by Linda Welch
What?
The bunched muscles in Royal’s arm pressed on my shoulders, his entire body tight. What was going on? Hidden from view, I dug my elbow in his side.
He ignored the jab and echoed my previous thoughts. “There’s not much to go on but we have taken cases with less.”
Astonished, I managed to keep it off my face. This was not the way it worked. We were partners, we made decisions together and one of us didn’t take on a case without consulting the other. And I didn’t know if I wanted this case. In fact, I didn’t, because these two frightened me.
I smiled thinly. “I don’t suppose Royal offered you something to drink?”
“Nothing for me,” Gia said.
“I’m fine,” said Daven.
I slipped out from beneath Royal’s arm. “I need coffee and don’t tell me you ate all the donuts.”
“I didn’t make it to the Moose.”
He meant The Mad Moose, a bakery and coffee house across the street. I grabbed his hand and hauled him upright. “Come show me again how to use your fancy new coffee maker.”
I didn’t give him the chance to refuse. I dragged him to the kitchen, where I let go his hand, pulled the coffee maker out on the counter and opened the cabinet where he kept coffee.
“What’s going on?” I asked under my breath.
His shook his head, a small, brisk shake as his eyes slid to them and back to me. He didn’t want to talk about them while they were in the room.
I looked back along the room - they should not be able to hear me unless they had superlative hearing, as Royal did.
I tried to catch his eye as he filled a filter with coffee, loaded the machine and started it, and I know he felt me staring, but he would not look at me. As water dripped into the carafe, he went back to our guests. With my back to them, I fumed. Royal should not have spoken up for both of us without talking to me first.
With the pot making bubbly noises in the background, I went back to them. Gia smoothly rose up and turned to me. I had to stop my feet stepping back away from her. Her expression was bland, but I felt inexplicably threatened. She smiled without warmth. “We must be going.”
Something was very wrong, and not just that they weren’t human beings. I knew it. Why did I feel threatened? Was it her manner, her smile, the way she stood? I didn’t know what made me bristle, but animal instinct prickled up the back of my neck. I blinked at her. “Okay. But we should meet again. Names, addresses and phone numbers would be helpful, and perhaps we can dig a little deeper into Rio’s past and current activities?”
She elegantly shrugged one shoulder. “I can come to your house this evening if you wish.”
I looked into her big dark eyes, trying to see what lay behind the enigmatic gaze. Up close I saw they were not black, but the darkest brown I had ever seen.
“Okay,” I said.
Gia swirled her long red cloak over her shoulders and put up the hood. The color would make her stand out on the street like a giant fire hydrant; as if she wanted to hide and attract attention at the same time.
They left the apartment and I stood at the window, waiting for them to appear in the street, but they must have gone to the parking lot out back.
I struggled to put it together in my head. Why did I agree to her coming to my home? I never invite clients to my home.
I turned to Royal. “Okay, what happened just then?”
Royal warily returned my gaze. “We took a case.”
I walked around the couch and stopped inches from him, glaring in his face. “You took on a case, but that’s not what I mean. Tell me why I just calmly agreed to her coming to my house? Have you ever known me to have a client at my house?”
“You tell me.”
I had not felt a thing, but I knew Gia somehow tampered with me. “I swear the woman did a mind job on me. She suggested she come to my house and I agreed without hesitation. They’re demons, aren’t they.”
“Demons? They’re not Gelpha, Tiff.”
My temper matched the color of my face, red and getting redder. “They kind of look like you guys and you indicated they could hear me when we were way over in your kitchen - it’s a demon thing - and anyway, there’s something off kilter with them. The way I just agreed to her coming to my house. . . . Are they another kind of demon?”
“Tiff, you know how we influence humans.”
I surely did. Demons can arouse you to the point you’ll do anything they say. Gia Sabato didn’t do that, but still, I knew she somehow influenced me.
“No comment on my assumption they have supernatural hearing?”
“Pointed teeth and glittering eyes, Tiff. See any?”
