“Not formless really,” I said. “I’m sure it has a shape, I just don’t know what it is yet.”
The rat picked up the toast again and nibbled. He stopped and looked at me. “What you’re describing is almost certainly from the Brume, but I need more to go on to give it a definite name.”
Diego pulled to his feet. “We’ll work on that. Thanks for your time.”
“You’re welcome,” the rat said. “Always good to see you. Bring a whole piece of toast next time. I have a family to feed, you know.”
We got back in the car and pulled out of the lot. I made a right off Pier to Pacific Coast Highway.
“About Maurice,” I said. “He’s not a shifter like your possum-fairy friend, is he?”
“No,” Diego said. “Maurice is just a rat. A magical rat, but a rat.”
I shook my head slowly. “There’s a whole world out there I never knew about.”
“Worlds,” Diego said. “Worlds next to worlds. Worlds intersecting and overlapping with each other. “
“Not what we see on the surface,” I said.
“Nothing like what we see on the surface.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Part of me knew that—my family history and all.”
“Only part of you?”
I shrugged. “My parents tried to give me a normal life, an ordinary life. I think partly it was my dad not being magical himself, and partly my mom’s pushback against her own childhood with a shape-shifter mother who pretty much blurted out every psychic impression she ever got from someone. My mom hides the source of her abilities in the normal world. I only knew how magical her healings were because she had wizards, shifters, and others as patients up at the house. The wizards and witches would do magic that I’d see sometimes, so I knew magic was real, but that world wasn’t my world, if that makes sense.”
The back of my neck prickled, and I jerked my head to look out the driver-side window.
Diego touched my arm. “What’s wrong?”
My hands were squeezing the steering wheel. My jaw had clenched so tight it hurt.
“I’ve caught his signature again. I’m going to follow it.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Diego’s hands tighten to fists.
Traffic was as slow on this stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway as it was in our small downtown—two narrow lanes going each way, with an equal amount of space allotted for parking as for driving. I cursed under my breath as the car in front of me slowed, stopped, and then started to back up to parallel park alongside the concrete median. I glanced at Diego. It would have been good if he’d done his traffic trick, but maybe that only worked if he was driving.
After what seemed an excruciating wait, we moved forward again, crossing Herondo Street and into Redondo Beach. My shoulders pulled up near my ears of their own accord. The signature was stronger now, the trail fresh. The killer, I thought, had come down Herondo and turned left.
Every block we went brought us closer to our quarry. My pulse thudded at my temples. A tension headache formed a crescent of pain along the right side of my head.
At Pearl Street, I turned left. The signature was stronger now, so strong I not only felt it but seemed to hear, see, and taste it—a low buzzing in my ears, a dark shimmer in the air, the taste of dirty metal in my mouth.
I turned left again at Camino Real and felt a blow to my chest. A blow that came from nowhere and nothing. I grunted low.
“You okay?” Diego said.
My hands were so tight on the wheel that my knuckles had gone white. I nodded that I was okay—as okay as I could be. The buzzing in my ears grew louder.
“Damn,” Diego said.
A block up, the police had erected a barricade. Half a dozen black-and-white police cars, the light bars on top flashing red and blue, and an ambulance were beyond it. Cops swarmed around an old beach bungalow painted a faded green. Wood sawhorses with yellow tape strung between them closed off the street from through traffic. I pulled the car to the curb and parked.
My throat felt tight. I centered myself and opened my inner eyes.
A shudder ran through me. I reached out into the mind of the cop who looked to be in charge.
“It’s happened again,” I said. “The cops have the killer. He hung around after, dazed. It’s the victim’s best friend since grammar school.”
“Like Brad and Eric,” Diego said.
“The real killer is gone now.” I shook my head, sorting out the various feelings running through me. “It brought us here on purpose—to show off its handiwork. It wanted us to know.”
Anger bubbled through me. “We have to stop this thing. We have to find it, corral it, destroy it. Whatever it takes.”
12
Exhaustion hit me then—an irresistible force dragging my eyes closed. I could barely force them back open.
I slowly forced my head around to face Diego. “Would you mind driving us back?”
The fatigue and sorrow in my voice must have been as clear to him as it was to me.
“Sure,” he said, concern clear in his voice. “No problem.”
We got out and exchanged places. I leaned my head against the glass on the shotgun side and closed my eyes. I guess I dozed off, because it seemed that the next second we were parked in my garage.
Diego slid out on his side and walked around. He opened the passenger door and helped me out.
“A wizard and a gentleman,” I muttered, taking his offered hand.
“Self-preservation,” he said. “You don’t look like you’d make it into the house without falling. All I need is a cranky invalid on my hands.”
I started to smile, but the sudden change in Diego’s expression stopped me.
“What?” I said.
He slipped his arm over my shoulders and pulled me close.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Someone tried to breach the house wards,” he said, keeping his voice low.
The back of my neck prickled, and my shoulders tensed.
“The killer,” I said, my voice as quiet as his had been.
Diego nodded, confirming what I already knew. I felt the killer’s signature swirling in the air like a fog of gnats or dirt in a dust storm.
