Out of Sight

by Stella Cameron

  “Well?” Pascal demanded.

  “Nothing,” Sykes said. “Nada. Not a thing. It’s empty. Except for rat droppings.”

  27

  “You don’t think one of the others will have the same idea?” Poppy whispered, although there was no way anyone but Sykes could hear her.

  They had turned on the light in Sykes’s living room, waited half an hour and now stood in the dark hall near the front door, listening for any movement outside.

  He held Mario who bristled with attention. “Knowing how we are, anything’s possible. Marley won’t go down there without Gray. Or I don’t think she will. Pascal’s the one who might sneak back, but he said we’d wait till morning to take another look.”

  “Sneak?” Poppy said. She guessed most people justified their own actions. “What are we planning to do, if it’s not to sneak back?”

  He leaned across and kissed the end of her nose. “That’s different,” he said. “We could wait in the living room.”

  “No. We have to be able to look for lights in the windows without being seen.”

  “And we do that, how?”

  “Look through the mail slot.”

  He grunted. “I don’t even know if it still opens. It isn’t used.”

  Tentatively, Poppy took hold of the flap and lifted. The thing creaked enough to make her wince, but it did open. She bent down and peered through. “Everything’s dark.”

  “They could all be waiting to go back to that storeroom and investigate some more.”

  Poppy snorted. “So we all bump into each other down there. Then we all look stupid.”

  “You’ve got a point.” Sykes was quiet for a moment. Then he said. “I think it’s important for me to go on my own—with Mario.”

  “Why?” She crossed her arms.

  “It’s hard to explain but…Poppy, I think I’m the one who should do this. Can we leave it at that?”

  “I’m coming with you. Don’t talk about that anymore.”

  He puffed out an exasperated breath.

  “Are you sure no one will see light when we open this door?” Poppy said.

  “As close to no light as possible,” he responded.

  He looked through the mail slot himself, then turned his ear to it and listened.

  Poppy almost started tapping her toe but stopped herself.

  “I’m going now,” Sykes said, standing up.

  “Good.” She wouldn’t say anything argumentative but she also wouldn’t miss any action.

  Sykes opened the door a couple of inches and with great caution.

  They waited again and then he slipped outside with Poppy behind him. He closed the door with equal care.

  “The stairs can sound like gongs if you’re not careful,” he whispered into her ear.

  Poppy nodded and they set off, single file, not stopping until they walked inside the empty storeroom to the right of the walled-off space.

  Poppy put her mouth to Sykes’s ear. “We’ve got to be careful with the flashlight. It could show under the door.”

  He nodded and slid the door shut painfully slowly. “If they see it, they see it. We can’t pack the whole door. I’ll try to keep the light away.”

  They looked at each other in the faint upward glow from the flashlight Sykes aimed at the wall. Then they looked at Mario who continued to be all bristling whiskers and bright black eyes.

  “Put him down,” Poppy said.

  Sykes did so and Mario promptly sat between them, looking from one to the other.

  “They don’t have long memories, do they?” Sykes said. “He’s probably forgotten all about what he did earlier.”

  “We don’t know which side he got in from,” Poppy said.

  “David picked him up outside this one.”

  She wasn’t convinced that proved anything.

  Sykes began running a hand from brick to brick along the length of the wall, pressing as he went. Poppy followed him, taking the next row.

  “Maybe he’ll get bored watching us and go in there,” Poppy said.

  “We could have brought something he likes to eat and pushed it through the wall outside.” Sykes kept moving. “If he could smell it in there he might go after it.”

  “Shall I go get something?”

  Sykes said, “No, one thing at a time.”

  Poppy knew they worked there a long time. Her fingertips grew sore from the rough bricks but she kept going. “Hey.” She stood still. “There’s no reason we can’t just knock enough of the wall out to get in there. That’s what they’ll do tomorrow.”

  “Noise.” He turned and rested a hand on the back of her neck. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted to find anything that’s in there myself. There are answers I need that would make a big difference going forward.”

  “Like what?”

  He sighed. “Like whether or not I’m the family curse who should be shunned, or if I need to be ready to take things over around here.” He repeated the old theory that because he didn’t have red hair or green eyes like the rest of the Millets, he could bring catastrophe to them as the only other Millet with his coloring had supposedly done.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Poppy said. “I bet it was nothing to do with Jude. And if anyone says there’s something wrong with you, just send them to me and I’ll fix their opinions.”

  Sykes swung her against him. “I think I got myself a champion. But for what it’s worth, I agree with you. So does Pascal. He wants me to start taking over. And we have to find the angel we keep being reminded of, and the Harmony, whatever that is—and I think that if it exists, it’s important. And there are some missing pages from a book of rules that might answer all my questions.”

  “Or not.”

  “Or not,” Sykes agreed. “I just want a chance to find out if there really are any answers and it’s not all just a big flimflam.” He rubbed his lips back and forth on her brow and they clung tighter, shivering.

  Poppy’s eyes were just above Sykes’s shoulder level and she peered into the gloomy room. “Where’s Mario?”

