by Linda Welch
I still feel guilty for keeping the journal to myself and not giving it to Royal, though how could I know it was specifically sent to him? I doubt anything would have changed if Royal read the journal before I got my hands on it. He would have given it to Dark Cousins Gia Sabato and Daven Clare. They would have understood why the beautiful Gelpha traitress, Maud, sent the journal to Royal, and gone directly to Myanmar. They’d still have found Stadelmann, Jacob, Vance and Gia’s lover Rio, and later, Dagka Shan. Shan would have still gone on his mad rampage. But I would not have met Janine, seen Maud die, been involved in an FBI manhunt. Not faced Dagka Shan in the High House.
Not see Janine’s face in my dreams.
I came back to real time, opened the front door, disabled the alarm, stripped off my down coat and kicked off my boots. I walked in the kitchen and tossed the envelopes and sleeve on the table. Strident, staccato sounds came from the television, which I left on to entertain Jack and Mel.
I forgot to pick up scones at the bakery and hungry butterflies romped in my stomach, so I opened the refrigerator and peered in the depths. The leftover spaghetti and meatballs still looked okay. I pulled a bowl from the cabinet, dumped the pasta in and put the bowl in the microwave.
I swear he wasn’t here a second ago, but now Mac hugged my ankles.
“Not for you, idiot.”
Deciding to mope, he went to the backdoor and curled up with his back to me. I puffed out air, opened the pantry and put kibble in his bowl. Microwaves are fast, but my boy cleaned his dish before the oven dinged.
A spicy, meaty aroma suffused the kitchen’s warm, humid air. Taking the bowl and a fork to the table, I sat and dug in.
Royal never mentioned any Cicero. Was he human, or a demon? A friend, or business acquaintance? A new case?
As he bent over me, Jack’s shriek almost lifted my hair. “Tiff!”
“What?”
“For the third time, can you change the station?”
I slid my weary gaze to the small television on the kitchen counter. Animé. Jack loathed it.
“Okay,” I grumbled as I got upright. “What do you want to watch?”
I paused on my way across the kitchen. “Not MTV.” MTV started Jack rapping, and he could not rap. Thankfully, we rarely heard a mangled syllable from him nowadays.
“The History channel.”
I could cope with that. I found the remote on the windowsill and flicked to the right station. Jack pretended to sit on a kitchen chair. Mel drifted in from the hall. I went back to my cooling lunch.
“What’s this?” Mel asked as she hung over the package.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled through a mouthful.
Jack forgot his TV show. “I didn’t notice that!”
Mail can be an exciting experience for shades. Anything out of the ordinary is an exciting experience.
I dubiously eyed the package where it lay on the kitchen table.
“I wouldn’t open it if I were you,” Jack said. He moved a few paces back from the table.
“Remember what happened last time,” Mel reminded me.
“Yeah,” I agreed. Elizabeth’s journal is not something I’ll forget in a hurry.
I also recalled that when the package containing the journal arrived, Jack and Mel had a rare time guessing the contents. Jack said it had to be a bomb from someone I pissed off. Not to be outdone, Mel suggested anthrax.
“Or, it could be… .” I leaped to my feet. “A bomb!”
I should not joke, the bomb in the kitchen freaked my roommates as much as it did me, but I snickered when Mel and Jack froze.
I put my thumbnail between my teeth and bit down as I walked around the table, checking the cardboard from all sides. Trying to smother my grin, I darted in and whisked it off the table. Jack back-pedaled till he came up against the refrigerator. He stopped as his back-thrust elbow disappeared in the shiny pink surface.
I ripped the easy-open zipper, which was anything but easy, stared in disbelief and dropped the sleeve on the table as if it dirtied my hands.
Mel had both hands over her eyes. “What is it?”
A mass-market paperback. The pale torso of a woman adorned a smoke-gray background. A black briar, the thorns tinted red, girdled her waist and snaked between her breasts. In blood-red letters across the top: GIA’S SONG.
I snorted through my nose. “I don’t believe it.”
Mel parted two fingers to peer through them. “What?”