Why had he felt it immediately, but I hadn’t until I sought it out?
I wondered again if I was using up my abilities, that I’d wake one morning and find them gone. There was no one I could ask, no one I knew who was psychic like me, no one who’d run her abilities far more than normal who could tell me if I could lose them from overuse. Diego had said use would strengthen them like a muscle. It didn’t seem to be working that way.
“Let’s walk around front and past my house,” I said, wide-awake now. “I need to see if the signature fades or if it’s still nearby.”
“Not a good idea if the beast is still hanging around.”
I moved my shoulders in the barest of shrugs. “I can’t think of another way to be sure.”
We walked five houses down. The signature lessened, fading like acrid smoke cleared by a sea wind.
“It’s gone now.”
I turned and fished in my purse for my keys as we walked back to my place.
Diego took down the wards, I unlocked the door and we went inside. As soon as the door closed behind us, Diego shot the wards up again.
“It’s after you,” he said.
“It could just as easily be after you,” I said. “You’ve been staying here. Maybe it doesn’t like having a wizard on its trail.”
“More likely it doesn’t fancy having a psychic who’s caught its signature coming after it.”
“Maybe it doesn’t like either of us very much,” I said, trying to make light of the situation while my heart thudded. It was my house the beast had tried to breach. But both Diego and I were here. Was the killer after one of us or both?
“Is there any way to know when it tried to breach the wards?”
Diego shook his head. “Why?”
“What if,” I
said, thinking it through as I was speaking, “the beast came around, tried to get in but couldn’t. It somehow knew where we were, the route we’d likely take home, and intentionally left its signature to draw us to the murder in Redondo Beach?”
“It’s possible,” Diego said. “Especially if it wanted us to know what it had done there.”
“A brag or a warning? The beast saying: look at me—I can lead you anywhere I want, and I know where you live. Or: even if the wizard’s wards stop me at the door now, eventually you will be just as dead as this man.”
Both possibilities gave me the shivers.
“It won’t get past my wards,” he said. “You can count on that.”
I grabbed Diego’s arm. “Maybe: I can make one of you do this to the other.”
He put his hand over mine where I clutched at him. “That’s not going to happen, Oona. But the quicker we figure out what beast we’re dealing with and how to stop it, the better.”
Easy to say, ‘That’s not going to happen.’ If Diego attacked me physically or with magic, there’d be little I could do to stop him.
“I might be able to draw a picture of the killer,” I said.
Diego’s eyebrows rose. “I thought you didn’t know what it looked like.”
“Sometimes when I get a vague psychic impression, my subconscious knows more than I think it does. I draw to let deep down knowledge percolate to the surface.”
“It’s worth a try,” he said.
Diego followed me into the third upstairs bedroom, the one I used as studio space when I felt creative. I took a large drawing pad out of the closet where I kept my supplies and sharpened a number two pencil. Usually I drew with colored pencils, but now plain gray lead seemed right.
I pointed to an overstuffed chair and ottoman in the corner. “You can sit there.” I hated having people looking over my shoulder when I drew.
I sat on the tall barstool at my drawing table, closed my eyes, and let my hands tell me what my conscious mind couldn’t. When I felt done, I opened my eyes and looked at what I’d drawn.
“Come see,” I said.
I’d drawn an animal, but it was no animal I’d seen in life. Four-legged, gray, and standing on its hind legs, it looked like a cross between a warthog with sharp horns protruding from either side of its mouth and a toad with its dry, leathery skin covered with bumps. Diego looked at the drawing and winced.
“Do you know what it is?” I said.
“I’m pretty sure, but we should take this drawing to Maurice in the morning and see what he has to say.”
“Can’t we go now?”
I didn’t want to wait another day to find out what this thing was and if there was a way it could be stopped.
Diego shook his head. “Maurice always knocks off work at noon on Sundays, for family and pack time. Not to mention that one of his wives is about to drop a new litter. Even if he were at home, he wouldn’t talk to us now.”
I blinked, taking that in. Magical rats. Magical rats with scheduled family time and multiple wives.
I drummed my fingers against my thighs. Waiting until tomorrow made me want to scream.
Diego took hold of my hand, flipped it over and put two fingers on my wrist, as if taking my pulse.
“Hmmm,” he said in a very badly mashed-up accent. “Ze patient ‘as ‘ad ein rough week. Fool of ze shock. Dr. Adair prescribes rest and relaxation.”
I shook my head. “How can—”
“Shhhh, fraulein,” he said and lifted my wrist to his ear, as if listening.
I laughed once, lightly.
Diego lowered my arm and turned it loose. “Ja. Rest and relaxation. Perhaps a game? Ze patient plays ze games? Boggle? Monopoly?”
“I’m not really much for board games or house games in general,” I said. “I don’t have anything here.”
“No,” he said in his normal tone. “What’s this then?”
He turned his back to me and bent his head toward his chest. I heard him murmuring the sorts of words I’d come to recognize as spell sounds. He turned around and handed me a beige cloth bag closed by a blue drawstring.
