"What games?"
"The 'it's almost Halloween, so something creepy is happening' game. C'mon, it's over. Where's Audrey? Is she in on it?"
He counted the two heartbeats before Charlie replied.
"Seriously, dude, it's not a game. There really is something creepy going on, and I don't know where your girlfriend is."
"She's not my girlfriend." And now a pang of guilt stabbed him in the gut and almost chased out the simmering terror that he’d gotten mixed up in something beyond what he could handle. He should have been watching more closely after he’d seen the fangs on the bartender.
"Okay, potential girlfriend. Where was she when she disappeared?"
"Right over there by the kitchen. She had gotten a cell phone call. They were getting their tips, so she was able to take the call."
They walked over to that part of the restaurant. The candles still flickered on the tables and sulked in their pools of wax.
"Wait a second…" Damien pulled out his flashlight again. He knelt and saw what he was looking for—a dark rectangle beneath one of the tables.
"What is it?"
"Audrey's cell phone." It was locked, but her fingerprints guided him to decipher the swipe pattern to unlock it. His hands were shaking, so he handed it to Charlie.
His friend scrolled through the call log. "Let's see… Most recent call: Lucy. Who's that?"
"You've got me there." Then Damien recalled Audrey answering her phone when she’d hopped out of his car. "A friend, maybe? Audrey was talking to her earlier."
"Hmm, let's look further. Most received and dialed calls. Uh oh…"
"What?" Damien's breath caught in his throat, and he knew what Charlie would say before the words came out of the detective's mouth.
"The top one is a local number, and she's got it listed under 'Kyle."
"Of course." He expected to feel relief—of course she was seeing someone, so he could let go of his feelings for her—but disappointment overtook it. "Let's call that other number first."
A quick check on the number led them to Madame Lucia's cell phone and her business and home addresses. They went to her home after questioning the other wait staff to see if they'd noticed anything unusual. Of course it had been so hectic they hadn't. Satisfied they'd exhausted all leads at the restaurant, they headed to Madame Lucia's house.
"Nice place, very Decatur bohemian." Charlie used the brass knocker on the door.
Damien's stomach flipped. When he'd dropped Audrey off here earlier, it had seemed like a friendly little neighborhood made for families with kids. Now the white siding of the house glowed in the moonlight, and the street lamps cast skeletal shadows through trees that had been whipped bare of their leaves by the wind.
The lady herself answered the door and only took a cursory glance at their proffered badges. "You're just in time for tea, gentlemen."
She led the way back to the kitchen, where three cups sat on the table.
"So, you're a psychic?" asked Charlie. "I haven't worked with you before."
The look she gave Charlie would've withered Damien's balls had he been on the receiving end.
"No," she said, "I always make tea for three at half past ten at night." She gestured for them to sit.
Damien complied and stifled a laugh, which turned into a yawn. "Sorry," he mumbled.
"You've had a long day, dear. And to answer your question, Detective, yes, I'm a psychic, but I don't involve myself with forensics. Such violent images stay with me for too long." She shook her head like she wanted to clear the unpleasant thoughts, and the beads at the end of her braids clinked.
"We're here regarding your neighbor, Audrey." Charlie said. "You called her earlier this evening?"
"Yes, she consulted me on a spiritual matter."
"Do you mind telling us what that was?"
"Yes, I mind." A firm nod with more clacks. "I have my professional ethics, boys. I'll just say it had something to do with a project that got dropped in her lap today."
"Meaning the kidnapping of Persephone?" Charlie leaned forward.
Lucia inclined her head and eyed him over the rim of her mug. "You know about that."
"I sometimes work with Margaret the Truth Seeker."
Damien watched the exchange, fascinated and half-horrified with himself for beginning to believe it all.
"Ah, so that was Maggie I saw in town earlier today."
"Yeah, she's around." Charlie's nonchalance sounded forced. "But while Persephone is now in her capable hands, we have a new problem."
