Out of Body (18 page)

She sat in her chair again, her feet flat on the floor, her hands on the arms. And Winnie curled herself over Marley’s feet, and closed her eyes.

Gray cast about, afraid to move, afraid not to move. “Marley,” he said quietly. “Marley?”

Her eyelids slid shut, but her face became rigid. As if she was wide-awake and tense inside a sleeping body. Gray saw her breathing grow shallow and rapid.

He bent over her. She hardly breathed at all. Automatically he lifted her into his arms. Sharp currents ran through his body.

“You must not interfere.”

Gray looked over his shoulder. In the multicolored haze suspended over the house, a wraithlike series of shapes coalesced into a dim face. He screwed up his eyes, strained to see. Gray-streaked dark hair. Sharp features, he thought.

The pattern of a voice rose out of that rustling, clear and demanding. It came from the direction of the workbench and the hovering face.

Gray held Marley tighter, gritted his teeth at the battering of sensation passing to him from Marley.

He sat down with her on his lap and stared ahead. Like the still-sleeping dog, he waited. Gray waited because he felt he must. At least Marley kept breathing faintly, but she was limp. He was afraid, but not for himself. He wanted to know more about whatever was happening around him.

The rustle continued.

His attention rose to the ceiling above the house. The colors there glowed, green, blue, pink.

They throbbed and he heard the sounds take shape again.

“She will live or she will die. She is uniquely gifted. You must only wait and be glad for your own emergence. Be ready to seize your own talents.”

This time the words definitely came from the ethereal being.

M
arley’s flesh quivered.

She had closed her eyes, but now she opened them and barely held back a scream. Hurtling through spaces too fast to grasp any one image, light and texture changed as she passed.

Vibrations buffeted her.

She spun around and around, then rotated head over heels.

Through an empty, dark-paneled room in an instant.

Into a pale chamber echoing with the Ushers’ voices.
We had to take you. We could not wait. You have failed each time. They need your help
.

“What do you want me to do? Where are Liza and Amber?” Each word felt thrust back into her throat where it faded away.

A corridor grew narrower as she shot toward an open door. Then she burst through.

Sunlight shone on a woman’s face, a woman with dark hair—and a blindfold. Marley could tell it was Liza Soaper.

Marley started to call out to her. Too late. In a crushing collision, she passed inside Liza’s seated body. This time there was no doubt what had happened. Marley was in a tight, clamoring place where she stared out at blackness, then down, past a narrow gap, at a stone floor. She looked left as far as she could, then right. Nearby was a wooden fur
niture leg. A table leg? Baseboards beneath cabinets. A white enamel door.

Marley was seeing through Liza’s eyes, out of a small opening at the bottom of the blindfold.

She must find out where this was. Until she did she couldn’t change anything.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

Startled by the loud voice, its vibration, Marley blinked. Liza had spoken.

“You were getting above yourself,” a man said in an unremarkable voice. “You’re very sexy, but you know that.”

Marley felt fear emanating from Liza.

“Please let me go.”

The man laughed. “So you can turn me in to the police? Now, Liza, you know better than that.”

“I thought I was coming here to talk about my career,” Liza said. “I haven’t been here long enough to be missed yet. If I go now I’ll be quiet and no one will ever know a thing about this.”

The man sniggered. “You’ll get out of here how and when I decide. But you’re here to talk about your career. You’ve hit that glass ceiling, baby. Time to get out of the way and make room for people with more talent.”

Marley felt Liza’s confusion. And she had her own questions that didn’t produce sensible answers. If Liza had only been missing a short time like she’d just said, then…

Time and events had changed.

Panic set in. Marley understood. For some reason she had gone back in time to the beginning of all this, when Liza first disappeared. This had happened just after her abduction.

Liza jerked to her feet. She struggled. “Get your hands off me. Don’t touch me like that.”

Helpless, Marley tossed with Liza’s emotions. The sliver of vision beneath the blindfold moved, twisted. Liza scuffed forward. Still the floor was white, but Marley watched the tiles
pass until Liza stopped again and a door opened. They moved into a room where brown paper packages were tied shut with string and pressed tightly together on a bottom shelf.

Another door opened and while Liza gave muffled shrieks, Marley fought against closing her eyes while a steep wooden staircase tumbled away beneath them.

“I’m good, y’know,” the man almost purred. “No woman ever complained about being with me. They all want more when I’m finished. You’re lucky.”

Liza’s scream pounded Marley’s brain. She wanted to scream herself, to find a way to drag Liza away.

Very little light showed now. Liza was on her back, writhing from side to side, trying to escape.

“You’ll only hurt yourself,” the man said, intense excitement in his voice. “But struggle. I like it when they fight me.”

Marley heard Liza cry out and tried to shut out the noise.

