Blue Dawn (13 page)

He strained to see the woman’s face. In the crystal’s blue light, her coloring was off, but she appeared the right height and build to be Allie. By sheer force of will, he managed to command a closer view, zooming in on the woman’s face.

Yes, it was Allie. He recognized the shape of her face, the chin-length hair, the full lips. But something was wrong.

He came closer still. It was definitely Allie. An Allie who did not appear demented or horrified or hurt by her transport to Zura, as his grandmother had been. But still, he knew something was wrong.

Again he looked at her face. The same shape, the same lips, the same nose, the same eyes.

What was it that disturbed him?

As his gaze focused on her eyes, he saw the strange blankness. At first it puzzled him. And then, with a sureness that could only be human, he realized what it was. Allie exuded a complete absence of emotion. She had, in effect, become a model Zalian.

Erik shuddered. The light from the crystal abruptly shut down. His eyes flickered open and he stared at the hunk of dark crystal on the floor before him. Involuntarily, he shuddered again.

He kneeled up and reached for the cold crystal.

He turned the multi-faced stone over in his hand.

He had the answer he sought. The crystal had confirmed Allie was his destiny, and would make a fitting mate.

Listlessly he passed the crystal from hand to hand. He should be pleased. Despite his difficulties, all was unfolding as it should.

Why then, did he still feel that something was terribly wrong?

Slowly Allie replaced the phone in its cradle. It was only 10:30 Monday morning, but already she felt drained. Talking to Cody’s mother every day was getting harder and harder—especially since no one, including the police, had a clue about what had happened to Cody. With no headway on his disappearance, Allie was starting to regret her promise to call Mrs. Walker regularly to update her. Her heart ached for the distraught woman, but besides sympathy, she had little of hope to offer.

With a sigh she focused once more on the huge pile of mail, memos and newspapers on her desk.

Just as she began to settle into the task, that hum started up in her head again. Surreptitiously she looked around. Yes, there was Erik, over by the newsroom water cooler, talking to another photographer.

With a harrumph, she turned back to her work.

Wasn’t it enough that Erik had been in and out of her thoughts ever since she’d met him? That she’d wasted far too much of Sunday trying to figure out who and what he was, and what exactly she felt about him? But no, this crazy, unbelievable buzz whenever he was around had to annoy her too.

Well, not any more. She was relegating him to co-worker status, and nothing more.

Biting her lip to bolster her determination, she forced herself to concentrate on an idea that had occurred to her yesterday between bouts of analyzing Erik. She’d managed to squeak a rather thin column out of the visit to the psychic, but in the absence of anything new, the story would soon die. And along with it, any chance of her helping to find Cody. Cody had taken her love and thrown it back in her face. In spite of that, she couldn’t just let him disappear. She had misplaced her love and her trust, but still, he was a co-worker, and a fellow human being, and if she could do anything to help find him, she’d do it.

The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that her brainwave Sunday would do the trick. What better way to maintain interest in a mysterious disappearance than to dredge up unsolved disappearances from the past.

To look at the differences, the similarities, and the effects on the families. And perhaps jog the memory or sense of duty of someone who had seen or heard something in connection with Cody’s disappearance.

But before she pitched this idea to Nate, she’d have to find some really interesting disappearances. There was no point trying to get him to buy the idea if she couldn’t come up with cases that would whet his interest.

She reached for the phone to call
The Streeter’s

”morgue”, as they called the library, and get the librarian Karl started on digging up some cases.

Before she could touch it, the phone rang.

“Alina Stanislawski. Good morning,” she said automatically into the receiver.

Silence met her greeting. Then a hesitant voice began, “This is Joanne Carabini.”

“Oh, how are you?” Allie snapped onto full alert. Her column today was light on facts. If Madame Carabini had more details, great. “Do you have more about Cody?”

“No, I’m sorry. I haven’t received any more impressions about Mr. Walker or his whereabouts,” the woman responded. “I told you everything I could see. I don’t know why it was so fuzzy, but it was. No, I’m calling today about the other gentleman.”