"Which is…?"
"Audrey has gone missing. We think she was kidnapped from her job earlier."
Lucia's hands trembled, and she put the chipped blue ceramic mug down. "I didn't see any signs of her being in danger specifically," she said. "But Persephone was surrounded by chaotic energy. Perhaps Audrey was not the intended target, and she will be returned once the mistake is discovered. They would bear a resemblance to one another, especially in dim light."
"The power was out, it was all candlelight." Damien struggled to keep his voice even and pushed away the memories of the two corpses. "But even if they did grab the wrong girl, that's not really how it works, ma'am. She's more likely to be killed. The beings, whatever they are, don't hesitate to take innocent lives."
"She needs protection, then." Lucia sighed. "Or needed. I should have seen this coming. I warned her to be careful."
"Can you tell us any more about what she asked you to work on?" Charlie asked. "It could be connected."
"She has lost her spirit guide. The guide exists and is trying to find her. I only pray she won't be too late."
"Do you have any idea where she might be?" asked Damien. He tried to maintain a professional, not panicked, tone, but Lucia's sympathetic look told him she could hear it.
"If I knew, I would tell you. I'll try to help you find her sooner."
Damien started to protest that soon may not be soon enough, but Charlie interrupted, "Any help you can give us is greatly appreciated."
She looked into her teacup and blew across the surface of the liquid. Damien opened his mouth to ask what she was doing, but Charlie put a hand on his arm.
Finally Lucia looked up. "Wherever she is, she is close by. Keep your mental eyes and ears open." And she added with a sly smile, "Especially you with your silver eyes. She may try to contact you however she can."
"I don't have any kind of special abilities like that," Damien told her. He hoped she didn't hear the trembling in his voice.
"But someone you loved did."
That was enough. They could talk about their crazy supernatural stuff, but they needed to leave him out of it. Damien stood. "Thank you for your help. We should be going."
To Damien's surprise, Charlie rose, and after the typical pleasantries, they left. Leaves scraped and crunched under Damien's feet like the snickering of old bad memories.
"Psychics pray?" asked Damien once they were back in the car. "Is that what she was doing?"
Charlie glanced at him as he started the car. "I guess you can't predict everything. And trust me, you don't ever refuse free help from a psychic."
The next stop was Kyle's apartment, located in a gated community near Emory University.
"You think he's still up?" asked Damien. They waited at the call box for one, two, three, four rings.
"Probably not." The call went to voicemail. Charlie took out a remote and opened the gate with a click of a button.
"How'd you score one of those? I thought we couldn't use them without a search warrant."
"Sometimes I get to skirt the rules. It's one of the perks of this job. Hence how we're not bringing in the Dekalb PD on this."
DeMarco's warning played back in Damien's head. Was that how Charlie resolved his cases—he didn't follow proper procedures? But then how did anyone get convicted in court?
Damien didn't have time to think too much. These apartments were several steps up from many of the ones Damien had visited
in the course of duty. Small trees lined the sidewalks, and the paint on the wooden balconies of the brick and white siding buildings was fresh and un-chipped.
"Thirty-four C…" Damien matched the building number, then the apartment number. "That one."
"Would you like to do it, or shall I?" asked Charlie once they stood in front of the door.
"Be my guest."
Charlie pounded on the door. The knocks echoed through the apartment. "Mr. Creely?" he called. "Dekalb police."
Damien heard cursing and smirked. Not that he had anything personal against this guy. He was sure he was a perfectly nice man worthy of Audrey's affections.
The perfectly nice man himself answered the door in nothing but a pair of boxers. A little on the scrawny side, Damien decided. A blond surfer boy. He resisted the impulse to shift his position to show his brawn.
Kyle blinked at the light and squinted at their badges. "Can I help you, Officers?"
A woman's voice called from the back of the apartment, "Kyle, what's going on?"
He ran his hand through his hair and shouted over his shoulder. "Police. Just stay there."
