Lau crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the door, pointedly, if one could be said to lean pointedly. “Armani’s not here to run interference for you, and I’ve got all the time in the world. You can tell me and go free to overcharge some poor schmuck for your time or you can sit here pissing me off until I lock you up for withholding evidence.”
“What evidence?” I nearly shouted. “It’s a freakin’ plastic fish. You want to go dumpster diving, you be my guest.”
“What the hell are you babbling on about?” she asked.
I stared. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Yesterday. Venice Beach. Ring any bells?”
Oh, that. That was, like, ages ago. Since then I’d been kissed, threatened, flooded and whammied with a spankin’ new psychic power. Surely I could be forgiven for forgetting a little near-death experience.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. Now, what’s this about your dumpster?” Lau’s eyes narrowed on me.
“First, I wasn’t attacked at the beach. I slipped and the shock of the cold water knocked me out.”
“Uh huh.” Oh, it sounded like agreement, but read more like giving me enough rope to hang myself.
“Second, the damned fish in the dumpster was someone’s idea of a practical joke, rigging the singing fish above my door to give me a dunking.” I squelched a dribble of water out of my shoes onto the industrial carpet for effect. Unlike my spare suit, the shoes hadn’t been hung above the waterline.
“First, Mr. Lafferty—you remember him—your rescuer—claims that you were struggling against someone.”
“How did you—”
The canary-eating cat had never smiled so broadly. “Armani tracked him down when he figured you were holding out. Wait, let me guess, you got your foot caught, maybe in your mouth?”
I seriously didn’t like this woman. “I’m not under any obligation to report a struggle.” Of course, an assault, being a crime, was another matter and I didn’t think Lau was the type to be put off by semantics.
“You do if it had anything to do with my murder investigation.”
I was all out of smart-ass comments. If Lau could convince a judge that I was withholding evidence, obstructing justice, my PI license would be suspended. Suspended, hell, I could be facing jail time. Of course, if my license was pulled it was only a matter of time before I got arrested anyway for vagrancy. Blacklisted from the circus, blackballed by the police, I’d be a two-time loser. It wasn’t as if I had another Uncle Christos waiting in the wings to bail me out.
“What on earth would I gain by keeping quiet about the attack?”
“You tell me. Why did you let the killer get away in the first place?”
My eyes nearly bugged out. “Are you kidding me? Did you see what that guy did to Circe? I’d gone in for a simple delivery. Unarmed. How the hell was I supposed to stop him?”
“One of the witnesses said that you had the murderer by the arm and you released him.”
But I heard what she wasn’t saying. “What about the other witnesses?”
Lau’s lips compressed into a thin line. I thought I even heard the gritting of teeth. “Why do you think I didn’t haul you in sooner? It starts to look pretty suspicious, though, in light of the new unreported attack.” I opened my mouth to renew my protest, but she plowed right on. “Don’t even try to tell me that there’s no connection. You were investigating the death of that actress, one of Circe Holland’s clients, who, by the way, drowned. Who are you protecting?”
“Drowned!” I was on the edge of my seat. “I knew that she died in the bath, but I was thinking drugs,” or drained life force, per the dragon lady’s contract.
I looked down at the files spread before me and caught the names Holland and Talbot. Everything I needed was here. I wondered if I dared use my gorgon mojo on the great detective.
It was a huge risk. If I locked the door, anyone trying to enter would get suspicious. If I left it unlocked, anyone could walk in. Plus, as far as I knew, Lau could see and hear perfectly well while frozen and I would be in deep doo-doo when she unfroze.
I was an idiot. As soon as I admitted to myself that I had the power, I should have experimented, tested duration, the ability to snap someone out of it at a moment’s notice. Now I was stuck. This might be my only chance to get at those files since it seemed I’d turned Armani against me—and I didn’t even want to think about how much that hurt.
Lau had been watching me closely, so it was no trick at all to catch her eyes. “Freeze,” I said, quietly but firmly.
