Doorways to Infinity (34 page)

“Of course it’s important,” Fred said. “She wouldn’t have heard it, otherwise.”

All heads turned when the doorbell rang. “Now what?” Jamie said.

Carl walked toward the front door. “I’ll see who it is.” Everyone waited quietly until he returned a couple of minutes later with a grave look in his eyes. “It’s a couple of FBI agents. They want to talk to Jamie.”

Jamie felt the blood drain from his face. “What should I do?”

“Go see what they want. They wouldn’t tell me.”

“What about us?” Terry said. “Should we leave?”

Carl motioned toward the basement door. “Not yet. Hide down there until they go. We may want to talk to you about this afterward.”

“I don’t want them to see us.” Larry stood and offered his hand to Lisa. “I think we’ll go with them. You, too, Sammi.”

Sammi got up from the couch and followed her parents, Rachel, and the two CIA agents downstairs, the carpeted treads muffling their footfalls as they disappeared into the basement. Eric paused at the entrance and said, “I’ll wait up here on the top step so I can listen,” then he pulled the door most of the way closed behind him, leaving it ajar, barely.

Jamie opened up his hands wide, his pulse rising and his mouth suddenly dry. “Uh…now what, Dad?”

“Invite them in. I want to hear what they have to say.”

“Will they let you? I mean, they’re with the FBI.”

“It’s my house, Jamie. I can do that. I’m a cop, too. Remember?”

Jamie paused while he regarded his father, who seemed remarkably cool, especially considering how Jamie felt at the moment. Carl pointed with his thumb down the hall behind him. “I think you can let them in now.”

Jamie opened the front door to find two men in identical dark suits, one of them holding a black briefcase. They were the same height, slightly taller than Jamie, and trim, with identical expressions — tight-jawed and narrow-eyed.
Like Eric
, Jamie thought. They both wore their hair short, one man’s was dark blond and the other’s brown.

“I’m Jamie Sikes. What can I do for you?”

The brown-haired man flashed his badge. “Greg Savern, FBI, and my partner is Will Nash.” He spoke using the minimum number of facial muscles, moving only his lips. “Can we have a word with you?”

“Uh…sure. You want to come in?” Jamie held the door wide for them and they stepped into the front hall, then followed him into the family room, where Carl waited, standing at the table by the kitchen. Carl nodded at them and introduced himself, then offered them each a chair.

As they took their seats, Jamie on one side and the FBI men on the other, Agent Nash said to Carl, “We’d like to talk to Jamie alone, if you don’t mind.”

Carl sat anyway, at the head of the table. “I
do
mind. I’m a detective, so I’m well aware of our rights. If he’s going to be charged with a crime, we’ll demand a lawyer before we start.”

“You don’t need a lawyer.” Agents Nash’s eyes narrowed even further once he realized Carl wasn’t going to leave. He turned and looked directly at Jamie. “Okay, then. Let’s get right to the point. What do you know about magic?”

Jamie’s stomach tightened immediately, as if a giant hand were squeezing his insides.
Do they know about me?
Then he remembered his first meeting with Eric and Terry, and he took a deep breath.
Maybe it’s the same situation
. He glanced at his father before answering with a small shrug. “I’m a pretty decent amateur magician, if that’s what you mean. I can do the basic tricks, like coin palming and stuff, but I can’t do the fancier things, like levitation.”

But he could levitate everything in the room if he wanted to. That knowledge gave him confidence, somehow. An edge, a small one. He held it close and nurtured it, hoping it would be enough to get him through.

“Not tricks,” Agent Savern said with a shake of his head, “real magic. What do you know about that?”

“There’s no such thing.”

“We think there might be, and we’re not the only ones.” The brown-haired man lifted his briefcase onto the table and opened it with a click of each latch. Then he pulled out a photo and slid it across to Jamie. It was a black-and-white picture of Terry, talking to Jamie, Fred, and Nova, in front of the building where Jamie had his Environmental Science class. “Do you know this woman?”

Jamie clamped his jaws together, trying to decide what to say. He fought to keep his expression neutral while every nerve in his body began to vibrate and his guts felt like they were about to flip over.
Keep cool
, he reminded himself, but it was difficult at the moment.

