Lure of Song and Magic

by Patricia Rice

  Both Pippa and Oz dived for him. Conan dodged, but two against one wasn’t fair. As he leaped across a lounge chair to avoid Pippa’s full frontal grab for the iPod, Oz brought him down from the back. Pippa snatched the player, speakers and all, and flung them into the pool.

  Laughing, Conan didn’t struggle when they teamed up and tossed him into the water after his equipment.

  It was good to see the old Oz back. Maybe now they’d see some action.

  ***

  “No one keeled over screaming,” Oz argued while Conan sprawled in a pool chair like a lizard on a rock. Pippa wanted to dump him in the water all over again, the rat-fink bastard.

  The set designers had toddled off on their business. Gloria was sketching ideas for Oz’s production. And Pippa paced uselessly up and down the pool tiles, feeling as if a whirlwind occupied her insides.

  “He played my song! I told him not to open those files!” She picked up the towel Conan had used and swatted him with it. The rat merely opened one eyelid, gave her the evil eye, and closed it again. She hit him a second time and then threw the wet towel over his soaked khakis.

  “I’ll throw him in the pool again if it helps, but that’s what he does—experiments. And it worked. Your song hurt no one.”

  Pippa wanted to hit Oz, too, but she was rational enough to know it wasn’t his fault that his brother was an interfering jackal. “We’re adults. The song is geared for children. We don’t know what effect—”

  “It’s a children’s song, Pippa. Quit overthinking it,” Gloria scolded mildly. “Be upset because he broke your trust, if you like. He deserved dunking for that alone.”

  “Unfair, Gloria,” Conan protested from under the towel he’d placed over his face. “You’ve played those songs and didn’t die. I want to hear about you, Mexico, Donal, and Alys.”

  Pippa glowered, but he had the right to hear the story if he was supposed to be investigating the case, although he didn’t appear to be doing more than drying out at the moment.

  “There’s not much to say, dear. As soon as I was mentally and physically recovered enough, I tried to look for family on the website, and the Librarian warned me to run, that I was supposed to be dead.”

  Pippa had heard this once, when Oz had forced the information out of her mother earlier, but she still couldn’t quite process it all. The Librarian had known who Gloria Jean Malcolm was, knew Syrene and Gloria were related…

  But the all-knowing Librarian hadn’t known where Syrene went. She didn’t know Pippa. Or hadn’t. She probably did now. Did the Librarian want to reveal Syrene’s location, or was she simply trying to help Gloria find her?

  “So I paid cash for a clunker,” her mother obediently continued the story, “found a driver, and moved to Mexico. I could live there on my disability checks. But I kept the email account I’d established earlier and checked it every once in a while. That’s when I found the note that the Librarian was sending someone to me for protection.”

  “How come she could say that much to you and she can only send me Twitter notes?” Oz asked in disgust.

  “These weren’t long missives. Several had gathered by the time I read my mail. One said need help. Another later gave an address, just as you say she’s done for you. It was a miracle I opened them in time.”

  “I don’t like it,” Conan said from beneath his towel. “There’s too much left to chance.”

  “You’re the expert,” Pippa said, not bothering to keep the edge from her voice. “If someone’s computer messages can be monitored, how much can they send without being discovered?”

  “None,” he said succinctly. “But if the Librarian spends all day at a computer under supervision, she may simply be sending hasty messages when someone’s back is turned. I still don’t like it.”

  Oz threw an empty water bottle at him. “We don’t care what you like. The whole thing stinks.”

  “I failed poor Alys,” Gloria said, ignoring the byplay. “I’m terrified I’ll fail Siren and Donal as well by not giving you what you need to protect them.”

  “You saved Donal,” Oz corrected. “I’m the one who lost him. What happened to Alys was completely accidental. I had her death thoroughly investigated. She was a victim of bad luck and bad driving.”

  “And panic. She wasn’t thinking very clearly,” Gloria admitted. “She was afraid you might be the one endangering Donal, so she didn’t dare call you. She was almost hysterical when she left Donal with me. She didn’t even know whether to call her family.”

