by Jayne Castle
“What does it take to be accepted?” Rachel asked.
Vince reddened. “I dunno. Mr. Kidwell makes the decision. When he decides you’ve got what he calls potential, he invites you to join the Circle. There’s like this cool ceremony, see? We went down into the catacombs with Mr. Kidwell and we took an oath and swore that we would never reveal the secrets of the Circle and stuff like that. Then we get the tat.”
Harry looked at Rachel over the top of Vince’s head. “Any ideas here?”
“Yes,” Rachel said, thinking about it. “We were right.
Mr. Kidwell and his friend Mr. Cosgrove use Second Chance House to recruit their own private army of street kids.”
“An expendable army,” Harry said. “Use and toss as needed. No one will notice a few kids who go missing off the street.”
Vince looked up at him, alarmed. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t want to know,” Harry said.
“One more question,” Rachel said. “Did Mr. Kidwell wear any jewelry?”
“Yeah, he’s got a ring with a griffin on it. Why?” “Any other jewelry?”
Vince shrugged. “I dunno. We never see his face. He wears a mask and this big old-fashioned cloak when we meet him down in the tunnels.”
Chapter 20
“Mr. Kidwell is Marcus Lancaster,” Rachel said. “I’m sure of it.”
“We can’t be sure of anything yet,” Harry said, “but I agree that’s a likely possibility.”
He leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs out under the small café table, folded his arms, and watched Rachel pace the small space. It was not like her to pace, he thought. Her restlessness said a lot about her mood.
Darwina, perched on the far end of the counter, the Amberella doll clutched tightly in one paw, had picked up on Rachel’s tension. The dust bunny was partially sleeked out. Now and again she opened her second set of eyes as if watching for a threat.
Rachel glowered. “I thought we agreed that it is no coincidence that Vince and Eric are wearing griffin tattoos identical to the one on Lancaster’s ring.”
“I agree the tats are a link between the three of them, but at the moment, that’s all we’ve got. Keep in mind that it wasn’t Kidwell who sent Vince and Eric after me, it was this other guy, Cosgrove. And remember that currently Kidwell is locked up in a para-psych ward at the Chapman Clinic.”
“They’re working together.”
“Sounds like it, yes. But why?”
She opened the glass case that held a selection of chocolate zingers and offered one to Darwina. “Here you go, pal. These cookies won’t last another day, and I don’t think we’re going to get any more from Jilly until the power comes back on.”
Darwina appeared to forget about any potential threat in the vicinity. She chortled, dropped Amberella on the counter, and bustled forward to seize the cookie. She settled down to polish off the treat with gusto.
Rachel watched her with affection. “Life is so uncomplicated for a dust bunny. Talk about the ultimate stage of Enlightenment. They truly do live in the now.”
“Maybe they have mastered the art of living in the present moment,” Harry said, “but I’ve got a hunch there is a dark side to dust bunny life.”
Rachel glanced at him, startled, “Why do you say that?”
“Because they are living creatures and that means they have to work to stay alive. Staying alive always has a dark side.”
Rachel blinked “Okay, that’s a very yin-yang thing to say. Are you sure you never studied at an HE academy?”
“The HE community isn’t the first or the only crowd to seek enlightenment.” Harry got to his feet. “Let’s go talk to our witness.”
“Calvin Dillard? Okay.”
She went quickly about the business of closing up the bookshop. When she was finished, she gathered up her tote and Darwina and Amberella and put the Closed sign in the front window. Harry opened the back door, and they all went outside and got into the SUV. Darwina hopped up onto the back of the passenger seat and fluffed up with an air of great expectation, but Harry got the impression she was rather unimpressed when he drove slowly and cautiously through the fog.
“What do you know about Dillard?” he asked.
“Not much but, then, that’s not exactly unusual here on Rainshadow. Calvin has never talked about his past. About the only thing I can tell you is that he subscribes to some science journals and that he’s a musician.”
“Which journals?”
“I can’t remember the names. He comes into town to pick up his mail a few times a week and he often stops at my shop for a cup of tea and a package of the tisane I blend for him before he drives back out to his place. A couple of times I’ve noticed the journals among the items in his mail. I asked him about them once.”
“What did he say?”
“Just that they were left over from another life.”
“Are they the sort of science magazines that are published for laypeople?” Harry asked.
“No, they were the serious sort that are read by academics and researchers.”
“What area of science?”
“Hmm? Oh, biology. I think that once upon a time he did some work in that field. He’s a very intelligent man. Brilliant, really.”
“You said he was a musician. What does he play?”
“Several instruments. I know for sure he’s got a violin and a guitar because he plays them occasionally at local celebrations and get-togethers.” She paused. “I think that he was playing a flute the morning I walked out of the Preserve. I remember following the sound of the music. The notes were crystal clear.”
“He was playing a flute at dawn?”
“A lot of the locals keep odd hours.”
He thought about that. It was true that the residents of Rainshadow were an odd bunch, but something told him that the business with the flute was important.
