Out of Body

by Stella Cameron

  She was quiet once more and her pace slackened. They walked slowly through the heavy night. As they got farther from the river, nothing moved but the two of them. Gray didn’t remember the city being so quiet at this time of the morning. But then, he didn’t hang out in this area anymore.

  “Whew,” Marley said. “It’s so muggy.”

  His turn to laugh. “That’s new?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and smiling up at him. “I’ve never liked the real heat even though I was born here.” Her smile faded very slowly.

  She’d gone away from him again. And his spine began to tingle as it had several times in the hours since he met her.

  He almost laughed at himself. Even journalists had libidos. Marley Millet had his doing contortions, not that he knew why. She was good to look at in a kind of breakable way, but that wasn’t it. The lady appealed to his need for challenge. He wanted to know her and know about her.

  Come on, Gray. You think she’s got something to do with this case.

  “You were going to tell me about Liza and Amber,” she said.

  And so she persisted—because, like him, she wanted something. They wanted things from each other.

  “Writing about jazz singers in New Orleans is a natural,” he said. “It’s not a new idea, but maybe it is the way I’m doing it. I’m not going after people who are institutions already. It’s the strugglers who interest me—mostly the women. Women always came, but not in the numbers there are now. What is it that makes them want to make it badly enough to come here? This can be a dangerous place for a woman more or less on her own.”

  “From where I’m looking, it is a dangerous place,” Marley said. “Liza and Amber know it is, too.”

  Gray figured he’d walked into that.

  Marley would not have gone two steps with Gray Fisher, alone, if Sykes hadn’t threatened her with a fate worse than death if she didn’t.

  “How,” he had asked, “are you going to find out if the guy’s a threat without giving him a chance to jump you? Trust me and do it.”

  She hadn’t laughed, or not on the outside…

  While she listened to Gray, Sykes loped along on the journalist’s other side. Now that he had Marley’s attention, Sykes had dimmed himself. When she saw his face, it was almost clear, but the rest of him blended into the background and appeared as a figure made of transparent shadows.

  And Sykes had never had any trouble making himself heard and understood whenever he felt like it. Unlike Uncle Pascal, they all knew Sykes was a scary-when-he-didn’t-smile, scarier-when-he-did-smile, outrageously powerful paranormal talent.

  “What do you make of Danny Summit?” Gray asked. “I didn’t know he was so involved with Amber till tonight.”

  “I don’t know anything about him,” Marley said. “Maybe he’s just what he seems to be, worried about his girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend?” Gray snorted. “Neither of them said a word about it to me.”

  “Until tonight,” Marley said.

  “And they live together.”

  “Seems that way,” Marley agreed. “I don’t think he meant to tell us that. Earlier he told me he loved her, but she wasn’t his girlfriend. Go figure.”

  Sykes nodded and took mincing steps as if he had to struggle not to outpace Marley and Gray. That wasn’t as true when it came to Gray, who was almost as tall and long-legged as Sykes.

  “Don’t do anything to make me laugh,” Marley communicated with him. “You don’t need to walk at all, do you?”

  “You are such a killjoy,” he responded. “It’s boring to float. Too easy.”

  To Gray, Marley said, “You still didn’t say how you chose Liza and Amber.”

  “I didn’t, really. A drummer at Blues Heaven mentioned Liza and Liza introduced me to Amber Lee. They were both right for what I wanted. What I still want.”

  “Which is?” The more she could get out of him, the better.

  Sykes leaned forward and touched the tips of a thumb and forefinger together.

  “Glad you approve.” She let him know she didn’t appreciate his interference.

  “Sarcasm never suited you,” Sykes said.

  “The story’s about the network here, the jazz network, and what it takes to break in,” Gray said. “I’m not interested in anyone with connections. Not anyone who already knew people who would help them out when they got here. All Liza’s got is her voice—and she’s easy to look at.”

