When he wanted to turn on the charm, it oozed out of his pores. He was the consummate diplomat-networker. He could meet people and have them charmed and eating out of his hand in minutes. She had to admit, she was pretty good at that too—which was what made them such a great power-couple.
But if she needed help in something other than politics…forget it.
“Thanks, Hugh. I’ll think of something.”
“I’m sure you will. Now, how about dinner tonight? Shall we meet at the Drawing Room or Taco DC?” he asked, naming the two restaurants on the Hill where staffers tended to congregate after work.
Erin let her head fall back against the side of the building again. Where was that siren when she needed it? She wished she hadn’t heard that. Just the thought of food made her stomach recoil, but she supposed she should go anyway. She had a career to push forward and had done enough informal negotiating and planting of information at these get-togethers to make herself indispensable to the congressman. Indispensable enough so that he practically gave her the most amazing apartment in the city, along with a raise so that she could afford it.
“I’ll see you at the Drawing Room at nine,” she finally conceded. All the correspondence she had to get through would probably keep her busy until then—especially considering that she’d just lost the past two hours.
“Okay. See you then.”
Hugh hung up and Erin pushed herself off the side of the building. With a last glance at the ordinary entrance, one that would never tell you there were million dollar apartments inside, she headed over to the metro station.
###
Lanie looked around at the crowd of tourists surging all around them. “What in the world are we doing here, Erin?” she asked, not even trying to keep the exasperation from her voice.
“I’ve got to get over my phobia. I thought maybe going up high would help.” Erin moved another inch forward in the line.
“Your phobia. You’re afraid of falling, not afraid of heights. How will going up in a secure elevator to the top of the Washington Monument help?”
Erin sighed. “I don’t know. It was all I could think of.”
Lanie grabbed Erin’s sleeve and dragged her out of the line. “This isn’t going to work. Come on, let’s get some coffee.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “As far away from tourists as we can get.”
Erin laughed. “In DC, when the cherry blossoms are blooming? Not far.”
Lanie scowled back at her and then led the way down Constitution Avenue in the general direction of Foggy Bottom, bypassing the White House and all of the security there. The cherry trees were fabulous, Erin had to admit, and they were at the height of the season.
As they strolled down Virginia Avenue, Lanie asked, “So, you’re really going through with this?”
“I’ve got no choice. And, yes, I signed the lease yesterday.” She was already feeling wretched about this and really hoped that Lanie wasn’t going to make her feel any worse. That wasn’t why she’d called and asked her best friend to meet her at the Monument on one of the busiest Saturdays of the year.
“Lanie,” Erin started, but then stopped and gave her a pleading look.
“Yeah, I get it.” Lanie threw an arm over Erin’s shoulders as they walked down the street.
Erin knew her trust hadn’t been misplaced when Lanie ordered her a large mocha coffee with double whipped cream at the first coffee shop they came to.
Chapter Two
I can’t do it, Lanie! I just can’t do it!” Erin dropped her forehead onto the coffee shop table, lifted it, and bonked it down again as if she could smash the phobia out of her head.
Lanie reached over and caressed Erin’s hair. “Yes, you can! It’s just a window. And the apartment sounds fabulous!”
“I don’t know whether it’s fabulous or not,” Erin said into the table.
“What?”
Erin raised her head and sat up. “I don’t know. Senator Whitmeyer said it was fabulous. I guess I’ll just believe him because I’ll never be able to live there.” She leaned forward to drive home her point. “I couldn’t even walk into the apartment, Lanie!”
Her friend just shook her head and gave her sad puppy-dog eyes. “Well, once you can step into it, it’ll be a big move up from that broom closet you’re living in now. I don’t know why you put up with such a tiny room in that enormous house. It’s not like you pay less than anyone else,” she said, as always, looking for the glass-half-full.
