Water to Burn

by Katharine Kerr

  “Let me?” I set my hands on my hips.

  “Sorry. I’ll amend that. How about this: I feel a real need to provide backup.”

  I considered arguing, but I had to admit that I agreed.

  “Okay,” I said, “I can accept that.”

  “Good. I’ve got a pair of sunglasses for you,” Ari went on. “They have a video camera in the frame. Wear them in, then set them down on the table with the lenses pointing at Caleb. I’ll carry the monitor with me. It looks like a cheap phone. No one will think anything of it if I sit somewhere and stare at it.”

  “Will the glasses record the conversation?”

  “No, but the monitor will.” He smiled briefly. “Although all I really want to do is keep an eye on how things are developing.”

  I spent the rest of Saturday morning working LDRS sessions and getting nowhere. I checked my Internet sources, as well, but again, no stories about a dead homeless man turned up.

  “I wonder if Sarge has seen Zeke,” I said, “I hope he’s not going to stay away forever. I want to read that letter.”

  “So do I,” Ari said. “If he’s so afraid of returning to prison, he can’t have gone back to that same world.”

  “He may know of other ones, or, come to think of it, he could have just gone back to Israel via GateExpress. This is not going to be easy. All I can do, I guess, is to keep looking for him. Regular scans and LDRS sessions should turn him up.”

  “Eventually, yes. You know your own business best.”

  “Thanks. How many gates are there in San Francisco, I wonder?” A fragment of a folk song came back to me. “Twelve gates to the city, alleluia!”

  Ari grimaced. Singing was not one of my talents.

  “That song derives from the Book of Revelation,” I said. “From a description of the heavenly Jerusalem—four gates each to the north, east, south, and west.”

  “That makes sixteen.”

  “Oh. Yeah, you’re right. I was never very good at arithmetic. Okay, three gates each.”

  Yet I wondered about that mistake, if maybe the CDS was sending me a message. A fragment of an old song floated to the surface of my memory. “Sixteen candles on her cake tonight”.

  “What?” Ari snapped.

  “Uh, sorry about that. I don’t know what it means.”

  He rolled his eyes. I filed the number sixteen away in my memory, just in case it proved significant.

  “If there are other gates in San Francisco,” Ari said, “they can’t all lead to the same place, or Doyle and Johnson wouldn’t have been trapped here when their escape route closed.”

  “You’re right, yeah.”

  Around noon, I got dressed for my lunch date. Since theoretically I had a job interview in hand, I wore the gray skirt suit with a teal silk shirt and heels. I also took a small notebook in my shoulder bag to write down the details of Caleb’s offer, should he make one.

  When we left, I drove our souped-up Saturn. I got onto the Great Highway going north, which led us along the beachfront. Even though the fog hovered thick, and a cold wind blew in from sea, we saw a good sprinkling of cars in the parking strips. Bundled in heavy jackets and long pants, people walked along the tide line or played Frisbee on the sand. I even saw a few surfers in full wet suits. Just before the road began to climb up the hill to the Cliff House, I pulled into the parking area and let Ari out. He handed me a pair of wraparound sunglasses that appeared perfectly ordinary, though they weighed oddly heavy in my hand.

  “I suppose you’d better put them on top of your head for realism’s sake,” Ari said. “This sodding weather! It’s nearly April. It should be warm.”

  “When the fog goes out, it’ll be warmer,” I said. “Where are you going to be?”

  “I’m not going to tell you, in case Caleb can pick that up.” He gave me a brief smile. “I’m learning.”

  Rather than mess up my hair, I put the sunglasses on, then drove up the hill. The gods favored me that day, because I found a head-in parking place above the complex in the curve of the road. As I walked downhill toward the restaurant, I passed a sleek white sedan that looked oddly familiar. I stopped and looked it over, because I could feel a memory starting to rise. I’d seen it in a similar context—the ocean, the Great Highway, the day the girl had drowned. The car had zipped past me without slowing down when other drivers on the road were gawking at the police cars and ambulance.

