Out of Mind coa-2

by Stella Cameron

  “Yeah, fake stone balustrades, soaring statues, Greek columns, fainting couches, velvet, gold—you should have heard it.” Marley paused for breath. She looked repeatedly at the spot over Willow’s left shoulder. “How would anyone do something like that anyway?”

  “No problem,” Willow said, almost ashamed that the challenge appealed to her. She started mentally lining up the people she’d call for props.

  “Get off the counter,” Marley said sharply. “Okay, that’s it. You’re annoying.”

  Willow’s stomach flipped. “What did I do?”

  “Not you—him.” She put her hands on her hips. “You want to bet on that? Give her a chance. Go on—see what happens.”

  Bemused, Willow turned around.

  She couldn’t see anything unusual.

  “That’s not fair,” Marley said. “And don’t tell me not to let her hear what I’m saying to you. It’s your own fault—I’m not going to let her stand there wondering what’s going on. You give our talents a bad name. I’m not asking you to go out of your way—just open up to her. If she can see you, she can see you—why should that be so bad? It’s all in the family.”

  A wavering form, with a human shape that faded in and out, but never became clear, sat cross-legged on the central island.

  Willow peered closer, and put a hand over her mouth. “Sykes?”

  “He loves being invisible when he communicates with me telepathically,” Marley said. “Let him in.”

  “He’s not invisible,” Willow pointed out. “Not completely.”

  “That’s because he’s letting you sort of see him. I told you she would, Sykes. Have a little faith in your own family, you oaf.”

  “That’s the respect I get,” Sykes communicated to Willow. “I’m here to save your rears from ghouls and goblins and what thanks do I get? Insults, that’s all.”

  Hearing him like that shook Willow, but not as much as seeing his transparent body behaving like a veil of shifting smoke on the counter.

  “Did you hear that?” Marley said in Willow’s mind. “He’s here to save us.”

  Willow swallowed and kept her mouth shut. “We can take care of ourselves, you overgrown sprite,” she thought.

  “Wow,” came back from Sykes. “Haven’t we told you for years how abnormal you really are? Now maybe you believe us.”

  “Those three are coming back,” Marley said aloud. “What are we going to tell them if they want their silly masquerade ball?”

  “First, Sykes, get lost. If Vanity saw you like that she’d completely lose it. If she hasn’t already.”

  “You and I can see him,” Marley said to Willow. “That’s because he wants us to. Don’t worry about them.”

  Sykes hopped to the floor and disappeared completely.

  “Does he do that a lot?” Willow said.

  “Whenever I feel like it.” Sykes voice was too loud in Willow’s head, and she jumped.

  Vanity came into the kitchen with Val and Preston. This was the closest Willow had been to Val since she arrived that morning. Preston looked drawn, but Val looked like hell. He seemed to have lost pounds overnight. His face drew back beneath his cheekbones and purple slashes underscored his eyes. His hands moved incessantly from his pockets to his face to be held down beneath his upper arms and back to his pockets.

  “Masquerade,” Vanity announced, her dark eyes feverishly bright. “Start making those callbacks, Marley. Please, darling. This is going to be completely memorable.”

  “Okay,” Marley said slowly, looking at Willow. “What should I tell them exactly?”

  “Masquerade ball,” Vanity said promptly.

  “It’s very short notice,” Willow said tentatively.

  Vanity ignored her. “And we’re going to need a videographer. We’ll show it at the funeral just as soon as they release Chloe’s body.” Bright red spots burned high on Vanity’s cheeks. “I can give you names for video people.”

  “Vanity,” Val said faintly. He hadn’t shaved, and his beard was many shades darker than the surfer-blond hair. “Are you sure this isn’t in really bad taste?”

  “Damn, one of them is still sane after all.”

  Willow really wasn’t comfortable with Sykes’s disembodied voice. She crossed her arms and tapped a foot.

  “What?” Sykes sounded tetchy.

  “I was thinking I didn’t like your disembodied voice too much, is all.” She cleared her throat. “That’s a joke.”