I turned the jacket to check the return address. Damn, I did know it. Why in hell’s name did she send me her book?
The edge of a piece of cream card stuck from the pages. I held the business card out to Mel.
Jack was beside me. “That’s Gia Sabato’s first book and her business card!”
She must be crazy, to think I’d want her book.
“Open it!” Jack urged. He hopped about as if tap dancing.
Maybe she put something else in there. I upended the book and shook, then fanned the pages, but nothing fell out.
“He means so we can read it,” said Mel.
I slid my gaze sideways at her. “I know what he meant. I’m not interested in her book.”
“Maybe not, but we are.” She looked at Jack. “Right?”
“Go ahead, read it. I won’t stop you,” I said unkindly. Why should I spend time turning pages for them when I had other things on my mind?
“You’re mean.”
They have no hands with which to pick up an object, no fingers with which to feel. Refusing them is akin to denying help to a living, handicapped person. But neither can I give in to all their whims and requests. I would be run off my feet. I’d never have time to myself. My life would be nothing more than an auxiliary part of theirs.
Oh, hell. “Okay, a few pages then.”
They were at my shoulder before I could draw another breath. I opened the paperback to the title page.
“She signed it!” Jack cooed.
Well I’ll be damned. In elegant, slanting italics: To Tiffany Banks, who should write a book. Gia Sabato.
Mel cracked up. “She wrote Tiffany!”
I scowled at the page. Trust the bitch from hell to deliberately write my full name. “I noticed, Melanie.”
I’m not alone in loathing my name. Mel cannot scowl, but she turned her shoulder to me and looked down her nose.
“You could write a book, you know,” Jack said as he leaned in.
“About what?”
“Your exciting life and adventures.”
I flicked the corner of a page. “Yeah, as if anyone involved would let me do that.”
“I don’t see why not. It would be a work of fiction.”
“No it wouldn’t, Jack.” I found the first page. “Do you want to shut up and read this or not?”
CHAPTER THREE
Every person has their song. It could evoke a memory, happy or sad. It could bring to mind someone, or something they crave but can never have.
I listened to my song on the radio.
“Do you really want to live forever?”
Yes!
***
It is time for a change.
Who, at some time in their life, has not expressed that sentiment? Yet I doubt they envisioned the dramatic change of lifestyle I experienced that gray evening in October.
A mist seeped through the door. Note, I say through the door, not through the doorway, for the door was fastened to keep the chill at bay.
The mist solidified, particles drew together. And there he stood. Pale, lazy, hazel eyes. Chestnut-brown hair cut away from his face to fall long in the back and flop over his brow. He wore a blue-gray wool suit over an open necked cream shirt, with navy-blue suede loafers. In his late twenties, absolutely gorgeous, a little pale, but not unnaturally so. My friend, Darrin Call.
Extreme exhaustion can debilitate the body and play tricks with the mind. I was bone weary, and now I was hallucinating. Perhaps I should see my doctor.
I tapp
ed my cigarette on the lip of the ashtray. “Darrin, be a dear and knock next time.”
He smiled. “Do not pretend your eyes deceived you.”
I looked away, preferring the view through my window to the glow of his eyes. Had his eyes always shined that brightly and I did not notice? “What are you talking about?”
“We call it transmogrification. Long ago, people called it magic.”
A magic trick. “Ah, magic,” I said, feeling pleased that he provided me with a logical explanation. “You must show me how you do it one of these days. But not now. I’m too tired to concentrate.”
He sat on the couch, rested one arm along the back and smiled again. “You admit you did see something inexplicable. What if I told you I altered the constituents of my body so I could pass through your door?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, darling. People cannot mist through two inches of wood and steel.”
He shrugged both shoulders. “They can if they are a vampire.”
I slapped the page and hooted. “Darrin Call!”
“I can read,” Jack said.
“Don’t you get it? Darrin Call. Daven Clare. She put him in her book!”
“She’s in there, why not him too?” Mel said. “She made herself the heroine in her own novel. Clever, isn’t it.”
