"Good." She stood and looked at the licenses.
Robert C. Sumner, age twenty-seven. With a dreadful picture of Bobby looking like a Hitler youth.
Ogden P. Snead III, age thirty, wearing a black suit, a white shirt, and a black tie for his license photograph.
And Warren B. Plonkett, age twenty-four.
Warren B. Plonkett, she thought. Warren B. Plonkett…
Suddenly she could see the man coming in to ask her for a job, mentioning that he knew her from a mutual friend, Liz Baylor, who lived on the outskirts of Peters and who had a nursery and a side business supplying herbs to pagans.
"I'll be damned," she muttered. "Warren B. Plonkett. I refused to hire you, didn't I? You were trying to sleaze your way into the position I eventually gave Lisa. You wanted me to hire you because you knew what I was, as you put it—as if that made any damn difference in what kind of an employee you would be. You didn't know anything about horses, had never done any leatherwork, and thought I would give you a job because I was scared of you. And naturally I didn't hire you. You little creep. You're the one who stirred these two up." She looked down at the back of Warren's head lying so close to her feet, and for just an instant she had an irrational urge to kick it until it bounced. She didn't, though.
Instead she went to the house and called the police and the sheriff's department. They were fascinated by what she had to tell them, and once they arrived, even more fascinated when all three men, including the deputy, were willing—even eager—to give full confessions.
Chapter Fifteen
"Come in. I'm Ariani Callion." Callion, disguised in the form of a statuesque blonde, showed the job applicant in. The man who'd come to interview, Callion knew from his application letter, was Jeremy Bridges, and as far as Callion could tell, he fit Callion's needs perfectly. But there might be inconvenient details that would prove him to be, on closer examination, an unfortunate choice.
So Callion showed the young man in to his office and let him pick a chair on the far side of the desk. Callion settled into his chair, steepled his fingers, and in a rich contralto voice that he intentionally made as sexy as he could, said, "From your letter, you sound ideal. You're a reader, and your familiarity with the fields of SF and fantasy is extraordinary. I was impressed by the fact that you're knowledgeable about mainstream fiction and mysteries, too. You presented yourself well on paper."
Jeremy waited for just a second to see if Callion was going to say anything else, then said, "Um…thank you. Your ad certainly caught my attention, and I fit the qualifications…but I was wondering what the job was. The ad didn't make that clear."
"Intentionally. I would rather not be swamped by unqualified applicants. Curiosity is one of the finest of characteristics in a human being, and surprisingly hard to come by anymore. But I consider curiosity essential in an applicant. When I'm sure you meet my needs, I'll tell you about the job." Callion cleared his throat and shifted so that Jeremy got a good look at his cleavage. "You didn't mention how your family would feel about your traveling for extended periods of time, or picking up and moving abruptly."
Jeremy looked down at his hands for a moment, inhaled slowly, and looked up to meet Callion's eyes. "I don't actually have a family," he said. "My mother died when I was pretty young and my father and I haven't…haven't spoken in years. I'm an only child."
"I see. Will you want moving expenses for your own wife and children?"
He laughed, but the laughter was devoid of humor. "I had a girlfriend, but she decided she would rather chase after men with money. I certainly don't have a wife or children."
Callion nodded. "Then you would be able to move at a moment's notice."
"Hell, I could move today," Jeremy said. The bitterness in his voice came through clearly.
"I see."
"I'm sorry, Ms. Callion. That was rude and unprofessional of me. Events in my life have been difficult lately, and I've experienced a certain amount of anger regarding them. But I'm over that, and my past won't affect my job performance for you."
Callion smiled. "That's fine. I would expect you to show some emotion when things have gone badly for you." He sighed. "You said you could move today, but I assume you'll actually have a number of financial obligations you will have to straighten out before you could really be ready to move?"
