Daddy Warlock

by Jacqueline Diamond

  It was the room where Ardath and Valdemar met their deaths. Curtains ablaze. Men shouting. Flames licking.

  He felt a shock of horror, and knew it belonged not only to him but to Tara. At this moment, she was seeing through his eyes, too.

  “That’s where you held the meeting?” he asked as they hurried past.

  Raymond glanced at the picture in surprise. “As a matter of fact, yes.” Chance shuddered, then forced himself to thrust the image from his mind.

  He could still feel Tara with him, but the awareness faded as he moved farther from her. Their plan to stay in contact might not work, after all.

  Firemen clattered into the lobby behind them as they sprinted past a main staircase. Rounding a corner in the heavy brown haze, they escaped notice, or they would surely have been forced to leave.

  Near the end of the corridor, Raymond twisted open an unmarked door. Behind it lay a second set of stairs, musty and obviously little used.

  “You know your way around, don’t you?” Chance growled, removing his cummerbund and holding it over his mouth to filter the smoke. “How on earth did you figure all this out?”

  “I did my research.” Struggling against a fit of coughing, Ray looked older than ever before, with no trace of the customary cockiness. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I never meant any harm.”

  Even before Chance was born, he’d been the object of his father’s schemes and manipulations. Over the past dozen years, he’d made sacrifices and taken risks, fighting Ray at every turn to stick to what was right.

  Now the man had circumvented him and endangered Harry’s life, and Lois’s, as well. It seemed a bit late for repentance.

  “Don’t ask me to forgive you. Not right now.” Pushing past his father, Chance strode up the stairs.

  On the first floor, the club had still been illuminated, but the staircase was dark except for a few low-placed red emergency lights. Silently Chance cursed himself for forgetting to bring a flashlight. He’d leapt out of the car without a thought except to find Harry.

  The smoke grew thicker as they climbed, stinging his throat and eyes. At the second-story landing, Chance halted, feeling heat billowing down from the attic.

  They could go no farther.

  TARA’S EYES SMARTED and her skin felt as if it were blistering. Scarcely aware of the firemen hooking up hoses and raising a ladder toward the attic, she struggled to remain in Chance’s consciousness.

  “What is happening?” asked Rajeev. “Does he need help? I will go in. This is my fault.”

  Exhausted, she released her mental grasp. Cool air washed over her in a burst of relief. “The attic’s engulfed. They can’t go up there.”

  “Surely Lois has brought the boy down by now,” Vareena said.

  “Then where are they?” Tara asked. “Chance should have seen them on the stairs.”

  “Perhaps they have come out on the other side,” Rajeev said. “I will go around and look.”

  “I will check in the other direction.” Vareena started off.

  “Thanks.” Tara called after them both. “That would help.” After watching the pair depart, she let her eyelids drift shut as she tried to gather her thoughts.

  “Excuse me, miss.” It was one of the firefighters. “You’ll need to leave the area.”

  “My son is inside!” she protested. “And my husband went in searching for him.” The word husband slipped out, and she didn’t bother to correct it.

  “We knew about a boy and a woman missing in the attic,” he said. “You mean there are others?”

  “Two men,” she said. “They’re on a hidden staircase. They’re trying to reach the top floor but there’s too much heat.”

  The firefighter hurried off. Thank goodness he hadn’t insisted she leave, or asked how she knew so much.

  If only Harry would make mental contact with her or Chance, Tara thought. But although the boy could read minds and even exert influence over people, apparently he hadn’t developed the ability to send his own thoughts to others.

  This link between her and Chance was something rare. All she could hope was that its ultimate effect wouldn’t be tragedy.

  If they hadn’t been drawn together on that Halloween night, Harry would never have been born. Each of them would have led a different life, but would that have been so terrible?

  By now she might have married some other man and had other children. Would they have meant as much to her as Chance and Harry? Would she have missed the deeper connection, or been content with what she had?