“One thing we’ve got in our favor,” he said aloud, “is that all forms of communication are down. There’s no way Lancaster can know what is going on here. He’s stuck in that locked ward at the Chapman Clinic. If he’s as deep in this thing as it looks, he must be frustrated and nervous as hell.”
“That’s a good thing?”
“Yes. Frustrated people tend to get reckless and make mistakes.”
“What about this Cosgrove person?” Rachel asked.
“He is now occupying the number-two position on my priority list, right below Calvin Dillard.”
“I thought I was Suspect Number One.”
His hands tightened on the wheel. “Rachel, I’ve tried to explain—”
“Never mind. That’s Calvin’s cottage up ahead.”
Chapter 21
If the road hadn’t dead-ended at the cottage, it would have been easy to miss Calvin Dillard’s house in the thick fog. As it was, Harry caught only glimpses of the weather-beaten cabin floating in and out of the gray mist.
He shut down the SUV’s flash-rock engine, raised his senses a little, and studied the old place. The windows were dark. An ancient pickup truck sat in the weedy drive. He could feel the crackle of psi that leaked out of the nearby Preserve.
“Dillard does live very close to the fence,” he said.
“Yes.” Rachel grabbed her somewhat battered leather jacket, cracked open the door, and started to get out of the vehicle. Darwina bounded up onto her shoulder and hunkered down with Amberella.
Harry noticed that the dust bunny was not chortling in her usual enthusiastic way. She had all four eyes open. Probably picking up on Rachel’s tension, he thought. Or maybe it was the hot psi swirling out of the Preserve. Or maybe something else.
“Hang on,” he said quietly. “I think we need a plan.”
Rachel was half in and half out of the front seat. The toe of one boot was on the ground. She turned back to look at him.
“What is there to plan?” she said. “I thought we were just going to ask Calvin a few questions.”
&nbs
p; “I’m all for questioning him. It was my idea, remember?”
“Your point?”
He considered his point while he slipped the knife out of the ankle sheath and walked around the front of the SUV to join her. He stood for a moment, looking toward the invisible boundary that marked the outer edge of the Preserve. The woods were cloaked in fog, but he could feel the fence and something else, some nameless, formless, impossible-to-describe darkness.
“Something doesn’t feel right here,” he said.
“Things never feel normal this close to the fence.” She started toward the front door of the cottage. “Questioning Calvin is going to be a delicate process. He’s very touchy about his privacy. You’d better let me handle it.”
“He’s all yours.”
Harry quartered the fog-drenched landscape one last time, searching for whatever it was that had stirred his intuition. There was nothing to see in the heavy mist, but he couldn’t shake the ominous sensation. He held the knife out of sight, alongside his leg.
He thought he’d been slick about the move, but Rachel must have sensed it. She turned to look at him over her shoulder. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the weapon.
“What is that thing?” she asked.
“It’s a knife.”
“It doesn’t look like a knife. It looks like some sort of medallion.”
“Trust me, it’s a knife.”
Rachel looked dubious. “I’ve never seen a knife like that.”
“It came out of one of the company labs.”
“Which company?”
“Sebastian, Inc.”
“Well, you won’t need that with Calvin. He’s harmless, I promise.”
“I believe you,” Harry said. But he did not sheathe the knife.
Rachel turned back to the door and rapped against it, sharply. Harry did not hear any footsteps on the other side.
Darwina muttered to herself and kept watch with all four eyes as if expecting a predator larger than herself to appear at any moment.
“I don’t understand it,” Rachel said. She glanced at her watch, winced when she remembered that it had stopped, and eyed the gathering fog. “Calvin’s truck is here. He must be home. I wonder if anyone came out to check on him this morning after the storm. Maybe he was injured and can’t make it to the door. There was all that lightning last night and this place is so close to the Preserve—”
“I’ll take a look,” Harry said.
She glanced at him, clearly worried now. He edged her gently but firmly out of the way. He wrapped one hand around the doorknob and opened the door.
Seething currents of dark energy wafted through the opening. Not fresh, he thought, but probably not more than a few hours old. He did not need Darwina’s low growl of warning to know that whatever had happened inside the cottage had been of a violent nature. He glanced at the dust bunny. She seemed to be focused on the entrance but she had not gone into full hunting mode.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Rachel asked quietly.
“Yes.” Harry moved into the shadowed front room of the cottage. “Feels like there was a struggle, but the place is empty now.”
“A struggle? Is Calvin—”
“Not dead,” Harry said. He moved into the front room. There were muddy boot prints on the floor. “At least he wasn’t killed here.”
She walked into the cabin. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure.”
She stopped just inside the room and gave a small cry of anguish. “Dear heaven.”
She took in the mute evidence of the struggle that had taken place. A chair was overturned. Pieces of a shattered lamp were strewn across the bare wooden floor. Several aging copies of the Journal of Marine Biology were scattered across the floor.
“Someone attacked Calvin,” Rachel whispered. “Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said.