I waited for her to ask me what the hell I was doing, but except for the subtle motion of her chest expanding and contracting she was as still as a statue—the kind farmers used to frighten off crows. I wasted no time in rifling through the files.
Circe’s autopsy report was fascinating. Clearly the ME had been baffled by the lack of apparent aging. Whatever magical treatments Circe had been giving herself at the cost of other people’s lives had even repaired the usual dental wear. Unless the victim had survived on an all-liquid diet, it was inconceivable that her teeth should be as good as new. The ME would probably be dining out on the story of Circe’s oddities for months—names carefully excised, of course.
Lau might unfreeze at any moment and even though I could freeze her again, every second that ticked by brought the risk of discovery. I flipped quickly to Sierra Talbot’s file and skimmed through, getting caught up here and there, mostly on the roommate’s interview. Tracy Challis, whose address and phone number I memorized in case I needed to talk to her later, had suspected Sierra of having a stalker. Sierra never said so directly, she admitted, but just before she died she’d suddenly become determined to move back to Ohio. She’d finally landed a real role, kick-starting her career. It seemed so odd… Unless, I thought, she’d gotten the “get out of Dodge” memo. Did that tie her to Apollo and/or his oracle, I wondered. Or did she have inside information on the source of the danger?
The doorknob twisted. Fear hit the plunger on a shot of adrenaline, which raced through my system. I stood and clapped loudly in the second it took the door to swing open—only to be blocked by Lau’s unmoving back. The paralysis held and I was SOL.
“What the hell?” Armani asked.
I quickly rounded the table to try again with Lau, while Armani gave the door another push, rocking her forward. She was going to have one hell of a bruise.
“Unfreeze,” I said, going for force without volume. Nothing. “Release,” I tried.
Armani hit the door again, this time with his full weight behind it and Lau fell forward into my arms, throwing me back against the table while I braced myself to hold her stiff dead weight. Armani bolted into the room, only to be brought up short when he spotted me pinned beneath his partner’s frozen form.
“What did you do?” he asked, rushing forward to take her from me. “Helen, Helen, can you hear me?”
He looked around for somewhere to lay her down, but there wasn’t enough floor space and she was too stiff for the chairs. He ended up holding her awkwardly, torn between watching her with concern and glaring me down.
“What the hell did you do to her? Neurotoxin? Hypnosis? What?”
I was flummoxed. “Thanks. I really appreciate your faith. You’re not going to believe this, but all I did was tell her to freeze.”
“That’s it,” Armani made as if to yell for backup.
“Wait, wait, wait!” I begged desperately. “I’ll prove it to you.” Stupid moronic idiot, I berated myself. “Look at your watch.”
I don’t know why he did it. If he’d been me, I probably would have locked him up and thrown away the key.
“Got the time?” I asked.
“It’s—”
“Freeze.” I put very little force behind it, still fearful about what I’d done to Lau and why she hadn’t snapped to. Too much of a good thing, I guessed. If it weren’t for the fact that I could see her breathing…
Armani stopped—for about
a minute, probably the longest one of my life.
“Eleven forty—wait, that’s not right.”
“You lose a minute?” I asked.
Armani stared at me as if at some kind of alien being, full of fear and awe and questions, so many questions, the first of which was, “How?”
But as he said it, Lau started to slump and he was distracted getting her into a chair.
“Helen, you all right?”
She wasn’t verbal yet. Her muscles sagged, but were not yet under her control. A full-on panic attack threatened to pound my heart to the breaking point. What would the police do to me? Had I hurt her? If the paralysis of voluntary muscles was this complete, had I killed the man/god I’d struggled with yesterday? He could seemingly breathe underwater, but what if, like a shark, he had to keep moving in order to do so?
Armani pinned me with his gaze. “Bring her around.”
I collapsed into the second visitor’s chair. “I don’t know how,” I answered weakly. “I think she’ll be okay in just a minute.”
