Orano took a deep breath before answering. “It’s always been just me and my mother.”
“Oh, that’s just so interesting. I come from a huge family that gathers every chance they get. I can’t imagine …”
Tori’s voice quieted in Phoenix’s head as he tuned out from the bird’s sense of hearing. Knowing how difficult that conversation—or any conversation for that matter—would be for Orano made him pity the poor guy. The faster they finished their search, the faster they could rescue him. And, judging by the scowl on the big guy’s face, he really needed rescuing.
Phoenix opened the door to find Gracey standing exactly where he’d left her. “Has anyone come inside?” he asked.
“No, so let’s get started. I don’t know how much time we’ll have.” Gracey took his hand and pulled him down a short hallway lined with dozens of photographs. “This is Tori’s office.” She pushed the handle down, but froze before fully opening the door.
“What are you up to, Gracey?” A stern voice, the kind normally associated with a strict high school principal, called out.
Gracey whipped around and gasped. “Liza … uh ….”
“She was just showing me these incredible picture collages. They’d be perfect for my mother’s birthday gift. Do you know where Tori purchased them?” Phoenix raised his eyebrows as he awaited her answer.
Liza glanced back and forth between them before speaking. “I’m not sure where she got them. Why don’t you guys come out back and ask her yourself?”
“Perfect!” Phoenix clapped his hands together and beamed a smile as they followed Liza to the kitchen. She opened the sliding glass door and gestured for them to exit.
Phoenix waggled his finger. “My mother would not be pleased if I forgot my manners that easily. Ladies first.” He gave them a courtly bow before pulling the door to its fully opened position.
Gracey giggled as she stepped onto the deck. Even Liza seemed to loosen up a bit, giving him a coy grin when he held her hand to guide her out the door. Phoenix stepped out and pointed to the back corner of the yard. “There’s Tori,” he said as both women turned in that direction.
His host bird fluttered through the open door unnoticed.
Orano, with Tori’s arm wrapped around his, stood ramrod straight. “Enjoying yourself?” he asked with one eyebrow raised.
“Thoroughly. I think I’ve got my mother’s gift figured out. Tori, you must tell me where you got those beautiful picture frames in your hallway.”
As their hostess rambled through an unnecessarily long answer to his question, Phoenix nodded politely. He commented when appropriate and continued to make small talk, though his attention remained split. No one seemed to notice that he was simply going through the motions of the conversation while he focused on the images seen through the eyes of his bird host.
********
Tori’s office door hung slightly ajar, left that way after Liza’s earlier interruption. He flew through the small crack and landed on a very well organized desk. Not a good sign. Someone that clean and tidy would be less likely to leave incriminating evidence lying around. Still, he needed to try. The three desk drawers forming the right-hand leg of the desk were all closed, making it impossible for his bird to gain entry. A laptop, however, sat open in the middle of the desk.
Phoenix used his borrowed beak to peck the spacebar, bringing the unit out of sleep mode. Thankfully, no password box appeared, and the machine booted up to the home screen. Without the benefit of using the mouse pad—something a bird just couldn’t pull off—maneuvering through the various point-and-click commands required him to use shortcut keys. With one clawed foot on the ctrl key, he pecked at the keyboard until the document file opened and scanned the list of titles. Most were what you’d expect to find on a home computer—address book, bank statements, tax documents, etc.—but one caught his attention. He pecked the curser key until the document called “New World” highlighted and pecked the enter key.
Although he’d been hoping to find a manifesto detailing Tori’s plans, instead the document appeared to be a mish mosh of portions of research papers and essays cut and pasted together. Each piece, written by a different expert in the field, discussed the possible ramifications of a worldwide power failure. Phoenix pecked the escape key until the home screen appeared, and then opened Tori’s email file. Printing out the “New World” document would have been easy, but his bird would have had a difficult time gathering the pages and flying out with them. Therefore, his best option was to simply email the file to himself and erase the record.
