THEY MOVED HER. CHECK HIS HOUSE.
He rubbed his face with his hand. “See, the problem is evidence. I can say all day long that Rollins kidnapped Susan, but I have no proof of this. No one saw him at her school. There’s no reason for a search warrant.
“The only person that saw him was you—and they think you’re dead. I have to get more solid, concrete evidence against Rollins.” I pursed my lips. I CAN TESTIFY.
He smiled but shook his head. “We need more than that. I need something solid just to get the search warrant—and I need to do it before Rollins moves her again if she’s in his house.”
I set the pen on the bed and bent my fingers. They were cramping up. This form of communication sucked.
“You stay here.”
I shook my head. HOME.
“Okay. You go home. I’ll make sure you stay put this time though.”
YOU GONNA HANDCUFF ME?
“Don’t tempt me, Zoë. Right now you’re my only witness and my only lead in this. I need you safe.” He smiled. “I would ask Nona to give me a hand watching over you.” His expression darkened for an instant.
I didn’t understand his hesitation. IS SOMETHING WRONG W/ MOM?
“No, not with her. There was an incident this morning, pretty early, with an elderly patient she’d been talking to.”
I instantly knew who he was talking about. The lady in the wheelchair. The one that I touched. WHAT HAPPENED? I wanted to know what it appeared happened from the other side, and not through the eyes of a Wraith.
Daniel shrugged, shook his head. “An elderly woman, sitting in a wheelchair just down the hall. Witnesses say she reached out to something—one nurse said she thought maybe she was talking to her dead husband—then she just fell out of the wheelchair. Dead.”
Dead.
I remembered the bright light. The incredible feeling of euphoria. How much better I felt—and something else came to me. Deep, overwhelming sadness. A feeling I’d touched something I’d never be allowed to know except in brief glimpses—tiny teasing tastes of peace. I reached up and touched my neck.
Daniel watched me, and his expression brightened. “Wow, even your bruises faded. Looks like the hospital did you some good.”
And then he did kiss me. I held my breath, careful not to breathe on him in case of halitosis. He didn’t seem to notice as he pulled back and put a hand to my chin. “You look a hundred percent better now than you did yesterday. Please be careful, Zoë Martinique. You make me laugh, and you confuse the hell out of me. And get better—I want to hear that sexy voice again.”
And he left.
I looked down at my board and erased it. He wanted to hear my voice again.
How was I going to tell him some bald guy in a trench coat stole it?
How was I going to tell him that I didn’t know if I’d ever get it back?
21
“WHO’S Joe?”
I gave Tim a confused look. Apparently I was going to have to learn to communicate with action and expression. I’d learned the middle finger wasn’t exactly making people cooperate with me.
And my expression of frustration—though understood—wasn’t appreciated either.
After the doctors released me—after much protesting—but I was technically okay—Mom and Rhonda took me back to the botanica and tea shop. It was just after nine o’clock Monday evening when we arrived, and in the darkness I’d noticed the black-and-white Atlanta cop car parked outside the house along Euclid Avenue. Mom had said they were Officers Mastiff and Harding and would be staying there, compliments of Captain Cooper.
So Cooper believed Daniel, or at least had some bit of faith in his suspicions. Maybe that was good, though I wasn’t happy with the watchdogs.
Not that they could really contain me.
Heh—heh—heh.
Other than the distant introduction to the nice policemen when we arrived, Mom hadn’t spoken much. She hadn’t really looked at me either. Hadn’t even asked me what had happened, either at the Park n’ Ride, or at the hospital with the elderly lady I learned was Delia DeAngelo.
In fact, the only people who’d spoken more than two words to me were Tim and Steve.
I heard the wind banging against the house with the occasional bonk of a pinecone or a sweet-gum burr as it hit the roof or a window. Bundled up in fleece and blankets, I could feel the cold through the foundation of the house itself.
I felt fine. Tired maybe. Insanely cold. But I’d walked the distance to the house from the car on my own, with almost a bounce to my step. Everything seemed to be working—except my voice.