  Sykes released her and abandoned caution with the flashlight. He swept it around the room. The little red dog wasn’t visible.

  “He can’t get out of here,” Poppy said, bemused. “Mario,” she whispered loudly. “Come boy.”

  Nothing moved and Sykes kept sweeping the light around.

  They both caught their breath at the same time and headed for the farthest corner, the one between the back wall and the wall opposite the one where they had been searching.

  Shadows gave a different perspective. The wall to the right sloped inward toward the back, meaning the room got narrower there.

  Poppy hurried to the corner. On the ground she saw a small pile of debris and crouched to look at it.

  “It doesn’t really meet here. It’s only an illusion that it does.”

  Sykes pressed his shoulder against what appeared to be a gap, turned his head sideways. Gradually and with difficulty, he disappeared.

  On her feet at once, Poppy followed.

  In front of them steps rose, barely wide enough for one person to climb with a lot of caution and hanging on to the walls either side. The space was minute and went almost straight up.

  “Why didn’t anyone find this before?” Poppy asked.

  “They weren’t looking.” Sykes’s voice came echoing down to her. “Maybe if Marley had used this storeroom instead of the other side, she would have seen it, but I don’t think so. Look on the bright side, someone had a reason for going to great lengths to hide something.”

  She felt excited but didn’t say so.

  Mario’s face appeared as Sykes’s head cleared the top of the stairs and they stood, nose to nose, until Mario turned away again.

  “He’s one weird dog.”

  “Don’t let Willow hear you say that,” Poppy said. “Pascal says she’s crazy about him.”

  Sykes crawled from the top of the steps into a tunnel, and Poppy wasn’t far behind
. Again, the space was claustrophobically small and went on far too long for Poppy.

  “We’re going over the storeroom,” Sykes said. “You don’t have to do this, y’know.”

  “Oh, yes I do. Hurry up.”

  Eventually they reached the top of another flight of tiny steps. Sykes turned around and started downward.

  Poppy had a headache and a stomachache. Tension did those things to her. She followed Sykes’s lead until they slid along another wall arranged to be an optical illusion.

  They were inside the false space.

  They faced each other. Sykes raised his hands and let them drop.

  “We found a nifty hiding place,” Poppy said. “That’s something.”

  “It would be if we needed a place to hide.”

  “Yuck,” Poppy said. “Now we have to go back. I don’t like it in that tunnel.”

  “I’ll be right there with you. Come on, dog.”

  Mario stretched out at the base of the patched wall and rested his head on his front paws.

  “Come,” Poppy said in her best dog command voice.

  He didn’t move.

  “He’ll be filthy from lying in all this dust,” she said, hunching over to scratch his head. “Not that he cares.”

  “This was a window, not a door,” Sykes said abruptly. “Or a patch in the wall. Someone took out a window and blocked up the hole.”

  Glancing up from Mario, Poppy looked straight at a very old but solid horizontal piece of wood. She touched it. “Because of this? You think this is a windowsill? The patch goes all the way down outside.”

  “But not inside.” Sykes hunkered down beside her. “None of the other storerooms have windows.”

  “Neither does this one, now.” Poppy smirked a little then met Sykes’s eyes and straightened her face. “Do you think this was all one big room once?”

  “Could have been.”

  Poppy used the old sill to pull herself up. She bent sideways and looked underneath. “It’s solid,” she said. “There should be windows in these spaces to make them lighter.”

  “Safer not to have them if you’re storing valuables.” He got up and rapped the wood.

  Frowning, Poppy knocked it, too. “Does that sound solid to you?”

  Sykes knocked again. “Nope. But it’s probably wormy and falling apart.”

  “Look at it.” The piece of dark wood, that was very much out of place, still held a luster.

  On his knees this time, Sykes wiggled, pushed and pulled. “Maybe you could move, Mario,” he suggested. “It does feel a bit loose.”

  Poppy took the sill in both hands and pulled it completely free of the wall.

  “How did you do that?” Sykes said, taking the wood from her. “I must have knocked it free.”

  Her very strong hands were something she didn’t usually think about. “You must have,” she said. Her brothers used to make fun of her unscrewing caps their father couldn’t move.

  “It doesn’t look rotten,” Sykes said, turning the piece over and over. He held it out in front of him. “It’s perfectly finished.”

  “Like a long box,” Poppy said. She touched the bottom and pressed. Nothing happened. The ends were solid.

  The side closest to her moved, started to slide open, and she yelped.

  “Careful.” Sykes didn’t hide his excitement. He turned the sliding side upward and slipped it all the way open. “I don’t believe it.”

  Puzzled, Poppy picked up a roll of pages from inside. She could see writing on them and noted that they appeared to be torn from a book.

  About a third of the box held a round case made of leather.

  “The Harmony?” Sykes took it out reverently. He made a grab at it when it fell open.

  Poppy glanced at him. “What’s that?”

  “I’m not sure myself. I hope those pages tell me.”

  “It’s another box,” Poppy told him. Her heart thudded. She was afraid to hold the roll of paper too tightly.

  “This must have been where the Harmony was, but it’s gone,” Sykes said, and she heard his disappointment.

