"That was my thought as well. And have you met Maggie?"
"She's set up shop next to Java Lemur."
"I shall have to visit her. That was a smart choice—there's a thinness in the walls between the realms of fantasy and the world of reality in that building. I imagine she got some extra help."
"Yep, they were hanging out at Java Lemur this morning."
Lucia smiled, her teeth large and white in her dark face. "They'll visit me if they want me to see them."
A thought tickled the back of Audrey's mind, and she closed her eyes to tease it to the surface through all the crap about Kyle. Something about creatures… "Maggie said that I should have a spirit guide. Do you know anything about that?"
Lucia frowned and tapped her finger against the ceramic of the cup with a series of clinks. The motion made her leaf-shaped silver and topaz ring sparkle. "It is highly unusual that you have not encountered your guide. Something may be keeping him or her from you."
"Like what?" Of course there would be a complication.
"Like whoever or whatever is causing the rifts. It makes your journeying much more perilous."
"Oh." Audrey didn't like the sound of that. "Is there some way I can find him or her?"
"I shall perform a ritual when I get to the office. I will let you know tonight."
"Thank you."
"It will be a long ritual, so I should start early."
Audrey didn't need to be psychic to take the hint. "I'll be on my way, then."
Since Lucia had been too distracted by the Collective Unconscious stuff, Audrey dialed J.J. as soon as she got inside her own apartment to tell him his suspicions about Kyle were likely true. His phone went to voicemail, which was strange because he always answered when she called at this time of the day.
You can't abandon me, too, stepbrother. She left a brief message and took a deep breath.
"Well, Athena," she said to her cat, "it looks like I'm going to have to be an independent woman and do what I need to do in spite of all this boy crap."
Athena just opened an eye and flicked her tail as if to say, "I didn't like him, anyway."
"Yeah, that's the problem," Audrey said with a sigh. "I did. A lot."
Amanda Lee's psychiatry practice was in one of the professional buildings attached to the medical center. After Charlie and Damien waited for half an hour, she appeared.
"Couldn't wait 'til tomorrow, Detective MacKenzie?" she asked with a grin.
"What can I say, Amanda? You do that to me."
"And this is…? He was there earlier."
"Detective Damien Lewis."
She arched a golden eyebrow, which appeared above her glasses. "Yet he wears a uniform."
"You're very observant. He's helping me out on a trial basis."
"So now that we've established who everyone is, what can I do for you?" she asked. "I'm afraid that Mr. Smith isn't able to be questioned right now; he is heavily sedated."
Damien, tired of everything, but especially of being talked around, said, "We actually wanted to ask you about the three young women who were brought in over the past few evenings."
"Ah, yes, Jane One, Jane Two, and Jane Three. You policemen aren't very original with your names, are you?"
Charlie shrugged. "What can I say? We're just simple men."
"I doubt that. What would you like to know about them?"
Charlie gestured to Damien to ask the questions. Damien sensed it was some sort of test.
"Well, first, why they were so disoriented." He tried to adopt a confident tone without being insulting. "Did someone check them out? Were they on drugs?"
She shook her head, and the tightness at the corners of her mouth told him he'd been too harsh. "Urinalysis and blood tests came back negative for all substances, both legal and illegal."
"Where are they now?" asked Charlie. "Can we see them?"
"You could, but I don't know that it would do you much good."
"Why not?" Damien looked up from his notes.
She spread her hands as though she held the answer in her long fingers. "They're housed on a locked ward. Two of them share a room. The first one was unresponsive, just sat and rocked, until the second one was brought in. They seemed to recognize each other, so we kept them together to see if we could observe some communication that would allow us to identify them and find out where they came from."
"What happened when the third one came in?"
She smiled. "The other two were very happy to see her. They spoke with each other, but it was all gibberish."
"Gibberish?"
"I'll concede that it might be a language I'm not familiar with. I'll ask the nurses and see if any of them has overheard or understood them. But I don't see how letting you question them can help, and it may cause them to lose what little progress has been made."
"May we see the charts?" Damien asked.
"If you wish." She called the front desk and asked for a copy of the hospital records for the policemen to look at. "I can't release them, of course, but I'm willing to do you this favor to help the investigation." Her smile was all for Charlie.
"And what about the young man who was found in the E.R.?" Damien tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "The one who shot, allegedly shot, Rizzo?"
Dr. Lee shook her head. "Daniel Smith is a frequent flyer on the ward. He has paranoid schizophrenia, and he will not stay compliant with his medication. Unfortunately, his family will not consent for him to be institutionalized, and we can only involuntarily commit him for seventy-two hours at a time."
"But psychotic people don't usually become violent," Damien said. "Has he ever done anything like this before?"
"No, that's what is so perplexing. He has never had hallucinations or delusions with violent content. Usually his ideas are of reference."
"Of what?" Damien asked.
"Of reference. Meaning he feels that things like billboards and televisions are displaying messages specifically for him to see, but the worst he will do is run and hide in the woods until he is brought in." She paused and cocked her head at them. A nurse knocked on the door.
"Your next patient is ready."