Though the handprint on my arm had turned from a bright red to a dark gray, light tattoo style, it was still there. It no longer ached or burned. And apparently the shock of white hair framing the left side of my face was also going to stick around.
Thanksgiving was less than a week away, and the hardwood trees around the avenue and behind the house were nearly bare.
I also felt as if I’d missed something else. It’d been a long time since Mom had been mad enough to be silent. At least I was too old for a spanking.
Maybe.
I thought again about Susan. I could see the fear in that small, pale face. How her eyes had widened when I’d spoken to her. She’d seen Trench-Coat when he’d appeared behind me.
And seeing such a horrible creature—I was terrified that even if Hirokumi paid the ransom for whatever it was Rollins wanted—Susan Hirokumi wouldn’t be returned alive.
I had no proof of this—it was just a feeling.
And my thoughts never strayed too far away from the mysterious Joe. I had no last name, no number, no idea who or even what he was. What he did have was knowledge, and I needed that. Desperately.
Once at Mom’s, Rhonda went into the back of the tea shop and started hot water boiling. I moved to one of the cozy couches by the fireplace, which Mom had left burning to come get me.
Steve carried the tea tray and set it on the white wicker coffee table. He was getting better at manipulation. He stepped forward and kissed my forehead, which is something he did very rarely. The flutter of butterfly’s wings against my solid skin. “You look like hell, gorgeous.”
I smiled at him. Rhonda had my board, marker, and eraser.
He bent forward and, to my surprise, lifted the olive green ceramic teapot and poured a cupful of golden, steaming liquid. “Nona called ahead and had me make this special for you. It’ll ease the aches and pains.”
I smiled. I needed my board so I could tell him I didn’t have any more aches and pains.
Not after I touched that old lady.
Mom had disappeared upstairs.
Rhonda came back in, her iBook in her hands. “Here.” She sat beside me and opened the laptop. A blank Word document appeared. “Type out everything that happened. That’ll be easier than trying to write it out on that board.”
I nodded and shifted my legs around to hold it in my lap. I’m a pretty decent typist when I concentrate, and once I got started on the events, I didn’t stop.
When I’d finished, ending it with Mrs. DeAngelo and her dead husband, I hit save. I looked up to see that Mom was sitting in one of the chairs across from me. She was watching the fire, a cup in her hand. Rhonda was stoking the fire.
I set the laptop on the coffee table. Rhonda immediately set the poker aside and grabbed up the iBook before sitting down on the rug with her back to the fireplace and started reading it.
That’s when Tim asked his question about Joe. He’d appeared then, hovering over Rhonda’s shoulder, reading.
I glared at him and sipped my tea. It really was a good tea. Mellow with a hint of orange. And something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
The small antique clock over the mantel chimed ten o’clock. I waited till everyone was done reading. Mom was last and set the notebook on the floor.
No one spoke. The silence was really getting on my last nerve.
I grabbed up the board where Rhonda h
ad set it beside me and wrote a message. I held it out for Mom to see. She didn’t look at it immediately, not until I banged it loudly against the coffee table. The ceramic tea service clanked at the movement.
I felt like some spoiled brat.
I wanted my mother to look at me.
She did. She read the sign and set her mouth in the thinnest line I’d ever seen it in. Nona sat forward then, set her cup on the table, and rested her arms on her thighs. “Am I mad at you? What the hell do you think? Look at you, Zoë! Forty-eight hours ago you were pronounced dead, child. That’s the call I got, do you understand that? Then I arrive to see you alive and shaking in a blanket—in the morgue! Three hours after they admit you upstairs, they tell me you’d slipped into a diabetic coma and the prognosis looked bad.” She stood up, towering over me. “Then I see you in the hallway, and you looked—”
I widened my eyes. Diabetic coma? No one told me that. I didn’t remember that. I narrowed my eyes at her when she looked around the room, her hands working into fists. I looked like what?