"Not really. I'll have to pay my final month's rent on my apartment and give notice, but if you hire a packer to move your people, I wouldn't have to stay there to take care of that. I don't own anything really valuable, anyway. Just my books. And I'd have to shut off my phone and my electric and my water, but again, that's something that would take about an hour."
"Excellent." Callion said, "Well, if you're interested, I'll be happy to show you the work you'll be doing with us, and tell you about the company, the benefits, the perks…" He stood. "Are you interested?"
"Well, I think so. But first, I'd like to know, from my qualifications, what my starting salary would be. That's pretty important."
Callion took out a sheet of paper and wrote for a moment. "You have a Bachelor's degree and are working on your Master's, you have an excellent grasp of the necessary material, by all appearances your IQ is exceptionally high—you wouldn't happen to know what it is, by any chance?"
"My IQ? One forty-eight."
"Yes, I thought so." That makes it even more imperative that I convince you to work for me. "I can start you at sixty-two five."
"Um…sixty-two five what? Dollars per day?"
"Oh, no. Sixty-two thousand five hundred dollars per year. If you already had your Master's I could go higher, but since we'll be covering the cost of your education from here on out, I'm afraid that's the top dollar I'm authorized to offer."
Callion watched him. Jeremy was trying hard not to appear stunned, but he wasn't fooling either of them. He'd never thought he could earn so much money, and his greed was going to put him right where Callion wanted him.
"That…sounds very good, actually," Jeremy said. "Certainly reasonable."
"Excellent. Then can I show you what you'll be doing?"
This time Jeremy stood. "By all means. Lead on."
Callion took him to the center of the house, to a room that had been a family room before Callion converted it. Now it had no windows, only the one door, and thick, soundproofed walls. Callion stepped in first, waiting until Jeremy was inside, and closed the door behind them. They stood in utter darkness for a moment, and in silence until Jeremy said, "What is this?"
"Patience. This takes a second."
Softly glowing points of golden light began to whirl up out of the center of the floor. They rose upward, drifting into a beautiful cloud of spinning fire, a slow-moving tornado of fireflies. "Oh," Jeremy whispered. "I've never seen anything so beautiful. What is it? Some sort of special effect?"
"They have a handful of different names. They've been called will-o'-the-wisps. Firedrakes. Watchers. I have always known them as Devourers. They are Rift creatures, predators of an interesting variety. Very rare. They have some amazing abilities."
"Predators?"
The firefly cloud spun itself out into the shape of a face, and a thousand whispering voices speaking in almost-synchronized phrases said:
we await
we await
your bidding (bidding) have
have you brought us
brought us
something tasty wonderful
something good
Jeremy wasn't amused. "If this is a joke," he said, "I find it in terrible taste."
"No joke at all," Callion said. "I require a lifetime commitment from my employees."
"Just forget it." Jeremy turned and tried the door, but of course it didn't open.
The lights swarmed forward, first a thin stream of them that spiraled around him and settled on his skin, burrowing in and illuminating him from the inside as they went. After the first few lights found their way into his flesh, the rest followed, flowing over him and moving t
hrough him. He began to swell and scream simultaneously, and he begged very nicely for Callion to have mercy, to not hurt him, to get the things off of him.
Callion watched, pleased. The Devourers obliterated Jeremy, leaving not even bones or hair to show where he had once been. Callion could have siphoned magic off of them had he chosen to, but Callion had no need for the soul-magic of the dead.
"Another bright breeder vanished," he said quietly, watching the last of the Devourers clean up stray spatters of blood from around the room. "The collective IQ of my enemies drops just a bit more, my own options expand, and someone else who might be able to figure out what I'm doing ceases to exist." He glanced at the Devourers. "And I keep you little monsters fed a bit longer, eh?"
He pressed his palm to the door, which opened instantly for him. He spent a little time making himself look like Jeremy. Then he drove Jeremy's car back to his apartment. He stopped by the manager's office and paid cash for Jeremy's rent for the next two months, then visited the utility companies and turned off Jeremy's phone, water, and electric. By the time anyone thought to start looking for Jeremy, they wouldn't have anywhere to look.