Once he closed the mail program, Phoenix made the short flight to the bookshelves. He could only see the spines of the books, which didn’t help him with the many old texts. Their covers looked as though they were homemade out of some sort of leather and held no writing on the part his bird could see. The textbooks were a different story. He recognized some of the author’s names from the file he’d just seen on the laptop. Apparently, Tori had a bit of an obsession with post-apocalyptic possibilities.
The other items on the shelves were either collectables or heirlooms. Several crystal fragments, a carved glass bowl, a mortar and pestle usually used for crushing pills or herbs, and several small sacks emanating odd odors. Perhaps they weren’t heirlooms. If Phoenix had to guess at what a witch would use to perform spells, those items would fit the bill.
Voices coming from the kitchen area told Phoenix he no longer had the house to himself. He fluttered over to the office door, landing silently on the carpet, and poked his head into the hall. Liza, with another woman he didn’t recognize, placed an empty platter on the counter and proceeded to fill it with sandwiches and raw vegetables. She handed the plate to her companion and said, “I need to use the restroom. I’ll be right out.”
The office door would be in full view of the woman as soon as she entered the short hallway. After almost catching Gracey opening it earlier, Liza might be inclined to investigate. As a bird, it would be easy for Phoenix to find a spot to hide if she looked in the room, but that wasn’t what had him worried. Even if she found nothing to raise her suspicions, the woman would surely close the door, locking his host inside.
The only two doors in the hall visible from his vantage point were both shut, leaving him no escape route other than flying right over Liza’s head and most likely being forced out of the house with a painful broom before completing his search. A quick look upward showed one possibility.
The trap door in the ceiling leading to an attic space sat crookedly in its opening. The folding wooden ladder caught on the molding, keeping the hatch from recessing fully and leaving a small gap just large enough for his host to find purchase out of sight. A quick flutter of his wings and Phoenix’s tiny talons gripped the wooden perch just as he heard Liza call out, “Tori? Are you in there?”
A moment later he heard the office door below him close with a click.
More voices could be heard entering the kitchen, and Phoenix knew he was in trouble. The heat seemed to be driving the guests inside, even though his human body still conversed with Orano, Gracey, and Tori out back. The women in the kitchen bantered about the food, the weather, and the men in their lives while his feathers became heavy with the heat and humidity of the attic above him.
The sound of running water signified Liza would be in the mix again soon. Hopefully, she’d run those stragglers back to the party in the yard and Phoenix could resume his search. “What are you ladies doing inside?” she asked.
“Just cooling off a bit. The air conditioning in here feels great,” another voice answered.
Yet another voice spoke the last words Phoenix wanted to hear. “Speaking of air conditioning, Tori’s power bill this month will be enormous with her attic door open like that.”
Before they reached the hatch and forced it shut, squashing his host in the process, Phoenix squeezed his feathered body through the space beside the folded ladder and up into the safety of the attic. The incredibly hot attic
. The shadowy space held only one small window. A circular pane of glass divided into four quarters by crossed pieces of wood. He flew over to it, but a quick glance told him that window held no purpose other than to beautify the outside of the house. He pecked at the glass with as much force as he could muster, but his beak didn’t have the strength to break it. He wouldn’t be getting through it, nor would any fresh air from the outside.
********
“Phoenix? Are you all right?” Gracey asked.
He’d been so focused on his bird host avoiding Liza that he’d forgotten he was involved in a human conversation at the same time. “What? Sorry. I must have zoned out for a minute there. What were we talking about?”
“Nothing important. You don’t look so good. Are you coming down with something?” She placed her hand on his forehead. “You’re burning up. We should get you home.”
Phoenix’s body often reacted to the environment his host occupied, but because he could only connect to a bird close by, it had never been much of a problem. Now, with his host locked in an oversized oven, he could feel his own body temperature rising as well.
“Tori, would you grab a glass of iced water for my friend, please?” Orano waited for her to step away, then asked, “What’s going on?”