“Maybe he is dead. Maybe his body is in the bedroom or the kitchen or—”
“No.” He put some steel into the word. “I don’t know if he’s alive or dead but I can tell you that no one was murdered in this cottage.”
She eyed him uncertainly. “You can feel that kind of thing?”
He stopped in the middle of the small space and jacked up his senses another notch. “It’s an aspect of my talent. I blame my family gene pool. Had a couple of ancestors back on Earth who possessed similar abilities and then there was good old Harry One.”
“The pirate?”
“Yes.” He did a quick check of the small kitchen.
“And here I thought my sensitivity had a serious downside.”
“It does.” He glanced back at her as he made his way down a short hall to the bedroom. “I’d say that when it comes to unpleasant talents, being able to see the monsters in our midst ranks right up there with a talent for picking up the psi-residue of violence and murder. But at least your talent has a major upside.”
“What?”
“The ability to heal. All I can do is deliver more violence.”
She watched him with somber eyes. “So you hunt the monsters.”
“It’s about all a talent like mine is good for.”
“Don’t knock it. There’s an old saying, one fights fire with fire.”
He looked at her again, surprised. “Somehow that doesn’t sound very HE.”
“Actually it is very HE. People outside the Community have so many—”
“Misconceptions. Yes, you’ve made that clear.”
He took a quick look around the bedroom. The bed was neatly made. An old harmonica sat on the nearby table. A guitar hung on the wall. There was no sign of a disturbance in the small space. Calvin had almost certainly been in the front room when he was taken.
He started back along the hall, pausing to check the tiny bathroom. He heard Rachel speak to Darwina.
“What did you find?” Rachel asked. “Can I see it?”
He arrived in the doorway in time to see Rachel crouched down in front of Darwina. The dust bunny was bouncing up and down excitedly. She still clutched her Amberella doll but she had a crystal cylinder about six inches long in one of her other paws. She graciously gave the cylinder to Rachel and fluttered off to explore the territory beneath the desk.
Rachel got to her feet and studied the gleaming object in her hand.
“What have you got there?” Harry said. “Looks like a miniature flute.”
“Yes.” She stared at the flute, comprehension heating her eyes.
“More memories?” he asked quietly.
“I remember this flute or one just like it. Calvin wasn’t playing it that morning. I was. I brought it with me out of the Preserve. In fact, I used it to find my way out.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Listen.”
She raised the flute to her lips and blew gently. He felt energy shivering in the atmosphere and knew that she had used some psi to rez the flute.
A delicate note, icy cold and clear as crystal sounded in the small space. It seemed to hang there for a few seconds before it faded. Rachel lowered the flute.
“This was how I navigated the Preserve,” she whispered. “How could I forget something like that?”
“Probably because someone helped you forget,” Harry said. “Let me see that thing.”
She handed it to him without a word. He took it and turned it over in his hand. The design was graceful, almost ethereal, but the crystal flute did not seem at all fragile. There was something ever so slightly off about the feel of the instrument in his fingers, however, as if it had been fashioned for a hand that was not quite human.
“Alien technology,” he said quietly.
Rachel’s eyes widened. “Yes, of course. That explains a lot. But where did I get it and how did I know how to use it to make my way out of the Preserve?”
“We seem to be piling up more questions than answers.”
“What do you think happened here? Where is Calvin?”
“I don’t know where Calvin Dillard is,” Harry said. “But it’s clear that someone took him.”
Rachel swung around to stare at him, horrified. “You mean he was kidnapped.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“But that makes no sense,” Rachel said.
Harry hunkered down and jacked up his talent to study the muddy boot prints on the floor of the living room. Darwina scampered toward him to see if he was about to introduce some new game. Together they examined the eddies of hot psi that swirled in the atmosphere around the prints.
“Whoever they are, they came out of the Preserve,” Harry said. He rose and went into the kitchen. He opened the back door and looked at the glowing tracks. The fog was so thick he could not see the ground, but the paranormal energy of the tracks glowed in the mist. “They left that way, too, taking their prisoner with them.”
Rachel came to join him. She studied the thickening mist. “Why would they take Calvin?”
“I don’t have the answer to that but I think it’s safe to say that someone did not want me to talk to him.”
“Dear heaven,” Rachel whispered. “It’s because of me.”
“I agree there’s probably a connection.” Harry closed the door and went back into the living room. He opened a drawer in the desk and saw a heap of sheet music. “But why would someone want to kidnap him just because he saw you walk out of the Preserve and gave you a lift home?”
There was a short silence behind him. He looked at Rachel. She was gazing fixedly at the little flute. She raised her head. Her eyes were haunted.
“Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that I emerged from the Preserve here at Calvin’s place,” she said.
“You think the flute was somehow tuned to this location?” He glanced at the crystal device. “That almost makes sense. But if it’s true, it means than Calvin Dillard is involved in this thing up to his neck.”
“I don’t pretend to understand how or why—my memories are still very foggy—but my intuition tells me that Calvin saved me that night I disappeared into the Preserve. Now he’s in trouble. We have to find him.”