  I took out my cell phone and snapped a shot of the license plate. Ari could check with the Department of Motor Vehicles and find out who owned the white sedan. The driver of the car I’d seen before had been blond, just like Caleb. Had he driven on by without slowing down because he already knew what had happened to those children? I put the phone away and walked on, but I stayed on guard.

  For a San Francisco landmark, the Cliff House lacks pizazz, at least when you see it from outside: a wide stretch of concrete sidewalk, and behind that, a low white building housing a couple of restaurants joined by a lobby and glass doors. It appears to perch right on the edge of the cliff; I’ve heard tourists say that that they weren’t going in because it looked so unsafe. From inside, it appears even more precarious, because it’s actually built down the side of the cliff. Several levels hang lower than the street.

  The formal dining area sits on the lowest level, a two-story high room lined with floor to ceiling windows. It seems to float right over the ocean and the sand below. White linen cloths and chrome fixtures add to the oddly empty ambience the restaurant projects even when crowded. As I walked down the ramp toward the hostess station, I could look out over the heads of the Saturday lunch crowd to the sea beyond and the cold gray sky.

  Caleb was waiting for me at a table beside a west-facing window. He’d dressed for the location in a pair of gray wool slacks, a white shirt with a striped tie, and a navy blue blazer with the crest of a Boston yacht club on the chest pocket. The blazer sat too loosely on his shoulders. Either he’d lost weight since it’d been tailored, or he’d bought it secondhand. Now that I knew his record, I suspected the latter.

  As I made my way across to join him, he rose from his seat and smiled, then held out his hand and shook mine when I offered it to him. His palm was sweaty. I noticed half a glass of white wine sitting at his place with the uncorked bottle nearby. We sat down, and he picked up the glass for a sip.

  “Would you like some wine?” he said. “A cocktail?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “Mineral water will be fine.” I took off the sunglasses and set them down, lenses toward him, on the table between me and the window. “I guess I didn’t need to wear these today.”

  “Well, the glare from the damned fog can be annoying,” Caleb said. “I was wondering if you’d had a chance to talk with Jack about our plans.”

  “I haven’t, no. I haven’t been out to see them since the party. They’re going up to Sonoma soon, I think.”

  “Yeah, yeah. He mentioned that to me.”

  The waitress arrived to hand us menus and rattle off a list of specials, then fled before we could ask questions. For a few minutes we studied the menus in silence. I could feel that Caleb was running an SPP on me. I was annoyed enough to drop caution and turn it back on him. He looked up from his menu and laughed, a short bark of honest amusement.

  “I think we both know where we stand, Nola,” he said. “Can we skip the fencing?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’ll save time.” I glanced around. No one sat at the table behind ours. The crowd in the dining room was thinning out. Eavesdroppers seemed unlikely. “We both have talents that could come in handy for your venture. We know that.”

  “Good.” He smiled again. “Then we can get down to business.”

  The waitress, however, interrupted, bearing Welsh spring water in a dark blue bottle. She filled my glass, then smiled impartially at us both. I ordered a fancy salad and, as a nod to the chilly day, soup. Caleb turned in his chair toward her and began asking earnest questions about every main dish on the menu. I
took the opportunity to study the view, a seemingly endless stretch of gray sea flecked with white foam.

  The ocean surged around the massive hulk of Seal Rock, iced white by generations of seabirds. I could just make out a few dark specks that might have been seals in the water around it. Like white wings waves broke just offshore, then charged with swirls of foam onto the pale beige beach. Silvery horses rose out of the waves, tossing their manes, galloping onto the sand only to disappear. Some thirty yards out from land a chariot of green glass emerged from the water. A towering blue-green god held the reins of four moon-pale horses.

  “Uh, Nola?” Caleb’s voice cut into the vision. “Are you okay?”

  Poseidon, horses, chariot, all vanished. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Just thinking.” I glanced around and realized that the waitress had long since left the table.

  “What were you seeing out there?” Caleb was smiling at me.

