Out of Sight

by Stella Cameron

  He smirked just a little and pulled on a gray T-shirt. “Do what?”

  “You know what you did. You’re not supposed to get in someone’s mind.”

  “Let me call Nat.” Sykes took up his cell and punched in a number.

  “Don’t creep around in my mind,” Poppy said. He made her feel vulnerable.

  “How about if I try to teach you to find your way into other people’s minds?”

  “I’ve never managed it yet. You’re supposed to ask permission, aren’t you?”

  He grinned. “Wouldn’t do much good if you can’t answer.”

  “I can answer out loud, you heel. You’re messing with—”

  “I can’t believe you haven’t dealt with this before. You’re surrounded by people like us. Can’t you feel when someone tries to make contact? Can’t you choose to stop them if you want to?”

  Poppy pressed her lips together.

  “Hey,” he said. “Those are straightforward questions.”

  “I’ve never discussed it with anyone. I’ve always said I didn’t want to talk about it. End of story. If I hear someone entering my mind I think about a lot of things to shut them out.”

  His lips parted and he stared. She heard him swallow. “You’re kidding. And you never talked to your brothers about this?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it now. Some things are private.”

  He raised his brows. “Not anymore. You just told me, and that needs fixing.”

  “Please don’t say anything to my brothers. They’ll only—”

  Sykes held up a hand. “Hey, Nat. It’s Sykes.” He listened for a while. “Yeah, and we can hope they stay gone. Maybe they’ve all died off in their Safe Place or Home Place…Lower Place or whatever it’s called. I like to imagine them lying in big, twisted piles deep in the earth.”

  He listened, and smiled. “I’m starting to get lulled into boredom by all the peace. I like it. Hope it lasts. I wanted to ask you about Ward Bienville.”

  He sucked in a breath and held the phone away from his ear.

  The noises coming from his phone were obviously a man shouting.

  Slowly, Sykes replaced the phone to his ear. “Yeah, buddy, I know it’s none of my G.D. business but it is the business of a…of someone I’ve known a long time. Poppy Fortune is pretty close to Ward.”

  He could have called her a friend without compromising his principles, Poppy thought. She swallowed. He was certainly being a whole lot nicer to her than she would have expected, but he had no intention of letting go of his anger with her so easily.

  “She was,” Sykes said. “So was I.”

  He held the phone away again and closed his eyes. Once the roaring ceased he tried again. “You can’t blame me because I was at a party and someone got knocked off in the same building hours later. And it’s sure as hell nothing to do with Poppy. All I’m asking is if you can help Poppy find out where they’ve got Ward. I don’t expect you to….”

  More unintelligible noise came from the phone.

  “Why are you thinking Embran?” Sykes said, not even trying to conceal his irritation. “This has nothing to do with them. If they were the only source of trouble in this town there wouldn’t have been any need for a police force in the first place.”

  This time Nat apparently kept his voice down, and Sykes did a lot of nodding and grunting. His breathing calmed down visibly. “We’ll take anything you can give us. I don’t want to come there any more than you want me there. Yeah, why not meet at Fortunes? Bucky? Of course bring Bucky.” He put his hand over the receiver. “Okay with you if Nat and Bucky Fist—he’s Nat’s partner—okay if they stop by your place in about thirty for a cup of coffee.”

  She just wanted to know what was happening to Ward but she nodded, yes.

  Sykes’s face took on an expression of surprise that only increased by the second. “Yeah? I more or less met her once. I think we got to wave from a distance. I kind of thought that was in the past.” He flinched. “Okay, okay. Not everyone talks a lot about their personal life. I get it. You’ll have Wazoo with you, not Bucky. Anything I should know about you two?”

  Again he winced. “Like you’re getting married or something. I just don’t want to make any mistakes.”

  The response must have been short.

  “See you there,” Sykes said and dropped the phone in his pocket. He shoved his feet into scuffed loafers. “He shouldn’t be that mad.”