I pulled open the drawstrings and laughed. “Jacks? You carry jacks around with you?”
He sent his gaze toward the ceiling and then back at me. “That would be pretty silly. No, I conjured them.”
I looked at the bag in my hand again. He’d done exactly what he’d set out to do—distracted me from my dark thoughts. I appreciated the effort.
“Conjured? Really?”
He opened his palm and showed me three small quartz-looking stones in his hand. “Watch.”
He closed his palm, murmured some more words, and was somehow holding a long-stemmed red rose. He handed me the flower.
“How do you do that?” I said over my shoulder, heading down the hallway to the kitchen to get a vase for the rose. He didn’t answer until I came back to the parlor and set the vase and single rose on one of the end tables by the sofa.
“Tell me how you do that,” I said again. “How you make things appear out of the air?”
He shrugged and grinned. “Well, I’m a wizard, so there’s that.”
I half-rolled my eyes. There was something to be said for a man who knew how to change the subject when things looked dark.
“Can you teach me?”
“If you promise to, I don’t know, watch a movie and chill for the evening or something. You really need some R&R. I do too.”
I frowned, wondering if I could relax. “I promise.”
“Good,” he said. “To conjure, you have to see in your mind’s eye the thing you want to bring to you. It has to be something real. You can’t summon up a unicorn. Do you have something in mind?”
I nodded.
“You’ll need these,” he said, handing me the three small rocks. “You need something real for the spell to attach to. It doesn’t have to be these particular stones, or stones at all, but it helps if whatever you use has been infused with power.”
I looked at the tiny rocks in my hand and then at him.
“Repeat the words I say,” he said. “I’ll go slow.”
Again, I didn’t see the actual moment the object came to me or came into being—however it worked—but as soon as I finished the last word, I had a small replica of the Stanley Cup in my hands.
I held it out to Diego. “For you.”
He smiled. “Sweet choice. Hold it a moment.” He drew in a breath, closed his eyes a second, and then drew in the air with his finger. “Okay, turn the base and take a look.”
I chuckled. He’d inscribed both our names in with the names of all the NHL players who’d ever won the cup.
He reached for the replica. “I’ll treasure this always. Or until the illusion fades. Whichever comes first.”
“Illusion?” I said.
“Sadly, yes. When you get up tomorrow, the rose and the cup will have faded away.” He half-shrugged, probably in reaction to the disappointed look on my face. “Magic can do many things but bringing real objects into existence isn’t one of them.”
That made sense. But, if the things conjured were illusions—
“Then why can you only conjure things that exist in the real world? Why can’t you conjure a unicorn?”
His brow furrowed. “I don’t know. I was told early on, when I first learned the trick when I was a kid, that only real things could be conjured. I took my dad’s word for it.”
“So, you never tried?”
“No,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Shall we try?”
He thought about it. I felt his curiosity and his hesitancy.
He shook his head. “Maybe another time. Now, pick a movie to watch. Something light and funny. Though, maybe not a chick flick.”
Here was another of those times when I wanted to peek into his mind. Why the hesitancy? Was there a reason for not conjuring an illusion of an illusion that he, for whatever reason, didn’t feel like telling me? Was it dangerous? Did he
not want to think that his father had told him something that wasn’t true? Was he just tired of magic tricks and not in the mood? I could have asked, but I was tired too.
“Cool Runnings?” I said, naming an old movie about the first Jamaican Olympic bobsled team.
“Perfect.”
We settled in together on the sofa and I turned on the movie. I’d seen it maybe half a dozen times, and evidently, he had too, since he talked along with some of the dialog. When he put his arm over my shoulders, I nestled into his side. My mother says, ‘Physical human contact is powerful medicine.’ She’s right.
He’d been right about watching a movie. It was a good distraction, a way to not think about all that had been happening. When the final credits rolled Diego said, “I’m bushed. Bedtime for me.”
He kissed the top of my head lightly, turned, and went up the stairs as casually as if we’d been friends and roommates for years. I waited fifteen minutes, feeling the heat of that soft kiss radiate through me, then went up to my bedroom.
Alone in my room, I heard him in the shower, singing an old Van Morrison song, “Into the Mystic.” Like me, he must have been raised on his parents’ old music. He sang with enthusiasm and completely off-key.
* * *
The sky seen through my ceiling window was clear, the stars a spill of diamonds on black velvet. The dim squeak of my bedroom door sent adrenaline shooting through my body. I felt him standing in the doorway, his presence as strong as if trumpets had announced his arrival.
Just because we’d cuddled some during the movie didn’t give him the right to come into my bedroom at midnight expecting—who knew what? I turned my head toward him.
My voice was ice. “What are you doing here, Diego?”
“Nothing sinister,” he said. “And not what you think.”
“Oh?”
In the faint light I saw him appraising me. I felt his annoyance, and his fatigue. “You and I both know we’ll be together eventually.”
“Really?” I said. “You’re pretty sure of yourself.”
“About this, yeah. It’s inevitable. You already wait, holding your breath, wondering, wanting, and not wanting. Right now, you’re hoping first one thing and then another.”
Ice Cold Death Page 9