  “Oh, just a vision of the horses of the sea and Poseidon. Sorry. I do that sometimes, see things I mean.”

  “Well, of course. That’s why I’m so keen on having you join us. Do your visions usually have classical themes?”

  “Sometimes, sometimes not. I see angels a lot, too. And every now and then I get a glimpse of strange goings-on.”

  “Oh, like what?”

  “Well, once I stumbled across a local coven. They were meeting to glorify the Peacock Angel.”

  Caleb’s fingers tightened on his wineglass. His smile turned rigid.

  “And I heard about,” I continued, “someone named Brother Belial who led that coven. Know him?”

  The color drained from his face.

  “I take it that means yes,” I said. “Sorry, but you suggested we skip the fencing.”

  “Uh, um,” Caleb lifted his wineglass. “Yeah, yeah.”

  I waited, smiling, while he drank the glass dry in one long swallow. He poured himself more while I had a couple of sips of spring water.

  “So, okay.” Caleb’s voice had returned to steady. “You know about that silly coven, then.”

  “Yeah. I’m glad you agree, about the silliness, I mean.”

  “Rank amateurs! I went once, and that was enough.” He rolled his eyes. “Chanting about demons.”

  “And throwing around enough frankincense to choke a horse.”

  While we shared the laugh of equals looking down on our inferiors, I remembered all over again why I disliked Chaotics. For people who say they believe in total freedom, status means so much to them. Caleb leaned a little closer across the table and lowered his voice.

  “But the being they called Belial has real power,” he said. “As you obviously know. I wonder how.”

  “Let’s just say I guessed.”

  Caleb had another long swallow of wine. The waitress returned with my soup and a small plate of sliced Harvard beets sprinkled with walnuts for him. The puree of white corn soup, finished with a float of truffle oil, occupied my attention while he crunched away across the table. Finally, Caleb looked up and wiped his mouth on his napkin.

  “Without some unusual help,” Caleb said, “we wouldn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of finding the treasure. It was buried four hundred years ago. Long time gone. That’s why I evoked Belial. That’s not his real name, of course.”

  “Does Jack Donovan know about your little assistant?”

  “No.” Caleb’s lip twitched in a gesture too near contempt for my liking. “He wouldn’t believe me if I told him. Of the earth, earthy, our Jack. Talking about spirits would just confuse him.”

  “What rank of spirit, or have you found out yet?”

  “Oh, he’s from a very high level, I’m sure. He told me that he came from several worlds away from ours. He gave me its name, one that indicates the sphere of the stars.” Caleb glanced around. “I’d better not say it aloud here.”

  So Caleb thought Bro Belial was a powerful spirit, did he? Not a bad guess, if only spirits had actually existed. Since they didn’t, I finished my soup and considered my next move.

  “Are you telling me,” I said, “that you set the coven up?”

  “What? No, nothing like that. Once he was here, Belial made contact with them on his own.”

  “Ah. And he let you know, huh?”

  “Of course. I’m his master.”

  My thought: oh, sure you are! Aloud, “One thing that puzzles me,” I said. “The coven members all say that Belial wore robes.”

  “An illusion.” Caleb grinned at me. “If they’d touched him, they would have found that out.”

  Which meant to me that Belial, robed or not, was a projection similar to Fish Guy and the fake office worker I’d seen in Embarcadero Center. In fact, he could have actually been inside those very projections. That he’d been able to speak through the hooded man form indicated he had a very high level of talent.

  A busboy appeared to take away my bowl and Caleb’s empty plate. When I leaned back out of his way, my napkin slipped onto the floor. The busboy trotted off without noticing. I bent down and retrieved it.

  “I should have gotten that for you,” Caleb said. “Sorry.”

  “Not a problem,” I said. “It’s the modern world and all.”

  “Well, but is the modern world any different than the ancient one? We all think it is, thanks to the gadgets and science and garbage like that, but at the heart, with what matters, nothing’s really changed.”

  “The universal forces still rule.”