“Which other gentleman?” Allie remembered before the words left her mouth. “You mean Erik?

Erik Berenger?” She grimaced.
The tall dark man
the psychic had predicted would be in her future.

“That’s right.” The hesitation in Madame Carabini’s voice was palpable, even over the phone. “Despite his denials, it’s definitely him.

And I’m positive those incidents I saw were part of his past.”

Allie recalled the shocked look on the woman’s face as she identified Erik as the man in her future. She recalled Erik’s refusal to discuss either of the incidents, even after he’d admitted they had, indeed, occurred.

“Yes?” She wasn’t really sure she wanted to hear what the psychic had to say.

“There was something I didn’t tell you before.

Something odd I felt about him, but couldn’t quite put into words. That he’s strange or foreign, but not in a way that makes any sense. I keep seeing flashes of an eerie blue light, and then a cold, forbidding landscape, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I don’t know where it is. I only know it’s associated with him. It’s . . . I felt I should warn you.”

“Warn me?” Allie’s voice rose. “Warn me about what?”

“I . . . I don’t know exactly . . . it’s just the strangeness . . . he wants something from you—”

“Are you saying he might harm me?”

Silence. Then, “Noooo, I can’t say that. Not in any conventional way. But . . . he heralds some kind of change for you. He will affect you . . . and it won’t be good.”

The hair on the back of Allie’s neck stood up.

Despite her innate skepticism, the psychic’s words made her uneasy. “That’s a pretty indefinite prediction,” she countered. “What exactly are you suggesting I do? Stay away from him? I work with him, after all.”

“Look Miss Stanislawski. I know this sounds odd. But at the very least, look into the man’s background.”

When Allie said nothing, the woman’s voice grew pleading. “Promise me you’ll do that. You may find something important. You don’t know how terrible it is to live with this gift . . . to have intimations of what may happen and have everyone ignore your advice.”

Madame Carabini sounded so upset that Allie reined in her skepticism. After her conversations with Cody’s mother, she could understand how horrible it was to want to help, yet be unable. She made a mental note to talk to the psychic about this later, perhaps for another column. “I promise I’ll at least look into his background,” she said.

“Thank you for your concern.”

When she’d hung up, Allie sat and stared at the telephone. As much as she hated to admit it, Madame Carabini’s vague intimations of some indefinable harm coming from Erik disturbed her.

Even she had to admit that Erik, with his often emotionless, stilted reactions, could be rather odd. And that crazy hum in her head whenever he was around. What was that about?

She twisted her fingers in her lap. But none of that meant he was an ax murderer. As likely as anything, Madame Carabini’s warning related to the fact that developing a romantic relationship with Erik would hurt her. Just as Cody had hurt her. One more reason to support her decision to refrain from anything more than a working relationship with Erik.

Thoughtful, she sat back in her chair. But it couldn’t hurt to ask Nate exactly what Erik’s resume had said. And whether the city editor had bothered to check his references.

A few minutes after one p.m., Erik pulled a chair up to the desk. “You wanted to see me?”

The dratted humming started up in Allie’s head before she could even look up, along with an unwanted tingle of anticipation. She gritted her teeth. Like it or not, she seemed to be cursed with an attraction for Erik, one entirely different from anything she’d ever experienced, and neither her own sense of self-preservation nor Madame Carabini’s intimations of dire consequences changed anything.

To make matters worse, her late morning chat with Nate had been interrupted before she’d been able to confirm whether he’d checked out Erik’s background.

Concealing her agitation, Allie regarded Erik’s broadly-chiseled features, his generous mouth, his unreadable gray eyes. Unnerved by Madame Carabini’s warning, she searched for something—

she didn’t know what —in his stoic demeanor.

She noticed how tightly he gripped the arms of the chair. He was nervous too, she thought with a start.
I wonder why?
. She was about to say something when he spoke.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you Saturday night,” he said softly. “But you said you wanted to keep everything platonic—”

“That’s right.” Allie cut him off. She didn’t want to talk about it. She’d made a fool of herself more than once, and she wasn’t about to do it again.