"You have company, Mr. Creely?" Damien was glad Charlie had spoken. Flames burned his face from the inside, and he suppressed the urge to wrap his hand around surfer boy's neck and choke that sheepish grin off his face.
"Yeah, my girlfriend."
"Now that's interesting, sir," Charlie kept on, the image of polite inquiry, "considering that she was abducted in front of witnesses this evening."
Kyle's jaw dropped. "Who was?"
"Audrey Sonoma, or were we mistaken?"
A young woman about his age and dressed in an oversized t-shirt came out of the gloom. "Audrey?" She swept tousled blonde curls out of her face and squinted at the bright porch light. "I thought you broke up with her."
Kyle ran his hand through his hair again. Damien wanted to grab his wrist and make him hold still. "I, ah, didn't get the chance to talk to her about that."
"What?"
Damien tried to hide a smirk and hoped it came out as a polite smile. "Sir, we appear to have caught you at an awkward time."
Charlie elbowed him so fast he didn't have time to react, just take a quick breath and process the hint to shut up.
"Can you tell me when you last spoke to her?" Charlie asked.
Kyle shrugged. "This morning, I guess, on the phone." Now it was his turn to grimace from an elbow to the ribs.
"You talked to her today? And you didn't break up with her after you'd asked me over yesterday afternoon? That's it, I'm leaving." She spun on her heel to stalk back into the dark apartment.
"Ma'am?" Charlie called after her.
"Chastity, wait."
"What?"
"Ma'am, have you been with Mr. Creely all evening?"
"Since about ten. This morning." She glared at all three of them. "Apparently I've been wasting my time."
"Well, we appreciate it," Charlie said. "We'll be in touch if we have any more questions."
"Yeah, you do that. Just call first next time," Kyle muttered and slammed the door.
"We did," Damien said through clenched teeth. His upper arm throbbed from the third hit that evening. "What the hell was that for?"
"I could tell you were simmering and wanted to hit the guy. Hey, you should be happy."
"For what? That her heart's gonna be broken?"
"No, for the chance to be the dude to comfort her in her time of emotional travail."
Damien didn't feel like lecturing him on how he wasn't the type of guy to take advantage of a girl's feelings. Or how his head spun between relief at her unattached state and regret at how hurt she'd be when she found out about it. Regardless of that emotional tangle, they still had one big problem.
"We have to find her first."
9
Something roared in Audrey's ears, and her hard, cold sleeping surface rocked. She opened her eyes to a blue sky through a clear pane. She lay on her side on another one, beneath which she could see sand, but when she tried to roll over, she couldn't move. A glass box about four feet long and three feet tall and wide encased her and kept her from being able to straighten in any direction. She couldn't break it, no matter how hard she kicked or pounded the sides with her fists. Water splashed against and over it, and with each wave, it sank further into the sand, and she grew more panicked.
"Help," she screamed, but there was no one on the deserted beach to hear her. Gray, rocky cliffs rose from the white sand to her right. To her left, the cliffs jutted to the sea in a formation that resembled a large donut. Water splashed through the hole and sprayed a rainbow mist.
She tried kicking again and only succeeded in hitting her head. She looked for seams or cracks, anything that might keep it from being solid, but found nothing. Singing caught her attention, and she paused to listen.
"He came to the sea,
My dark-haired lover.
He came to meet me
Where the water comes over
He came to be free
From his land-worn lover
He came to heed my call."
A young woman with dark brown hair walked on the sand toward Audrey, who banged on the walls of her crystal box, but the woman stared straight ahead. She walked slowly along and hummed the melody to the song, the wind whipping her hair around her face, her sea-green eyes focused on the donut rock. Rather than a cloth garment, she wore swirling mist anchored to her by seaweed strands. Small seashells woven into her hair gave her a tropical look.
"He came to the sea," she sang again. Water foamed around her ankles, and she held her arms out. When her hands passed through the hole, she disappeared, and the song ended with a scream of terror.
