Out of Mind

by Stella Cameron

Willow’s heart missed a beat. She stepped from behind Ben. “I went to discuss some orders with one of my bakers. He does the best spun sugar fancies in town. Billy Baker. That’s his real name. Baker Baker—that’s his shop. It’s on—”

  “Chartres,” Nat finished for her. “You came straight here?”

  She ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth. “Yes. And I hurried so it could only have taken minutes. What is it, Nat?”

  “Bucky Fist’s over there now. Billy died—apparently about the same time you were there.”

  Willow heard Marley gasp and Winnie rushed past to lean on her mistress’s leg.

  “That can’t be,” Willow whispered. “He was fine when I left.”

  “Was anyone else there with you?”

  She paused before saying, “No. How did Billy die?” she said, horrified that the vital man she’d been with so recently had supposedly died—the moment she left his shop. “He was alive when I left him. Really, he was. He was laughing about having to make two hundred sugar pigs.”

  “I believe you,” Nat said, not referencing the pigs. He gave another engaging smile all around. “The woman who found Billy saw you leave the shop, Willow. You’re pretty hard to miss. And everyone around here knows who you are.”

  Ben wanted to punch the guy out—even if he was smiling. Willow hated being identified as “one of those strange Millets” everywhere she went.

  “Looks like he had a heart attack,” Nat said.

  “That’s not acceptable,” Pascal said in his customary formal manner. “Why are you here if he had a heart attack?”

  “It was more than just a heart attack. Billy had a bunch of tiny puncture wounds on his face, neck and head. I wouldn’t have been called in and I wouldn’t be here if it was a natural death.” He glanced at Marley. “Doesn’t have to be connected, but some of us know it isn’t the first time we’ve had a corpse with wounds that don’t make sense—at first.”

  Willow’s hand went to her neck.

  Nat’s cell beeped and he answered, “Archer.” He listened for a long time then said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up.

  “What?” Willow said, seeing the fury on Nat’s face.

  “Carry on, folks,” Nat said. “Message from above. I’ve got to back off this case.”

  3

  This was too much.

  Another Embran was in town. He didn’t know where exactly the new specimen had set himself up, or what forms he could change into, but another one of them was in New Orleans and thanks to the last efforts of the creatures from deep in the earth, this one would be better prepared to carry out his plan.

  If he succeeded, would his kind pour from below, like battalions of fantastic monsters, to overrun the city? Jude Millet knew the answer, but asking himself the question again gave at least a tiny suggestion that it might be impossible.

  They would never succeed. He pushed back the tails of his black coat and planted his fists on his hips. A humming grew within his brain and he gave a grim frown. His force, the power of his gifts, trembled at the prospect of confrontation to the death.

  Fuming, Jude paced the attic in the building that housed J. Clive Millet. All he had been granted were a few months of peace since the last giant upheaval, and he didn’t appreciate this fresh intrusion. He wanted, no, needed much more time to consider how to deal with several disparate issues: First, doing what he could to help his family cut off the Embran attempts to destroy them. Second, guiding the Millets and other psi families involved toward finding what he knew as the Harmony, an object purported to contain a treasure they must protect. Also, he longed to help settle the Millet division over who was or was not suitable to be head of the family.

  And he must also be sure that New Orleans, and the powerful psychic families who lived there, most in anonymity, continued to thrive. The less talented families, or perhaps the younger ones—in centuries—faced a smaller risk than the prime ones, the Millets, or the Fortunes, or even the Montrachets, but if any of them went down, all would suffer.

  He had had his suspicions that the present generation of Millets had not done what was needed to be certain their work with the Embran was finished.

  But he had not expected a fresh onslaught so quickly.

  This time would be more difficult.

  This time there was no willing go-between with that world down there. Or none that he knew of.

  With a breathy sigh that filled the attic, he drew himself up to his full height and pointed at the gauzelike web separating him from the “real world.” Even the term made him smile. What did these newcomers know of reality?