“And we both know your people can hide that, even from me, if they make the effort.”
Sudden thought: “Royal, why were you so nervous around them? Are they dangerous?”
He turned away from me and faced the windows. The man actually turned his back on me! “Let it go, Tiff.”
I couldn’t let it go. “Royal, now is the time to tell me what’s going on.”
When he kept staring out the window, I knew I had to get out of there before I said something I’d regret.
I moved toward the stairs. “Tiff,” Royal called out. I half turned to face him.
His mouth worked as if he couldn’t get out the words he wanted to say. Then his shoulders slumped. “Tiff, I can’t tell you.” His eyes looked desperately into mine. “Please understand - I just can’t.”
I walked out of the apartment.
Chapter Five
I was still steamed as I drove along Felldale Avenue in my navy-blue Subaru Forrester. “Let it go, Tiff.” I mimicked.
I don’t as a habit speed in a residential area and when I checked my rearview mirror, sure enough, a cop car followed two cars back. You just try ticketing me for going five miles over the limit, I seethed. Just you dare. Which proved my mood was not only foul, it was stupid. I eased up on the gas pedal.
More than anything else, I hurt. Royal and I had grown so close. I thought we had. We were always absolutely honest with each other, weren’t we? But he shut me out, and not only on a personal level, this was an investigation.
I pressed my lips together and blew air through my nose. My imagination went into overdrive as I considered that everything about this new case seemed coincidentally too tidy. The absent boyfriend grew up in Clarion and disappeared here. Royal and I just happen to live and work here. Our new clients seemed to have at least one demon attribute, and we had pissed off a lot of demons.
A setup? Was somebody after us? Were demons after us?
The last time that happened, I ended up in Bel-Athaer being tortured by Royal’s brother. If Royal had not turned up and rescued me, I’d likely be dead, and young Lawrence also.
Were Gia Sabato and Daven Clare working for demons, for Lawrence’s enemies? Were bad demons after me again?
Royal and I escaped a tribe of demons in Bel-Athaer. Although they started it when they abducted and tortured me, I guess they hold us responsible for the death of Royal’s brother. He couldn’t assure me they would not come after us.
I roared up the street and in my driveway, got out the car and slammed the door. I stomped to the mailbox and fought with a big manila envelope the mailman had jammed in there.
Banks & Mortensen, 1825 Beeches Street, Clarion, Utah, 84311.
Banks and Mortensen. See who gets top billing?
A handwritten address, with no return address. The postal stamp said Salt Lake City, but all mail to Clarion goes through there.
I went inside, in the kitchen, dropped the envelope on the table and went to the refrigerator. “I met Gia Sabato today,” I announced to thin air.
Mel and Jack flashed into the room.“The author, the one who writes about vampires?” Mel asked.
“The very same.” I opened the fridge and got a diet cola. The fridge is old, one of those bulbous fifties things and a lovely shade of pale pink. If you put anything at the bac
k it half-freezes up, so I keep the soda there. It comes out icy and delicious. “She and a guy name of Daven Clare are our new clients.”
“You’re on a case for them?” Jack asked.
I popped the tab and took a sip, then said, “It’s what you usually do for clients. Gia’s coming here to talk to me this evening.”
They reacted like a person would when hit with mind-shattering news. They went perfectly motionless, then their jaws dropped in unison. A second later Jack managed to say in a voice hushed with awe: “She’s coming into the house?”
They were more taken aback by a person coming in the house than that the person was a famous figure. I took my can of soda to the table. “Yep.”
“She’s gorgeous.” Jack ran his hands over his hair. “How do I look?”
I eyed him. “Kinda . . . dead. Fortunate for her, she can’t see you.”
“Bummer.” He folded his arms, slumping.
“But what’s she like?” Mel asked.
“She’s scary as hell and not human.”
Mel jerked into motion. “Of course she’s human! We saw her photo in the paper.”
“I’m positive she’s not.”
“Duh!” Mel put hands to hips, elbows akimbo. “I get it. She’s a demon.”