  Pippa stopped her pacing to squeeze Oz’s shoulders when he tensed. He’d already had to endure one hysterical woman in his life, one who had endangered herself and his son. He certainly didn’t need a neurotic female like her around, but they were stuck in this together.

  “We all react differently to danger,” she murmured. “Alys tried to do the right thing.”

  “She should have trusted me,” he said grimly.

  “Like you trust others?” she asked, causing him to turn and glare. Had Alys been a passive wimp afraid to confront Oz the bully? Pippa was betting yes.

  “So, how did you communicate with the Librarian?” Conan demanded, riding over the emotional interference with pragmatism.

  “I didn’t, dear,” Gloria said, returning to her sketching. “She sent me a message akin to ‘Siren lives’ and attached songs, and I simply did what she asked without question after that. My daughter’s voice is rather unique, you’ll have noticed,” she said dryly. “Once I recognized the seal song and realized I wasn’t hallucinating, I couldn’t deny her voice.”

  “Which probably means the Librarian has heard Pippa’s recordings, too, and hasn’t died from it,” Conan asserted. “Just as millions heard them when she was a kid. All I’ve done is prove the new song is harmless.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Pippa said sharply, hoping he’d cringe. He didn’t. “All you did was prove some people are immune. I already know Oz is. You may be too. My mother has taught herself to tune me out. And the set designers are adults. Until you play the song for children, you know nothing.”

  “I know the computer store where the Librarian probably stole the songs is owned by Adam Technology,” Conan said, apropos of nothing.

  That stopped Pippa’s pacing. Even Oz quit typing to stare.

  Conan lifted the towel to peer out. “Anyone heard of them?”

  “Can’t say that I have, dear.” Gloria held her sketch up to the light to examine it and then passed it on to Oz.

  Pippa wanted to jump up and down in frustration. “I will start detesting you shortly,” she warned Conan. “Loathing isn’t far behind.”

  He covered his face again. “Adam Technology also owns the website of Malcolm genealogy and the server to which you’re backing up your files. Very busy people. Lots of moola. Connected to every cyberspace corporation known to mankind and maybe some I can’t track on Mars, which may be where the owners live. It’s not a public company, and I can’t find the owners, but I’m betting your Librarian has access to their servers.”

  Even Gloria and Oz were staring at him now. Pippa grabbed a bottle of water, took a chair, and settled into a lotus position. Conan apparently liked attention. Oz should give him his own show. She refused to rise to his bait.

  “The dates line up,” Conan continued from beneath the towel. “Gloria’s accident was in the news twenty-three-and-a-half years ago, to be precise. Seven-day wonder, before a missing hiker and a wildfire took over the headlines. Driver dead at the scene. Woman paralyzed and comatose. No family members to contact. No identity.”

  “My grandmother was a Wainwright and lived in Texas. She was old and frail, and I didn’t list her as an emergency contact, so even if my purse didn’t go up in flames with the car, no one would know to call her,” Gloria said, returning to her sketching.

 
; Pippa sighed and asked the obvious. “Your grandmother wasn’t a Malcolm? So how did she know about my Voice?”

  “Oh, she had Malcolms on her family tree too. That’s how she knew you were a siren. You got it from Nana’s mother. I met Jordie at a Malcolm reunion when we were both teenagers. He didn’t have an ounce of talent, but he had excellent instincts as a cop.”

  “And your parents?” Oz asked.

  “We moved to California when I was a baby so they could work with South American archeologists. They went on an expedition when I was ten and never returned.” Gloria sounded ineffably sad. “I was too young to see the pattern then, but I wish I’d seen it later, when I learned Jordie was an orphan too. I didn’t start making the connections until I started recovering, years after the accident—too late for everyone. Our family is disaster prone.”

  “Just because your accident was deliberate doesn’t mean they all were,” Oz said.