  Tara didn’t know the answers. She didn’t know what she would do if she lost her son or Chance, or both. She couldn’t think about that now. She had to clear her mind, and hope that somehow she could find a way to help.

  WHEN HE LOST his sense of Tara’s presence, it worried Chance at first. He wished he knew whether she was simply distracted, or had become unable to contact him.

  In either case, he needed to try to sense his son’s thoughts. Shouldering his way out of the staircase and into the second-floor corridor, he crouched down where the air was clearer and formed a picture of Harry in his mind. The key was to open his consciousness and allow the contact to establish itself.

  It wasn’t working. Except for his unique link with Tara, Chance had never before tried to reach someone who wasn’t within sight, and the disorienting effects of smoke and heat made it doubly hard to concentrate.

  Then he felt Tara rejoin him. Oxygen cleared away the haze in his brain and his mind came to a sharp focus. It was as if he could not only feel her but breathe with her.

  An unnamed power was fusing their spirits, boosting Chance’s ability to reach out. As he released his tension and opened himself to receive contact, he caught a fleeting hint of fear. Was he tapping into his son’s thoughts or mistaking his own emotions for telepathic communication?

  Then the fear returned, plus more. Confusion. Determination. Concern for Lois.

  Bits and pieces came to him, not clearly enough to provide a picture of the missing pair, but at least he knew they were still alive. The one fact that reached him clearly was that Harry and Lois had found a third staircase, closer to the fire’s origin.

  Chance strained to stay with the child’s mind. The sensations kept slipping away, but he had to learn more. He needed at least a general idea of where the two had gone, or he would never have time to find them.

  Help me, Tara.

  A tingling across his skin gave him the odd impression of a ghostly figure overlying his body. Then, with a cooling sigh and a subliminal buzz, their spirits merged.

  With the boost from their combined strength, he caught an image of Harry and Lois staggering down from the attic until the staircase became too smoke filled for them to reach the ground floor. They emerged here, on the second floor.

  Rising, Chance shouted their names, then realized he must have seen something that had happened earlier. Otherwise, he would have heard or spotted the pair by now. But where had they gone?

  He struggled to visualize which room they had entered, but exhaustion thinned the connection with Tara. Drained and starting to cough, he couldn’t find her again.

  “We need to search the rooms, fast.” He turned, expecting to find Ray behind him, but the man wasn’t there. A glance at the landing showed that he wasn’t waiting on the stairs, either.

  How like the .man to have fled, just when he was needed most! Restraining his anger, Chance returned his attention to the corridor.

  He didn’t have more than a few minutes to search before he himself would be overcome. He would have to check the rooms and hope the pair were in plain sight.

  The first room proved to be an office, crammed with desks and filing cabinets. Chance shouted their names hoarsely, but there was no answer.

  Pulling the cummerbund tighter around his mouth, he moved on.

  A GREAT MANTLE of weariness pressed down on Tara. She, too, had seen Harry and Lois stagger from the stairs into the second-floor hallway,
but where were they?

  She tried to reach out, to give Chance her strength, but received only an impression of choking darkness. It had an odd familiarity, not from the distant past but from something she’d seen recently.

  A videotape on fire preparedness. She’d checked it out of the library a few months ago to watch with her son. It had been one of those endless motherly precautions, like posting CPR instructions on the refrigerator.

  The video’s horrifying depiction of roiling darkness had given her nightmares. Harry hadn’t been fazed, though.

  A comment he’d made tickled the back of her mind, as hard to grasp as a fading dream. What was it? What had he said?

  “Why don’t the people get in the bathtub?”

  That was it! He’d been convinced that hiding in a tub of water was the best protection from a fire. Although Tara had pointed out the deadliness of smoke inhalation, Harry hadn’t understood.

  Was it possible the notion had stuck in his mind? She had to let Chance know.

  IT WAS TAKING LONGER than he expected to go through the rooms. Once Chance thought he saw a shadow move, and shoved aside several boxes before he realized it had been caused by lights outside the window.