"Excuse me, gentlemen, I must get back to work. You can look at the records at the desk. Just respect confidentiality."
"Thank you for your time," Charlie said and shook her hand. "Please let us know when Mr. Smith is ready for questioning."
"Mr. Ames is ready for you now."
The mundane words Lyle Ames' secretary had said a thousand times before made his heart skip a beat, and adrenaline rushed through his system with a crackle like electricity. Show time.
"Calm down, Lye," he told himself, using the nickname from long ago when he had been just another kid struggling through college, working two jobs so he could afford to take the extra classes he needed to qualify for the MBA program. He'd succeeded and become one of Atlanta's top businessmen. But nothing he'd studied had prepared him for this.
Three men walked through the door. The one who immediately drew the eye had an air of confidence, like he could snap his fingers and make anything happen. This attitude wasn't a game—he could make many things happen, although his talents were attenuated in the conscious world. He wore a pinstriped navy suit, and no beard covered his square jaw or lent softness to his harsh profile. His hair showed gray at the temples, but only enough to give him a distinguished look and highlight his olive skin and black eyes. The other two men, venture capitalists, looked as nervous as Lyle felt, so he smiled to put them at ease. Yes, hanging around Zeus could do that.
"Please have a seat, gentlemen. I assume you met in the waiting room?"
The younger one nodded and swallowed before he spoke in a tremulous tone. "Yes, we met Mr. Zeus."
"Excellent, Mr. Feinstein. And what do you and Mr. Donnell think?"
"The business plan sounds fair enough," the older man spoke up. He had the look of a hungry hawk with beaked nose, sparse gray hair, and sunken cheeks. His eyes,
the color of a smoggy summer sky, missed nothing. "Mr. Zeus mentioned that you have done some pilot testing of the product and that since it is already FDA-approved, there will be no interference from that agency."
"It's more that the product is making the difference we need to implement the plan." Ames pushed the button on his desk that caused blinds to slide across the windows. A projection screen rolled out of the ceiling at the back side of the room, and everyone else turned their chairs to face it. Diagrams, abstract figures that didn't mean much but looked impressive, appeared on the screen. "As you can see, the, ah, personnel is arriving in the area, and we should be able to acquire a supervisor soon."
"Is this someone you're hiring?" Donnell asked.
"In a sense." Ames smiled at the venture capitalists. "This particular supervisor is an expert in her field, and we predict that once we get the business established, revenue should skyrocket."
Feinstein, the younger man, leaned forward. "You mentioned a unique method of discretion."
Lyle smiled at him with the look of mischievous understanding that men get when they give each other permission to bend the rules. "Yes, indeed. It has even fooled my wife, and she watches me closely, although I've never given her reason to." He avoided looking at Zeus, whose indiscretions were literally legendary.
Donnell, the older of the two, laughed, a dry coughing sound. "Really, Mr. Ames, we had no idea you would be tempted into such activities."
Lyle shrugged. "I had to see it for myself once Mr. Zeus told me about it. You may try it out if you like. Mr. Zeus will be your guide."
The god inclined his head. "I have some amusements picked out that I'm sure you two will enjoy."
Donnell and Feinstein looked at each other. "I think that before we make an investment of this magnitude, we should see what all the fuss is about," said Feinstein.
Lyle held his breath. He knew the younger man wouldn't do anything without the complicity of his mentor.
Finally Donnell said, "That seems like a wise choice."
Lyle grinned and reached into his desk drawer, where his hand closed around a small bottle. "I thought you gentlemen might want to see for yourselves. If you'll follow me, I'll show you how to enter the temple."
5
When Damien arrived at his apartment, an in-law suite at the bottom of the house in a quiet neighborhood, he let himself in and collapsed on the couch. He should have been tired, but the strange events of the night before and that morning replayed in his mind. Every time he felt his eyes drifting closed, another bizarre memory popped them open. Plus worry for Rizzo clawed at his chest.
While his grandmother—talk about strange memories—wouldn't have forced him to eat, he couldn't help but remember her admonishment that it was difficult to think clearly on an empty stomach. Of course she would pop into his brain at a time like this. He shoved himself off the couch and went into the small kitchen to heat up a can of soup. Then he remembered his microwave was broken and ended up having to make it the old-fashioned way—in a pot on the stove. While it warmed, he went into his bedroom to take a quick shower and change.
As he waited for the soup to finish heating, he flipped through his phone, mostly to distract himself, and nearly dropped it when it rang. The number was unfamiliar but showed a local area code, so he answered it.
"Hey, Lewis."
The voice sounded familiar, and Damien realized it was Paul DeMarco, the deputy that had been giving him shit earlier.
"Yes?"
"Hey, I know that sometimes I give you a hard time, but I wanted to warn you about something. Uniforms gotta stick together, right?"
"Right." Damien turned off the stove since his lunch, dinner, or whatever it was bubbled.
"So anyway," DeMarco continued, "I saw you hanging around with Lieutenant MacKenzie earlier. You know he was with the county for a while, but nobody was sure what he did, just that he took cases that nobody else wanted."
"And what's so bad about that?"
"Well, that's the weird thing. These cases never got solved, just closed. And for the strangest reasons."