  “Besides, how could anyone track Malcolms before there was an Internet?” Philippa protested, unwilling to believe anyone would deliberately target a widespread family, no matter what inane reason.

  “Want to bet that if there is an evil villain, he’s someone who knew Gloria’s family, maybe even someone at one of those family reunions?” Conan asked idly. “There’s always one troublemaker in every family.”

  “He’s talking about Moron, our middle brother,” Oz said, striving for humor to ease the pall.

  “Moron?” Philippa had to ask. Dylan and Conan were bad enough. She couldn’t imagine naming a child Moron.

  Conan laughed. “Magnus. Our grandmother was nuts about using family names. She wanted to call him Mervyn. Dad had to draw the line somewhere.”

  “So we all have nuts on the family tree,” Oz said. “I still think the pattern is random. I’m not saying I believe Malcolms have mysterious abilities, but people with talent attract attention, some of it adverse. My competitors would probably love to kill me. Pippa’s managers used her talent to get rich. Jordie might even have had an empathic talent,” he said that with skepticism, “that made him a good cop and got him killed, but that’s all I’m seeing here. Talent has a tendency to take risks others don’t.”

  Pippa couldn’t find her center with a painful conversation like this flowing around her. Even humming wasn’t helping. She could hear Oz’s pain through his logic. “The news reports didn’t mention me?” she asked, to divert his anguish and place it back on herself.

  “Ah, she speaks to me again.” Conan threw off the towel, sat up, and looked about brightly. “Does this mean your beastly Voice has freed me from its spell?”

  Pippa flung her water bottle at him. He ducked and let it bounce off the wall behind him.

  “I’ll quit paying you, bro,” Oz said ominously.

  “Now there’s a voice I respond to.” He stood up and circled the pool to take the laptop from Oz. “You’ve seen the news stories. You know they don’t mention any wandering toddlers at the crash site.” He keyed a code in and set the machine on Pippa’s lap. “But the date from the Bakersfield crap sheets report an abandoned toddler twenty-four hours after the Times reported the accident on the coast.”

  “Someone grabbed her from the side of the road?” Oz suggested as Pippa read the dates on the articles Conan had summoned. “Maybe the guys in the semi came back to make certain they’d done the deed, saw her, and didn’t want any evidence wandering around.”

  “And she probably screamed them into letting her out a few hours down the road,” Gloria said wryly. “If we could find the Librarian, we might find some answers. I don’t suppose you have any magic for conjuring the invisible?” Gloria asked wistfully.

  Pippa watched with suspicion as Oz’s lanky brother grinned. Conan was almost as good-looking as Oz, in a more angular way, but his robot mind robbed him of Oz’s personality. On Conan, a grin seemed ominous.

  “I’ve planted my own bug in their dirty little cloud,” he announced. “They’re transmitting from a server in Utah. The feds are circling as we speak.”

  Finally, good news! Pippa tried not to get too excited, but locating the Librarian seemed essential. “Then the Librarian can lead us to Donal.”

  Oz looked skeptical. Pippa caught his hand, and he squeezed her fingers. To her surprise, he was the one who responded, not his attention-grabbing brother.

  “The server is just a host,” Oz explained. “The Librarian could be in China. Probably is, or Conan would be collaring her now. All the feds can do is check the server’s records and try to trace the customers using their facilities. Even if Adam Technology owns it, they can’t be blamed for what their clients are doing.”

  With despair, Pippa verified his explanation by the smile disappearing from Conan’s face. His expression was grim. She cuddled her poor stuffed seal.

  “It’s only a start,” Conan agreed. “The feds can trace the satellite and work from there, but most of these virus-wielding creeps are out of our reach. We can shut down their access to the server, but they pop up again somewhere else. We call it whack-a-mole.”

  “I really think the Librarian is trying to help us,” Gloria insisted. “I’d rather you not do anything to cause her harm. She’s the only connection we have.”

  “She may be our mole in the enemy camp,” Pippa suggested. “If there is an enemy.”