  There were half a dozen more rooms, and he was running out of air. He still hadn’t seen any firemen on this floor. Why didn’t they come racing up the main staircase, which must connect with the other end of the hallway?

  As he thrust his way into yet another office, the chilling truth struck him. The main staircase didn’t reach this corridor. There must be another section of second floor, separated by the two- and three-story meeting and ballrooms. Unless the firemen stumbled across one of the two smaller staircases, they wouldn’t even know this area existed until too late.

  Even keeping close to the floor barely provided enough air. Sputtering and gasping, Chance knew he could investigate one more chamber at most.

  Bathtub.

  He heard the word, and knew the communication came from Tara. It was all she could get through to him.

  Somehow, she had figured out where Harry was. Now if Chance could only find him.

  Bypassing the next two offices, he staggered toward a narrow door. It was too dark to read, but his fingers traced the letters R and E.

  Rest room.

  He staggered inside, peering through the haze. There were two toilet stalls and a sink but no tub. Bitterness churned as he realized that, even if Harry had come here, the boy wouldn’t have found what he was seeking.

  But this was an old house. Maybe the tub lay in an adjacent room, out of sight.

  Stumbling around the stalls, he saw that he’d guessed right. Behind them stood a small door that he would otherwise have mistaken for a closet.

  “Harry? Lois?” Wrenching it open, Chance stepped onto a tiled surface.

  Floodlights from outside shone through a narrow window onto an old-fashioned claw-footed tub filled with water. In the distorted shadows, he thought for a moment it was empty, then realized he was seeing an almost solid mass formed by two bodies intertwined.

  “Daddy!” A little voice raised goose bumps across his flesh.

  “Chance! Lois tried to rise, slipped and grabbed the edge of the tub.

  He pulled them both from the water. The splash of wetness against his clothing felt wonderful, but it couldn’t compare with the exultation of seeing their eager faces.

  Harry nestled into his father’s arms. “You saved us!”

  “Thank heavens, you’re here.” Trembling and soaked, Lois didn’t look much older than the boy. “I can’t believe we’re safe!”

  The danger was far from past, however. They still had to get out of here.

  Chance doubted they’d be able to go back the way he’d come. Without giving it any more thought, he yanked at the double-hung sash window.

  It stuck. Two more shoulder-straining jerks and he shoved it open. Leaning out, he waved and shouted, but with all the commotion, he couldn’t make himself heard.

  He didn’t need to. Whether she’d seen him or sensed him, Tara noticed him at once. With a signal of recognition, she ran toward one of the firefighters.

  It seemed to take forever, but must have been no more than a few minutes, before a ladder reached them. With a fireman’s assistance, Chance boosted Harry out the window, followed by a shivering Lois.

  He himself was coughing so hard, he nearly fell on the way down, but he wasn’t going to give up now. Only when his feet made contact with the pavement did he allow himself to stagger in exhaustion.

  A fire captain caught him. “Is everyone out, sir?” the man asked.

  About to answer in the affirmative, Chance hesitated. “My father went up with me and then he vanished. I assumed he came downstairs.”

  “What does your father look like, sir?” the captain queried, when a shout came from the attic. Above, a firefighter emerged onto a ladder with a large body draped over his shoulder.

  Instead of fleeing, Raymond must have thrust his way into the thick of danger. He’d been trying to find his niece and grandson in the attic.

  He was hurt but alive, one of the firefighters said a few minutes later. That was the last thing Chance heard before he blacked out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “It is a time for new beginnings.” Great-aunt Cynda plopped her crystal ball onto the table beside Raymond’s hospital bed.

  “I suppose it is.” Tara stifled a yawn. She’d spent the night at Harry’s bedside while he, Chance and Lois were under observation and Ray was treated for smoke inhalation and second-degree burns.

  The boy was napping this morning, and Tara had decided to accompany Cynda as she visited the others. They’d left Chance when his doctor arrived, and picked up Lois en route to the burn unit.