  “Exactly.” He saluted me with his wineglass. “And a man’s only what he has the courage to be. I use the word ‘man’ generally, of course. A woman’s what she has the guts to be, too.”

  “Very true.”

  The waitress and a waiter came gliding over, carrying assorted plates. Caleb had ordered a number of items, most of them fish dishes of some sort, and my elaborate salad arrived with a small china pitcher of dressing on yet another plate. In between bites of his enormous lunch, washed down with the bottle of wine, Caleb told me more about his search for Drake’s alleged treasure.

  Like so many treasure hunters before him, he simply couldn’t believe that anyone would turn a fortune over to the Crown without holding some of it back in a private stash. I had to agree that Drake was probably just as venal as most Elizabethan gentlemen, but my central objection came from the large number of failed attempts to find the goods. If Drake had buried something on Bay Area shores, the horde of treasure hunters who’d gone after it surely would have found it by now.

  Caleb, of course, thought otherwise. He’d been reading accounts of Drake’s voyage, studying old maps and modern maps both, and above all, as he told me in near whispers, he’d been invoking more spirits than one to help him in his search.

  “I’ll bet none of the other hunters knew how to do that,” Caleb said. “I’ve got help from a higher level, as you know.”

  I nodded and looked thoughtful.

  “But I’ve also called up a crew of lesser beings. They’ve promised me a great treasure,” he went on. “A great treasure and the fame to go with it. I’ll be a man of distinction, then.” He paused to pour the last few drops of wine into his glass. “The difficulty, of course, is pinpointing the location. Spirits don’t see the world the way we do.”

  “No,” I said, “they sure don’t.” I remembered some of the content of my medieval grimoires. “They’re tricky little buggers, too, you know. You’ve got to be wary about what they say, or they’ll mislead you every time.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We’ve been looking for two months now and not finding a damn thing. That’s why I thought we should bring you into this. Fresh eyes and all that. We’re prepared to offer you a full third of the treasure when we find it.”

  “Nothing before that, huh?”

  “Unfortunately, my resources are limited right now. Maybe Jack can—”

  “No.” I spoke firmly. “I don’t take money from my sister’s husband.”

  “Oh. Right. The family connection.”

  Caleb turne
d in his chair and signaled to the waitress, who’d been hovering some tables away. When she came over, he asked for the “afters” menu, which she supplied. For a man of limited resources, he was spending a bundle on this lunch. I suspected that one way or the other, Jack was paying for it.

  “Would you like some dessert?” Caleb asked me.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t eat a lot of sweets.”

  “Which is one reason you’re so beautiful, so slim and graceful.” He smiled in a sloppy sort of way. “You’re really amazing, Nola.”

  “Thanks.” It came out a lot drier than I wanted, and he winced.

  “Not just flattery,” Caleb said. “I mean it, you’re amazing. You know, when I was looking for a partner in this venture, I checked out a lot of guys with boats. I finally chose Jack because I wanted to meet Kathleen’s sister. You’re even more beautiful than I thought you’d be.”

  “Well, then, thank you.” I heard various inner alarms go off. “I will have some coffee, but just black for me.”

  “All right. I was thinking of having an Irish coffee in your honor, but all that cream . . .”

  “Don’t feel obliged for my sake.”

  “Just plain whiskey, then. Let’s see what kinds they have.”

  While he ordered, I glanced out the window, just casually. One vision trance with lunch was enough for me, especially with Caleb’s interesting slipup to ponder. He’d chosen Jack to get at me, had he? I suspected that Belial lay behind the decision, not my pretty face.

  The waitress arrived with our coffees, his so heavily laced that I could smell the hot whiskey from across the table. I turned back to pick up my cup and nearly knocked it over.

  Someone else had joined us. Not a visible person, no, not even an invisible physical presence—but an intangible someone or something, a guest of sorts at the table, had taken the empty chair next to Caleb, who knew it as well as I did. I noticed how he slid over slightly in order to give the guest plenty of elbow room, how he glanced sideways at the chair. I decided to call the game.