  Through the walls, as if they were made of muslin, traveled an unnaturally cold wind. It blew hard, swirled around them.

  Poppy heard wildly agitated voices whispering.

  28

  The gray people.

  Some walked down Poydras Street; others along Canal, heading for the Mississippi.

  They didn’t go that far.

  Not one of them caught particular attention. Ordinary people often don’t. And these men and women were ordinary. Not tall or short. Their bodies average in every way and unremarkable in their dress.

  Their faces were the faces seen on any street in New Orleans—unless you looked into the eyes and then the difference was obvious. No expression. These people showed no happiness or sorrow, no anticipation, no disappointment.

  Nothing.

  They gradually merged with a line of people buying tickets at a movie house and went inside the building without looking at posters, or buying popcorn and soda.

  Among the pairs and groups who laughed and talked, the gray people were careful to pass without touching. Into the theater itself they merged, taking scattered seats. Perhaps there were fifteen of them, or twenty. It would be hard to count because they blended into the seated crowd.

  “Please be considerate of others and make sure your cell phones are turned off.”

  The announcements rolled, the talking French fries, the dancing hot dogs, the full screen of heads in a darkened theater where someone spoke too loudly and the rest shushed them.

  Then came a brief pause before the first short for an upcoming movie.

  Black and white flashes broke across the screen. The sound changed to clicking that built to a roar.

  And then absolute darkness.

  The rolling click continued.

  Some caught the hand of a partner for comfort—or out of a desired thrill—their chatter barely audible over the broadcast noises.

  As quickly as the glitch happened, it stopped and the right pictures were shown again.

  All continued as it should.

  The show ended and the lights went up a little. Patrons blinked as they filed from their seats—most of them.

  From the audience at the opening, the fifteen or twenty gray people were missing, not that the others noticed.

  There was less chatter as they all exited.

  Among the departing crowd there were pairs of eyes that registered no emotion.

  Fifteen or twenty of them.

  29

  There had been a tense moment when Mario insisted on scuffling about among the bamboo on an evidently important mission and a light had gone on briefly in one of Pascal’s windows.

  Fortunately Pascal must have decided not to investigate because the light went out again and he didn’t appear at the back door of the shop in the next fifteen minutes.

  Sykes and Poppy made it into Sykes’s flat and he led the way to the bedroom, turning off the living room light on the way. When she raised a brow at him he said, “Don’t want anyone to wonder why we would stay up all night,” and shut the door. He also locked it—with Mario on the outside.

  He set the box in the middle of the bed and yanked the pillows against the headboard. “Might as well be comfortable,” he said, hoping his smile was innocent.

  Poppy climbed to sit on the nearest side and Sykes went around to the other one.

  A piece of thin green ribbon, tied around the roll, kept the papers together. Sykes untied the ribbon and carefully smoothed out the sheets. They were thick, like old, handmade paper and ragged at the left edge.

  Sykes tapped the papers. “If this doesn’t give me anything useful, I’m not sure where to go next,” he said.

  Poppy worked the white coverlet over her legs and settled more comfortably.

  The writing—ink and in a fine, bold hand—was still clear. Sykes realized he had no idea if this was really old or if he was just su
pposed to think it was. “Someone could have planted this,” he said.

  “Could have,” Poppy agreed. “Is it likely?”

  “No.” He began to read….

  This extraordinary meeting of the Order of Bella Angelus is convened because we vow to protect our families, our fortunes and, above all, the ultimate safekeeping of the Harmony, our final source of rescue, if our powers are in danger of annihilation.

  We are heads of the seven families marked by the power of the Harmony:

  Millet

  Fortune

  Montrachet

  Averill

  Villiers

  Savin

  Vaux

  As the most senior family, the Millets shall safeguard this book and the Harmony…

  “I think this is what it’s supposed to be,” Sykes said aloud. “I saw the book these sheets were torn from.” He didn’t add that he had seen a manifestation of the book, not the actual thing.

  Poppy didn’t answer and he continued reading to himself:

  We have been threatened several times over centuries and always we have prevailed. Our adversaries are those who want the Harmony, the source of our power, to use for their own unacceptable purposes, even though they have no way to know the exact nature of what we have.

  They do not know that we need to go to the Harmony only if we are threatened with extinction and in need of its protection, or that we are the only ones for whom the Harmony holds restoration. In all other situations it is only necessary that it exists, as it will forever.

  We are in dreadful danger now, otherwise you would not be reading this explanation. Although we do not know if it will be in a week or a thousand years, we have heard of a coming threat, a great threat. There is to be a stranger in our midst whom we do not recognize as the enemy, and this one will begin our downfall if we do not protect ourselves.

  Unfortunately the presence of the interloper will not be known until harm has been done. Then, as this creature’s kind come for our power, and if it seems they may win, it will be up to you to turn to our source for renewal of our strength.

  The round leather box stored with this book contains the Harmony. Treat it with deference, for it has its own will. With the golden Harmony in your hand, use the seven gold keys, one from each family (these to be presented when required by the current head of the Millets), to unlock the segments.