  “The detective?” Poppy asked.

  “Yeah. It was like he expected to hear from me and he’d been waiting to use me as a punching bag. Doesn’t make any sense. People get killed in this city. It’s no Boy Scout camp. We’ve been tied up with some ugly stuff, but this is different. Nope, don’t get it.”

  “He’s bringing a friend?”

  “His girlfriend. Lady friend. Hell, I don’t know what to call her. She comes from Toussaint and they’ve known each other at least five years. I’ve only seen her a couple of times. Maybe just once. He’s very private about her. I’ve never seen him look at another woman since they met but nothing happens.”

  She smiled slightly. “How do you know that?”

  “Touché,” he said, but he looked thoughtful.

  “You don’t have to come,” Poppy said. “You shouldn’t have to put up with nastiness because of me.”

  He took her by the elbow and shunted her ahead of him to the front door and outside. “I know I don’t have to come, but Ben is my best friend. I’d want him to look after my sister in the same situation, so you’re stuck with me.”

  In other words, Nothing personal, ma’am.

  Okay, he could keep that up but she had seen chinks in his armor and she didn’t think he was as unaware of her as a woman as he wanted her to believe.

  “Besides,” he said. “I’m not missing the first time Nat’s willingly let anyone meet his Wazoo.”

  “What kind of name is that?” Poppy said.

  Sykes shrugged.

  “Did Nat say where they’ve got Ward?”

  “He’s at the precinct house on Royal Street. I thought he would be.”

  They went down flights of green-painted metal steps to the courtyard itself. Redbrick walls and more steps leading to other flats surrounded the area with J. Clive Millet, Antiques taking up most of the side that faced Royal Street. Sykes’s uncle Pascal lived above the shop. Poppy had never seen that apartment, but was sure it would be crammed with interesting things. Pascal Millet was said to be an avid personal collector.

  “How many flats are there altogether?” She must have known once, but she had forgotten.

  “Nine plus Pascal’s,” Sykes said shortly.

  An oversized marmalade cat sunned itself on the warm earth at the edge of a bed crammed with flowering shrubs and semi-screened by a stand of bamboo. “Whose cat?” Poppy said. The cat’s eyes were as orange as its fur.

  “No idea.”

  This was turning into an uphill conversation.

  Poppy looked at the fountain angel, at her sweet face, and turned around to seek out some of the other angels that were mostly hidden in the shrubbery.

  “Looking for anything in particular?” Sykes said, but although his face was remote, it wasn’t hostile. His blue eyes never failed to quicken her pulse.

  Her smile was involuntary. “Smiling angels,” she said. “Smiling just at me. And I’d like to hear them whispering to me, too. It would be okay if they turned pretty colors as well.”

  “Marley really does tell you things,” he said. “How come I didn’t even know you were back in town? You must have been hiding out. I thought you were away all these months.”

  Avoiding the question, she turned to the planting bed where the cat stretched out and tentatively scratched her tummy. There were more angels in there and, barely visible, a small griffin made of some kind of reddish stone. If it weren’t for the gargoyles on lintels and glowering down from the roof, the griffin would look completely out of place.

  In the ne
xt bed of plants over, she parted a cascade of philodendron draped over a figure with wings folded and eyes lowered. “I’m not proud of what I did before y’know. It was only by chance that Ben and Willow got back together.”

  “Not entirely,” Sykes said. “It was kind of a joint effort.”

  “I’m sure it was and I’m glad you intervened. I was an idiot. I knew I wasn’t welcome here afterward so I stayed away. Marley wanted me to get everything out in the open with you and try to get past it, but I…well, I didn’t is all.”

  “No laughing angels today,” Sykes said. He turned away from her and after making sure the angel she had found remained revealed, Poppy caught up with him.

  They left the property through tall, wrought-iron gates at the side of the shop. Poppy noticed for the first time that there was a griffin in the center of those gates. Someone must have liked them a lot.