His grandmother had told him once that any fool could perform when things were going perfectly, but a real entertainer, a Performer, could do it when things were going wrong. They often did. Jamie sometimes forgot to bring an important magic prop for his act. The wind might blow the playing cards around if he and his friends were doing a show outside. The PA system sometimes wouldn’t work properly.

He was performing now. He was maintaining a poker face even though he wanted to run and hide in a closet like a little boy. He gritted his teeth tighter and clenched his stomach muscles. He would not let the two agents see that he was frightened. It was too important not to.

He finally nodded. “That’s…Ashley, I think.” He gave a slight nod. “Yeah, that’s her name.” He decided to use her alias, the one she’d given him when they first met. “She was in one of my classes.”

“You know her better than that. We’ve seen you with her several times.”

“I helped her study. She’s been out of school for a while and she was struggling with the subject matter, so I told her I’d help her.”

“Jamie does really well in science,” Carl said.

The agents ignored Carl and fixed Jamie with accusing stares.

“My girlfriend knows her better than I do,” Jamie added. “They hang out sometimes.”

“Grace Mary Callahan,” Agent Nash said flatly. “She lives across the street.”

Jamie was irritated that they knew so much already. “Everybody calls her Fred, and yeah, she lives across the street. What of it? Did we break some law?”

“The woman you know as Ashley is really named Terry Voss. She’s a CIA agent.”

Jamie feigned surprise as best he could, widening his eyes and catching his breath.
Performing
. “No way! She seems like an ordinary person to me.”

“She has a partner named Eric Stenner, and they work in a special unit that deals with supernatural and paranormal cases. We know that they are working on a difficult international case that may involve magic, and we think that’s why she contacted you, and that it’s possible you know something that’s useful to us.”

“Terry and I only talked about my magic act a little bit, and I did a couple of little tricks for her. As far as I can tell, she really is a student. I mean, she was trying pretty hard in that class we shared.”

Both of the agents looked at him wordlessly for several seconds, until Agent Nash said, “We’re looking for help, too. Have you heard of the Pentagram Killer?”

Huh?
Jamie nearly sighed with relief.
Maybe they don’t know about my magic
.

Jamie answered them with a tight shake of his head, but Carl said, “I have. There’s been a string of murders in Baltimore where the killer has carved a pentagram on the foreheads of his victims. Pretty gruesome stuff, I hear. I think there was a similar case, years ago.”

Agent Nash nodded. “The M.O. is a little different this time.”

Agent Savern picked up the photo and dropped it back into the briefcase. “There have been other signs of magic rituals left behind at the crime scenes besides the pentagrams, but nothing that’s led us to the killer. We’re stumped.” He sagged slightly in his chair and he seemed vulnerable, all of a sudden.

“We hired a guy,” Agent Nash said, “who calls himself a magic consultant, but he’s not been very effective. We think he might be a fraud.”

That’s because he is
. Jamie tried not to smile.

“So we’re trying to find someone else who can help us,” Agent Nash said. “Someone who can sense it when another person has been using magic.”

“Jamie, maybe you should get Fred over here,” Carl said. “She knows Terry better than you do. Maybe Terry has found someone who knows about magic and told Fred about it.”

Jamie was about to protest but caught himself when he realized what his father was hinting at:
Bring Fred over here and let her use a potion on these agents to get them off our backs
. “Um…sure, I’ll call Fred.”

“The phone’s in the basement,” Carl said and gave Jamie a subtle look, barely a twitch of his eyebrows. “I took it down there a while ago to make a work call.”

Jamie knew the phone was still in the kitchen. He’d seen it there earlier, sitting on its cradle by the toaster oven. “I’ll go call her,” Jamie said.

He opened the basement door to find Eric and Terry standing near the top step. Eric put his index finger to his lips and motioned for Jamie to go down, and they followed him.

Everyone else was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, bursting with questions. Jamie whispered, “I don’t have time to talk. They’re asking about magic. Fred, do you have a potion already made that we can give them?”

“Like a forget potion?”

He shook his head. “Do you have the reverse truth potion, the one that’ll make them believe anything we say?”

“I have some in my bedroom. Momma Sue and Mrs. Malley have been urging me to stock up on spells for when we finally go after Phillip Cage.”

