He smiled then, just the tiniest bit. “Deal.”
The damage wasn’t all that bad; I dug a couple of twenties out of my wallet and tucked them into the leatherette envelope next to the bill. Only a few swallows of chardonnay remained, so I finished off my glass and set it down as Paul drank the rest of his iced tea. We both slid out of the booth and headed toward the parking lot.
California was still a week away from Daylight Savings Time, so full dark had fallen by the time we emerged from the restaurant. The wind had picked up, catching at my hair and most likely making it look wilder than ever. I shivered and wished I’d brought my leather jacket with me.
Paul was quiet as we walked out to our rented car. Maybe he was thinking about what Raymond had found. I found myself wondering the same thing but didn’t really feel like discussing it. Whatever he’d discovered, I had a feeling it couldn’t be good.
To my surprise, Paul walked me around to my side of the car instead of simply hitting the remote to unlock the doors and leaving me to fend for myself. I didn’t have time to ponder this outburst of chivalry, however, because instead of pulling out the car keys, he reached for me and drew me toward him, even as he bent and pressed his lips against mine.
This action was so unexpected — just a further indication that a good part of my psychic talents seemed to have abandoned me — that for a second or two I couldn’t even react. But then I realized just how good it felt to have his arms around me, how firm his mouth was, how he tasted faintly spicy and better than I could have ever hoped for. He held me like that for what could have been just a minute or maybe half an hour. It was hard to tell, with the way my head was spinning.
He pulled away a few inches and said, “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?” I managed, glad I was able to string even two words together.
“With everything that’s going on, with what’s at stake….” The words trailed off, and he shook his head. “Kissing you in the parking lot like we’re back in high school isn’t exactly a mature reaction to the situation.”
My lips still tingled from the touch of his lips. “So why did you do it?”
His shoulders lifted. “I kept looking at you during dinner, wondering. I suppose some part of me just said the hell with it.”
“Then say the hell with it again,” I told him, and the words were barely out of my mouth before he bent down and kissed me once more, his hands tightening on my arms, holding me tightly as if he was afraid someone or something might come along and snatch me away.
No chance of that. It would take an act of God to pull me away from Paul, that much I knew. The familiar sensation was back, the one of absolute certainty. Whatever else was going on, and whatever dark forces might have forced us to flee here where no one knew us, I did know I was meant to be with Paul. Crazy, sure — I’d known the man for less than forty-eight hours. But the same still, quiet voice that had guided me through my counseling sessions seemed to have returned long enough to tell me I had finally found the one man who took me as I was and expected nothing more…and nothing less.
His pocket buzzed against my collarbone and I jumped, breaking our contact. He shook his head, then reached in and pulled out his cell phone.
“Yes, Jeff, we’re on our way. Just had to…wait for our check.” And he closed the phone and stuffed it back in his pocket.
“You are such a liar,” I told him, even as he clicked the remote to unlock the car, then opened the door for me.
“It wasn’t a complete lie. We did have to wait for the check.”
“A whole three minutes.” But I got the point, and lowered myself into my seat as he went around to his own side of the car.
Neither one of us said anything as he started the engine and then backed out of the parking space before pointing the Camry toward Fourth Street and Raymond’s lab. Somehow, though, it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. The pressure of his lips seemed to linger on mine, and I smiled a little as I stared out the window at the streets passing by. Whatever might still be waiting for us, I knew Paul had feelings for me, feelings strong enough that he’d acted on them, even though logically both of us should have known to keep our libidos in check until we’d gotten the rest of this mess sorted out.
At the moment, I was very glad neither one of us had turned out to be all that logical.
Nothing seemed to have changed appreciably as we pulled into the parking lot at Lampson Labs. The Prius and the shabby white van were still in their respective places, and the front office was still noticeably empty, the fluorescent lights within glaring out through the open blinds. Paul and I got out of the Camry and went in, heading toward the back of the building.
We found Raymond and Jeff in one of the labs, Raymond with his eyeballs apparently glued to a complicated piece of equipment I guessed was some sort of microscope, although it appeared to be an order of magnitude greater in complexity than the sorts of microscopes we’d used when I was in college and taking my required biology coursework. Jeff hovered a few feet away, and shot us an irritated glare as we entered the room.
“Nice of you to drop in,” he remarked.
I barely refrained from raising a guilty hand to my lips, as if Paul’s kiss had left an imprint there. Which was just silly, since I’d done a quick reapplication of lipstick on the way over.
“What have you got?” Paul asked, his tone mild. You’d have thought he was the one who’d had the calming glass of wine with dinner.
At that point, Raymond lifted his head from the microscope, but slowly, as if reluctant to turn away from whatever he was inspecting. “It’s definitely alien,” he said.
Paul’s eyebrows went up slightly. “How do you know?”
“Are you a biologist?”
“No.”
“Well, then,” he replied, as if that explained everything.
It was my turn to throw an aggrieved glance in Jeff’s direction. “You called us back here because you said you had something important to tell us. So what is it?”