Damien rubbed his eyes. "Look, do you have any real information for me? This is sounding like fairytales."
"I'm just trying to help you out. I don't know what Charles MacKenzie is up to, but it's not worth sacrificing your career over, no matter how interesting it might sound. Nobody takes a cop who goes off the deep end seriously."
Damien's stomach rumbled, and he knew with as much certainty that the soup wasn't going to satisfy it as he did that DeMarco was again full of shit. But there was no reason to be rude. He thanked DeMarco for the warning and hung up. He grabbed a soup spoon and had just dipped it into the small pot of chicken noodle when his phone buzzed with a text. It was Charlie inviting him to lunch.
This is unbelievable, thought Audrey for the twentieth time. She'd seen enough restaurants by now as a reviewer to categorize this one as "modern bistro", fitting because its name was Bistro Moderne, but the diners in this particular lunch crowd—at a restaurant that wasn't even supposed to be open yet—surprised her.
A couple of women in navy blue robes, their pointed hats on the table beside them, and their brooms bristle-side-up in the umbrella stand, expounded on the relative merits and hazards of modern witchcraft. Dwarves like the ones Audrey had seen that morning quaffed amber liquid out of large mugs, and from their inebriated state, she guessed it wasn't coffee. The most disturbing aspect of the whole crowd was that the woman interviewing her didn't see or hear them.
So this means either they're real but with some powerful enchantment, or I'm truly losing it.
"I don't really know what to tell you." The woman who had introduced herself as Cece the manager, soon to be owner if things don't get better soon because by god, I'm not going to look for another gig, sighed. "We've had a hard time keeping people, and I know reviewers are going to come in soon. We're desperate for help, so as long as you're minimally competent and not easily stressed, you'll do well."
One of the dwarves belched, and Audrey jumped as the rest of the little men giggled.
"Don't worry." Cece flipped through Audrey's application. "It's just the heating in this place. It makes funny noises all the time; it's ancient."
It's not the only thing, Audrey thought. She watched a couple of gargoyles exit through the glass front door—without opening it—and take wing.
"Let me show you around."
Cece walked by the dwarves' table and knocked one of the knives, which hung over the edge, to the ground with a clatter. "How'd that get there?" she asked and picked it up. "Oh, look, it's filthy. I'm going to have to get the dishwasher checked again."
"Bitch," mumbled the dwarf. Audrey hid a smile and tried not to look at them for fear they'd discover she could see them.
They walked by the table with the two witches, and Audrey couldn't help but sneak a glance at them.
"I've been to Gallows and Things, but not to Life, Death, and Beyond," one of them said. "What do you think of the prices?"
"Oh, they're great if you have the immortal coupon. They never expire, you know."
Audrey turned away from the table before the witches caught her eavesdropping and…what? Turned her into something? Unbelievable.
Cece held the doors open, and Audrey looked around the kitchen. She watched, fascinated, as the chefs, a pair of tall elves in chefs' whites with their pointed ears sticking out the sides of their toques, whisked all evidence of their preparation out of sight. The smell of cooking food made Audrey's stomach grumble.
"Look a' that'un," one of them said, his voice low like the murmur of windblown autumn leaves. "She's got pointed ears."
"And the sight. But she doesna wan'ta give that away. Donna worry, honey, we won't let your secret out."
Audrey inclined her head to acknowledge and thank them.
Cece moved to the sink and paused when she saw it already filled with soapy water. "Hmm, must've left it from last night." With a deep breath, s
he asked, "So when can you start?"
"Any time. I'm between positions right now."
"Great!" She exhaled with relief, and Audrey felt sorry for her. "You can start tonight."
"Just out of curiosity," Audrey asked when they walked back into the dining room, "has anyone else interviewed for any positions here this week?"
Cece shook her head, her lips pursed in a pout. "Once it got out that the restaurant is haunted, the interviewees dried up. We're lucky to have the staff we do. I do have one more interview this afternoon, and if she works out, we'll at least have the minimum necessary for dinner business."
"I see."
"Great, we'll see you at four, then, for some quick training and so you can try the specials." Cece steered Audrey out of the restaurant and locked the door behind them. "Gotta run!"
"Wow, I don't know if I'm ready for this." Audrey walked back to Java Lemur to grab a salad for lunch and tell Maggie what she'd seen. This would be an interesting assignment, but the feeling that it wouldn't end well lingered. She checked her phone to see if J.J. had called her back yet, but still nothing. She texted him again with a plea to answer her as soon as he could.
The Crystal Cave was closed with an "Out to Lunch" sign in the window. Damn, Maggie must've already made lunch plans. She decided to grab a taco across the street instead.
Damien felt too wound up to sleep, so he agreed to meet Charlie and his associate for lunch at Java Lemur. He had to admit that part of it was to prove to himself that Charlie wasn't up to anything strange. And another part might have been to see if that cute girl came back. He might have strict rules about dating, but he did appreciate a good flirt every so often. After he and Charlie arrived at the coffee shop and ordered, he made sure to sit where he could see the door. The young woman didn't appear, but a striking redhead did and came directly to them.
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