  Sykes didn’t respond.

  Marley chuckled softly behind her hand.

  The stares they got from Preston and Val wiped out any banter. Fortunately, Vanity was soaring in the rosy haze of her costume party bubble and hadn’t noticed anything different.

  “Off you go,” Vanity said to Marley. “Willow, the man doing the marquee is impossible. He’s rude—that is, he doesn’t talk to me. And the tattoos—awful. Get rid of him.”

  “Sorry,” Willow said. “That’s Rock U. and he’s excellent. Let him get on with what he’s doing. I’ll have him change the decorations. What do you think about the flowers?”

  The Potted Ladies had already transferred galvanized buckets filled with white flowers through a side gate and they were lined up in front of a hedge. They were adding set pieces to the collection—also white.

  Vanity tapped her fingernails against her teeth. “I think red.”

  “Bloody hell,” Preston muttered.

  “Appropriate.” This from Sykes, wherever he was.

  “Spray them,” Vanity said.

  “Leave it to me,” Willow told her. “Really, Vanity, don’t worry about a thing. As long as you can answer our questions as we go along, you have nothing to worry about. We’ll take care of the event and the cleanup.”

  “Red flowers?” Val said vaguely.

  “It’s the color of love,” Vanity told him, placing a palm against his cheek. “Like your love for darling Chloe.”

  He nodded.

  “I prefer to use theatrical costumiers for these things,” Willow said. “I can get Sybil Smith over to talk about what you want to wear,” she told Vanity.

  “We’ll all need costumes. Including the help. Everyone. I want it absolutely perfect. Venetian! That’s it, Venetian is what we want. Jesters…”

  She rushed from the kitchen, and Willow heard her voice raised all the way to the foyer. Vanity was demanding the attention of whoever was “in charge for the authorities.”

  Marley cringed. “So it’s a Venetian masquerade. I’d better get started with the calls. Do I ask if they need any advice on getting costumes in a hurry? Or say they don’t have to be in costume if they don’t want to?”

  “You don’t know our friends,” Preston said, slapping Val on the back. “They’ll be in costume and they’ll knock your socks off. Excuse us. Come on, Val, we’d better stick with Vanity.”

  “Is she cracking up?” Val said.

  “Close,” Preston said.

  Willow caught the door before it could close behind the two men and followed them out. She also wanted to see what the police were up to. The staircase was going to be integral to Vanity’s extravaganza.

  “Val,” the woman called when she saw him. “Your wedding video. Have that on hand, please. We’ll use that as a backdrop to the toast tomorrow evening.”

  Through the front door walked Nat Archer with the detective whose name Willow didn’t remember, and both Gray and Ben.

  “Didn’t you already do that?” Vanity said to a technician in a white coverall. He was suctioning the stair risers, sucking fibers into a clear bag attached to a powerful vacuum.

  “No, ma’am.”

  They could hear heavy footsteps overhead.

  “When are you going to be finished?” Vanity asked.

  “Still not sure, ma’am.”

  “Above your pay grade to know that?” Vanity said, her nose wrinkling. “Who would know?”

  She finally noticed the four men who had just arrived. “What do you want?” she as
ked. “You can’t just come walking in here.”

  “You met Detective Fist and me last night and earlier today,” Nat said. “We have more questions, ma’am.”

  “Why?”

  “We know more than we did last night,” Nat said, frowning.

  Vanity stared blankly.

  “We can see how things go here, but we may have to ask you to come downtown later. Willow, stay where I can find you.”

  Ben didn’t take his attention from Willow’s face. She had to look back at him, and he didn’t attempt to hide his longing. And something else. Cautiously, she reached toward his mind to ask what was wrong.

  She was shaken when she realized he knew what she wanted, but was shutting her out.

  “I have to leave,” Vanity said. She turned to Preston. “I need to get over to the agency for an hour. I completely forgot. Could you drive me, darling?”

  “Of course.” He pulled keys from a pocket in his khaki shorts.

  Marley hurried away to the office she had been using, catching Gray’s hand and pulling him with her as she went.