  “This is where you tell him all men are the same,” Sykes said. “We only care how sexy a woman is.”

  “All he said was, she’s easy to look at.”

  “Code for sexy,” Sykes said. In a single long stride, he bounded forward and turned to walk backward in front of Gray. “Do you know he’s sensitive?” he asked Marley. “He’s just waking up to it. Don’t know why, unless it’s something to do with you. Yeah, could be. He’s trying to pretend he doesn’t notice anything really different.”

  “I do know about him,” Marley said. “Be careful he doesn’t intercept you talking to me. Keep your guard up. I think he heard Uncle Pascal.”

  Sykes snapped his fingers soundlessly and danced in front of them to music only he heard. “Baby, baby,” he sang in his husky tenor. “My guard is always up, up, up. I’m always ready. Bring it on.”

  “I’m glad we’re having this opportunity to talk,” Gray said.

  Marley did her best to shut out Sykes’s image. “Really?”

  “I was serious when I said I want to know more about your…what do you call that?”

  Her instinct was to leave him flailing around, searching and finding ever more foolish terms for the powers she had. “You don’t have to call it anything,” she said, taking some pity. After all, he hadn’t jumped her yet. “You don’t have to think about it at all.”

  “Didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “You didn’t.” But he might very soon.

  “So tell me,” he said. “You saw Liza and Amber somewhere since they went missing?”

  “Does anyone even know how long they’ve been missing? Who told the police about it first?”

  He laughed.

  Marley risked glancing at Sykes, who made an owlish face.

  “How useful you are,” she told him.

  “Anytime, sis.”

  “Why are you laughing at me?” Marley asked Gray.

  He held up his palms. “I’m not. No, no, never. It was the way you turned me from questioner to questionee. You do that all the time. You have a thing about being in charge, don’t you?”

  Marley stood still to consider that. “Yes. Now I think about it, I do like being in charge.” She glanced at Sykes. “That could be because I’ve had to deal with a lot of domineering people in my life. I don’t put up with that stuff anymore.”

  That got her a wide, eerily white-in-the-night grin.

  “Good,” Gray said. “I’m sick of wishy-washy women.”

  She wondered which wishy-washy women he was talking about.

  “At the club you told me you were really cold?” Marley asked, suddenly remembering.

  “I was,” Gray said. “I’m not anymore.”

  He looked sideways at her and her tummy tightened. She swallowed. The Millets had a few problems when it came to sex. Potential problems. Dating was fine, but the Mentor’s family honor—or rules—insisted any sexual partner had to know the dangers ahead of time.

  The Mentor was a mysterious person—or thing—they had all been taught to respect as the family oracle. Marley had never seen the Mentor and mostly didn’t know what she thought about him—or it—but she wasn’t about to be the first to mention doubts about the Revered One.

  Marley shook back her hair. Wow, Gray Fisher had her racing in dangerous directions. She didn’t even know him and didn’t intend to…but she might.

  That cold green drink she had left at Scully’s would taste really good about now. A past experience with telling a man what it meant to get really close to a
Millet’s powers, and the curse they supposedly carried, hadn’t encouraged her to try it again.

  “You okay?” Gray asked.

  She wasn’t. This man had a force field all of his own. He was incredibly sexy.

  “Now what?” Sykes said. “Holy—Marley, you’re lusting after this guy.”

  “Shut up,” she told him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I can feel you reacting to him.” He studied Gray. “He’s not my type, but I guess if I was a lonely little woman I could get turned on.”

  “Sykes! Stop it!”

  He sniggered and she noticed Gray was giving her an odd look. “Can I see you again?” he asked abruptly. “Maybe tomorrow evening when we’ve both got our acts together.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  He walked on and she caught up this time.

  “You don’t know anything about me, but what I’ve told you,” he said. “I’m going to give you my card and I’d appreciate it if you’d do some legwork to find out what my reputation is. I’m pretty boring so it won’t take long.”