She forced a smile and assumed her most business-like demeanor. “Thanks again for helping with the painting. But now I’d like to bring you up to steam on some new column ideas Nate’s approved. You’ll be taking the pictures of course, and accompanying me to the interviews.”

That strange, confused look she’d seen more than once flickered across Erik’s face, sparking her curiosity and making her wonder once again what tragedies, what harsh childhood incidents had made him the way he was. She tried to tell herself she didn’t care, but deep inside she knew it wasn’t true. She cleared her throat and continued.

“There’s nothing new on Cody’s disappearance, so we’ve decided to unearth some old unsolved disappearances to help keep the story alive.

Maybe it will raise some new clues, some new directions for the investigation. Karl in the morgue dug up some great cases this morning.”

She looked at Erik to confirm his attention. “Go on,” he said, neither his tone nor expression indicating anything more than polite interest.

She continued. “The first one I’ve decided to go with is really heart-rending. It’s a child called Amanda Blake who went missing five years ago.

She disappeared while going to a friend’s house three doors away. No one ever saw her again, and there’s never been even one clue about how she disappeared. I’ve already phoned her parents and we’re going there this afternoon.”

Erik nodded solemnly. Allie grimaced, then silently berated herself. What exactly did she want from Erik anyway?

“The next two are more straightforward and I’m going to put them together in one column, with an emphasis on the effects of their disappearances on their families and friends. One’s an elderly man who wandered away from his nursing home, never to be seen again. The other is a mother of three who disappeared from her car —sort of like Cody.”

Allie noted the slight tightening of Erik’s mouth at the mention of Cody. She remembered his questions about Cody Saturday night. Why had he developed such a strong dislike for a man he’d never even met? Her anger was understandable, but Erik’s?

She picked up the last sheaf of printouts. “The last one is the best, even though it’s the oldest.”

She waved the printouts at Erik. “It’s from 1936. I know it’s going back more than sixty years, but it’s a great story.

“The woman’s name is Eva Bukowski,” she rattled on, intent on explaining the story as quickly as possible. “She was only nineteen the night she disappeared from her parents’ house.

She was wearing her pajamas and no other article of clothing was missing from the house.”

Allie glanced from Erik to the blurred copy of a black and white photo on the first sheet of the printout. “Eva was really pretty. She—”

Amazement cut off her words. She stared at the photo in her hand before looking back at Erik. She looked back at the photo.

“I don’t believe it,” she muttered. “It’s incredible. And I didn’t even notice it.”

“Notice what?”

“The resemblance. See?” Allie shoved the printout with the photo under Erik’s nose.

“Look! Look at Eva. She looks enough like you to be your sister!”

Every muscle in Eric’s body tensed as he stared at the photo only inches from his face. Not the year, not the mention of the name, nothing had steeled him to come face-to-face with the photo of the woman he recognized instantly as his grandmother.

Yes, she was younger. Years younger than the woman he remembered, the woman who had died only a scant seven years ago after a life of unremitting misery. And yes, the expression on her young, fresh face was entirely different from the one he had known.

But it was her. His grandmother. Only it was his grandmother as he’d never seen her before. He struggled for a moment to pinpoint the difference that went far beyond age.

Then it hit him. In the stark black and white photo, Eva was smiling, with a gladness and innocence that shone uncontrolled from her eyes and her lips. She was
happy
, by the stars of Zura!

Happy!

Erik couldn’t suppress a shudder of horror.

This was what his grandfather had wreaked by kidnapping Eva from her Earth home? This was the result of fulfilling his destiny? Taking a happy young woman looking forward to her future and turning her into the miserable creature Erik remembered. The woman who either could not, or would not comprehend what had happened to her.

The woman who had stayed locked up inside her head, inside her own world despite his grandfather’s limited Zalian efforts.

It took all of Erik’s control not to snap the photo from Allie’s hand and crumple it into a ball.