by Devin Hanson
That reminded me, the whole reason I had gone out last night had been to meet with Lei. If anyone knew what was happening to me, it would be her. Our meeting last night had been interrupted before it could begin by the Red House’s proactive marid.
I was still dressing when my phone rang. I found it on my nightstand and my heart skipped a beat when I saw David’s number. I picked up quickly. “Good morning.”
“Don’t you mean afternoon?” David asked.
I pulled the phone away from my ear to check the time. He was right. It was almost two. “Woops. I had a late night, uh, following leads.”
“Oh? Progress already?”
I winced. “After a fashion. How can I help you?”
“I have business outside the hotel today. There is a chance my tail will make an appearance.”
That was a really good idea. I kicked myself mentally for not having thought of it first. “Okay! Yeah, I can come. Where should I meet you?”
“Better we stay apart in public, for now,” David said firmly. “I have business at the Superior Court. Can you be in position to pick up a tail in thirty minutes?”
It was Monday, and the lunch-hour traffic would have cleared. I climbed into my jeans. “Will you be coming out of the front door?”
“I can make that happen,” he agreed.
“Then I will pick you up.”
“Very well. Then, until next I see you, Alexandra.”
He hung up and I finished dressing quickly. I applied more makeup than I normally would have, going heavy with the foundation. It covered up almost all of the bruising, but anyone who looked closely would see it. I wished I had a pair of aviator glasses.
Ethan was already gone, and I felt some relief at not having to talk to him. Last night had been awkward. There was no time to eat breakfast—or lunch, I supposed—if I wanted to be in place before David left the courthouse. I went straight out to my scooter and headed downtown.
Finding a parking space downtown was always a nightmare, but with a scooter, I found a spot in a parking structure a block away from the courthouse. I locked my helmet to the scooter and had to run to make the crosswalk before the light changed.
I made it to the courthouse with five minutes to spare and looked around for a suitable vantage point, where I could see David leaving the front doors and shadow him from a distance. There was an open-air restaurant across the street that had a clear view of the courthouse doors. That looked as good a place as any to wait.
I was waiting for the light to change, checking the time on my phone impatiently, when I looked up and saw a large man in a suit join the small crowd on the far side of the street waiting to cross. In Los Angeles it isn’t exactly strange to see men over six feet six. Between the actors, the athletes, and the bodybuilders flocking to the City of Lights, the demographics had to be skewed compared to other cities. Despite my interactions over the last couple days, it was rare to see a marid, especially in the full light of day.
Nevertheless, I felt my heartrate pick up. I was here to pick up the trail of a marid, and I hadn’t been here five minutes before a potential candidate showed up. The light changed and we crossed the street. I kept my eyes forward and only glanced up at him once as we were passing.
Whatever the man might have been, he was not a marid. He was on his phone, laughing about something as we passed. There was no sign of nose creases and his canines were normal-sized. That didn’t necessarily rule him out though; cosmetic surgery could all but erase the physical markers.
I reached the restaurant and sat where I had an uninterrupted view of the courthouse doors. I scanned the sidewalk, looking for the suit, and spotted him waiting to cross the street, moving away from the courthouse. The last of my suspicion faded. He wasn’t my target. Now I just had to wait for David to show.
I didn’t have to wait long. Before the waitress had a chance to make her way over to where I was sitting, the doors to the courthouse swung open and David stepped out into the sunlight. Memory of our evening together came crashing back and I felt a flush of warmth sweep over me.
I watched David check the watch on his wrist, then turn to the right and start walking up the street. He looked good, tall and confident.
“Can I get you something?”
I looked up and saw the waitress frowning down at me. “No. Sorry, I was just leaving.”
I flashed her an embarrassed smile and started walking up the sidewalk slowly, giving David a head start. Belatedly, I realized David wasn’t alone. He was walking beside a slender woman with unbound hair so light-colored it was almost white, and even in heels she barely made it to David’s shoulder. She was pretty enough to give me a little twist of jealousy. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was sharing his bed as well.
I wasn’t here to look at David, though. From my vantage across the street I had plenty of opportunity to scrutinize the pedestrians behind him. At a glance, I could tell none of them was a marid. I reminded myself that David hadn’t said he was being followed, just that there was a possibility he might be.
David and his companion took a right into Grand Park, more a cement edifice than an actual park, with a sizeable fountain as a centerpiece. I got hung up at the crosswalk and tried not to be impatient. David wasn’t hurrying anywhere. I could catch up with him easily enough.
There were a sizeable number of people walking about the park. For mid-afternoon on a weekday, I would have thought the crowds would be smaller, but maybe the Starbucks kiosk by the fountain was attracting people. The crosswalk turned and I crossed Grand and entered the park.
Behind the big fountain, a flat, ground-level fountain shot jets of water over a dozen kids running and shouting through the sprays. Parents looked on, sipping their coffee and a few dozen other people sat about in small groups, making use of the hideous pink park furniture scattered about.