  Fortunes was only blocks away on St. Ann Street. They walked fast through a midday hot enough to raise waves of trembling vapor from the pavement. Flecks of mica sparkled through a thin layer of dust.

  A small boy in a stroller cried while a black Lab licked ice cream off the toddler’s face. The mom was too busy trying on sunglasses from a vendor’s cart parked at the curb to notice.

  “Hope that’s not chocolate ice cream,” Sykes said to the woman, who spun around. He pointed at the dog and baby. “Chocolate is really bad for dogs.”

  He reached for Poppy’s hand and pulled her along with him as his strides lengthened.

  “You’re mean,” she told him, laughing.

  “Got her to look after her kid, didn’t I?” He pointed ahead. “I see someone we both know.”

  Poppy saw her brother, Liam, pacing outside Fortunes, a phone pressed to his ear. He saw them coming and raised both arms in the air. He wasn’t waving. Liam radiated anger.

  “He’s going ballistic,” Poppy said unnecessarily. “Liam doesn’t lose it like that.” She broke into a run.

  Sykes was faster and loped ahead fast enough to just about pull her off her feet.

  “Whoa,” Liam shouted. “Where’s the fire?”

  Sykes skidded to a halt in front of him. “You tell me. You’re the one waving his arms around.”

  Liam turned red. He ran a hand behind his neck. “I couldn’t find my sister,” he said, looking from Sykes to Poppy. “No one saw you since last night when you went to that creep’s place. We heard what happened to that woman and Ethan’s gone over there with the band.”

  “The band?” Poppy frowned at Liam. “You’re not serious.”

  “They had an early session and you couldn’t keep ’em away. They’re protective of you, Poppy.”

  Fortunes had its own regular band for backup and to play when they didn’t have featured artists.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Poppy said.

  “I did. The number’s not in use, it says.”

  Poppy shook her head. “You can’t be using the right number.” She marched past Liam to enter the club. She was grateful for the cool in the foyer.

  Sykes and Liam followed her, both tall, both dark-haired, and Liam’s eyes were an intense navy blue. Her brother was another heart-stopper, but he genuinely didn’t seem to have any idea of the effect he had on women.

  Liam taught history at Tulane. He also helped back up Poppy with the club management, mainly dealing with immediate financial issues while Ben oversaw all of the family’s business interests. Their youngest brother, Ethan, was a lawyer.

  The blue inside of the club enveloped them. It seemed strange not to hear live music at once. They rarely used anything canned.

  “No sign of Nat Archer yet?” Sykes said. “You know Nat. He’s joining us here for coffee.”

  Poppy half listened to Sykes. It was Liam whose expression confused her. He had relaxed and now he hovered, put his hands in his pockets, took them out again. Back in again.

  He nodded and rolled from his heels to his toes.

  Poppy frowned at him. “You okay?” she asked.

  His grin was very un-Liam-like. “Great. Just great. It just never crossed my mind, is all. I mean you never said anything one way or the other. Not either of you.”

  Sykes had switched on one of the fiber-optic globes that were in the center of each table. They all joked about how hokey the idea was but they had been a fixture for years.

  “I’ll call Ethan and tell him to get back here,” Liam said. “You’ll want us together. Huh! When I saw you running down the street like that, hand in hand… Well, it didn’t come to me right off, but you know how slow I am about some things.”

  Poppy and Sykes frowned at each other.

  “Worldly things, so they tell me.” Liam chuckled. “It never crossed my mind—you two being together. Hmm. If I’d known you were with Sykes, Poppy, I wouldn’t have worried. Is it too early for champagne?”

  6

  In the attic above J. Clive Millet, Antiques, Jude Millet passed through the curtain that separated him from the living world.

  The heaviness he felt was of the mind. Of the spirit…he laughed silently at the thought. Physically he had no weight. At last he was desperate to finish what had started three centuries earlier. Yes, he had married an Embran woman without any idea what she was. But he had just lost the only woman he had ever really loved and he wanted peace, a quiet home, children.