“I finished the first page,” said Jack. “Get on with it, you two.”
We read the first chapter, which took time as Mel is a slow reader. Jack tutted when I closed the book and pushed it aside. “That’s all we get, one chapter?”
I jerked my shoulder. “Sorry. I have to be somewhere. You can read more tonight.”
“They’re not real vampires are they?” Mel asked.
“Positively not.” I pressed my palms to the tabletop and pushed to my feet.
Dark Cousins certainly use an arcane ability to charm humans, but it is their only vampire-like trait. Oh, that and their preference for lurking in the shadows.
The reminder of Gelpha and Cousins allure took me back to the last time I experienced it at the hands of an enticing demon with an English accent. Not precisely at his hands, but I know he wanted to get them on me. I pictured Christopher Plowman, his long, silky gray hair threaded with glinting black, his lazy shimmering gray eyes with those remarkable hematite pupils.
However, Mel meant people with fangs who plunge them into human necks and suck their blood. Dark Cousins don’t even have the slightly pointed teeth of the Gelpha, those I call demons, and I’ve seen no evidence they drink blood. They give blood. I believe Gia’s blood saved her lover’s life, and she administered a transfusion to Royal in the High House infirmary. He came home four days later with only scars as evidence of the terrible wounds Dagka Shan inflicted.
A chill crawled over my flesh as I saw Shan in the bowels of the High House with dead and dying demons lying in their blood. He went through them like a cyclone, unstoppable. Curiosity prevented him killing me, but it was a momentary reprieve. He had me pinned to the ground, about to rip my throat out when I shot him in the head with my Derringer. All the other hairy situations I’ve got into pale in comparison.
I cleared my throat. “I think Gia Sabato is laughing at us when she writes a book. She puts herself in there to make her readers wonder. Is she, or isn’t she? A clever marketing ploy, that’s all.”
I took my bowl to the trashcan and scraped it clean, then put it in the sink, filling it with water to soak off the crusted-on sauce.
“Where are you going, anyway?” Mel asked.
“The PD.”
Jack sounded perky. “You have another job?”
I had to disappoint them this time. “I’m going to Mike Warren about Royal.”
I walked through the huge, circular foyer, as always feeling dwarfed by the size and grandeur. The sun decided to invade the interior and pour beams through the high windows in the east wall, splashing yellow pools on the pale marble floor. A handful of people sat on benches around the perimeter.
I went to the duty sergeant’s cubicle, but nobody sat behind the glass and wire window, so I waited impatiently, tapping my toe on the floor.
Two young, immaculately attired attorneys came through the tall swinging doors of the courthouse and crossed the lobby, voices stabbing out as if they fought a verbal duel. They spoke too fast for me to understand one word. As I waited, officers and civilians moved through the foyer, in and out of the door which gives access to Vice, Narcotics, and the Gang Division. Missing Persons is down there too. I wanted upstairs, the home of Robbery, Homicide and the Cold Case Divisions. Internal Affairs has a little office tucked in there somewhere.
A voice made me start. “What can we do for you, Tiff?”
Sergeant Bruce had crept in the booth. I leaned on the counter, smiled at him. “Can you buzz up and ask Mike Warren if he can spare me a second?”
“Sure.” He slid the window closed so I couldn’t hear him speaking. He picked up the phone, punched a button and said a few words, frowned as he settled the phone in the cradle.
Damn, Mike was busy.
But Bruce said, “He’s up to his ears, so make it fast.”
I gave him my version of a dazzling smile and headed for the escalator. My rubber soles squeaked on the polished tile, people on the benches watched me.
Taking the escalator up, I walked along the hall and into Homicide’s Squad room. A familiar buzz of voices and activity washed over me. It did look busy, with some detectives on their phones and the rest pecking away at their keyboards. My gaze automatically went to the wall where Royal’s picture once hung.
Mike sat in his office, talking to Detective Brad Spacer and a woman whose strawberry-blond hair fell to her shoulders. He spotted me and beckoned with one hand, an abrupt motion. Even with the squad room separating us, Mike looked harried. Jacketless, shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal beefy forearms, the top button of his shirt undone, tie loosened; his naturally florid face shone.
