sedona files - books one to three

by Christine Pope

  “Arianna, please.”

  “Arianna.”

  She sent me a sideways half-surprised glance. I knew the surprise was less for showing up in Claremont completely unannounced than appearing with such a hunk in tow. Certainly she knew I wasn’t seeing anyone special, because I would have mentioned someone like Paul. And I also knew she was doing some other quick mental calculations; after all, most couples who weren’t cohabiting didn’t go out for breakfast together unless they’d spent the previous night in each other’s company as well. Not that it was any of her business, of course, but even at thirty-two I still hadn’t quite gotten past the weight of my mother’s expectations.

  “So what are you doing in town, Mom?” I asked, figuring it was safer to go on the offensive than wait for her to start asking questions.

  Not that my abrupt salvo put her off her stride one bit. “Second Saturday — Chamber meeting. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

  “I thought Paul should have one of George’s world-famous Denver omelettes.”

  “I suppose it is worth the drive,” she said, with another one of those significant glances. “So where are you from, Paul?”

  “New Mexico,” he replied, looking a bit bemused.

  Funny how he could manage alien invasions with aplomb but didn’t quite know how to handle my mother. Then again, I really shouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe we’d been going about this whole thing all wrong. Maybe all we really needed to do was sic my mother on the aliens and call it a day.

  “New Mexico! What brings you all the way out here?”

  “Well, I — ”

  I cut in, “Paul’s out here on business. We met through work.”

  “Work?” she repeated, and pulled the sunglasses off her head so she could tap one of the stems against her chin. I knew that was a warning sign. She’d never been terribly thrilled about the whole psychic thing. It was sort of hard to explain to the other members of the Chamber and her friends at the Women’s Club. “Are you a psychic, too, Paul?”

  “No,” he said, and I saw the little quirk at the corner of his mouth, the one that meant he was trying to suppress his amusement. “I’m an astrophysicist.”

  “Really?” She sounded almost impressed…and then she squinted a little, as if thinking it over. “I wasn’t aware that astrophysicists and psychics had much in common, work-wise.”

  “Isn’t the Chamber meeting at ten?” I asked, even though I knew I sounded desperate. At that moment, however, I really didn’t care.

  “So it is,” she replied, with another of those significant looks. “Guess I’d better be going. Very nice to meet you, Paul.”

  “Nice to meet you, too, Mrs. — Arianna.”

  My mother flashed him a sunny smile, then replaced her sunglasses on her nose. “I’ll call,” she told me ominously, before sailing off down the sidewalk.

  A silence fell, during which I studiously stirred the lemon in my glass of water and tried to avoid looking at Paul, who was staring down the street in the direction my mother had disappeared.

  “I really didn’t plan that,” I said, once I realized the waitress wasn’t going to come rescue me by interrupting to ask what we wanted to order.

  He laughed. “I figured.”

  “Thank you for not running screaming into the night.”

  With a shake of his head, he said, “After you’ve sat through two separate dissertation panels, it takes a lot to intimidate you.”

  “Right. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  And then the waitress did show up to take our orders. I settled for a cafe au lait and hoped it would provide the appropriate kick to keep me going through the day. Tea didn’t seem as if it would cut it, given the current situation.

  I also reflected that Paul was definitely a keeper. True, my mother had been (somewhat) restrained for her, but it usually only took a few minutes in my mother’s company for someone to realize that she might be more of a handful than a man would want as a prospective mother-in-law. And that really was silly of me, because a few days in someone’s company and a spectacular night in the sack weren’t quite enough to warrant choosing a china pattern.

  “Anyone else I should worry about wandering by?” Paul inquired, still with that amused lift to his mouth. “Father…brothers…sisters…long-lost cousins?”

  “No,” I retorted. “That is, I’m an only child, and my father tends to spend Saturday morning tinkering with his ’67 Camaro. I think my mother started going to Chamber meetings just so she wouldn’t have to listen to him playing with power tools.”