With a quick glance at Gracey, Phoenix answered as well as he could. “I feel like I’m locked inside a sweltering attic or something. I just need some air and I’ll be fine.” He hoped Orano understood his meaning.
Gracey wrapped her arm around his waist. “Let’s get him into the air conditioning for a while. He might be suffering from heat stroke.”
“Good idea,” Phoenix said as he allowed them to help him to the kitchen table. He chugged the glass of water Tori handed him, but it didn’t help. Nothing would help until he could get his host out of there. Disconnecting from it would save Phoenix, but the bird who’d allowed him to use its body would be left to die. He couldn’t do that. Just as he could feel the effects of the heat surrounding the bird, the bird could also feel the effects of the cool air in the kitchen surrounding Phoenix. That was probably the only thing keeping his host from boiling in its feathers.
While the women fussed over him in the kitchen—something he would have enjoyed under other circumstances—he locked gazes with Orano, jerking his head in the direction of the ceiling hatch to the attic. His partner nodded and slipped away unnoticed.
********
A sliver of light rushed into the attic through the hatch as it cracked open, bathing the plywood floor around it. An old masonry jar sat a few inches from the opening with what looked like a misshapen doll inside. As the hatch lowered, the light illuminated the jar and the name scrawled across the front of it in black marker. Gracey McMillan. Phoenix struggled to remember what Gracey told them about how the coven bound a witch’s powers.
As long as the totem remained bound, so did Gracey’s powers.
Through the hatch opening, he could see Orano gesturing to the bird to come out. Although Phoenix wanted nothing more than to be enveloped in artificially created cool air, he forced himself to wait. Wedging his tiny body behind the jar, he pushed with his chest until it tipped over. As the jar rolled toward an unsuspecting Orano, a distorted reflection in the curved glass caught Phoenix’s eye. He rotated his neck to check if what he thought he’d seen reflected in the jar actually existed.
It was. Row upon row of shelves lined the wall behind him, each jammed full of masonry jars. Apparently, Gracey wasn’t the only one to have her powers bound. Not by a long shot.
Phoenix flew out the hatch and landed his host on Orano’s shoulder just as his partner caught the falling jar.
********
“You’re looking a little better now. How are you feeling?” Tori asked. She’d planted herself in the chair right next to his at the kitchen table.
“Much improved. Thank you.” Phoenix disconnected from his host as soon as Orano let him out the front door. Less than a minute later, the big guy walked back in with neither the bird nor the jar. “Although, just in case I’m coming down with something, we should probably go. I wouldn’t want to infect you nice ladies.” Phoenix stood, thanked each of his nursemaids again, and held his hand out to Tori. “Thank you for your kind invitation. I’m sorry to leave in such a hurry.”
Her smile grew as she swatted his hand away and pulled him in for a hug, her arms wrapped around his neck. “You’re welcome any time, Phoenix.”
When she released him, a painful tug at the nape of his neck caused him to wince.
“Oh, goodness me,” Tori spouted. “This darn watch is always getting caught in people’s hair. I’m so sorry.”
Gracey’s eyes widened, but Phoenix didn’t need to see her reaction to know he’d royally screwed up. The coven leader had just gotten a lock of his hair.
Chapter 10
“Well, that was a waste of time.” Gracey slumped in the back seat of their car, arms crossed over her chest. “We didn’t even get inside her office.”
Phoenix glanced over his shoulder and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.”
“Seriously? You guys aren’t going to hop on the next flight out of here? You said we needed proof, and we didn’t get any.” Although Gracey wanted them to stay and help her stop Tori, she hadn’t expected them to even consider doing so. “Am I missing something?”
“No,” Orano and Phoenix said in unison.
Gracey’s eyes narrowed as she peered at her companions. Their denial came far too quickly and easily. They were up to something, but she couldn’t begin to understand what. Or why.
“You hungry?” Phoenix asked.