  She doubted if he was boring at all—ever.

  “He’s not,” Sykes said. “He’s complicated and I think he could be dangerous. But I don’t think he’s a threat to you.”

  “You’re pushing it,” Marley said. “And you’re breaking the rules. I didn’t invite you to read me.”

  “Uncle Pascal called me in. We wanted you found, physically and mentally. He can’t do that, but I can.”

  She crossed her arms. “Aha. You guided Uncle Pascal to me. That explains everything. I couldn’t figure out how he managed to find me.”

  “He was very worried about you.”

  “So you helped him invade my mind? You’re not supposed to do that.”

  “It’s Gray I’m reading now,” Sykes told her. “Be careful here. We need to know what his game is.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t have a game. Is your guard strong enough?”

  “To keep Gray out? What do you think? Watch your own.”

  “Are you sure you won’t see me tomorrow?” Gray asked. He ducked his face closer to hers and light from a window glinted in his eyes. “I’m okay, really I am. We need each other.”

  “Why?”

  “You and I are mixed up in the same thing and it’s nothing good. We may need each other,” he said.

  Marley wanted to trust him.

  She did need someone’s help, badly, but she couldn’t fool herself that she was not strongly attracted to Gray for other reasons, as well.

  “I think I should go to Detective Archer and tell him what Danny said,” she told him, feeling shaky. “The police ought to know Danny and Amber are involved—and that they probably live together. The police said they were having difficulty finding a lot of information on Amber or Liza, didn’t they? Danny said he hasn’t told them anything.”

  Gray cleared his throat. “He did say that, but I’ve got to think Archer knows more than he’s going to share with anyone he doesn’t think needs to know. Would you do me a favor? You could do it because I believed what you said and Nat Archer didn’t. Don’t go to Archer about anything for a bit. Come to me. Tell me if you remember something else.”

  Looking straight at Sykes, she thought about that.

  “Think he’s crooked and trying to get any information you may have before you give it to the police?” Sykes asked.

  “You’re reading my mind,” she told him neutrally.

  “Nah, just a lucky guess.”

  “I know roughly where Danny lives,” Gray said. “What can he say if I just stop by to say hello?”

  “Get lost, I should think,” she said. “He spelled out that he doesn’t want interference. He wants Amber back, period.”

  Gray inclined his head. He watched her too intently for comfort, Marley decided. Her breath shortened. “The detective won’t like it if you get between him and his investigation,” she said.

  “Maybe he won’t. But he laughed at you, remember. Maybe that’s why you could be on my side.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  They reached Royal Street and Marley tried to pick up the pace, but Gray continued to measure his strides. After a few seconds he said, “I don’t want to get there too quickly.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed. “You just don’t mince words. Because I want to keep you with me as long as possible,” he said.

  She looked at him sharply.

  He looked back and she could have sworn he was as surprised by what he’d said as she was.

  “Because we haven’t decided anything,” he added, but she wasn’t sure she believed the excuse.

  “There isn’t anything to decide,” she said. “I don’t make rash decisions.” Of course not, only most of the time.

  “This is it,” he said.

  They were in front of J. Clive Millet, Antiques. Beside the left-hand shop window a wrought-iron gate, with a griffon at its center, led to the Court of Angels at the back of the shop. Marley would rather Gray didn’t know exactly how to reach the family’s homes.

  She had the keys to the shop and decided to use them. If she had to, raising the alarm wouldn’t be hard once she opened the front door. Not that any of that mattered, since Sykes was with her.

  “We didn’t meet under good circumstances,” Gray said. “I wish we had.”

  “Why?”

  “Damn!” He looked skyward. “Sorry. But can’t you say anything but ‘why’? It’s annoying.”

  “I can say other things,” she told him.

  He put his hands lightly on her shoulders. “Can I come by and take you for dinner tomorrow? Around seven?”

  “Sykes?”

  Sykes didn’t answer and she looked around, but couldn’t find him. “Damn,” she said sharply.