She sat back down suddenly and put her fists on her knees. Rhonda looked up from her laptop when it looked like Mom wasn’t going to finish. “You looked wrong, Zoë. You looked like something from the Abysmal. And then you touched that woman, and she just died.”
Mom held up her hand, and Rhonda nodded. “She just dropped dead, right there, Zoë. Then you vanished, and the doctors tell me you’re awake and healthy enough to be discharged.” She leaned in close to me. “Do you think I have a reason to be upset or mad with you?”
I quickly erased my board and rewrote. WOW.
“Oh. Yeah. Wow for you. They tell me you have laryngitis, but we both know that’s not true. First that bastard did something to your arm, and you’re physical, and now—now you can’t speak because you think he shoved his tongue down your throat and stole your voice.”
I didn’t remember the sensation being that cut-and-dried, and thinking of it raised the temperature in several different parts of my body—parts I didn’t want reacting to that thought.
“You have to understand,” Rhonda said, and her voice was soft. Which was weird itself—I’d never considered anything about Rhonda as soft. “We were convinced you were going to die. Maddox was sure. Your heart was failing. And then we see”—she sort of waved at me—“what you did in the hall. And you’re fine. Near to perfectly healthy. All color and smiles, sans your voice and with an added handprint and white streak.”
I wrote, DOES IT LOOK BAD? I realized I hadn’t seen myself since Friday. When I pulled my hair forward I could see the white hairs, mixed in with my darker locks. IS IT A LOT?
“I’d say you’ve got about this much.” Rhonda indicated about an inch with her thumb and index finger. “But you had dyed it, right? Before all this happened?”
But Mom wasn’t finished yet. She was on her feet again, pacing this time. “Zoë’s hair isn’t the issue. That Symbiont or whatever the hell he is did more than just steal her voice and possibly her health. I think he did something else to her.”
I didn’t have the answers. I DON’T KNOW.
Mom stopped her movements, knelt in front of the coffee table, and slammed her hand down on it. Oooh. Mad. “Where were you from the time he took your voice to the time you came back into your body, Zoë? Can’t you remember anything?”
I did remember things, but not things I wanted to share with my mom, even if we were alone. None of us knew or understood what was going on. The only one who seemed to was Joe, and I had no way of getting a hold of him.
I wasn’t even sure Joe was real. No one else had seen him.
But there was something he’d said. I grabbed up my board. RHONDA, LOOK UP COPS NAMED JOE IN VICE. He’d said he was going to ask a kid who popped him. Had to be a vice cop, right? Knew about kids and drugs and needed to identify a killer?
I thought about Mrs. DeAngelo. Of me touching her and the sensations that came next. And then I thought of Tanaka and of Trench-Coat standing there beside him. Taking his soul.
Christ. Was that it? Was this what Trench-Coat had done to me? Was that why I felt so much better—because I’d taken her soul?
I looked at Rhonda, who’d stopped typing and stared at me.
I tried to tell her. I even opened my mouth and spoke as if I could. I tried to tell her my fears.
Nothing.
Her eyes widened. “Mother guppy, Zoë. You don’t even make a squeak, do you?”
I was ready for a Drama Queen moment right then. I felt like a child who’d lost her favorite toy. And I was terrified. Mommy was mad at me, and she’d made me think of things I didn’t want to.
Where had I been for that time? What had I done to that elderly woman?
Arms encircled me then. Mom had stood and joined me on the sofa, and I turned and laid my head down on her shoulder. I could smell Mom’s perfume. White Diamonds. And for once, I didn’t choke.
Well I did—but I think they mistook it for a sob. A sob takes voice.
I had no voice.
“Why don’t we ask the dragon?”
Everyone turned to look at Steve. Even I ceased the waterworks and looked at him, lounging against the fireplace. When had he popped in?
“You mean what’s-her-bucket inside?” Rhonda said.
Steve nodded. “Sure. She’s the one that first sensed Zoë. She’s the one that started us thinking down that road of Wraith. You said this morning the thing could be interrogated.”