Audrey shrank back in her box, and her heart beat a staccato counterpoint to the waves. What the hell was that? She fought her rising terror and heard the song again, and the woman came walking along the beach a second time.
"Don't go to the rock," Audrey screamed, but the woman still didn't hear her. The scene played out again, and the woman repeated her actions and disappeared.
Okay, what am I seeing? It's obviously a rewind and replay of some moment in time. But who is she?
"Nimue," the waves whispered.
"What?" she asked out loud.
But nothing answered. The box shook with the fury of the water, which roared its frustration at her lack of understanding.
"Who is she?" Audrey asked again, the haunting melody in her ears, her throat raw—why couldn't she be heard? What had the waves said? The woman appeared again.
"Nimue," Audrey whispered, and this time, the woman turned her head.
"Wake up," the woman said. "Please wake up."
Audrey woke, once again on a hard surface, but concrete this time. Her hands and feet were bound, and her heart pounded somewhere in the middle of her head.
"Are you okay?" The voice sounded at first like the wind on the seashore, but the question ended on a frightened tone that was all too human.
"I think so." Relieved to be out of the box, Audrey took a few shaky breaths and did a quick mental scan of her body. "I don't feel like anything is broken. Who are you?" She squinted into the dim light and could barely make out the features of the speaker, the woman from the seashore. This was no radiant nymph, but a frightened girl with a smudged face and tangled hair. She, too, was bound, but sat propped up against some sort of crate. She wore tattered jeans and a T-shirt that proclaimed, "Destin is for lovers."
"I don't know."
Audrey tested her bonds. "Does the name Nimue mean anything to you?"
The woman's eyes widened. "Yes, that is my name. Wait. It's coming back to me now."
An aquamarine aura surrounded the woman, and Audrey had to ask, "What are you?"
"I am a water nymph, and I am a servant of Her Radiance, the goddess Aphrodite." She wrinkled her forehead with a frown. "Or at least I was."
"Was what?"
"Aphrodite's servant." She looked dow
n and shook her head. "I slipped away to meet a lover and found myself here."
"Here?" They were in a warehouse. Boxes barely illuminated by a glow that could have been from outside or minimal security lighting cast deep shadows. The acrid, oaky smell of fresh wood mingled with the scents of mildew and rain.
"Not here, mortal." The woman leaned forward. "On a street in this realm. And a man brought me to a place that smelled…" She wrinkled her nose. "I don't have words to describe it. The bright lights hurt my eyes, and people in white coats poked and prodded and asked so many questions."
Audrey's lips tingled, and she had to ask, "Describe the man who brought you there." Thinking of Damien, how he'd have the situation under control, gave her some measure of calm, but it merely took the edge off her rising fear again. What the hell had happened to her? She'd been in the restaurant, and…
Everything was fuzzy. The ropes burned at her wrists, and she had to remind herself to stop straining at them or she'd hurt herself further.
"He was very handsome, much like my lover, with dark hair and silver eyes, a strong face, and dark clothes."
"Damien," Audrey murmured. She pictured him guiding the nymph to his car, asking her questions, and trying to calm her panic at having landed in this strange place. She wondered if the nymphs and goddess had felt the same calm when they'd been near him that she had.
A clap of thunder rattled the windows, startling her out of the feeling she'd almost reached.
"Is it water?" asked the nymph, looking up with wide eyes.
"What does that have to do with—" Audrey took a deep breath. She had to remember that the immortals had their own agenda. "I don't know. It may be a storm, but it's cold for thunder."
"Demeter is displeased her daughter is missing. If I could get one drop of water, real water without all the things you put in it, to touch me, I could be away from here."
"How long have you been here?"
"Since this afternoon. This morning, Her Loveliness, the goddess Persephone, got us out of that awful place, but then Germa—she's a wheat nymph and one of Persephone's servants—and I got separated from her in the confusion, and two men grabbed me and brought me here."
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