Circe’s minion had only halted for a moment when I’d given him the Look. It must have been that belief or vocalization or something gave it more force. I was horrified at myself and half-ready to swear off using my power for good and all.
Lau rolled her head in the next instant to find me. “What—?” she asked.
“You fainted.”
“Fainted, hell,” Armani exploded. “She—”
Lau shook her head faintly. “Wanna hear—” she sucked in a jagged breath, “—from her.”
“Would you believe gorgon blood?” I asked.
Her chest rose and fell suddenly in a staccato motion and I feared she’d gone into cardiac arrest. It took me a full five seconds to realize she was laughing.
“Damn that hurts,” she said finally. “Welcome to the sisterhood.”
Chapter Eleven
“I don’t want to see your face again—unless it’s on a milk carton.”
—Lenny Rialto, second generation, Rialto Bros. Circus
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
“Huh?” I asked cleverly.
She gave a half-bow from her chair. “I am a direct descendent of Liu Lei.”
“I’m sure that should mean something to me, but I have to confess—”
“Damn Eurocentric country,” Lau said, back to her irascible self as she cut me off. “Liu Lei, the dragon tamer.”
Clear as mud. “Um.”
Lau rolled her eyes. “Reader’s Digest version—Liu Lei, born during the Xia Dynasty with the ability to tame and ride dragons, given charge of King Kong Jia’s four beasts. Unfortunately, one died in his care. Not his fault; if it’s a dragon’s time to go, there’s nothing anyone can do about it. His dishonor was being too cowardly to come forward. Anyway, the family fell out of royal favor,” which I guessed was a euphemism for was forced to flee the country, “but the ability continued to breed true.”
She hadn’t laughed at me—well, okay, she had. Still, I was pretty sure if I laughed back I’d be donkey dust. I looked at Armani to see how he was taking things. Shell-shocked might be understating matters.
“So, you’re a dragon tamer,” I asked, just for clarification.
Lau huffed, sensing the skepticism behind the question. “More like guardian these days. Most of the creatures have their heads in the sand, hoping we’re just an evolutionary mistake that will pass like all the rest. They have a different conception of time, being immortal and all. Meanwhile, they dream of fat prey and no men around to hunt them into extinction.”
“How do you know what they dream?”
“Who do you think spins the fantasies that lull them to sleep? It’s what we do, speak to them in pictures, soothe them mind-to-mind.”
“Uh huh.” I took a seat of my own. “So, ah, where’s this dragon you’re watching?” It was well past breakfast, but I wasn’t sure how many more impossible things I could take. Maybe the caffeine and sugar deprivation actually helped in that department.
Armani cut in before she could answer. “Hold up. What the hell kind of drugs did you give her?”
Great, we were back to that. Feel the love.
“Underground,” Lau said, ignoring him. “Earthquakes are the dragon rolling over.”
I was afraid I was going to break our tentative rapport by bringing up, oh, I don’t know, tectonic plates and a little thing called geology, but Armani beat me to it.
“You’re both insane. Helen, I’m getting you checked out. You,” he said, pointing to me, “are staying right here.”
“Nick,” Lau said, making me bristle at the use of Armani’s first name. “Sit. Before we start talking about crazy, why don’t we let Ms. Gorgonzola here speak?”
So much for rapport.
“Listen, b—” I caught the word before it actually left my mouth, “—babe, you’re starting to tick me off, so unless that dragon of yours is ready to play second, you might not want to issue me a challenge.”
Armani growled to get us back on track.
“Fine. I’m just saying you’ve already seen what I can do. So far, Ms. Dragon Whisperer is all talk.” Okay, the name she’d come up with was way better. So sue me. “Anyway—” gods, where did I start? “—it’s like this…”
I told them. Everything—the attacks, the hints of a divine comeback, old ones like Yiayia’s contact afraid to talk for fear of retribution—everything but the fact that Apollo himself was very likely that Apollo, which I figured was his business. By the end of my recitation, Armani had gone a whiter shade of pale and, lacking a third guest chair or the power to make it to the one at his desk, had collapsed onto his butt in an unceremonious heap. He rallied as I wound down.