  He appeared to contemplate that for a bit, then asked, “Do you think she’ll tell anyone?”

  It took me a few seconds to figure out what he was getting at, because at first my paranoia kicked in, and I thought he was worried that she was going to tell the world we were shacked up together. Then I realized he was understandably concerned that she might, in an otherwise innocent phone call, let slip that I’d been seen in the vicinity of Claremont. I had no idea whether anyone was listening in on her phone or hacking her emails, but I knew if I were trying to track down someone who didn’t want to get caught, I’d be keeping an eye on all the friends and family just in case.

  “I don’t know,” I said frankly. “She’ll say something to my father, I’m guessing, but my mother is definitely the in-person type. That’s why she loves going to all the meetings — that way she can network with people face to face instead of over the phone or via email.”

  “Well, let’s hope for the best.”

  I nodded, and then the waitress brought our coffee. I busied myself with stirring in the single packet of sugar I would allow myself. Otto had always advised me to follow an ayurvedic diet, as that would have better freed up my psychic abilities, but I didn’t have that sort of discipline. About the best I could do was watch it with the refined sugar.

  Run-ins with my mother aside, I found myself enjoying the fact that Paul and I had somehow managed to avoid the whole “morning after” awkwardness. In similar situations in the past there had too often been mumbled assertions of future phone calls, calls that never materialized, or at the very least those strange interludes where you’d look over at your companion and think, Holy crap, I was doing all sorts of unspeakable things to that person not twelve hours ago.

  But with Paul there didn’t seem to be any of that. Oh, sure, he threw a significant glance in my direction from time to time, the sort of look that sent happy little tingles down my spine. However, for the most part, we were just going along, moving forward as best we could, only with the added wrinkle of a layer of intimacy that hadn’t existed twenty-four hours ago.

  He smiled at me then, just before he lifted his mug of coffee to blow on it. Something inside me turned over, and I knew I was in trouble. Because I really did want to start ordering china patterns, or at least the emotional equivalent. Never mind that I had no idea what the rest of this day was going to bring, or how the hell we were really going to succeed at what seemed like an impossible task. All I seemed able to think about was how Paul made me feel a way that no one had ever managed to do before, and how at the moment I really didn’t care what happened, just as long as I could be with him.

  Luckily, he seemed to understand that I was in a contemplative mood — or maybe he thought I needed some time to recover from our unexpected encounter with my mother. Whatever the case, he appeared content to watch the people pass by in the street, and to take his own meditative sips of coffee, until the waitress arrived with our omelettes.

  After that there was some healthy digging in, because if nothing else, we’d both worked up some fairly massive appetites after last night and this morning. It wasn’t until roughly half of his omelette had disappeared that he set down his fork and said, “How well does this Tyler Russo know his stuff?”

  I thought for a moment, my own fork dangling from my fingers as I contemplated his question. “Pretty well, as far as I know. He’s been working as a sound
engineer for about fifteen years now, I think. The company he works for gets a lot of the big contracts — if there’s a blockbuster, there’s a good chance it’s going to end up passing through Topanga Digital at some point.”

  “And you think he’ll be honest with you?”

  “I don’t see any reason why not.” I picked up a toast point and spread some blackberry jam on it while I contemplated Tyler Russo. Probably the last guy you’d expect to visit a psychic, as he seemed a very nuts and bolts sort of person, but he’d come via a recommendation from a friend and had stuck with me for the past few years. Mostly for relationship help; he didn’t have much luck in that area. I guided him as best I could, although I knew his real trouble was that he worked insane hours much of the time, and, short of finding a woman who was an airline pilot and so never around as well, he probably would continue to strike out.

  “Unless the aliens have gotten to him during the past few days,” I added, and waited to see if any sort of twinge or chill might follow my statement. None did, which meant either Tyler was still in the clear, or my spider sense had packed its bags and left for the Bahamas so it could meet up with Otto.

