She and Cassandra entered through doors framing the broken revolving door. Almost immediately, they encountered a security station with a metal detector manned by two guards. One looked as ancient and decrepit as the building but the other’s bulk nearly burst out of his buttoned shirt. Cassandra had been sure getting by security would be no problem. The bulky guard stared at them, and Lucy wondered if Cassandra’s assumption would hold true.
“Hey, Zev,” Cassandra said. “Busy today?”
“Hey,” Zev, the older man, answered. “Pretty busy. All the bigwigs are here. Budget stuff.”
“We’ll be in and out of Sal’s office before you know or anyone else knows it.”
“Is Salvatore here?” The burly guard asked.
“He finally arrived home, sick as a dog, probably a hangover.” Cassandra rolled her eyes. “He left some paperwork behind and felt guilty about not doing work, so he asked me to get it for him.”
“If he’s not with you, you can’t go up,” Burly Guard said.
“But…Zev, you know me,” Cassandra said. “Me and my friend will only be a second!”
Zev glanced over at his fellow guard. “Um, rules are rules. Sorry. You’ll just have to tell Salvatore if he needs the paperwork, he has to get it himself.”
Lucy put her arm around her friend. “It’s okay. Let’s go dose Salvatore with more coffee and see if he can make it.”
Cassandra nodded, exchanged a good-bye with Zev, and they went back out the way they’d come.
Lucy drew her friend to the side of the steps, out of sight of anyone looking through the glass doors.
“Now what?” Cassandra asked, her voice cracking.
“We’re not done here,” Lucy answered. “I’ll sneak inside.”
“And how do you get past the guards? You might convince Zev but not that new guy.”
“Just go back in there and ask if you can get one of Salvatore’s friends to sign you in.”
Cassandra put her hands on her hips. “That won’t work.”
“I know. I just need you to provide a distraction so I can sneak past them.”
“There’s no way to get past them, unless you somehow turn invisible or something.”
Lucy smiled. “Trust me, okay? What do you have to lose?”
“What if you’re caught and arrested? I’ll have you and Salvatore to worry about.”
Lucy sighed. She could demonstrate the invisibility to Cassandra but that might scare her friend off more than being vague. Al had never been scared of her, but most people freaked when they saw her go invisible.
“Do you want to find your guy or not? We need to get inside and I can.”
Cassandra nodded. “Okay, if you say so. Maybe I can talk Zev out of arresting you when you get caught.”
“Never gonna happen. I’ll follow you in. From there, just talk to Zev for a bit. Don’t worry about where I am or where I’ve gone. I’ll meet you down in the parking lot when I’m done. Might take an hour or so.”
Cassandra took a deep breath. “What the hell. Something tells me I want to see this.” She squared her shoulders and turned to face the door.
Lucy smiled. If this worked right, no one would see anything. That was the point.
As Cassandra turned away, Lucy closed her eyes and concentrated. Her friend had sarcastically asked if she was going to turn invisible. Exactly, Lucy thought, and vanished from sight in the blink of an eye.
Originally, Lucy believed her invisibility had been caused by the insane experiments her captors had conducted on her. With help, she had discovered her ability was a latent telepathic power that had been triggered by the trauma of her torture. She hadn’t been able to escape, so she’d literally willed herself invisible to her captors’ eyes.
She felt so much better knowing the invisibility was a part of her and not created by her torturers.
“It’s an amazing and powerful telepathy, Lucy. What you’re doing is sending out a mental command to people that they can’t see you at all.”
That’s what Beth, her telepathic mentor, had said. Lucy hadn’t believed it at first because if she could do that, why couldn’t she make her clothes invisible? But Beth said telepathy required belief. If Lucy believed only she was invisible and her clothes weren’t, then people saw the clothes but not her.
Now, Lucy could make herself and her clothes invisible, a wonderful change from having to run around naked to vanish. All she had to do to turn the ability on was think “no one sees me” and her subconscious, so used to projecting the thought, did the rest.
It took more concentration to turn off the power. After a year spent in constant invisibility, it was far more her natural state.
Lucy followed Cassandra through the door.
As Cassandra pleaded unsuccessfully to the two guards, Lucy waltzed right past them. She debated going up the sweeping front staircase but decided there could be too many people hanging around the main area. Instead, she slipped into a stairwell in a corridor on the right.
She was Noir now. Whatever else she did, wherever she belonged as Lucy, being Noir would always give her a rush. It would be even better if Al were with her, watching her back.
Her soft-heeled boots made little sound on the enclosed stairwell. She pulled her hat low to avoid a good photo of her face if she was caught on camera.
She should’ve asked Cassandra if city hall had video surveillance. She hoped not. She had no idea if her telepathic command to be unseen extended to someone at a security station in the building. Her range was still unclear.
Salvatore’s office was on the fourth floor, number 134. Noir pushed open the door slightly in order to peer into the hallway. No one was in sight.
She stepped out of the stairwell.
The area was deserted. Maybe everyone was in that big budget meeting that Zev the guard mentioned. Whatever the reason, it was perfect for her needs.