Chapter Sixteen
Kate looked at her clock. Seven twenty-five A.M., which was a reasonable time to be up and working, except that she hadn't gone to bed until three. She tried closing her eyes, but she could tell pretty quickly that doing so was pointless; four hours of sleep plus change and she was up for the day.
She yawned and sat up. Rhiana was asleep on the floor beside her bed—Kate had decided Rhiana would feel better sharing a room with her than with Val and Tik and Errga. The arrangement had a second advantage, too; both of them could keep the daylight hours they preferred.
Rhiana sat up.
"Go back to sleep. I didn't mean to wake you," Kate told her.
"I didn't sleep very well, either." Rhiana stretched and brushed the hair out of her face. "Too much excitement."
"I know."
"At least they'll be imprisoned now."
"Don't count on it." Kate got up and went to her closet to find something to wear. "Our court system won't lock them up, even though they confessed. They'll be out on bail pending trial."
"Out?" Kate couldn't see Rhiana's face, but the depth of disbelief she put into that one word told Kate how she felt anyway.
"Yes, out. Over the years our court system has become geared toward protecting criminals instead of the innocent. Well, some sorts of criminals, anyway. The system has fallen apart to the point that people don't really expect justice anymore." She found a comfortable old pair of jeans and another Rangers sweatshirt. She felt confident enough about the magical work she and Rhiana were doing that she decided to wear it; if the two of them accidentally blew it to oblivion, she'd have a duck. The Rangers were playing that night, though, and she felt the need to support her team. As they neared the playoffs, they were falling in the standings. She thought their struggles were a last taste of the legacy of Neil Smith and Colin Campbell, who'd traded their youth and their future in the 1995-1996 season for a bunch of aging goons.
She'd wanted to see Messier win another Stanley Cup before he retired. The old consolation, "Maybe next year," sounded more and more unlikely. It needed to be this year.
Hence the sweatshirt. She couldn't think of anything else she could do. Well…maybe she could light a few red, white, and blue candles. She laughed at that thought, took her clothes, and went to take a shower.
Rhiana was sitting at the top of the steps waiting for her when she came out. "We never called Lisa to see if she could find a number for Callion," she said.
Kate thumped herself on the forehead with the palm of her hand. "I forgot."
"Too many things going on."
"We shouldn't have had the pizza party last night after the police left."
"Everyone liked the pizza, Kate. I liked it."
"Well, the celebration was fun, but the pizza was mediocre. You haven't lived until you've tasted New York pizza. That was just chain stuff."
"Chain stuff?"
"Pizza parlors all over the country prepackage…never mind. It wasn't real pizza. Trust me. Anyway, after all of that, I forgot I intended to call Lisa."
"Can you call her now?"
Kate nodded and jogged down the steps. She could hear a symphony of snores rolling out of the living room; Val, Tik, and Errga had decided beer was the best part of a pizza party and had overindulged. "I can call her in about five minutes. She won't answer the phone until eight-thirty, when the mail-order part of the store opens."
"I'll be down soon, then. You can tell me what you found."
Kate heard Rhiana close the bathroom door, and heard the pipes begin to rattle as the shower hissed on. She watched the clock, and as soon as she could, she called her store.
"Saddlecraft South, this is Lisa. How may I help you today?"
"It's Kate."
"God, Kate…I read in this morning's paper that the police captured the three men who attacked you last night."
"Yeah, but that isn't what I called you about. You know that phone number CD-ROM you have?"
"Sure."
"Could you look up a name for me?"
"Of course."
"It's Callion. I guess it would be C-A-L-L-I-O-N, but check for other spellings, too."
"Do you have a first name?"
Kate thought about that for a moment. "Check it as both a first and a last name. Can you do that?"
"Sure. I'll just run two searches, one with the first field open, and one with the second field open. You'll probably end up with a lot of wrong names and addresses, though."
"I can't help that. When can you check?"