  “But you don’t think that’s the case.”

  “No — but how did you know?”

  “Maybe some of your powers are rubbing off on me.”

  Or it could be that I had the world’s worst poker face. I glanced down at my watch. Ten forty-five. If Tyler wasn’t up by now, then he was sleeping in after an all-nighter, which meant it really didn’t matter what time I called — anything would be inconvenient. “Let me borrow your phone.”

  Paul reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the little prepaid cellular. I had to hope Tyler would pick up, even if he didn’t recognize the number; on occasion he took side gigs in addition to his regular job at Topanga Digital, and so it wasn’t in his best interests to ignore a call, even if it came from a phone number he’d never seen before.

  I did power up my own iPhone, but only to get Tyler’s number from the address book app. His phone rang once, twice, three times. I bit my lip and began mentally composing a message in case it rolled over to voicemail, but on the fourth ring I heard a sleepy-sounding male voice say, “Hello?”

  So I had woken him up. Knowing there wasn’t anything to do but forge ahead, I said, “Hi, Tyler. This is Persephone O’Brien.”

  “Persephone?” A pause, and then, “Did I miss an appointment or something? It’s been kind of crazy lately — ”

  “No,” I broke in. “Nothing like that. I actually just wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “Questions?”

  “About your work. If you don’t mind.”

  “Well, I’ve got to be back at work in about an hour — ”

  There went any plans of seeing him in person. I’d have to do this over the phone and hope for the best. “Oh, that’s fine,” I said hastily, and glanced across at Paul and raised my eyebrows, as if to ask whether it really was okay. He responded by lifting his shoulders and giving me a somewhat resigned nod. “I’ll make this fast. You say you’ve been really busy lately?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Have you noticed anything unusual about the projects?”

  A note of suspicion entered his voice, but it felt like normal caution to me, not any real attempt at a cover-up. “Unusual how?”

  I sent a pleading look in Paul’s direction. How was I supposed to ask the right questions when I really didn’t know what we were looking for?

  Paul leaned across the table and murmured, “Ask him if he’s noticed any anomalies in the upper bands of the digital tracks. They might have caused a distortion that he’d have to compensate for across the other bands.”

  My knight in shining armor. “Any anomalies in the upper bands? They might have caused distortions that you’d notice, and have to compensate for.”

  A long pause. Then, “How’d you know about that?”

  I could practically feel the uncertainty and worry pulsing across the ionosphere and working its way down into the cell phone I held. All very human emotions, though…I still didn’t sense anything odd or otherworldly about him. So Tyler was apparently still Tyler. “Um — something another client spoke to me about. I told him I had someone I could ask. Confidentially, of course. I didn’t give him your name.”

  “Oh.” Another one of those hesitations, but somehow I knew that, some thirty miles away, Tyler had relaxed slightly. “Well, yeah, I have been seeing stuff like that for the last few weeks. It’s really making my life miserable. I even went to my bosses with it, said that we were getting junk from the studios and that the mix wasn’t going to be clean, but they told me to just do what I could and leave it alone. So I did.”

  Which could mean the bosses were controlled by aliens…or just too used to taking their orders from the studios, which of course were everybody’s bread and butter in this town. I knew that things in post-production were often worked on up until the last minute, so the material that had been hitting Topanga Digital and playing havoc with Tyler’s carefully calibrated equipment was probably going to be in multiplexes within the next few weeks, if even that long. We didn’t have a lot of time.

  “Thanks, Tyler,” I said, and tried to sound breezy and unconcerned, as if all I’d been doing was collecting data for someone else and not trying to figure out what I was supposed to do to keep the alien hordes from enslaving the entire planet. “That helps a lot. Sorry I woke you.”

  “No prob. The alarm was going to go off in ten minutes anyway. Have a good one.”

  He hung up, and I snapped the phone shut and handed it back to Paul.