“I’ll make a portal to your house. Grab the potion and let yourself in our front door when you come back. And hurry.”

He quickly drew the glowing outlines, and as he pushed it open, Lisa grabbed Sammi by the hand. “I think we should go home, too.”

“I’m coming with you,” Rachel said, and left with Larry, Lisa, and Sammi.

Jamie turned to Eric. “Are you and Terry staying?”

“I think we should. We’ll wait down here.”

Jamie closed the portal and went back upstairs. “I got hold of Fred.” Jamie reclaimed his seat at the table across from the FBI men. “She’ll be right over.”

They were forced to make small talk to fill the time until Fred arrived, and Jamie was glad that his father was with him. Carl pressed the FBI men for more details about the Pentagram Killer, and they seemed willing to talk shop with another lawman. They described the clues they already had, the number of victims, and where they found the bodies. Jamie found it to be chilling and morbid, but Carl obviously didn’t.
I’m glad I’m not a detective
, Jamie thought as he listened to their grisly conversation.

Jamie heard the front door slam and Fred walked in carrying her purse in one hand and swinging a dark pendant in the other. She didn’t wait for introductions. “I’d like some coffee before we chat. All of you want some.” It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a decree. “You like it black.”

“I want some,” Jamie said eagerly, suddenly craving a hot drink. It seemed so necessary, just then. He couldn’t imagine wanting anything else.

Coffee. Black and strong.

Fred turned her back to the FBI agents and scowled at Jamie, and he understood what she was doing.
She’s using the pendant to cast a compulsion spell. She’s going to slip a potion into the coffee and she needs the agents to drink it
. “Um, on second thought, maybe I’d better not. I’ll help you get it, though.” Fred winked at him and followed him into the kitchen. But he still wanted coffee. Desperately.

Jamie filled two cups from the pot on the counter and Fred took a small plastic bottle from her purse. She measured seven drops into each one and whispered, “I’ll fix a cup for your dad after you give these to the other two guys. We don’t want your dad getting any of this stuff by mistake.”

“I want some coffee, too.”

Fred rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, but let’s take care of these guys first.”

Jamie took the cups to Agent Savern and Agent Nash and watched as they both raised them to their mouths and blew on them to cool them. Carl continued to make small talk with the men until they’d each taken a sip.

By the time the two FBI agents had finished their coffee, Fred had convinced them that she and Jamie and all of their friends and family knew nothing about real magic because there was no such thing. The men were also convinced that Terry was attending classes at WCU because she was taking a leave of absence from her job and was considering a career change.

As soon as the men drove away, Eric and Terry came out of hiding in the basement. Eric leaned close to Jamie’s ear and whispered, “Let’s go someplace where we can talk safely.”

“I can do this instead.” He glanced at Fred and Carl. “Stand near me.” He held out his hands and formed his shield, and the air around them shimmered, then he modulated it to muffle sounds. “Nobody can hear us now.”

Terry shook her head at the floor before saying, “I’m sorry. This is our fault. If Eric and I hadn’t contacted you, the FBI wouldn’t know about you.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Carl said. “Unless you have access to their computers.”

“I do have access,” Eric said, “and I’m going to find out what they know. I’ll give them a couple of days first, to see what their reaction is to your meeting.”

“Those guys are certain that we’re not worth a second look,” Fred said. “That potion I gave them is one of Mrs. Malley’s, so it’ll work for sure.”

Jamie frowned. “Now I’m really worried. First the CIA shows up here,” — he gestured at Eric and Terry— “then the FBI. Is the NSA next?”

“Maybe not,” Eric said. “You guys seem to be maintaining clean electronic communication, but you’ll need to keep that up indefinitely. I’ll do a little more snooping and see what the NSA knows, but I’ll have to be careful. I don’t want to attract any unwanted attention. But last I checked, you’re still safe.”

Jamie sensed an unspoken
for now
. “Well, there’s not much we can do except be careful.”

“Eric,” Carl said, “what about the recording you made of Sammi?”

“I’ll drop it by the translator as soon as we get back to Langley. I should know something by the morning. If we can meet again tomorrow afternoon, we’ll tell you what they say. I also want to check this house for listening devices.”