She turned left and stalked down the hallway. She passed doors with little hint of what went on behind them. They were old-fashioned doors, wooden with frosted-glass upper portions that had numbers painted on in ink, like something out of an old movie. No names on any of them, only numbers. She found 134 after turning right at the end of the first corridor. She slipped on her gloves and turned the door handle.
Locked.
Damn. She should have asked Cassandra if she had a set of Salvatore’s keys. Noir knelt in front of the door to get a better look at the lock. Like the design of the door, the doorknob was archaic. If she could slide something between the door and the bolt, she could pop it right open.
She pulled the flat plastic jimmy from the inside of her coat. When she’d been a runaway with no place to go, she had used it to slip through back doors and find warm places to sleep.
The lock clicked. Success. She walked inside and shut the door with as little noise as possible. She blinked to adjust to semidarkness, as the office had no window and the overhead light was off. Turning the light on might bring attention. Instead, she used her little flashlight and directed the beam at the floor so it wouldn’t flare through the frosted glass.
Neat freak, aren’t you, Salvatore? A desk calendar covered the center of the desk. Papers were stacked on the side in out-boxes and in-boxes. To the other side was a pencil holder that looked like Cassandra’s metalwork, and next to it was a framed photo of her and Salvatore.
Noir peered at the calendar. Yesterday’s date was circled in red, with the words budget meeting in all caps. This all looked normal. It’d be nice if one of the entries said “bad guys” with a blinking neon arrow pointing to them, but no such luck.
Noir ran her finger over the calendar, hoping her first impression was wrong, but still found nothing out of the ordinary. Cryptic, yes, with some entries that seemed to be gibberish but obviously meant something to Sal. She wondered what Al would make of them.
Yesterday, however, was blank. Maybe he’d planned to do something that day he didn’t want to record.
Noir ripped off the page for the month. Cassandra might be able to decipher Salvatore’s shorthand. As Noir pulled the page free, a postcard floated to the floor. She picked up the card, part of publicity for the local exhibition at the museum. Nothing out of the ordinary there, either, given Cassandra’s art would have center stage.
Still, Noir folded the postcard inside the page from the calendar and tucked them into her coat pocket.
Noir knelt and searched the trash can. Empty. She lifted up everything on the desk, looking for notes or anything underneath. Zilch. If only Salvatore were a messy guy, there would be more clues here.
She checked under the desk and found a little laminated trinket about an inch long. It was…something, but Noir couldn’t guess what. It could be Cassandra’s work. She pocketed that too.
She brushed against the monitor, an old CRT model that had seen better days. It rocked, uneven. Weird. Normally these old CRT monsters were steady as a rock. She lifted it to look underneath and spotted a small thumb drive.
Aha. No way that was here by accident. It joined the calendar page, the postcard and the trinket in her pocket.
The door to the office opened.
Noir plastered herself against the wall, near the door.
A man and a woman stepped inside. The woman’s voice was lower than Noir expected, and angry.
“No word on where he is?” the woman asked. She was tall, with a face that had probably once been pretty but was worn down with lines and worry. Her brown pantsuit washed out her complexion, doing her no favors. “There must be some clue in here to where he’s gone.”
“We already looked here this morning and found nothing,” the man answered.
“Not even on his computer?”
“No, Ms. Schneider,” he said. “We downloaded all the memory. He’d wiped it clean.”
Salvatore, Noir thought, exactly what are you into?
“There must be something here or he wouldn’t have sent his girlfriend to get it,” Schneider said. “I can’t believe you didn’t have our guards grab her. She’s our leverage with him and we let her walk right back out of the building.”
“I can’t just have them arrest her.”
“Tell them to check if she’s out in the parking lot. If she is, arrest her for conspiring with her boyfriend to steal city property. And murder. Don’t forget murder.” Schneider’s voice grew shaky with the mention of murder.
What? Murder? Steal city property? This had just gotten a whole lot messier.
“We don’t know that Johns’ death had anything to do with Giamatti,” the man said.
“Murder. Someone murdered Sholly. And Salvatore Giamatti is missing. They met yesterday. You don’t have to be an accountant to do that math.”
Again, a ton of emotion in Schneider’s voice. Sholly Johns, whoever he was, had been important to her.
But who the hell was he? And what city property had enough value to steal in the first place? She and Cassandra needed to find Salvatore and ask, and before Schneider got him.
“Look, Schneider, I know you’re upset but just how do we charge this woman with theft? If we did, we’d have to reveal the stuff was gone. We don’t want that kind of publicity,” the man said.
“Fine, fine. Tell the guards to grab her and I’ll come up with some dummy charge about trying to sneak into a government building. You bring her to me.” Schneider slapped her hand on Salvatore’s desk. “I want Salvatore Giamatti. We have her, he’ll come to get her.”
Screw that, Noir thought. Cassandra was going nowhere with the guards or anyone else.
A radio crackled from Schneider’s purse. The sound was garbled and Noir couldn’t understand the words. But Schneider’s answer was audible enough.
“She’s out in the parking lot still? Pick her up, you idiot. She’s probably working with her guy on this whole mess.”
More crackling.
“You want to keep your retirement pay? Go outside and help pick her up, old man,” Schneider said.