  “There’s already a lot of ‘infected’ material in the pipeline,” I told him, and his brow creased.

  “Damn. I was hoping we might have gotten a jump on things.”

  “Well, all is not lost.” I thought furiously, trying to dredge up all the minutiae of the technical side of the film industry that I’d mentally shoved aside, not thinking it would ever be of much use to me. Guess you just never knew. I went on, “I know all that data has to be stored someplace. And I know actual film also has to be stored, even though more and more places are digital these days. But we don’t have much of a lead, that’s for sure.”

  Paul was still holding the phone in his hand. It went off, chirping away in the annoying standard ring tone he’d never bothered to change.

  I probably would have started and dropped the thing. But he just opened it, scanned the number quickly, and lifted the phone to his ear. “Jeff.”

  That syllable was followed by a silence of about half a minute, while the line between Paul’s eyebrows deepened and his mouth tightened. Finally he said, “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Immediately I started looking around for our waitress so I could have her bring the bill. “What is it?”

  “New developments. Jeff wants us there as soon as possible.”

  “What sort of developments?”

  “He didn’t want to say. Just told me it was urgent.”

  Great. After craning my head to survey the other end of the patio, I locked eyes with the waitress and beckoned her over. Luckily she had just finished dropping off someone’s order, because she came over almost at once.

  “Anything else for you?”

  “Just the check.”

  Bless her, she had it in the pocket of her apron, and so was able to extract it and hand it to me on the spot. I thanked her, pulled the money out of my wallet, and handed it over to her. “Keep the change.”

  Her eyes widened a bit; she’d probably gotten about a thirty-percent tip, but it wasn’t worth waiting for those couple extra dollars. “Hey, thanks!”

  “My pleasure.”

  Paul got up, and I rose as well, stuffing the wallet back into my purse at the same time. Without speaking, we hurried out the little gate that led from the patio to the street, and then on to the parking lot half a block down. It wasn’t until we were back on the freeway, s
peeding eastward, that I spoke. “Did it sound bad?”

  “I didn’t get any details. But he sounded…strained.”

  In which case it probably wasn’t good news. I fiddled with the strap of my purse and stared out the window as the carefully landscaped freeway embankments slid by. Reapplying my lipstick seemed like a frivolous use of my time, but I didn’t have anything better to do, and Paul didn’t seem inclined to conversation. Too bad that the lipstick reapplication took roughly thirty seconds, while the trip to Fontana seemed to drag on forever.

  It was a bright, sunny day, much nicer than the one before, and yet as we drew closer to Lampson Labs, a chill began working its way down my spine. I knew that sensation, and it wasn’t a good one.

  I said, “I don’t know if this is such a good idea.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “A feeling. Something bad is waiting for us.”

  He let out a breath, and frowned as he turned off Fourth into the little industrial complex where the lab was located. “We already know it’s bad. It’s an alien virus.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “Could you provide a little more detail? A nebulous ‘bad feeling’ isn’t all that helpful.”

  I knew that just as well as he did, but at the moment I didn’t have anything else to offer. “Sorry. That’s it for now.”

  “We’ll just have to be careful, then.”

  Meaning he might be a little extra wary, but he wasn’t about to turn the car around. I forced a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself. True, my having a raging case of the heebie-jeebies meant more than it did with most people. However, I knew Paul was determined to meet Jeff and hear his news, so there wasn’t a lot I could do, short of making him stop the car and let me out.

  I knew I couldn’t abandon him, so I just knotted my fingers around my purse strap and bit my lip as we turned the corner and pulled up in front of Lampson Labs.

  Nothing seemed to have changed. Jeff’s shabby van and Raymond’s shiny Prius still occupied the same spots, which made sense, if they’d pulled an all-nighter. True, the rest of the lots around the building were pretty much deserted, but it was a Saturday, after all; not everyone was as dedicated as Raymond.