I looked at Rhonda as she stood, her laptop closed and clutched tightly against her chest. She looked at each of us and took a step back. “I’m not sure if I interpreted that right, though. And it means half-releasing it to do it. What if I goof, and it gets free? It’ll try to kill Zoë.”
Gee—it’s nice to be wanted.
“If it gets free, then I’ll kill it myself.” Mom released me (go supermom!) and set about pulling stuff off the shelves. Vials, herbs, and a few gitchie-goomies that even I wasn’t sure what they were. I watched as she motioned for Tim and Steve to clear the center of the room.
They moved the table, the chairs, the sofas, and the rugs. This revealed the dark hardwood floor.
It also revealed a honking-great pentagram painted on the wood itself.
I stared at Mom openmouthed. She looked back at me. “Having you silent might actually be a blessing.”
22
I wasn’t sure how I felt about my own mother having a pentagram plastered on the floor of her place of business. I mean a girl likes to think her mother reads romances in her spare time, or crochets, not casts spells and summon demons.
This was so Buffy.
Unless she was summoning cute demons.
I’d written WTF? on the board, then held the thing up in front of her.
She’d chosen not to answer me as she and Rhonda went around the place gathering up whatnots and suches. So I followed them, trying to shove the board in her face and point at the floor at every opportunity.
Didn’t work. She just ignored me.
It really sucked not being able to yell.
It wasn’t long before the room smelled like rotten eggs. Sulfur. Mom’d brought out what looked like an old silver chafing dish in need of a polishing. She filled it with sand and set three cute little round charcoals sparkling and smoking in the center.
It was the nasty powder stuff she tossed on the top that smelled so bad. And smoked. (Cough)
At each of the corners—well--quarters (circles really didn’t have corners) Mom and Rhonda placed thick white candles. I took up my board and wrote YOU TWO DO THIS MUCH?
Rhonda smiled. “I’m not as good as your mom.”
Oh great. I looked at Mom, then at the circle. Nona Martinique, Atlanta’s own Professor Witch.
Faboo.
I wanted to frazzle her with a bazillion mixed questions. When did this start? Were you doing this in our old house when I was sleeping? Is this why I had all those nightmares as a kid? Do you have séance parties a
nd then don’t invite me? You talk to Dad like this? Is this why Dad left?
Oh hell. Is this why I could go out of body?
But it was just too hard to scribble all that crap down. So I sat in the corner and sulked. At one point I winked an eye and lined Mom’s head up in my sights as I crushed her between my thumb and index finger.
I squish your head.
Maybe this sort of behavior was what made puberty a nightmare.
Once they were done, Rhonda set the dragon statue in the middle of the circle. I won’t lie and say the thing didn’t still give me the heebie-jeebies.
Because it did. And I wanted nooo part of it. I was still paranoid the thing was going to eat me.
Now—this is where things got weird.
Like my life up to this point wasn’t already a case for Ripley’s and hunky Dean Cain? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Sitting in my little corner of the room by the fireplace, I watched as Mom started mumbling something out of a small notebook (one of those black-and-white Composition notebooks), and Rhonda lit the candles from a wooden match. No lighters, for these would be Charmed Ones.
Nothing much happened for a few minutes, except the fraying of my patience. Mom has a nice singing voice, but not a great mumbling one. And it started to really work my last nerve.
The dragon popped, kinda like a kernel of corn on a hot griddle.
I screamed. Not that anybody heard me. I also pulled my blanky up closer. I was still dressed in a pair of sweats and my SpongeBob slippers.
It jumped again.
Shit.
Then it started to jump a lot till it was vibrating against the floor. The candles bounced a bit, and I could feel it through my sweats.
Something shot out of the thing’s mouth just as an extremely loud scream filled the entire store.
I really hoped Mom had put up the closed sign. This was not the moment some unsuspecting customer should pop in for a late-night visit.
I pressed my hands to my ears, as did Rhonda and Mom. I was also screaming—but that really didn’t matter. The thing looped several times, then paused above the dragon, an amorphous ball of green smoke.
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