  The curtain fell away and he walked, albeit unwillingly, to look down from the single gabled window on Royal Street floors below. The last of the sun had mercifully bled away, leaving only wisps of purple amid the murky gray of the encroaching evening.

  There were times when his ability to hear whatever he wished to hear could be a damnable nuisance. Today, especially late in the afternoon, he had given in to a premonition that he needed to listen in to his descendants. The games they played! Sykes bringing young Ben Fortune back to New Orleans—not that Jude might not have done the same thing himself. It seemed that the problem child, Willow, had attracted attention from a malevolent force—little doubt about what that force might be—and her brother, Sykes—also Jude’s favorite—was using the occasion to play matchmaker.

  Jude wholly approved of a match between Ben Fortune and Willow, as long as that young woman was ready to accept her own talents—and those of her family.

  But there would be time enough to deal with that after Ben helped to make sure Willow didn’t manage to stumble into serious or worse trouble. Jude had felt her rushing through the streets, and he had heard her exclamation when she felt something odd. Small, sharp tapping on her neck.

  And now some baker was dead, supposedly of a heart attack, but with small puncture wounds on his head.

  Ah, yes, signs of Embran were simple to recognize once one knew what to look for.

  Sykes had been down in the shop, too. He knew he should not use invisibility to hang around spying on his own family, but couldn’t seem to suppress his natural love of mischief.

  Jude sighed. The red-haired issue must be dealt with quickly. Sykes, dark-haired and blue-eyed, should be running J. Clive Millet and looking out for the family since his ineffectual father, Antoine, refused to do so. Pascal didn’t want the job, or said he didn’t, but was too responsible to walk away.

  Sykes’s talents were, as he’d heard some young whippersnapper say, “awesome,” and Jude was immensely proud of the one who was, unfortunately, suffering because of Jude’s own mistakes.

  His eventual plan was to put all that right. And he hoped it didn’t take another three hundred years, which was the length of time he had been working on the problem so far.

  Several centuries ago, after losing the love of his life to a mysterious death, Jude had married a woman Embran, in Bruges, Belgium. Of course he hadn’t known she was Embran or that she intended to use him to further her own evil plans. The Millet family had suffered unspeakably. He had been tricked by the creature’s beauty and charm—her kindness to him in his time of grief—and had no idea of her true nature or form until she managed to have his entire clan chased from Belgium by those she had caused to suspect the Millets of witchcraft.

  That had started the entire superstition about dark-haired, blue-eyed males being a curse. All the Millets were born redheaded and with green eyes. Then Jude had come along and when they could no longer try to pass him off as a changeling, he was branded a mutant with hair as black as night and eyes the blue of deep water over a reef.

  That was why, since Antoine Millet had shirked his duties in favor of supposedly going in search of a cure for the curse, his brother, Pascal, had taken over as Millet-in-Chief while dark-haired, blue-eyed Sykes was kept on the sidelines.

  “They are all so stupid,” Jude said into the silence. “While they fuss about minutiae, enemies t
hreaten their existence and the existence of every psychically empowered family in New Orleans, together with the poor mere humans who get in the way.”

  He opened a door in an ancient dresser and slid out a painting he made himself look at occasionally, just to sharpen his determination. It showed him as a man of twenty-nine, his hair long and black as it still was, apart from some gray streaks, with the sweet-faced blonde woman who should have become his wife. On her lap was what they had jokingly called “their first child,” a dog she had adored.

  Once more he recalled the pain of losing her, and his unspeakable mistake in turning to someone else so quickly. He sometimes allowed himself a little quarter because his nemesis had, in fact, been red-haired and that had been part of what fooled him into marrying her.

  “Never be fooled again,” he told himself. “And make sure none of the ones for whom you care are fooled.”

  There must be a way to move actively among his people without them suspecting his presence. This time he could rely on no one but himself to keep the flow of information coming so that he could direct matters as necessary.

