Broken Dolls
A Paranormal Thriller
By B.R. Kingsolver
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Published by B.R. Kingsolver
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Copyright 2013 B.R. Kingsolver
brkingsolver.com
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Cover art by Heather Hamilton-Senter
www.bookcoverartistry.com
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Books by BR Kingsolver
Dark Streets
Gods and Demons
Dragon’s Egg
The Chameleon Assassin Series
Chameleon Assassin
Chameleon Uncovered
Chameleon’s Challenge
Chameleon’s Death Dance
The Telepathic Clans Saga
The Succubus Gift
Succubus Unleashed
Broken Dolls
Succubus Rising
Succubus Ascendant
Other books
I’ll Sing for my Dinner
Trust
Short Stories in Anthologies
Here, Kitty Kitty
Bellator
To Valentina, who wanted me to write a mystery.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Valentina, for your encouragement and editing. Jane, Jackie, Jessica and Mia for putting up with me and giving me invaluable feedback and editing help. Abigail and Jelaine, who were brave enough to read my work for the first time and contributed so much to helping me clarify the world of the Clans. Mia for the cover. The book is much better for your help. It turned out better than I hoped. My thanks to you all.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Succubus Rising
The Telepathic Gifts
A full list and description of the Telepathic Gifts appears at the end of the book.
Broken Dolls
Chapter 1
For the third night in a row, the office light went off at 7:30. Three minutes later, the man I was following walked out the front door of the building wearing his jacket and carrying his briefcase. He turned right, walked two blocks and turned right again. Another block and he walked into a pub. He sat at the same table and ordered shepherd’s pie and a pint for the third night in a row.
Following this guy was getting very old.
I tried the shepherd’s pie the first night, lamb stew the second. Looking at the menu, I decided on the steak and kidney pie. I didn’t have high hopes it would be much better than the previous meals in this place. I wished he’d find a pub with a cook who knew how to cook. Congealed grease is not one of my favorites. If this assignment lasted much longer, I was going to start billing a hazard surcharge for the food. Lousy fish and chips three days in a row for lunch, and terrible shepherd’s pie three days in a row for supper. No wonder he was thirty pounds overweight.
He took the Tube to the train and walked in the front door of his house at 10:00, again for the third night in a row.
By the time I got off the train back in London, it was almost 11:00. It was after midnight when I got home and I got back to his place at 7:00 in the morning. I considered a sleep-deprivation surcharge.
Sitting in the coffee stop across the street from his building, I mused on why his wife thought he was worth keeping, let alone why she thought someone else would want someone so boring. But she was willing to pay, and my rent was due.
It would have been so much easier if he were a norm. I could just read his mind and know if he was screwing around. I’d give her my report, charge her a thousand pounds, and be done with it.
As distasteful as following cheating husbands is, I’d rather be sitting there reading a book than selling my high-end services. It wasn’t so bad when I was paid ten thousand pounds to seduce a norm. But with another telepath, unless his shields were leaky, I couldn’t be sure if I was seducing a cheater or inducing an honest man to cheat. That was part of why I charged twenty-five thousand for that service. The price discouraged a lot of women, and if it didn’t, I made enough to deal with my guilty conscience.
I met the wife of my assignment for lunch on Saturday.
“Meg, I haven’t seen anything that would indicate he’s cheating on you,” I said. “He’s working ten hours a day. He goes straight to work in the morning, and in the evening he has dinner at the pub and goes straight home.”
His wife was pretty and thirty years younger than he was. I wondered what he’d done to win her in the first place.
“Something doesn’t feel right. I know he’s hiding something. Can you stay on the job another week?” Meg Whitman asked.
“Yes, but I need the money in advance. I’m burning all of my time keeping him under surveillance. Not to be offensive, but I’ve had clients try to back out of payment when an investigation doesn’t produce any results.”
She pulled money out of her wallet and paid me, cash, no arguments. How many people carry five thousand in cash? She’d paid cash up front the previous week as well.
“Miss Kendrick, I’m not crazy and I’m not paranoid. Is there any chance he’s carrying on an affair at work?”
“I’m not seeing any evidence of it,” I said. “I can see through the window of his office all day, and I’ve checked his schedule. His presence is accounted for. But I will admit, sometimes an illicit affair may be an occasional meeting. For all I know, he may already have an assignation planned for two weeks from Monday.”
I thought back on that conversation the following Thursday when he left his office at 3:00 in the afternoon. He walked five blocks to a hotel, bypassed the front desk, and took the elevator to the fifth floor. I got on with him, but got off at the fourth floor. Pelting up the stairs, I opened the door to the hall in time to see him enter a room. A woman, older and plainer than his wife, kissed him and closed the door.
