so suddenly the next day….
He shook his head. Right now, the problem at hand was to locate Audrey and hope she was still well and whole. They could hash out their differences then…if she’d even allow him to. Hers had been a hard, bright, icy anger, difficult to work his way around. But he’d have to try. He knew it was impossible that they would simply work together on the show, then go their separate ways once shooting was done. If nothing else, their destruction of the circles in the basement of the Whitcomb mansion proved how well they worked together. He wanted to keep on working with her, wanted to be part of her life, and for her to be part of his.
Unbound Spirits Page 2