  “Would you rather come downtown now?” Nat asked Vanity.

  “Go on into the sitting room,” Val said. He looked worried. “Vanity was Chloe’s dearest friend. She’s under a lot of stress.”

  Nat made a sympathetic noise.

  “I’m not talking to you now,” Vanity said. “It’ll have to wait.”

  “I’m afraid it can’t. What I need to ask first is what you were doing around the dance hall on Rampart yesterday.”

  Chapter 27

  “Why do they want to talk to me?” Vanity said, her voice pleading. She gripped Ben’s forearm, and her long nails dug in hard. “Why don’t they all go away and leave me to grieve in peace?”

  Ben had been introduced to Vanity for the first time right after Chloe’s murder, which didn’t make them buddies. He had recalled when he met Chloe. She had come to Fortune’s to see Poppy about a charity project.

  “It’s a hard time,” he said, patting Vanity’s hand. “Best get the formalities out of the way. They’re only routine.”

  “He’s not acting like they’re routine.” Vanity nodded to Nat. She sounded whiny. “If it was, he could wait until we’ve honored Chloe, couldn’t he?”

  “Ma’am,” Nat said, casting Ben a sympathetic look. “Time is really important in these investigations. Things change fast. The longer we take to go over everything, the less chance we’ve got of finding anything that could be useful in our investigation.”

  A flash of brilliant red hair, and a knifelike glare from a pair of greener than green eyes, and Willow put herself in the center of the melee. Her attention was focused on Vanity—when it wasn’t pinning Nat or Ben.

  “You’re grasping at straws,” she announced. “And you’re deliberately trying to scare Vanity.”

  Nat’s eyebrows shot up and he looked questioningly at Ben.

  “Willow?” Ben said, as mildly as he could. “What is it?”

  “This isn’t a good time to patronize me,” she said. “You’ve made it clear how close you really feel to me. You shut me out. Nat, this doesn’t seem like much of a way to run an investigation to me.”

  Nat looked at her askance. “I’m sure you’ll explain what you just said later. Bucky, go ahead and make sure they’re ready to monitor the interviews from downtown.” He sounded tightly wound, and evidently Willow sensed it, too, because she took a step backward.

  “Willow,” Ben said urgently. “Over here.”

  She tried to stand her ground, but he placed an arm around her and walked them rapidly away from the group. “What d’you mean, I shut you out?” he said.

  “A little while ago I asked you what was wrong, what was going on, and you ignored me. I felt the wall go up.”

  He smiled before he could stop himself.

  Bad move.

  “Don’t laugh at me,” Willow said. “I’m tired of your family putting me down.”

  She caught him off guard. He kept his hold on her and waited for her to look at him. He shook his head, nonplussed.

  Willow met his eyes and took a very deep breath at the same time. “Why didn’t you answer me?”

  “Did you signal, Willow?”

  “Signal?”

  “Do you see how many people are around here? They’re all talking, and Marley’s putting in comments, to say nothing of Sykes. I know you can’t see him, but—”

  “I did see him in the kitchen earlier when Marley told him to show himself to me, and he talked to me,” she said, sounding defensive and embarrassed at the same time.

  “But you started a telepathic conversation with me?”

  “I don’t know what I did—just the same as before, I guess. You and I have been talking like that more and more. The first day you got back from Kauai you were in the shop when I got there, and I heard you talk to me in my mind.”

  “I signaled first,” he said, realizing she might not understand what he meant. “I signaled but you pretended not to hear.” He didn’t want to make this difficult for her. “Of course. Whatever happened when you just tried to reach me was a misunderstanding. I didn’t hear you, Willow. It’s all about concentrating on the mind you’re looking for. Then there’s confirmation that you’ve been recognized, and you enter—if everything’s okay. It happens almost instantaneously. We just need more practice together.”

  “Of course.”

  He saw her decide to let the topic go. Okay for now, but they would have to straighten these things out. “What’s the deal over Nat asking Vanity some questions? He told me he wanted to ask you a few more, too—that’s why I came.” Careful. “He mentioned it and I wanted to be here with you.”