“I’m not sure.” I took a seat at the table. “If she and Clare are demons, they’re like none I’ve seen or heard of.”
Jack came in closer. “What do they look like?”
“She looks normal in her photo,” Mel said.
“They can perform miracles with Photoshop,” from Jack.
“They look human. But. . . .” Confused again, I stopped talking.
“If it looks like human, walks like human and talks like human, generally it’s human,” Jack opined.
“It’s something. . . .” I splayed my hand on my stomach. “This tells me they’re not.”
“Probably indigestion.”
“I wish,” I told him.
My roommates are easily distracted. “What’s that?” Jack asked as he bent over the tale for a closer look at the package.
“I don’t know.”
He turned to the TV set as Oprah came on. “Who’s it from?”
I took another healthy gulp of soda. “Don’t know that either. No return address.”
“Probably a bomb from one of the several hundred people you’ve pissed off.”
“Or . . . what’s it called . . . anthrax?” from Mel.
“So, it’s from one of the several hundred terrorists you’ve pissed off,” Jack amended.
Where did they come up with these ideas?
I sat at the table and ripped off the end of the envelope. Jack and Mel in unison parodied gasps of alarm.
I pulled out a slim six-by-nine book with a soft, black leather cover. It looked old, like a well-worn Bible, and on the front, in gold lettering crackled by time, Elizabeth Hulme.
I flipped it open. “I think it’s a diary.” I held it up for them to see the words in large, ornate, tortured handwriting. “See, inside here it says, I Continue My Observations During Our Expedition of Discovery. Burma 1887. Elizabeth Hulme aged Fifteen Years and Seven Months.”
“How odd,” Mel said. “It looks really old.”
“Well it would be, if it was written in 1887,” Jack commented dryly.
“Why would anyone send you an old diary?” Mel asked.
“It came to the agency, not me in particular.”
“Anonymously too,” Jack put in.
I widened my eyes at them, closed the book and pushed it away.
“Leave it open!” Mel said.
I sighed. “I’m not in the mood to sit here turning pages for you. Maybe later.”
I got up, went up the stairs and along the passage to my bedroom. Before closing the door, I looked back. “And stay out, will you, guys? I need some me-time.”
They were still in the kitchen, but I knew they heard me.
***
I needed time alone to think things through. I lay on my stomach on the bed, arms crossed on the pillow and my head on them. Oprah’s voice echoed up the stairs now and then, but apart from that, blessed quiet enfolded me. The soft tock of the old carriage clock on the mantle calmed me.
I ran it through my head again. Not the case, not the mystery of disappearing Rio Borrego. Gia Sabato and Daven Clare, and Royal. All three knew something they were not telling me, that Royal refused to tell me.
Royal was leery of them, but determined to take the case. He acted like it was a done deal, with no input from me.
I propped my elbows on the pillow and rested my chin on them. Gia did influence me. I could see no other explanation.
I went over everything said by all parties, everything I observed, and I kept coming back to the same question. Not who, but what were Gia Sabato and Daven Clare? Demons making me think they were human, or human beings?
I flopped over on my back and stared at the ceiling. They could be human with special powers - I narrowed my eyes - powers of intimidation, for sure.
I rolled off the bed, sat at my computer and Googled Gia Sabato.
I found a lot of entries on Gia connected to her writing: reviews on her two books, an official Gia Sabato web page and an official fan page. It went on and on. I kept scrolling down until I got the occasional Antonio Sabato Junior entry interspersed with hers, then entries on other Gias and other Sabatos.
At last I found a little gem. Clicking the link took me to a post in an urban fantasy forum.
“Who is Gia Sabato? I wonder if that’s the name she was born with. Sabato has a driver’s license, passport, credit cards, social security number, so on and so forth, but they date back just five year. Before then, nada. So I can only conclude she legally changed her name, but there’s no record.”
The post rambled on at some length. It came from a Robert P. Bristow of Warrensburg, Missouri, dated a month ago. Answering posts theorized, but most of their ideas were ludicrous.