I spotted David in line at the Starbucks and slowed down to a stroll. The breeze blew a cool mist from the fountain over me and I paused to enjoy it. I didn’t want to get too close to David and whoever might be following him. I leaned against the short wall and looked out over the people enjoying the park. The high-pitched screeching of the children playing in the fountain was mostly drowned out by the rush of water coming from the main fountain.
David finished getting coffee and walked further into the park, talking with the woman at his side. A man brushed by me and I glanced up at him. He had a suit on and he was hurrying with a phone held against his head. And he had a bandage over his nose.
I froze, staring for a moment before I recovered and jerked my head back around. If it hadn’t been for the bandage, I wouldn’t have recognized him. Still, just to be sure, I got my phone out and opened the picture gallery I had taken yesterday. Even with the bruising around his eyes, the man was unmistakable. It was the same person who had been meeting with Elaida. The same guy I had smashed in the face with my helmet.
I followed the man with my eyes, only turning my head far enough to keep track of him. He settled down from his hurrying pace and slowed until he was keeping pace with David, a few dozen paces behind him. I scanned the crowd around the fountain, looking more closely now.
As I watched, Elaida unfolded herself from one of those awful pink lounge chairs and handed her untouched frappuccino to a passing kid. She had a blonde wig on, cut short in a bob cut that looked terrible with her cheekbones, but it was unmistakably Elaida.
What the hell was going on?
I watched Elaida cut across the park and start walking fast. David was far ahead now, and I had to start moving or I would lose sight of him. It seemed too much of a coincidence for Elaida and dent-face to be here, to all appearances tailing David.
Suddenly Elaida’s whirlwind romance with Ethan started looking suspicious. It didn’t seem like too much of a stretch for Elaida to have been courting him in an effort to learn something about David. Had the marid I’d seen in Barnsdall Park been the one that had trashed my apartment? At this point, I wouldn�
�t have been surprised.
I still didn’t see anyone about that could be a marid. I knew they had one in the group, but maybe he knew he had been made and was running support or something. It would have worked, too, if I hadn’t run into Elaida and her crew in Barnsdall Park.
David was moving in and out of sight far ahead. He reached Hill Street on the far side of the park and took a left. Elaida was in front of him now, moving half a block ahead of David.
My knowledge of shadowing people came from watching movies, but I didn’t have to be a professional to see that Elaida and her friends were in a class above. I doubted David would have picked up his tail if it hadn’t been a marid following him. It seemed a glaring oversight on their part. Maybe they had been short-handed one day.
I was over my head. What I really should do is call David and warn him, then call Ethan and tell him what I’d seen. I ought to do a one-eighty and go home.
Then a panel van pulled up next to dent-face and he climbed in. I caught a glimpse of a hulking figure inside the back and recognized Eric as the driver. The van pulled back into traffic and disappeared, leaving Elaida alone, walking ahead of David.
I frowned and cut across the park diagonally. That was unexpected. Maybe I had jumped to conclusions early. Maybe Elaida had nothing at all to do with David. And now, without dent-face leading me, I was in danger of losing track of David altogether.
I reached Hill Street and saw David and Elaida waiting at the crosswalk. They weren’t together; Elaida had her back to David and she seemed absorbed in her phone while David and his blonde companion had their heads together discussing something.
The light changed and Elaida glanced up as David left the curb, pretending to have missed the light. She took three or four steps at a double pace, then slowed, matching David’s pace but six or seven feet behind him. It was masterfully done and I could tell David had no idea he was being followed.
There was no way I could make the light before it changed, even at a dead sprint, so I meandered. David took another left when he reached the curb and walked up Temple Street. Elaida followed behind him, now trailing by a dozen paces.
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels was an enormous concrete monument to post-modern hubris. I had never been inside, but from the outside it looked like ten stories of criminally negligent design flaws. The cathedral façade was asymmetric, probably out of desperation. Nobody could make it symmetrical and have it come out looking like anything but an oversized gravestone.
David had made it halfway up the street and had walked into the cathedral’s courtyard by the time the light changed again. Elaida kept walking up the street, and a moment later, the panel van pulled up at the curb and dent-face jumped out again. He had changed his clothes to a light-colored suit and was wearing eyeglasses that partially obscured the bandage on the bridge of his nose.
The van pulled away from the curb again after hardly slowing down and dent-face walked into the courtyard after David.
Well, there went any possibility that Elaida was here on other business. Elaida was near the end of the block now, with the panel van nowhere in sight, probably circling the block, and I was nearing the limit of my courage. It was only a matter of time before Elaida or dent-face looked behind them and saw me following them. Once that happened, God only knew what their reaction would be.
Unlike Grand Park, Temple Street was practically abandoned. A few cars went by now and then, and the sidewalk wasn’t completely empty, but there were no crowds to lose myself in. I reached the entrance to the courtyard and slowed down, peering inside.
The concrete courtyard was as bland as the building itself. David and dent-face were out of sight, having already climbed the stairs just through the entrance gate. I looked up at the pretentious array of bells hanging over the gateway, just one more poorly thought out design, and took a step through.