“It’s alien,” Jeff said, “but it’s not exactly biological. That is, it appears to be an engineered virus of alien origin, but in a nanotech delivery system. We’ve never seen anything like it.”
“No one’s seen anything like it,” Raymond mumbled, his face planted back on the microscope as if pulled there by some irresistible force.
“So what does it do?” Paul asked.
“We don’t know yet for sure,” Jeff replied after throwing a quick glance at Raymond, as if guessing that the biologist wasn’t about to provide the answer. “We just thought you should know it’s definitely not spray-tan oil.”
No kidding. I didn’t pretend to understand exactly what they were talking about, but I could tell from the furrow between Paul’s brows that he had gotten some of it…and didn’t appear to be precisely encouraged by the news.
“This delivery system,” he said. “I assume it’s intended for quick absorption through the skin?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“But you don’t know why.”
Right then, Raymond did look up from the microscope. “Not yet. If you think you can do any better — ”
“Of course not,” Paul broke in. It seemed to me that he’d been mostly thinking out loud, not actually trying to impugn Raymond’s research abilities. “Ms. O’Brien and I will continue our side of the investigation,” he went on. “Let us know if you find anything else.”
“No problem,” Raymond replied, sounding sour even for him. “It’s not like I’m planning on sleeping tonight.”
There didn’t seem to be much of a way to reply to that, so I sent him what I hoped was a reassuring look, even as I wondered what the hell Paul thought we could investigate. I’d been under the impression that we’d pretty much hit a dead end…at least, until we got more information out of Raymond.
But I kept my mouth shut as Paul made his curt goodbyes and went back to the car. It wasn’t until he’d pulled o
ut of the parking lot and had us headed back toward the freeway that I asked, “So, do you have some hot leads I wasn’t aware of?”
“No,” he said briefly. “Which way to get back to the motel?”
“North on the 15, and the 210 west.”
There was still a good bit of traffic around the on-ramp because of the influx from Ontario Mills, but we made it onto the freeway without incident. A few miles passed by without either of us saying anything. It wasn’t until we’d transitioned to the 210 and were headed toward Pomona that I said, “So what do you think that nanovirus is for?’
“I’m not completely sure.” He had his face forward, his attention focused on the unfamiliar roadway. “There has to be some connection with the film industry, but I’m just not seeing it right now.”
“Film industry?”
“Look at the clientele at Lotus. You yourself said a good number of the people who patronize that spa are individuals with influence in the movie industry. And Alex Hathaway told you that his girlfriend had suffered a complete personality change after going to get her tan. So let’s go with Jeff’s earlier theory, that the spray tan provides a means to get this nanovirus — if that’s what it truly is — into a human host. Maybe you were right when you said earlier that Alex’s girlfriend was simply a mistake. It doesn’t mean there aren’t others being infected, people who have far more power than an out-of-work actress. What do you think they might be trying to control?”
I wanted to tell him that it was silly to believe aliens would really care enough to take over a bunch of studio execs, but a cold little chill somewhere in the midpoint of my spine told me he wasn’t just engaging in a bit of blue-sky thinking. It figured my spider sense would kick in just when I really didn’t want to hear what it had to tell me. Of course, I didn’t have any direct connections with the film industry, but I knew many people who did…and from what I’d heard, the people who ran Hollywood were scary enough on their own without being taken over by aliens in the bargain.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense that aliens would care about the movies one way or another. They’re just a bunch of flickering images in the dark.”
Flickering images in the dark….
It struck me then, the way these things sometimes did, as if they’d been sent down a pipeline by God or the universe or whatever else you wanted to call it. Far more than a notion — a certainty, the inescapable realization that what my mind had just whispered to me was the absolute truth.
I didn’t remember making a sound, but I must have, because Paul looked over at me sharply. “Persephone? Are you all right?”
“No,” I replied, voice shaking. “I really don’t think I am.”
He reached down from the steering wheel with his right hand and wrapped his fingers around mine. “What is it? Did you sense something?”
There was a lot to be said for being with a man who just accepted your psychic powers and didn’t joke about them or try to exploit them. “I think I know what they’re doing.”
“What?”
I swallowed against the sick taste in my throat and hoped my dinner would stay where it was. “They’re not here to destroy us,” I informed him. “They’re here to control us.”
Chapter Eight
Surprisingly, he didn’t appear all that startled. “What makes you say that?”
“I just know.”
“How?” A pause. “Is Otto back?”
“No,” I replied, sounding a little tetchy. Did Paul really think I couldn’t have one flash of intuition without my spirit guide’s help? “This one just came to me — as things did before Otto showed up, and still do on occasion. Thank God, since it looks like Otto’s permanently relocated to the Bahamas or something.”
“So what does your intuition tell you?”