  He had got chaos, whispered suggestions that Mrs. Jude Millet was a witch, that she and her family were conspiring to bring down the booming merchant town of Bruges in Brussels for their own gain.

  The flight to London had been cruel on the Millets. Mrs. Jude Millet wasn’t with them, she had disappeared. But that didn’t stop the persecution that eventually chased the family to New Orleans where other paranormal families had helped them settle and establish themselves with the considerable possessions they had been fortunate enough to rescue.

  What they had not rescued was what they thought was almost within their grasp before the disastrous marriage: the angel who would lead them to the Ultimate Power, and the secret to why they had a wide spectrum of paranormal talents and even on occasion passed from life into a quiet place of contemplation that was not death, either. This had happened to Jude. He was certain he could not be the only one to experience this seemingly endless existence yet, so far, he had not been contacted by any others.

  The Embran woman had been called Astrid, or so he knew her. Somewhere, even now, she existed although he believed she was deteriorating, rotting around whatever held her shape-shifting body together. And she was blamed for bringing slow disintegration to the rest of her kind.

  That was the past, the present was for finishing at least this one task. He would do whatever he must to help his progeny find the sweet angel, the Book of the Way, which contained the master rules for their kind, and eventually the Harmony and the precious Ultimate Power it contained.

  As yet Sykes—and it was Sykes who mattered most—knew little about the Ultimate Power or the Harmony that held it.

  The greatest obstacle, those without conscience and with their own immortality at stake, were to be stopped: the Embran.

  And he, Jude, would become more involved as the Mentor. Changes were already in motion.

  An opportunity had arrived in the Quarter, a stranger to him. He had decided on a daring path because he had needed a fresh slant on the problem they faced in New Orleans. He had decided to play a dangerous, possibly disastrous game; to give a practitioner of talents foreign to him a chance to intermingle with the paranormal powers he was familiar with.

  Desperation has pushed him to take the chance. If it was as he had always believed and these other elements were no more than myth, then there would be no benefit, but also no harm done.

  He hoped.

  But this new candidate was unique, and he had begun to take it more seriously that a combination of highly developed intuition, magical practices and the manipulation of minds through suggestion—voodoo in this case—might complicate the f
ight against the Embran. He had no way of knowing this until the two came in contact.

  On the other hand, if these magical skills were real and they could complement the paranormal powers present in such advanced forms in this city, among the Millets, the Fortunes, the Montrachets and others, then the answer to winning might be moving much closer.

  Once more he had lost—at least temporarily—his intermediary, a small and unusual intermediary it was true, but also an efficient one. Jude was in the process of giving another subject a trial although this one showed far too many signs of an unpredictable and selfish spirit.

  But he would persevere—there must be a way for him to directly achieve small tasks involving the family and their friends. Although he found it simple to approach them as an apparition and prod the more evolved of his progeny onward, there were some things he could not do. He could not dig around where the results of his movements, if not his person, would be seen while he searched for more of the keys that were part of that damnable mechanism in the Harmony that must be dealt with.

  And he had to hope that Sykes would discover the message he had sent him within the green and gold stone. If and when—if—the real angel was found, Sykes must remember that stone and realize what he was really looking for: the Harmony and the Ultimate Power.

  He was bored with his one view from the dormer window in the attic. Although he would rather not admit it, even to himself, he was…well, not exactly tired of his descendants, but impatient with their slow progress.

  That was wrong. They couldn’t move faster than the information revealed to them. Unfortunately he was coming to believe that parts of their history might have been lost, hidden or destroyed.

  Almost worse, what if they had been robbed?

  Driven by an unfamiliar agitation, Jude passed through the door that led into the attic room. He had not been at the top of the staircase leading down in front of him for centuries.

  He descended very slowly, using one of his many extraordinary gifts: he could hear at great distances and clearly. Jude was, however, a gentleman in all things and did not take unnecessary liberties with his advantages.