"Is there a rush?"
"If you ever want me back there carrying my share of the workload, there's a rush."
"Paul's here now. We aren't busy yet—he could cover for me and I could go home."
"Great. Do that, then, and call me with the results." She considered. "Um, if you have too many, just print them off and I'll stop by and pick up the sheet. And Lisa…"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks."
After spending endless hours trying to think of a magical solution to finding Callion, if it were this easy, she was going to feel like an idiot. And wouldn't that be the way; the outsider who never saw a phone until seven days ago being the one to figure out that angle.
Kate poured herself a bowl of Fruit & Fibre, the kind with the peach chunks in it, dumped in skim milk that was squeezing too close to the expiration date for comfort, and sat at the bar to eat and meditate. She'd finished off the first bowl and started into a second when Rhiana joined her.
"Did fortune smile?"
"It hasn't even grinned yet," Kate said.
"I see." Rhiana eyed Kate's cereal and milk, wrinkled her nose, and got out sausages, cheddar cheese, and bread for herself. Kate had discovered that none of the Glenraveners considered cereal to be fit food for humans, thinking of it instead as something appropriate for cattle and horses, and they didn't like skim milk, either. They didn't ask her to supply them with the food they preferred without compensation, though; Val and Tik had some gold which they gave her when it became apparent that they weren't going to be going home immediately. Because of that, she didn't begrudge them their insistence on meat with every meal. She didn't expect to get rich from her guests' small hoard, though. She had no idea how she was going to dispose of circulated gold coins with some sort of Glenraven crest on one side and the head of a woman with fangs on the obverse, and edged with writing from no known language on Earth. She supposed she'd find a way. Someone ought to be intrigued by them.
"She will tell you when she finds something?" Rhiana asked.
The sausages smelled wonderful. Kate glanced down at the soggy flakes floating in her pale milk and sniffed wistfully. Bad for the heart, she thought. Bad for the arteries, bad for the hips, bad for my health in general. Sausages…made with the stuff left over after all the parts people are willing t
o eat are gone. She'd seen hog jowls and pigs feet and fatback and tripe in the local Winn Dixie. If people were willing to eat that, she didn't want to consider the bits that went into the making of sausages.
Her rationalization did nothing; the wondrous odor of sizzling sausages made her stomach growl, and she ate her last few spoonfuls of cereal sullenly, wishing that someone, somewhere, would find a way to make sausages into a health food.
The phone rang.
"Yeah?"
"Kate? You all right?"
"Of course. I'm just lusting after pork products."
"Winn Dixie had bacon on sale yesterday—really good price, too."
"Great. Just what I didn't need to hear."
"You still doing the low-fat thing, huh?" She laughed. "I got your numbers."
Kate grabbed the pad of paper and the pen she kept by the phone and said, "Okay. Go ahead."
"There aren't many. David and Rick Callion in Montana…"
"Probably not who I want, but give me the numbers. Did you get street addresses, too?"
"Of course." She read both sets of numbers and addresses off and Kate wrote them down.
"P. D. Callion in Rochester, New York…"
Kate got that one, too.
"Eight Callions in and around the Tennessee-Kentucky border…"
"Okay…" Kate scribbled name after name, wondering if any of this could be leading anywhere.
"And one Callion used as a first name. Callion Aregeni, in Abilene, Texas."
Kate wrote that one down, too. "No others?"
"If there are, they're unlisted."
"Thanks, Lisa. You might have saved me a whole lot of time."
"No problem."
When she hung up the phone, she showed the list to Rhiana. "Any of these look likely?"
Rhiana stared at the words, then looked at Kate. "I can't read that."
Kate felt stupid. She'd known before that the Glenraveners couldn't read English. She realized that they didn't actually speak English. But because they could read the same text she could read in the Fodor's Guide to Glenraven, it was easy to forget that what they were seeing and what she saw were two different things. "Sorry," she muttered, and read the names aloud.
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