“Because I was the last one in,” Erin explained for the umpteenth time. Yes, her room was tiny, but she loved living in a house with other people—people who weren’t her parents, that would have just been too humiliating. “And besides, although my bedroom is small, I only have to sleep in there. I hang out in the living room or the kitchen whenever I’m home.”
“Oh God, what am I going to do, Lanie?” The words came out more as a groan.
Lanie just tilted her head, waiting for Erin to finish her moaning. She knew Erin too well.
“I’ve never lived alone! I don’t know…” Erin stopped and shook her head. “The point is moot. I’m never going to be able to live in that apartment. I can’t even get two feet past the door.” She dropped her head back on to the table, nearly bumping into her coffee. She paused to take a sip, reveling in the delicious juxtaposition of the cold whipped cream and the hot chocolaty coffee.
Lanie tucked one of her many thick black braids into the knot at the back of her head. Her beautiful brown skin seemed to glow in the filtered sunlight coming in through the coffee shop’s window, and once again, Erin felt a pang of jealousy at her friend’s perfect complexion. She never got sunburned or turned the slightest bit red after being outside for too long, although her hair didn’t naturally lighten in the summer like Erin’s did.
“Who, in their right mind, builds an apartment with a whole wall of windows?” Erin asked, keeping her mind on the problem at hand.
“Someone who wants to be able to charge four thousand dollars a month?” Lanie lifted her coffee to her lips. “There’s a gym, right? Is there a pool?”
Erin tried not to smile too gleefully. “Gym, doorman, free wifi, a media room which can be booked for private parties…”
“Oh,” Lanie sighed and sank down in her chair a little.
“Well, what do you expect for four thousand dollars a month?”
“No pool then, huh?”
Erin couldn’t help but laugh. “No. No pool. But there is a rooftop patio with a barbeque grill and chairs and stuff.”
“Wow. Do you think Whitmeyer wants another mistress?”
“Oh, God, I hope not. Did I tell you, I have to be able to vacate the apartment within half an hour’s notice? That means I’ve got to keep the place spotless—all the time!”
Lanie scrunched up her nose. “Oooh, no, I couldn’t do that!”
“No, you could not! You’re a slob! At least I know how to do dishes.”
Lanie laughed. “Yeah, not my forté.”
Erin sighed and sat back, her mind reluctantly going back to those windows. “I just don’t know how I’ll get past that sky. I had to keep my eyes glued to the wall next to me the entire time I was standing there.”
“What if you tell him you can’t—”
“I lose my job, get blackballed, you name it,” Erin said as lightly as she could with a slight shrug of one shoulder, and then tried to surreptitiously wipe the moisture from the corner of her eye.
Lanie shook her head sympathetically and sat bolt upright. “I’ve got it!” She laughed, clapping her hands together. “I’ve got it! I’ve got the answer to your problem.” She slapped herself on her forehead. “Why didn’t I think of this right away? It’s so obvious!”
Erin sat up again and reached across the table to her best friend. “What? What is it?”
“David!” she said triumphantly, as if Erin would know exactly what this meant.
She waited for more information.
Lanie took
another sip of her coffee and then said, “David, the guy I work with who introduced me to Ibrahim? He can hypnotize people. He just has to hypnotize you and put a post-hypnotic suggestion into your mind that you’re not afraid of falling and…” she spread out her hands, “voilà!”
Erin sat back and thought about this. Did she really want some guy she didn’t even know hypnotizing her? Could he really do it? It’s not like he was a professional or anything. Hell, he was a lawyer! She was sure he could talk his way around a legal case but hypnotize her?
Her doubt must have shown on her face because Lanie grabbed her hand. “This will work!”
Erin still sat and thought about it. She really didn’t know about this.
“What do you have to lose?” her friend persisted.
Good point. Erin shrugged. “Ok.”
Chapter Three
Shit, what’s this guy gonna to do to me?
The voice trembled in David’s mind.
I bet he’s gonna put me into one of them group homes. Well, at least the kids there ain’t as mean as some of Deon’s friends. Man, those guys are nasty! This lawyer’s an asshole.