I walked the aisle between desks to Mike’s office as Spacer and the woman came out. Her badge said Detective Grace McMullin and she looked ill. Her oval face shone, her blue eyes watered and thin bangs stuck to her forehead. She made eye contact, nodded and went on past.
A terrific honk made me look back to see McMullin blow her nose on a well-used handkerchief.
“How are the ribs, Banks?” Spacer made as if to slap my shoulder, but changed his mind.
“Fine. As if it never happened,” I told him.
He looked a question at me, but I couldn’t tell him why my cracked ribs healed faster than the average gal’s. I got them when Dagka Shan punched me in the gut, denting my armor. Yes, armor, and not the modern kind either; the breastplates I borrowed from the High House armory were medieval.
“Banks, you got three minutes. Get in here,” Mike yelled.
I made wide eyes at Spacer, went in Mike’s office and settled in the chair across from him. The office was stuffy and smelled faintly of garlic from the garlic chicken pizza carton compacted in the wastebasket.
I didn’t think Mike could cram more paperwork into his office, but he’d managed. A row of six cardboard boxes stood beneath the window behind his chair. Piles of papers leaned on both sides of his desk. A stack of file folders on his filing cabinet leaned like the Tower of Pisa; I imagine it shifted a little each time he slammed his door. He used to have a personal printer/fax in here, but I couldn’t see it. It could be behind more cardboard boxes topped with more loose sheets of paper in the corner.
Mike’s shoulders went down as he hunched over his desk. He always hunches, but it becomes more pronounced when he sees me. Sounding world weary, he asked, “What can I do for you, Tiff?” in a puff of garlicky breath.
I resisted the urge to wrinkle my nose. “Not having a good day?”
He rubbed hard at his brow as if trying to smooth away the deeply etched furrows. “Budget cuts. We’re undermanned and when I spoke to the Mayor, he told me this joke. You heard the one about the City, the Police Department a
nd the pay raise? You should have heard me laugh. Almost choked. I predict a blue flu epidemic before the month’s out.”
Not good. The last blue flu, when eighty-percent of the PD called in sick for three days, sent the city into an uproar. If one thing gets me madder than a wet hen, it is how the City cuts the budget for essential programs when funds are short. I crumpled my mouth, rolled my eyes.
“So you can understand I’m under pressure,” Mike continued. He pushed a pile of papers to one side of his desktop. “What do you want?”
“To report a missing person.”
His hand clenched, creasing the paper on top of the pile. His nostrils flared. “You do have a good reason for coming to me instead of Missing Persons.”
Expecting this, I mustered an inner calm. “It’s Royal, Mike.”
He sat back, hands splayed on the desktop. “Tell me.”
After I told him, Mike didn’t give me any guff, none of the possibilities for Royal’s disappearance he would present to another person in light of the fact Royal was missing only three days. He knew Royal. He knew me and that I don’t get wound up without cause.
His gaze dipped to his desk. In the Squad Room, a clatter and someone swore. Someone else laughed. Brad Spacer raised his voice, “No, Ma’am. Osama bin Laden’s dead, you couldn’t have seen him in the Mall.”
“We can’t do much, Tiff.”
My shoulders sagged. Dammit, I thought he would take a personal interest. I dug my nails in my palms. “He’s in trouble. I know it.”
“He’s not over sixty-five or under eighteen and no suspicious circumstances. You don’t even have enough to warrant a Missing Persons Report.”
“I don’t want to file a Missing Persons Report. How do you think Royal will feel if his name’s all over the airwaves?”
“If he is in trouble, he’ll appreciate it. But as it stands, we’ve no reason to put it abroad.”
I bit my lower lip and gave him flinty eyes, which made no impression on him whatsoever.
Mike rumbled in his throat, sounding remarkably like Mac. “If suspicious circumstances were involved we could get Forensics to dust his apartment and truck, but a guy leaving his girl in the middle of the night… .”