Chapter Ten
“Stop, child!”
I jumped in surprise and turned to scowl at my mother. She was dressed in white this time, the swell of her breasts on full, indecent display, framed by red satin. Criss-crossing red and white satin strips wrapped down her waist and overlapped in a herringbone pattern.
“What do you want this time?”
“Do not enter the church, daughter.”
“Why not? I’ve got to follow my client.”
She paced, clearly agitated, her perfectly manicured fingers clenched into fists at her sides. “God may be long gone, but his sanctuaries are still verboten.”
“What? Holy ground?” I grinned.
My mother crossed her arms and glared at me. “You laugh, but the old ways still have power.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe for you.”
I turned back around and walked forward. I crossed under the bells and it was like opening the door on a blast furnace. Heat roared past me, searing at my skin, burning at my eyes. I gasped in surprised pain and the air I sucked in scorched down my throat and baked my lungs.
I staggered backward and fell on my ass on the sidewalk. Tears streamed down my face. The exposed skin on my hands was ruddy, as if from sunburn. I gasped after breath, coughing and blinking my stinging eyes.
“I did warn you,” my mother said smugly.
“What. The. Hell,” I groaned, coughing between words. At least the street was basically empty. Nobody was around to see me getting rejected from the church grounds. I could only imagine the viral video spreading over YouTube.
“Your soul is split, my daughter. The side of you that belongs to me has been barred from passing onto blessed soil.”
“Soil?” I coughed. Painfully, I climbed to my feet and tugged my jacket straight. I half expected to see scorch marks across the front of it. “Does it look like there’s a lot of soil in there?”
My mother’s face twisted in sour irritation. “It’s a figure of speech, child.”
“I’ve been in churches before,” I said. “Nothing like that has ever happened before.”
She shrugged. “Not every church has had the full rites performed and you were not in your majority previously. The rites are more superstition than anything else these days.” A sly smile spread on her face. “Soon they will be lost entirely. Without God to affirm the beliefs of the faithful, membership and faith wanes. Prayers dry up. In another hundred years, the Church will be gone entirely, replaced by hedonism and technology.”
I shook my head. “Wow. A monologue and everything. Careful, or next you’ll be rubbing your hands and gloating.”
“I find you boorish, child,” she huffed and turned away. “And not a word of thanks for the painful death I saved you from.”
I eyed her, trying to tell if she was joking or not. “I find it hard to be grateful when you’re the one responsible for me catching on fire.”
“Selfish ingrate.” She sniffed and disappeared.
I looked back through the arch into the cathedral’s courtyard. Following David inside was out of the question. Just the thought of stepping back through that arch made my skin crawl in fear. My throat and lungs still ached and my eyes stung and watered. I wiped away the tears with the back of my hand, careful not to smudge my makeup.
Now what? I turned around, trying to figure out what to do. The far side of the cathedral block was the freeway, with no exits on that side. If I found a vantage at the end of the block I was standing on now, I could see both the front of the cathedral and the courtyard entrance.
The rough, raw feeling in my throat started to fade as I walked up the street. There was a shaded spot with benches on the other side of the street outside a city administration building. I crossed over and settled into a bench with a sigh.
I really needed to have a long talk with someone who knew what the hell was happening to me. Who knows what the next surprise would be. Maybe silver would blister my skin or someone saying a prayer out loud would deafen me.
In the meantime, I had some time to burn. I had no idea what David was doing inside the cathedral or how long he�
��d be in there. I couldn’t pass the time on my phone as I had to keep an eye out on the two entrances, but I did send Ethan a text message, letting him know I was out and about.
He replied back after a five-minute delay. He was at the doctor’s office, getting looked at. Apparently, he was feeling ill, like a flu but without a fever. He couldn’t sleep and had no energy or appetite. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with him but had taken blood samples and was sending them to the lab.
“Hopefully it’s not contagious,” I muttered. The last thing I needed right now was something like mono.
“There is nothing wrong with your friend,” my mother said.
I only flinched a little this time and turned my head to glare at her. “What do you know about sickness? And you really need to stop just showing up. People will notice.”
“Are you embarrassed to be seen with your mother? How cute is that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please.”
“I’ll have you know,” she said haughtily, “there are few beings in this world who know as much about the human body as my sisters and I. Much of the medical practices developed during the fourteenth century was built up through our direct influence.”
“You’re responsible for the plague?” I asked, aghast. “Sweating sickness? Spanish flu?”
“We called them by other things,” she shrugged modestly, “but yes. Not directly, of course, we have no power of creation, but you would be amazed at how much change can be caused by the right whispers in the right ears. The Romans were far too clean for any decent disease outbreaks. But do you know how many of the Roman upper class died from syphilis? How many powerful and noble lines were destroyed, unable to produce a healthy heir? Whole dynasties were torn apart by my influence alone. Lust is my domain, child. Never underestimate the power of the human libido.”
I turned away, my stomach twisting at the picture she painted. “You’re insane.”