  They didn’t know it downstairs, but their enemy was already among them and Jude expected this one to make the last one look like a toy for a child to cuddle. Death was in the air, again, and a plan to reduce New Orleans to the earthly stronghold of the Embran.

  There was much he didn’t yet know, but he would find out—with some help from an emissary.

  He gazed down on the gathering waves of people in the streets and considered how he should choose his collaborator.

  But of course! Jude laughed and braced his weight on either side of the window. Of course. He had the perfect solution to his dilemma.

  4

  Willow opened the French doors to the courtyard behind the shop. She glanced back at Ben. He smiled at her, but Willow hurried outside—unsmiling—and shut the door again.

  “Give her a few minutes,” Pascal said, putting the box containing Willow’s new helmet into Ben’s arms.

  Marley smothered a snigger and Ben narrowed his eyes at her.

  “I’ll take the gun, too,” he said.

  “She shouldn’t have a gun,” Pascal said promptly.

  “Come on, Winnie,” Marley said, her expression innocent. “Time to leave great male minds to work out what’s best for the little woman.”

  Marley glanced past Ben and raised one fine, red brow. “Some things never change,” she said. “Are you ever going to grow up, Sykes?”

  Ben grinned. Sykes Millet, a formidable paranormal force, used his ability to be invisible judiciously—except when he wanted to tease sister Marley. He never tired of sneaking up and letting her see him when others couldn’t, something he didn’t do with anyone else.

  “Don’t smirk at me like that,” Marley said. She crossed her arms. “If you’ve got something useful to suggest, show yourself so we can all swoon over you.”

  A heavy hand landed on Ben’s shoulder and he looked into Sykes’s brilliant blue eyes. “How long have you been here?” Ben asked.

  “I was worried about Willow. Something’s definitely going on. I caught up with her in the street and came here with her—more or less.”

  Pascal shrugged as if he was out of patience. “Really, Sykes. Why not meet your sister out there like any normal man and walk with her back to the shop? Why all this silly showing off?”

  “Normal?” Sykes said with a wicked grin. “If you don’t know the reason for my caution, I’ll tell you. I was trying to see if there was something around that shouldn’t be there. With me walking along beside her in clear sight, I doubt there would be anything to see.”

  “Was there?” Marley, Pascal and Ben asked together.

  Sykes sat down and stretched out his tall body on an old fainting couch with gilded legs shaped like fish standing on their heads. He put his hands behind his neck. “Depends on what you mean by was.” Sykes appeared all shadows and angles; his eyebrows flared and he managed to look as if he belonged on the eighteenth-century couch, even if it was much too short for him.

  A Renaissance man with muscles like steel, whip-fast reflexes and hands honed to weapons by years of chiseling stone, Sykes had made a name for himself as a sculptor.

  Marley sighed, but Winnie trotted over to plant her front feet on Sykes’s ribs and lick his dramatic face.

  “No more evasive answers,” Pascal said shortly.

  “When Willow’s hair moved away from her neck out there and she felt a sensation on her neck, was there anything there if I couldn’t see it? It made her scream.”

  Ben’s jaw tightened and he turned to look down on his old friend. “I saw her touch her neck just now. Why? You know, don’t you?”

  Sykes got up and paced. “You’re the one who’s going to find out what she felt, Ben. She may tell you. With the rest of us she won’t admit there’s anything in the world that’s not what she calls ‘normal.’ Her hair moved, or was moved. And she felt something. I thought I saw a separate shadow, but I couldn’t be sure. So was there something?”

  Ben thought about it. “Didn’t you say that after Marley and Gray came together and Willow accidentally let everyone know she can see hidden events and feelings, past and present, you thought she was ready to join the fold?”

  “Sykes is an optimist,” Marley said. She sat on the stairs and Ben was struck afresh by the appeal of the Millet women. “Willow has powers none of us had guessed at. She could see how Gray had suffered in the past, and how it affected him, but she only slipped up and let us know because she felt badly for Gray.”