  “How do you know Vanity?” she said.

  “I met her right here after Chloe died. That was it.”

  “Of course.” Willow gave a short nod. “And Gray—why is he here? It feels like a special operations force came to take us all down.”

  “C’mon.” He squeezed her, and they both closed their eyes a moment. “Gray’s here because Marley’s with you, and he doesn’t like her too far out of his sight. That’s something I share with him—we can be a bit possessive with the women we—With our women.”

  Her glance said she knew what he’d almost said. He’d like her to look more pleased about it.

  “Do you know what an energy sentient is?” Willow asked.

  He made the subject switch fast. “Yeah. Someone who feels energy others don’t—and some of them—”

  “Translate what the energy is and what it means and why someone has it. Marley thinks that’s what I am. One of those. She thinks I have it strongly. If I do, what was I picking up on last night when I saw that horrible thing going after her?”

  Ben looked at the others, who were clearly not having a happy conversation. “Did Marley make a suggestion about it?”

  Willow hesitated. “I didn’t exactly tell her the whole thing.”

  “What did you leave out?”

  “That it was her I saw.”

  He screwed up his eyes. “Any reason for not telling her that you want to share?”

  “I didn’t want to frighten her. Visual premonitions, energy sentience, it’s feeling real to me and scares me—a lot. Maybe it wasn’t Marley I saw. Maybe it was me. It was me when I went outside from the room upstairs after Chloe died. Remember?”

  His tightened grip made her gasp. “Don’t you know who you saw at Sykes’s place? You said you did.”

  She shook her head, no. “I don’t, not for sure.”

  Ben didn’t believe her, but he also didn’t blame her for wanting to shield her sister. “Okay. That episode could have been brought on by stress, too. Let’s see what Nat and Bucky need from you. Probably nothing much.”

  “I think it’s going to make me mad,” she said. “Even madder.”

  “Willow,” Nat said when Ben walked her back. “I’d like you to stand by, please. I’ll get to you as soon as I can.”


  “I’m going to be around, Nat, but not standing anywhere for long. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re trying to arrange a memorial here.”

  “Bad timing,” he said. “And inappropriate.”

  “Damn you,” Vanity said. “I cleared this with your people, and they said you’d all be out of here today.”

  “I don’t think they did,” Nat said. “Are you sure you weren’t told they’d be clear by tomorrow—we hope?”

  Vanity spun toward Val. “We’re working around them until they’re gone. And we didn’t ask for an opinion about what we choose to do. Did we, Val?”

  “No.” He rubbed her back. “Please stay calm. Does this have to be done now, Detective?”

  “Sir, your wife died under very unusual circumstances last night. This is all perfectly normal procedure. We’ll take as little time as we can.”

  This was awful, Willow thought. They were trying to make a case against Vanity. “Vanity couldn’t have done it.” She heard her own words, explosive, and the silence that followed. “She couldn’t.”

  They all stared at her.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what you’re up to, Nat. You’ve got to have someone to pin these deaths on, and you’ve got some crazy idea about Vanity.”

  Ben reached for her, but she shrugged away. She didn’t feel too steady on her feet, but she did feel plenty mad. “What’s that nasty man’s name? Molyneux. The chief of police. He wasn’t nice to Marley when she had so much trouble. And then—after all that and everything Gray and Marley did to solve the crime for the cops—they lost the people they caught!”

  “Who told you that?” Nat said sharply, his eyes narrowed and furious.

  Who had told her? “I…I just know,” she said. Someone had told her. She frowned at Nat. There was something she was almost remembering. Had Nat told her himself?

  “Ben?” Nat stared hard at Ben.

  “You don’t speak to her like that,” Ben said. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting, but I don’t like it.”

  Vanity leaned against the wall. All color had drained from her face. “Me?” she whispered. “You think I… You think I killed Chloe?”

  “I did not say that, ma’am,” Nat said, glaring at Willow.