  Gray rubbed his palms up and down her arms and laughed. “You, too, huh? At a loss for useful words? Just say yes.”

  “I’d rather think about it.”

  “Yes, of course you would. You do that and call me.”

  “Okay,” she said, anxious to get away.

  Sykes had left her in her hour—her moment of need.

  “Good night, Gray.”

  “Night,” he said. “How will you phone me?”

  She frowned.

  “You don’t know my number. It doesn’t really matter. I’ll call you.”

  Marley turned to unlock the shop door. She felt shivery and not only because she was responding to a very sexual thrill. Real fear climbed her spine. He could follow her into the shop and there would be nothing she could do about it if Sykes had really chosen to take himself off.

  “Good night, Marley,” Gray said. “Tomorrow?”

  She turned back for a moment. “Maybe.”

  He nodded and faced the street to step off the sidewalk. His hands were deep in his pockets. Every move he made flowed. He had a powerful grace, like a big cat.

  The instant before she looked away, Gray glanced at her over his shoulder.

  That look wasn’t soft or humorous anymore. Just for a flicker of time he stared, and Marley went into the shop and slammed the door. She shot home the locks.

  It was the light, it had to be. But then, it had been the light the first time she saw hardness in those eyes that looked black, not whiskey-colored anymore. The light had turned his face into a facsimile of a black-and-white photograph. What the living face amazingly concealed, a negative image revealed: a thin, white scar passed through Gray’s mouth, sliced upward beside his nose and across his cheek.

  10

  Marley didn’t want to wake up.

  Between night and dawn, sleep and the drifting time, Marley’s old companions waited: the Ushers.

  They had come for her. They wanted her to travel again.

  Should she resist—or give in and go where they took her?

  They were there again, beckoning.

  In her dream-state, Marley felt
herself drawn back to something that had happened to her more than two weeks earlier. She saw her feet aimlessly wandering along a sidewalk as they had that day. The colored layers of her skirt floated, pointed hems curling about her ankles and flashes of gold—from the sandals she wore—gleaming through gauze.

  A woman called out, “Marley Millet?”

  Marley didn’t recognized the voice, but it was kind.

  “Marley Millet, you came! I’ve been expecting you. This way, my friend, follow me.” A welcome in every word. “I’ve waited for you and now you’re here. You’re going to help me do something that must be done. Come and see what I have for you.”

  “Yes,” the Ushers whispered to Marley when she hesitated, whispered in sounds like soft smiles. “Come on, Marley.”

  An alley and an archway opened before her and once through the arch, she entered a small shop. She twirled around and felt her skirts fly wide, then wind tight. Glass cases filled with toys. Dolls. All around her beautiful, wide-eyed dolls, their ringlets shining, dressed in silks and satins.

  Teddy bears and stuffed horses, foxes, lambs, piglets, kittens and puppies, an elephant, an ostrich, a giraffe, a parrot—they lined two rows of shelves, one above the other, all around the shop.

  Marley turned and turned.

  A baby buggy of palest cane stood there, and there a cart with woolen chickens inside, and there three penguins with nodding heads. They must be on springs—those heads.

  Wooden blocks, a jack-in-the-box, bags of jacks and decks of cards, marbles, bubble mix, balloons, soldier sentries in their fort, fairy wands, scarlet capes, tiny cars and trucks and trains stood everywhere in piles, on hooks, in open drawers.

  “My name is Belle,” the woman said. “Take this. It’s not big, but it’s heavy, so be careful not to break it.”

  Marley stretched out her arms and Belle placed there a small, wooden house lacquered a brilliant red, with the silhouettes of the people inside showing through closed blinds at the windows.

  “Do not tell anyone you’ve got this,” said Belle. “If you do, others will try to take it from you. Don’t let them. Protect the house from friends and enemies. Whatever it takes, keep it until I can return for it. Keep it and use it well.”