  “Things will be different now,” Cynda announced. “Very different indeed.”

  “You’ve seen the future?” Lois asked. Her hands, which had been blistered last night, were thrust deep into the pockets of her bathrobe.

  “I don’t need to see the future. It’s clear to anyone.” The older woman stepped away from the crystal ball. “I thought my nephew might want to practice with this while he’s laid up. He needs to find a better outlet for his energies than trying to manipulate other people.”

  From his mummylike swathe of bandages, Raymond eyed her ruefully. He was doped up with painkillers, but the doctor had said the burns weren’t severe enough to be life threatening and he should make a full recovery.

  “I guess we all need a better outlet for our energies,” Lois admitted. “Tara, I’m sorry. I’ve been so stupid and selfish.”

  “At least it came out okay,” Tara said. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt more seriously.”

  “Thanks to Harry.” The young woman grimaced. “He’s the one who kept calm, not me. He’s a very special little boy, and not because of any darn mind-reading abilities. Phooey on that.”

  “I’m glad to see you’ve had a change of heart,” Cynda told her granddaughter. “And a change of career, too, I hope.”

  Ray mumbled beneath his bandages.

  “You stay out of this,” said Cynda.

  “Oh, let the mummy speak.” Lois shot her boss a skeptical glance. “Well?”

  The words were slurred and only partly audible. “Somebody has to mumble mumble and take over the business. Lois has the right mumble.”

  “You’re retiring? Good!” Cynda gave his bandaged leg a thump. “New beginnings, just as I said!”

  “I’ve got a lot to learn about the company.” Lois sighed. “You have executives who are a lot more qualified than I am. But maybe I’ll stick around and work my way up.”

  “You can do it,” said Cynda. “Without any sneaky stuff.”

  “Absolutely,” Lois agreed. “By the way, Raymond, what did Victor Moustaki have to say about last night’s fiasco?”

  “Surely he isn’t taking phone calls!” Cynda protested.

  “I have it on good authority he took this one,” sai
d her granddaughter. “I talked to his secretary this morning.

  “He mumble mumble that we were spying mumble mumble cussed me out. The deal’s off.”

  “Serves you right.” Cynda’s peppery response, far from angering Raymond, raised a low chuckle.

  “I’m a changed man. I’ll never mumble mumble again.”

  “We’ll see about that.” She gave him a stern look.

  After a few minutes, Tara excused herself and made her way to Harry’s room. She found her son awake, playing with a menagerie of stuffed animals sent by a kindhearted public. The dramatic rescue had appeared on the late news and in this morning’s papers.

  The coverage had reached as far as Kentucky. Tara’s father had called earlier, full of concern. He’d invited her, Harry and Chance to come visit his new family, and she’d said they would, when things settled down.

  Her father’s rejection when she’d needed him most could never entirely be erased, but neither could the ties between them. Tara was glad her son would have a chance to know both his grandfathers.

  “How’s Daddy?” the boy asked as she sat down.

  “He’s fine. You should both be coming home today,” Tara said. “You’re a hero. Did you know that?”

  He grinned. “I can’t wait to tell Al and Sammi!”

  “I’ll bet they already know.” She stroked a shock of brown hair from his forehead. Aside from some bruises, he’d come through the ordeal remarkably unscathed. “You saved Lois’s life.”

  His expression grew serious. “It was Dad who saved us. And you did, too, figuring out about the bathtub. Mom?”

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “I thought I was real powerful, because of the stuff I can do. But it wasn’t much use against a fire, was it?”

  She scooped her son into her arms. “Magical powers are no substitute for good judgment and courage. And you showed both of those last night”.

  A nurse came in with discharge papers, and there was no more time for quiet talk. Tara found herself bustling through the hospital, making sure all the paperwork was completed for Chance as well as for Harry. She barely had time to say goodbye to Cynda and Lois.