They hadn’t eaten since breakfast so, of course, Gracey was starving. “I could eat.”
“Why don’t we head back to the hotel to freshen up, and then we’ll grab something,” Phoenix suggested.
Gracey agreed, although she felt sure they were keeping something from her. Orano should have been grumbling under his breath about the time they’d just wasted, and Phoenix should have been recommending she go back to the loony bin, in the kindest possible way of course. No, they were definitely hiding something from her.
When they reached their rooms, Gracey waited for one of them to follow her into hers. When both of the boys headed to the other door, she stopped short.
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to be left alone,” she said. “You know, me being crazy and all.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be right next door. By the time you’re out of the shower, we’ll both be ready to go.” The smile Phoenix wore resembled the one he’d flashed Tori at the barbecue. She filed the image away in her mind so she’d never forget his “I’m lying” smile.
Gracey bit the inside of her lip. “Okay. I’ll come over when I’m done.” With a fake smile of her own, she stepped inside her room and closed the door. She immediately turned on the shower, though she didn’t intend to use it.
The door joining the two rooms sat slightly ajar, allowing Gracey to hear the hushed conversation taking place next door.
“That Tori chick has big plans,” Phoenix said. “She has several texts about all of the solar flare stuff Julien told us about, along with some really creepy looking old books. Like, really old, witchy kind of books. I emailed myself a file from her computer. Take a look.”
Gracey couldn’t risk taking a peek but knew all she’d see if she did was two men staring at a phone. How had Phoenix seen any of those things? She’d been by his side the entire afternoon and they hadn’t stepped foot inside Tori’s office. The only time he’d been out of her sight was when he’d been in the bathroom. Did he climb through a vent or something? If so, why hide it from her?
“What about this?” Orano asked in low voice.
What about what? Gracey thought.
“I found it in the attic. If it is what I think it is, shouldn’t we take care of it?”
What were they talking about? What did Phoenix find, and why was he tel
ling Orano he’d gotten it from the attic? He’d never been anywhere near Tori’s attic.
A few moments of silence, broken only by the occasional grunt, had Gracey biting her fingernails down to the quick. Curiosity consumed her. Just when she thought she couldn’t take any more, a loud curse from Orano had her stifling a giggle.
“If a guy as big as you can’t open that jar, I’ve lost all respect for body builders,” Phoenix taunted.
“It’s going to take a little extra to break through whatever’s protecting this thing,” Orano said.
Jar? It can’t be. Gracey replayed the afternoon’s events in her head, trying to remember anything that might explain what she’d just heard. The only jar she could imagine Orano being unable to open was the one containing her totem, but that couldn’t be what they were discussing.
“We should have a few minutes before she’s out of the shower. Do you want to find a sheltered place outside?”
Although she didn’t hear an audible response, she did hear the door to their room open and close. Gracey cracked her door as quietly as she could and risked poking her head out enough to see down the hall. She caught sight of Orano’s backside as the exit door closed behind him.
Feeling a little like a cat burglar, Gracey ran down the hall. She had no way of knowing where they’d gone after exiting. They could easily be standing right outside, ready to catch her in the act of spying on them. After a deep breath and silent prayer, she pushed open the door. Nothing but a standard parking lot greeted her.
They could have gone anywhere, she thought. Except that wasn’t true. Phoenix said they would go somewhere sheltered. There weren’t many places she could see that fit that description. None in fact. The parking lot held no trees and ended at the wall of the next hotel. Then again, there were a couple of transport trucks parked near the back corner. They didn’t have their trailers attached, but the cabs alone were plenty big enough for a couple of guys to hide between.
Gracey made her way to the closest cab just in time to hear Orano tell his partner to step back. She crouched low and crept around the front of the cab. Their backs faced her, Phoenix closest to the truck she hid behind. They’d put the jar—her jar—on the pavement in front of them.
Chaos (Book 4) (The Omega Group) Page 8