David broke eye contact for just a moment and looked down at the paperwork sitting on the bare table in front of him. Somehow, someone had carved the word ‘fuck’ into the center of the table just above where his papers sat. He wondered if it had been a kid or a lawyer.
The cold from the metal chair was beginning to seep right through his wool suit pants. Who would have thought a room could be so cold in early April? And his client sat there in an oversized t-shirt. Why was he not cold? David shifted in his chair.
“So what were you doing when the police picked you up, Shawn?” he asked the skinny, black boy on the other side of the table.
The boy shrugged but didn’t say anything.
David flipped over to the next page in the file. “They’re charging you with possession with intention to distribute,” he said even though he knew Shawn had already heard this. He looked into the boy’s eyes again, as the kid glared angrily at him, and listened.
Bad fuckin’ luck! If only Latonya hadn’t told me she’d be helpin’ her mom out at the store, I wouldn’ta worn Deon’s jacket. Fuckin’ Deon. Stupid shit, keeping his stuff in there.
David dropped his eyes back to the paper once again and tried really hard not to smile. The kid was innocent. He had been sure of that all along—his instincts were always right. That jacket wasn’t Shawn’s, it belonged to Deon, whoever that was, and he’d only worn it to impress some girl. The drugs had to belong to Deon too. But then something on the paper in front of him caught his eye. He looked up again quickly. “Your mom’s in a drug rehab?”
Shit! The word exploded from the boy’s mind. “Yeah,” he said with a shrug.
“So who are you living with? Who’s taking care of you?”
Shawn turned his eyes away and stared at the industrial green cinderblock wall. “My brother, Deon. He and I are takin’ care of ourselves.”
So Deon was his brother. Ok, this was beginning to make sense. “And Deon’s a member of B4.” Only the worst gang in DC.
The boy’s eyes snapped back to David’s.
Shittin’ mother fucker! I hate this dude! Shawn didn’t say anything. He just stared malevolently into David’s eyes.
David nodded. It was all right. He didn’t need his client to like him. He just needed him to tell him the truth. “Whose jacket were you wearing today, Shawn?”
Oh, fuck! Shawn stared even harder into David’s eyes, not even blinking. “I already said. The jacket’s mine.”
“Come on, Shawn, tell me the truth.” It took effort, but David kept the magic from his voice. Oh, it would have been so easy to let it slip in there. The boy was staring right into his eyes. Wasn’t that why he had magic, to help others?
For thousands of years, the Vallen had been using their powers to help stupid kids like Shawn, getting them out of tight situations. But he shouldn’t do it, he knew it would be… David sighed. Wrong.
And not only that, what would it get him? Shawn had already confessed to the police that the jacket was his. That the drugs in it were his. If he changed his story now, who would believe him?
David shook his head. It was a sad world, but no, no one would believe this kid if he told the truth. Hell, they probably wouldn’t have even believed him if he’d done so from the start. He was wearing the jacket, that alone made it and the drugs his in the eyes of the law, whether they were or not. So what could David do about it?
If he wanted to keep this kid from getting into even more serious trouble, he was going to have to prove that the jacket and the drugs weren’t Shawn’s, and that they belonged to his brother. But how? This was going to take some work—foot work.
A sharp tweet from his phone made him jump. Shawn just looked away, appearing, if possible, even more bored and angry.
With relief, David got up from the hard chair, stretching his legs as he answered the call.
“David, it’s Ibrahim,” said the voice on the other end. He hadn’t needed to, of course. David’s phone had already told him who was calling. Even if it hadn’t, he’d have known his best friend’s voice anywhere.
“Hey, Ibs. What’s up?”
“Lunch. Today at one with Lanie. I’ll meet you both at Cosi, ok?”
“You sure you want me there?” David asked. He’d set Ibrahim up with his colleague three weeks ago, and they’d practically lived in each other’s pockets since then.