Yeah, that’s not going to happen, Noir thought. She put her hands in front of her and channeled all her anger into her other ability, the flashy one, the one people remembered.
Noir unleashed a blinding burst of light that filled the small office.
Her telepathic mentor, Beth, was less certain where the light burst came from. It needed further study, she’d said, and it was even possible Noir was bending light waves with her mind.
Noir didn’t care why she had the light show. She just cared that it worked.
Schneider dropped her radio and shrieked, covering her face. The man stumbled over Salvatore’s office chair and went down, shielding his eyes.
Noir sent another burst to keep them disoriented, backed out of the room and ran for the stairwell. She heard Schneider calling for help. Good. A distraction that drew other guards away from the two trying to arrest Cassandra could only help.
Noir practically flew down the steps. She missed the sound of her cape flapping behind her but Al had probably been right. Capes were too showy and since she could turn her clothes invisible now, she didn’t need it.
But it had looked so cool…
She burst from the stairwell and onto the main floor.
No guards. Damn. They were after Cassandra already. Noir leaped over the guard’s desk at the entrance, burst through the front door and rushed down the main steps.
She was almost too late. In the parking lot, next to the car, the two guards had Cassandra by the arms. Noir had to give the older woman credit—she was kicking and screaming like a banshee.
“Fucking pigs!” Cassandra yelled.
Go hippies!
Noir rushed up behind the big guy and slammed a fist into his kidney. Burly Guard dropped Cassandra’s arm and stumbled forward into the car. Noir elbowed him in the back again, the same spot as the kidney punch, and then slammed him, facedown, into the doorframe.
A tooth skittered down the side of the car. Burly Guard swore and went down to his knees, searching for that tooth.
Bully, Noir thought.
Zev, the elderly guard, dropped his hold on Cassandra and backed off, eyes wide. “What the hell?”
“Get away,” Noir said, using her scary voice. It tended to freak people out when they heard it coming from thin air. Zev was no exception.
Cassandra abruptly stopped screaming and started looking around, confused.
Noir opened the driver’s side door, pushed her friend inside and whispered, “C’mon, are you going to waste this chance?”
Cassandra practically fell into the seat and started her car. Noir slammed the door shut on Cassandra, ran around to the passenger side and climbed in before her friend took off without her. But Cassandra seemed frozen.
“Drive!” Noir yelled.
Cassandra hit reverse first, surprising Noir and almost throwing her into the dashboard. She just had enough time to click in the seat belt when Cassandra hit the brakes, shifted to drive, and squealed her tires while pulling out into the city streets.
Cassandra squealed the tires around the first turn too. Noir clutched the armrest. They’d been inches from being squashed by a truck.
“Jesus, Cassandra, don’t kill us.”
“Who the hell said that? Where are you? What are you?” Cassandra looked around, eyes wide.
Oh. Right. Lucy closed her eyes and consciously relaxed her mental command so Cassandra could see her.
“It’s just me. Lucy.”
“Holy fucking Mother of God,” Cassandra said. She zipped through the next set of lights, took another right and pulled over into a vacant lot, hiding the car behind an old trash bin.
“Nice driving,” Lucy said. And she thought Al drove lik
e a crazy person.
“Lucy, what the hell is going on? Is that really you? How did you disappear and reappear?” Cassandra ran her hands over her face. “I’m on an acid trip, right? I must have taken some last night or something and now it’s all blooey. I’ll just close my eyes and I’ll wake up in bed with Salvatore next to me.”
Lucy took a deep breath and winced. Al had accepted her invisibility without being freaked. So had Beth Nakamora and her bodyguard, Daz Montoya.
Of course, they’d had warning. They knew psychics with weird and strange abilities were real. Beth’s lover was a firestarter, for God’s sake. An invisible person? No worries.
But Cassandra knew nothing about any of that.
Lucy reached over and put a hand on Cassandra’s arm. “It’s me. Just Lucy. It’s not an acid trip. I can do some…things. Things that can help us find Salvatore.”
Cassandra stared at her, blinking furiously.
“You’re real? That just happened? I’m not tripping?”
“You’re not tripping. But you’re one of the few people to ever see me do what I just did, to go from invisible to visible. I’m told it’s a bit freaky.”
Cassandra framed Lucy’s face with her hands. “You are real but…you appeared out of thin air.”
Cassandra had a Vise-Grip on her face.
“No, it just seemed that way. Like I said, I was invisible,” Lucy said. Her powers were more complicated than that, but now wasn’t a good time to explain. “Um, could you let go of my face? Your nails are digging into my cheek.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Cassandra released her. “So, you were invisible? That’s how you snuck up on the big guy?”
“Yep.”
“You whacked him good.”
Lucy smiled. “I sure as hell hope so, with the way they were grabbing you.”
“How— I mean, what happened? How did you get this way? Are you a mutant? Radioactive spider? Are you from outer space?” Cassandra’s eyes grew wide again. “You’re not some sort of hologram?”
Lucy laughed. “If I were a hologram, I wouldn’t have been able to smack the big guy.”
Ghosts of Christmas Past Page 4