Still didn’t tell me anything about the woman, but interesting nonetheless. If Gia Sabato sprang into existence five years ago, who was she before? Getting a fake identity was easy if you knew how.
One way to find out.
Royal installed some possibly illegal software on my computer. Strike that - definitely illegal. I rarely used them for fear the CIA or Homeland Security would come busting in my house and haul me off. I decided to risk it if the snoop programs could tell me anything about Gia Sabato.
I need not have bothered. They confirmed what I read on Bristow’s blog. Gia Sabato’s social security number showed up in the system five years ago, followed by a driver’s license. Soon after, she opened accounts at two banks and a credit union. She got a passport. Before that? As Robert Bristow said: nada. Not even demon-tech could tell me.
In her publicity photos she always stood in shadow and wore a long hooded cloak or a wide-brimmed hat. She never gave interviews and did book signings only late in the evenings. At those signings, many of the fans who queued were young vampire wannabes, and others wore costumes which made them look like extras for The Addams Family. And Gia wore pale makeup on her face, black on her eyes, bright red on her lips.
I shook my head as I looked at the monitor. The woman had reinvented herself. She adopted another persona as a publicity ploy: a mysterious, eerily attractive author of vampire novels. And her fans lapped it up.
How did she hide her origins so thoroughly? What influence and power did she wield to be able to do that? How do you suppress public records?
I leaned back in the chair. Or. . . .
Did she come from Bel-Athaer and like many Gelpha create the identity of a human being?
I looked for Daven and found a Daven René Clare, born in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1971. He had addresses in Bennington, Vermont and Clarion, Utah.
Bella Vista Drive, up at the White Basin Resort. Hm. I pinched my lower lip, thinking. Maybe I should take a drive up there. And I could check out Gia’s place in Bay
le Court.
I rubbed my eyes with my fingertips. I felt very, very tired; probably worn out emotionally more than physically.
I picked up my bedside phone to call Royal, put it down again. I’d call him later when I was in a better mood.
I went back to the kitchen to make a late lunch, pausing in the hallway to switch on the air-conditioning so the temperature would be comfortable by the time Gia Sabato arrived. The kitchen is my favorite room in cold weather because it’s the warmest one in the house. In summer, with sun blazing through the west-facing windows, it gets really, really hot. Air conditioning was a deciding factor when I bought the house. Back then, most homes in Utah used evaporative coolers, commonly called swamp coolers because they shoot out moist air. I hate the things. They are noisy, and don’t help much with the heat when temperatures get above ninety degrees, plus they make the house damp. I looked at five other homes, but this was the only one with air-conditioning.
This was the only one with two dead people already installed, but I didn’t know at the time.
How could I not know Jack and Mel haunted my house? They didn’t show themselves, and maybe my senses were not fully attuned back then, because I didn’t feel them like I can feel a shade’s presence now. Yep, finding a couple of spooks in my house a week after moving in was something of a surprise.
Too bad if Gia objected to meeting with me in my kitchen. Royal and I had an agency, but we didn’t have an office. At one time I thought of doing a makeover on the living room and use it as our office - I never use the dark little room and the décor stinks - but I don’t have money to spare for renovations. I changed my mind, anyway, deciding I didn’t particularly want clients in my home. But I didn’t have a choice with Gia Sabato, she didn’t give me one.
Mel and Jack watched me avidly as I got out tuna, pickles, sweet relish and light mayonnaise. I drained and flaked the tuna and mixed everything in a plastic bowl with them hanging over my shoulder. If they could drool, my shoulders would have been soggy. I slapped the mixture on a slice of bread, added a leaf of lettuce, topped it with another slice and took the sandwich to the table.
Mel and Jack ogled the sandwich, but I was used to that. They don’t remember the taste of food, but act like they do. I think they fixate on my enjoyment. If I want to rile them I make a lot of appreciative noises when I eat, but this time I ate silently. Then I picked up the diary again.