“Yeah, Lanie already asked if I’d mind if you joined us. I told her I did, but she told me to stuff it. So I’ll see ya later?”
David laughed but something tickled at the back of his mind. Why did Lanie want him to have lunch with them? Why couldn’t she have just spoken to him in the office? Mentally, David shrugged. “All right. See you there.”
With another sigh, he turned back to the boy slumped in the chair on the other side of the table, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
###
“So, how’s your first real case goin’?” Ibrahim asked as David slipped into the chair next to him. He and Lanie had already gotten their food and were just starting to eat.
David felt bad for being late. He knew that Ibrahim had driven in from Bethesda, the closest Maryland suburb to Washington, DC. He worked at the National Institutes of Health and didn’t have a lot of time before he had to head back. But then again, he wasn’t here to see Ibrahim. It was Lanie who’d asked him to join them.
David shrugged. “Not too bad. The kid doesn’t take too well to being questioned, though. The more I talked to him, the angrier he seemed to get. It was odd.”
“I don’t think opening up and spilling your guts is these kids’ style,” Lanie said around a mouthful of salad.
David laughed and relaxed a bit. “I think you might be right.”
“You gonna get something to eat?” Ibrahim asked.
David looked over at the line that snaked around toward the door. “No, I’ll pick up something on my way out.” He turned toward Lanie. “All right, time for you to spill. What did you want to talk to me about that you couldn’t at the office?”
She sat back and raised her eyebrows at him. Her deep brown eyes held a moment of shock, but she quickly recovered. “My, we are direct, aren’t we?”
David reached over and helped himself to some of Ibrahim’s chips. “Yes, we are. We also don’t have a lot of time, so let’s hear it.”
Lanie laughed at his continued use of the royal “we” and shook her head. “All right. You want it straight?” At David’s nod, she continued. “I’ve got a friend who needs your help.”
Already David wasn’t liking the sound of this. If it were legal help, he didn’t see why Lanie wasn’t helping her friend herself. She was an excellent lawyer, probably better than him. No, it had to be something else. “What sort of help?” He asked, not even caring if he sounded suspicious.
Lanie toyed with her salad for a moment. She
stole a guilty look up at Ibrahim before turning back to him. “Ibrahim told me that you can hypnotize people. I’ve got a friend—”
“Stop right there! I do not hypnotize people.”
“But he told me that in college—”
“Yeah, that was college. It was a long time ago, and we were just fooling around,” David said, not sparing Ibrahim a glare that should have curled his ultra-straight dark, brown hair.
“But it worked. You were able to do it and put suggestions into people’s minds!” Lanie argued.
Ibrahim just kept his eyes focused out of the window over Lanie’s shoulder and his mouth full.
Traitor! David couldn’t believe that his best friend had actually told Lanie about the tricks they used to get up to in college! Wasn’t that against—he didn’t know—roommate privileged information or something like that?
David shook his head. “Listen, I don’t do that anymore. I haven’t hypnotized anyone in years. Three and a half to be exact—since I graduated from college. And like I said, it was all just a joke—fooling around.”
Lanie looked hurt and not a little worried. “But do you think you could try it anyway? My friend, she’s going to lose her job and very likely her career if you don’t.”
David looked at her for a minute, trying to decide if she really meant that. She met his eyes full on, and he knew that she truly believed that what she said was true. It was as plain as if she’d whispered it in his ear.
Erin has to get over her fear of falling. If she doesn’t, she won’t be able to live in that apartment and she’ll lose her job.
David had no idea what this meant. Sighing and cursing the way people’s thoughts just jumped out at him, David sat back.
A nudge from Ibrahim made him look over at his friend. Their eyes met and Ibrahim’s voice filtered into his mind. Please, man, do this and I’ll owe you. It really means a lot to Lanie. She’s really worried about her friend.
David thought back, What, you want me to possibly give myself away just so that you can get it on with Lanie?
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