“Just that the aliens are looking for a way to control us, and it’s connected to the movies somehow. Or actually, movies and television.” I shut my eyes then, drawing myself into the dark. The interior of a car barreling down a freeway at seventy miles an hour was perhaps not the best place for peaceful contemplation, but one worked with the available materials. That sensation was there still, accompanied by a rapid succession of images, some from films I’d seen recently, others snippets from television shows. And from all of them vibrated a sense of wrongness, a flicker at the very edge of perception no one would have ever known to look for. A dissonance began to build in my mind, pulsing at some subsonic level that caused a throbbing pain to build in the bone behind my ears.
Unable to endure it a second longer, I opened my eyes. At once, those painful harmonics disappeared, and I let out a hitching little gasp.
“Persephone?” Paul asked, his tone sharp with worry.
“I’m okay. Get off at the next exit.”
He must have heard the tension in my voice, because he only nodded and then maneuvered the car over to the right, pulling off the freeway at Towne. From there, he seemed to recognize where he was, because he didn’t ask for any further directions as he headed south toward Foothill and the motel where we were staying.
It was only after he’d pulled into the parking lot and followed me up the stairs to the room we shared that he said, “What did you see?”
At any other time, I might have considered the awkwardness of the situation, of the two of us sharing a room after a kiss that had forever changed the way we viewed one another. Right then, though, I could only think of the painful wrongness that made itself felt in my bones, of the similarly soul-deep knowledge that somehow the very mediums we employed for entertainment were going to be used against us.
“I don’t know how they’re doing it,” I replied. “I don’t even know how I know, but I’ve learned not to question these things. But somehow they’re building a — I don’t know what you’d call it, exactly — some sort of signal into the movies and TV shows that are coming out of Hollywood.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. I watched as he went back to the door and tested the lock, then turned toward me. “A carrier wave. I can see how that might work. But we need to be able to find out how they’re doing it — what the wave is composed of, to see if there’s any way of blocking or neutralizing it.”
“Easier said than done.” I sat down on the bed I’d been using and kicked off my shoes. They were more or less comfortable, but almost any pair of shoes needed a breaking-in period, and it had been a long day. What I wanted right then was to lie down and lose myself in blissful sleep for a few hours. My mind, however, had other plans.
The prickly feeling returned, along with the certainty that whatever the aliens’ ultimate goal might be, they weren’t even in the testing stages yet. Made sense, or Paul and I and everyone around me would have already been turned into a brain-controlled zombie. Well, maybe not Paul; I got the impression he wasn’t much of a movie or TV guy. At any rate, luck seemed to have guided us to discovering the plan while it was still in its embryonic stages. But it was beginning to happen, and would continue, if we didn’t do something to stop it. What that something would be, I had no idea.
Paul said quietly, “There’s always a way.”
Who knew a ufologist could be such a Pollyanna? I wished I had some sort of retort to make, but the truth was, I didn’t have the energy. The wave of dark sound that had welled up into my brain seemed to have drained whatever reserves I had left. “Well, if you have a plan, I’d love to hear it.”
He didn’t appear to be put off by my reply, but sat down in the chair by the window and appeared to think for a moment. “What we really need is someone who works in the technical end of the business, but who hasn’t yet been affected. As far as I can guess, it seems the actual alien takeover is geared more toward the top level of the studios. There’s a possibility that the tech people have escaped unscathed.”
I wanted to argue that you’d think the techs would be the first people to be taken over, since one person smelling a rat might be enough to upset the whole
plan, but I didn’t know that for sure. After all, from what I’d heard, the people in the trenches pretty much kept their heads down and just did their work. There were too many people waiting in line for those jobs for anyone to make waves. One of my clients, who worked post-production, had some horror stories that would make your hair curl —
Of course. Tyler Russo was a sound engineer at a lab out in Studio City. We’d had a session only two days earlier. I found it hard to believe that the aliens had already suborned Tyler — surely I would have noticed if something was wrong. And even if he was on the list, it seemed as if there were a good number of people higher up the food chain who were more in danger of being spray-tanned into mental domination.
“I think I know someone we can talk to,” I said, and then, as Paul’s eyes lit up, “…tomorrow. I’m pretty sure Tyler would find it odd to have me calling him out of the blue at nine-thirty on a Friday night.”
“Tyler?”
“A client of mine. He’s a sound engineer. He’d be a good place to start.”
“You are a woman of infinite resources.”
I laughed. “I don’t know about that. I do know a lot of people in Hollywood. That helps. As for the rest — we’ll just have to see. Just because he’s a sound engineer doesn’t mean he’ll be able to nail down this carrier wave-whatsis.”
“But he might be able to direct us to someone who could.”
“Hopefully.”
Paul stood up then and stared at the closed curtains for a moment, as if seeing something in the tacky blue and green striped fabric that I apparently had missed. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, obviously on edge about something.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Sorry I couldn’t come up with a better plan, but — ”
“It’s not that. I’m just — I suppose I’m not sure how we’re supposed to proceed.”
“‘Proceed’?” I repeated. “Proceed with what?”
In answer, he came over and sat down on the bed next to me. “With this.”
Magic in the Desert: Three Paranormal Romance Series Starters Set in the American Southwest Page 63