  Oz seized on her suggestion, turning to his brother. “Can you get a message to the Librarian through your bug?”

  Conan nodded warily. “Possibly. Since we have no idea what we’re working with, it would have to be innocuous if we’re trying not to endanger her or Donal.”

  Pippa didn’t like the satisfied look on Oz’s face before he spoke.

  “Tell her we’ll have a live audience for Pippa’s first rehearsal in a week, as soon as we find a location.”

  Chapter 26

  Pippa grabbed her gray bundle of seal-shaped fur, stalked through the back garden gate, and slammed out of the pool enclosure.

  “Where’s she going?” Conan asked from the lounge chair he’d returned to after Oz’s announcement that rehearsals were scheduled.

  “To her studio, to keep from throwing me into the pool.” Oz supposed he was lucky they had progressed from physical combat to the silent treatment. But if Pippa was still afraid he’d drive off a cliff if she yelled at him, he understood her silence. What he didn’t understand was why she was angry.

  The damned woman knew what they had to do. She couldn’t still be objecting to singing one silly song. “I probably ought to carry the computer down to her.” Oz stood, heading toward the house.

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Gloria said placidly. “She never liked being told what to do. You played that badly.”

  “I shouldn’t have to play her at all!” Oz objected.

  “You’re bullying her, not leaving her any choice. Did you ask what she thought?” Gloria’s placid tone took on an edge reminiscent of her daughter’s.

  “It’s not all about you, my lad,” Conan agreed mockingly.

  Oz grabbed the back of his brother’s lounge chair and lifted. Cushion and Conan slid straight into the pool.

  Conan popped back up, flinging his soaked hair off his brow and grinning. “It’s warm in here. I think I’ll stay awhile.”

  Flipping off the pool heater switch to cool off his know-it-all brother, Oz took the path around the house toward the day care parking lot. He didn’t have to deal with a woman who drove his protective instincts into overdrive while his mind was crazed with worry about Donal. Conan had obviously retrieved Pippa’s music from her computer. They could broadcast the stupid seal song if they wanted. Not that he could figure out how that would lure Donal from his kidnappers—not any more than he knew how Pippa could.

  He just wanted to fix things, now.

  And he couldn’t. He couldn’t do
anything. He’d been helpless for a year, and just when he thought he might have a handle on things—

  Damn. He still had nothing. He’d simply added Pippa to his mucked-up head—and he couldn’t do shit about anything.

  They were politely sitting around pools, discussing inanities, when his boy could be suffering. He needed to punch someone. Maybe he needed to let Pippa scream for him. Even a scream that shattered tall towers wouldn’t be sufficient for his current rage.

  He strode into town, looking for his set designers. Or trouble, whichever came first. If Pippa wasn’t going to cooperate, he had no good reason to keep his crew up here. They could all go back to L.A. and their air-conditioned offices and decent restaurants. He could film at a real studio.

  He’d thought Pippa understood the urgency of the situation. How could she hold out now, after hearing her mother’s horror stories? After Conan had proved her songs hurt no one?

  Except—Oz had seen her sing a drunk to sleep. And lure a little boy from the desert. Improbable, but he wanted to believe she was magic and could save Donal too. He wanted to believe there was something mystical about that stupid song.

  He was grabbing at straws, and that frustrated him even more.

  What few shops existed along the main drag were closed on Sunday. Oz strode down the street, still simmering. It was past noon, and the café was humming with after-church customers. Maybe the tavern wouldn’t be busy. Chet and Jake were more likely to go for a beer than join the Sunday crowd.

  “First customer of the day!” Lizzy called cheerily as Oz entered the dingy Blue Bayou.

  Except it wasn’t quite as dreary as it had been the other night. He glanced around, trying to pinpoint the difference. The black curtains were gone, and sunlight streamed across the scarred wooden floor and tables. Not necessarily an improvement but a more cheerful aspect, at least.

  “Pizza?” she asked, when he simply stood there, wondering why he was there. “I’ve got a new menu!”