To my surprise, she was a norm. I’m not prejudiced, but it’s generally acknowledged that sex with the most repressed, homely telepath is a lot better than sex with the most beautiful, passionate norm. A telepath shares their emotions and sensations with a sexual partner, enhancing the experience in a way a norm never could. There had to be something else going on there besides the physical aspects of sex.
I extended my awareness, and entered her mind. I had to be careful, because he was in her mind, too. She definitely thought he was the best lover she’d ever had. It didn’t take long to fi
gure out why he wanted her. I withdrew, feeling a bit sick.
Shit. How was I going to break this to his wife?
I called Meg Whitman and arranged to have lunch with her the following day. We met in the town where she lived. She chose a nice little café with checked tablecloths and a fresh carnation in a bud vase on every table.
“Your husband is meeting a woman named Gloria Watson at a hotel called the Western Grand. They get together twice a month on Thursday afternoons. She’s a norm and he met her on the Internet,” I told her. She turned a bit pale and her mouth set into a grim line. Her eyes got a little glassy.
“Why? Do you know?” she almost whispered.
This was the hard part. I’d hoped she wouldn’t ask, but they always do.
“They’re having sex. Sex that most people would consider rather kinky.”
“Oh my God,” she breathed. “So he’s going to this woman for something he doesn’t think I’d do.”
“Meg, it’s something you can’t do,” I said. “He uses compulsion on her. What she remembers isn’t what happens.”
The blood completely drained from Meg’s face and she looked sick. “Does he hurt her?” her voice came out thin and shaky.
“Yes, and other things. Are you sure you want to know everything? I don’t consider myself squeamish, but it’s really something I’d rather not talk about. It’s in my report.”
“That bad, huh?” She wiped her mouth with her napkin, her hand shaking, and taking her purse excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.
There aren’t any laws against using compulsion on an innocent norm, primarily because norms don’t know it can be done. It’s frowned upon by telepaths. Of course, all of us know how to do it, but using it on a sexual partner is essentially rape. Considering Meg’s husband’s perversions, it would be difficult to find a willing partner.
We parted ways. If she wanted more details, they were contained in the report I gave her. I urged her to burn it before she read it. I put the really nauseating part in a separate appendix to make that easier. She might burn it, but I was pretty sure she’d read it first. We’re like normal humans in a lot of ways.
~~~
The ten thousand pounds I’d made off Meg Whitman’s pain had me set through this month and probably next, but it wasn’t enough to take a holiday.
It was a lovely late spring day and a lot of other people were on holiday. The streets were packed with tourists. I’m not a big fan of kids, and there were lots of kids out that day.
I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Meg had eaten at the café, but I just had tea. I wondered if she’d be able to keep it down after she read that report. I stopped into a pub in the West End and ordered a pint and a salad. While I was waiting, I checked my messages. Business was looking good. The first one was a potential client. The second message made me sit up in my chair. I hadn’t heard the voice in ten years, but it wasn’t one I was likely to forget.
The caller spoke in fluent Irish-accented Welsh. A deep, pleasant, calm male voice. I couldn’t ignore the message, mysterious though it was.
“Rhiannon, this is Lord O’Byrne. Please come see me. I have a job for you. A ticket awaits you at Gatwick for a flight at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”
No one calls me Rhiannon, mostly because I never tell people my name. I had used the initials R.B. since going away to university. But he’d paid for that university education, and never asked me for anything.
I returned the other call, setting up an appointment with the woman later that afternoon.
“How shall I recognize you?” she asked me.
“I’m about five foot eight with ginger hair and green eyes. I’ll be wearing a sweater and jeans.”
~~~
I walked into the restaurant to meet my prospective client, scanned the diners and slipped into the booth with her. She started to say something, then her eyes widened and nothing came out of her open mouth.
“Mrs. Sanders? I’m RB Kendrick,” I said, extending my hand.
“Oh, my,” she breathed. “The description you gave me is wholly inadequate.” She stared at me for a minute, then said, “Copper.”
Confused, I looked around. There weren’t any police in there. “Huh?” I said intelligently.
“Your hair. It’s not ginger, it’s like polished copper. It shines.”
Women notice different things than men. As I suspected from our conversation on the phone, Sylvia Sanders was a norm and so was her husband. What I read in her mind matched what she told me verbally. It’s so much easier when clients tell you the truth. I understood why she had suspicions about her husband. The changes in his behavior and schedule screamed other woman to me also.