“So, to recap, Circe is—or was—a psycho who believed some crazy contract clause prolonged her life. Sierra Talbot may or may not have had a stalker but either way was ready to blow her big break. Apollo believes some psychic when she says to bug out of L.A. and you and Helen believe gods and dragons walk the earth. Have I got the basics?”
Lau and I exchanged a look. “In a nutshell,” she agreed.
Armani raked a hand through his hair and left it standing straight up.
“What the hell kind of psychoactive chemicals have you two been smoking? I might expect this kind of craziness from Tori, but you, Helen—what the hell?”
Lau stiffened and I could almost see the stick up her butt snap back into place as she rose from the table. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Armani asked suspiciously.
“A little road trip. I’ll let the evidence speak for itself. In the meantime, you might not want to say anything more you’re going to regret later on.”
I think I could have knocked Armani over with a feather right then, and after his comment about what could be expected from me, I was sorely tempted, but it would hardly have been sporting.
No one spoke as Lau marched us off to her car. Armani took point, leaving me to sit in the back like a prisoner, half wondering if everyone in the world hid behind a façade of normalcy. But no, Armani was way too flummoxed to be hiding a mind-bending secret of his own. I wouldn’t be taking bets on anyone else any time soon.
Tension was our co-pilot for the long, windy trip up Beachwood Drive toward the top of Mount Lee. After a while, Armani reached over to flick the radio on and messed with the knob until he found a classic rock station. Heart’s “Magic Man” filled the silence, but the way my love life was going I didn’t want to think about magic hands or anything of that nature, so I watched the scenery, putting two and two together.
“You’ve got to be kidding me—the dragon sleeps under the Hollywood sign!”
“More or less,” Lau agreed primly.
“Unbelievable.”
“I should have my head examined for not locking you both up,” Armani growled.
Lau took her attention away from the road to cut him a withering look. “Judgment in advance of the evidence?”
; “The evidence of my life to date suggests that dragons don’t exist. If they did there’d be reported sightings right along with Bigfoot and UFOs.”
“Are you saying those are real?” she fired back.
They squabbled all the way to the summit—like siblings, I thought. It made me smile. Finally, we pulled off, having gone as far as we could go but still some distance from the Hollywood sign.
“You can’t see him,” Lau explained as we exited the car. “He’s curled up in a hollow within the mountain.”
“Do you have to be this close to, you know, um, work with him?” I asked.
“It’s easier the closer I am, but no. I can’t be too far as the crow flies, within about a ten-mile radius, I’d guess, but I don’t have to be right on top of him. This is for your benefit.”
With that she stalked off across the nearly pristine hillside and chose a nice thick patch of grass on which to strike a meditative pose. Lotus, I thought it was called, but it had been years since my aborted yoga experience. Kickboxing was way more my speed.
Armani alternately prowled the hillside like a great cat on patrol and shot searching glances at his partner. Me he avoided looking at entirely, until the ground suddenly shifted beneath our feet, shuddered, sending rocks skittering and dropping us to our knees before settling to absolute stillness. His startled gaze flew to mine then, as if to assure himself it really had happened.
I was betting my eyes were the size of saucers. I hadn’t had much chance to consider whether I believed she could do it at all, but I certainly hadn’t thought it would be so immediate.
“So?” she asked smugly, still sitting back on her heals amidst the grass.
A weird tremor took hold of me, like an echo of the heaving earth, but it came with an injection of adrenaline. Apollo’s early warning system?
“So?” a new voice echoed Lau, shimmering into view before us like a cartoon mirage. Only the figure before us was never meant to form human speech—a fox-like muzzle, hell, a fox-like body, glowing like golden flame in the sunlight. Only its size, more husky than fox, and its whipcord serpent’s tail indicated that this was something other.
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