  Ben screwed up his eyes. “An advanced power, I should think. And rare. Where is Gray, did you say?”

  “His office is still at his dad’s cottage in Faubourg Marigny. He’s either over there or out on the job. He’ll be back a bit later.”

  “I may need him,” Ben said. He wasn’t above confronting Willow with solid evidence of how “normal” she was. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  Ben gave Sykes a look that warned him to not follow him as he went after Willow. As powerful as Sykes was, he wasn’t the only one who could be around without others knowing it. The difference was that Ben used invisibility to travel to other locations, often returning without anyone being aware he had ever left. And in truly extreme situations he could manipulate time—which was a skill he had never told anyone about. It was dangerous and carried more responsibility than anyone could take lightly, but Ben was schooled in keeping the changes minuscule and returning time to its rightful place once he’d carried out what had to be done.

  He held out his hand for the package containing the gun. Pascal grimaced, but handed it over.

  “Good luck,” Sykes said with a sympathetic shrug. “I think it’s time for me to get back to work.”

  “Thanks,” Ben said, going out into the Court of Angels.

  Alone among the lush ferns bobbing over cobblestones, the tough, shiny leaves of gardenias and the stone angels—some not very angelic-looking—Ben collected himself.

  This courtyard had intrigued him since he was a boy. The atmosphere was like no other place. Ben had seen and felt things here that he had never felt anywhere else.

  Subtle things he had only mentioned to Sykes, whose experiences among the shadowed stone faces and occasional gargoyle poking from a door lintel were different from Ben’s, but no less intense.

  Today he did not experience anything remarkable.

  He wanted to see Willow on his own. He wanted her to at least give him a little opening into her life again, but if they couldn’t accept every aspect of one another, the incredible emotional and sexual power she wielded over him wouldn’t be enough.

  Would it?

  The patterns thrown by leaves shivered on red brick walls around all sides of the courtyard.

  There it was, gentle laughter, almost giggling, so faint he strained to hear it. Automatically, he stared from stone figure to stone figure. They weren’t laughing.

  Green-painted
metal staircases zigzagged upward between randomly placed windows, stopping with a landing at each floor. The Millets’ flats faced him on each side, including Sykes’s, which was where Ben would live while he was back in New Orleans…unless Willow kicked him out….

  He glanced up at Willow’s flat and barely pulled himself together enough not to jump. She stood at the open front door, leaning on the jamb, arms crossed.

  It was definitely giggling he heard, and it saturated his senses.

  To smile or not to smile?

  Ben fashioned a restrained upward tilt at the corners of his mouth and strode to jog up the steps and meet the woman he wanted.

  “Hey, Willow,” he said, arriving in front of her and keeping his demeanor more-or-less solemn. That wasn’t hard. He suddenly felt solemn…and insecure? Ben Fortune didn’t go in for feeling insecure very easily.

  “Hey, Ben.”

  The giggles faded into gusty titters that slithered away. He had always intended to do more research on the Court of Angels, but never got around to it.

  “I brought your helmet up,” he said, feeling lame.

  “Thanks.” She reached for the box, but he made no attempt to give it to her.

  This was the first time since his return that he had stood so close to Willow. She really was a little woman. All the women in her family were small. He recalled his sister, Poppy, reminding him before he left for Kauai that he should “Look for a woman you won’t crush.” Poppy was tall and almost too beautiful. She had always been his friend, but in the past two years he had come to truly admire her.

  “You’ve got my gun, too. How did you manage to get it from Uncle Pascal?”

  “By letting him know you’re mature enough to make your own decisions.” Not completely true, but Marley had just about said that and Ben hadn’t disagreed.

  “Thanks for that.” She smiled a little, but immediately bowed her face in the way he remembered so well. Willow talked a tough story, but she had a shy streak a mile wide.

  “Are you going to invite me in?”