“So what do you want, Mrs. Sanders? A report, photos, a confrontation? A basic report of what and who he is or is not doing will run a thousand pounds. Photos catching them in the act are another thousand, if I can get them. Unlike the telly, most people don’t conveniently provide evidence in front of windows with the shades open. If you want to confront him in the act, I’ll accompany you for an additional fifteen hundred pounds.”
She blanched at my rates.
“If what he’s doing isn’t obvious, and I have to put him under surveillance for an extended period, my rates are five thousand a week.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” she said with a quiver in her voice. She gave me a thousand and I wrote down all the pertinent information.
“I’ll check on it this afternoon. I’m going to be out of town for a few days,” I told her. “If I don’t find anything by tomorrow morning, I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Thank you, Miss Kendrick. This has been going on for several months. I don’t think it’s going to change.”
“Mrs. Sanders, you need to think about what you’re going to do if your suspicions are correct. Are you going to confront him and hope he ends it? Or do you plan to divorce him? It’s something you should decide before hand.”
“I want a divorce,” she said. “I know he’s cheating on me. He called a little while ago and told me he had to work late this evening.”
~~~
Edward Sanders worked about a mile away. I took the Tube to his building. About twenty minutes after I arrived, I saw him come out and head for the Tube station. Obviously, he wasn’t working late.
I followed him and sat behind him on the train. I read his mind to get his destination, then sat back and used my phone to check my email.
When we left the tube station, I took a slightly different route than Sanders to reach the house of his mistress. I stood across the street and watched as she answered the door for him. I could understand why he was attracted to her. She was even more beautiful than what I had expected from the images in his mind.
I read her mind, also. She was the lonely trophy wife of a successful businessman who traveled often. Edward Sanders was good looking, and twenty years younger than his mistress’s husband. She wasn’t in love with him, but considered him a wonderful diversion. He wasn’t in love with her, either, but was infatuated that such a rich and beautiful young woman wanted him.
The shades in the living room weren’t drawn, and the amorous couple started their activities immediately upon his entering the house. I pulled my camera from my bag and walked across the street and across her lawn. There was a small tree in an ugly plastic pot sitting in the middle of the lawn, and I had to detour around it.
I could see glimpses of the lovers through the living room window, but reflections in the glass prevented me from a good view. It appeared he was doing her on the dining room table. This was going to be the easiest thousand pounds I’d ever made.
I was so focused on what was going on inside that I didn’t see the hole hidden by the small tree sitting in front of it. I should have realized what a potted tree was doing on the lawn. Someone planned to plant it.
I took a step and my left foot found only air. The world spun around and the camera slipped out of my grasp. My
chin hit something hard and I bit my tongue.
When I came to my senses, my right leg was sticking straight up and the rest of me lay twisted in the bottom of a hole. My chin felt like it was on fire, and my tongue hurt like mad. It took me some time to get myself situated and crawl out onto the grass. I looked back. The hole was about two feet deep. I spit, and a spot of bright red blood landed on the green lawn.
I picked up my camera and checked it to make sure it was still working. Looking around, I didn’t see anyone. I waited until my head stopped spinning, then crept up to the window. They were still going at it on the table. I took some pictures, but had to wait for them to shift positions so I could get his face. After a few minutes, I had all I needed.
A sudden noise behind me caused me to turn around. A white-haired woman with binoculars hanging from her neck stuck her head out of the window of the house next door.
“You clumsy cow,” she shouted at me. “Get out of the way. You’re blocking the view.”
I retreated in a hurry, and she raised the binoculars, trained on the window through which I’d been snapping pictures.
Case closed. I walked back to the Tube and went home, holding a handkerchief to my still-bleeding mouth.
~~~
I stared at myself in the mirror. My chin was scraped from the point up to my swollen lower lip and oozed blood. My tongue still bled and it was swollen so badly I had trouble drinking. It hurt like hell.
*Monica?* I sent telepathically, *Where are you?*
*At the clinic,* she replied. *Some of us work for a living.*
*I need to come see you. Can you fit me in?*
*What have you done to yourself this time?* she asked, exasperation clearly evident in her mental voice.
*Don’t ask.*
It took me forty minutes to get to the clinic where she worked. Monica is my best friend, one of my only close friends. She’s a Healer, a telepath with the Hakizimana, or Healing, Gift. She’s also a doctor. I met her when I went to her clinic with a sprained ankle that wouldn’t heal. It turned out to be broken.
Broken Dolls: An Urban Fantasy (The Telepathic Clans Saga Book 3) Page 1