A thud, followed by more and increasingly hard and rapid impacts made Marley’s mind feel dull. She was helpless and trapped inside the mind of a desperate woman.

As precipitously as her joining with Liza had begun, it ceased.

Revolving slowly, moving away from a scene she couldn’t see clearly and didn’t want to see at all, she felt herself begin to swim. There was the funnel, its opening facing her. She was so tired. Even lifting her arms was too much.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,”
came the Ushers’ cries.
“She went the wrong way.”

She couldn’t concentrate on what they might mean.

“She wasn’t supposed to go back.”

Marley moved weakly, like an exhausted swimmer treading water.

“We must get her to the right place or it will be too late. She can’t stay much longer.”

A sound like a tornado, a freight-train roar, buffeted Marley. She felt consciousness slip.

Once more she spun and projected forward at a pace that shook her through and through. She looked, but couldn’t see anything but darkness. The sound turned into a screech like brakes fighting to take hold.

She landed on a hard floor against something hard. She touched it, but pipes and other pieces of metal were all she felt.

A wheel. Marley ran her hand over the tire and over a frame to a seat. A bicycle in a rack. Small items pressed into the underside of her thigh. She pulled out hard things; most she couldn’t identify, but there was a little pair of scissors, a round piece of rubber, a lipstick, a key.

Through utter darkness came a familiar sight, two glowing scarlet eyes with the quality of fire. She kept absolutely still.

Coughing. The thing coughed and wheezed to catch its breath.

Marley lost sight of the eyes as it must have turned away.

A breeze filled with a foul stench passed across her face.

Then the eyes were over her, burning down. This thing was aware of her presence, but she didn’t feel it had power over her. Closer it moved and made a slashing downward motion with those eyes. She threw up a hand and moaned inwardly. Searing heat jabbed her palm and dragged its way for several inches. She heard the sleeve of her T-shirt tear.

The coughing began again and the eyes were obscured.

Seconds later a door opened and an elongated neon sign on a nearby building flashed from top to bottom. A picture of an animal, or a bird. Marley wasn’t sure. Turquoise and yellow reflections slipped into the place where she was, across a dirty floor. An empty place, but for a figure crumpled in a dark heap.

Marley tried to reach the person, only to see him or her dragged over the floor.

The door closed again.

From outside came a low rumble, an engine turning over. Then the crunch of wheels on gravel.

“Now!”
the Ushers gibbered with excitement.
“Go now before it’s too late.”

Marley saw the funnel again and reached for it—but unconsciousness claimed her.

G
ray felt Marley move, or he felt something move inside her. “Marley?” He shook her. “Open your eyes. Look at me.”

The electrical force that bound them whenever they touched had faded to almost nothing since he’d felt her leave him, but it was back. Not as strong, it was true, but stronger than it had been.

She stirred and made a faint sound.

He struggled with his automatic instinct to call for help, but he had heard the warnings. Under normal circumstances, he would have attempted to bring Marley around, but there was nothing normal about any of this.

There was nothing normal about his hearing voices rising out of patterns deep inside a rustling sound.

Or seeing a ghostly form assemble to speak to him.

“Marley?” He put his cheek near her mouth and nose and smiled when her breath lightly touched his skin.

Winnie lay on his feet and from her sleeping weight, she ought to be a much bigger dog.

What had happened to him? In a short space of time he had gone from worrying about not being able to find two women he had interviewed, to being embroiled in a murder case, discovering he had paranormal powers and getting involved with a woman he couldn’t stay away from even though her touch all but hurt him.

Her eyelids opened a fraction.

“Marley?” He didn’t want to stay away from her. He was addicted to searing encounters with her, dammit. “Marley, honey?”

She blinked, then seemed to drift back into sleep.

Paranormal powers?
Stable, feet-on-the-ground men like him didn’t abruptly start thinking they were witches or whatever. Warlocks? Psychics? He was green when it came to all things you couldn’t see, touch, smell, possibly hear and always identify. This woman had played with his mind.

He had heard those whispering, implacable voices ordering him around. Heard them and done exactly what they told him to do.

They put people who heard voices in padded rooms.

Maybe not that exactly, not anymore, but there were medications and nasty hospitals, that much he knew.

“What are you doing?”

Marley’s question disoriented him. He stared down into her very green eyes.

She crossed her arms, if lethargically and in slow motion. “I asked you a question.” One forefinger rose to point directly into his face. “Where do you get off manhandling me?”

A lesser man would remind her that she didn’t seem to be trying to get away from him.

“How do you feel?” he asked her.

She took a long breath through her nose. “How would you feel? I’m tired. I’ve worked hard.”

The dog rolled off his feet and stood up. Tottering, she sniffed the air and yawned.

“What do you mean by, you worked hard? Where did you go?”

“’Scuse me,” Marley said and yawned wider than her dog. “I gotta get something.”

“Tell me what you want. I’ll get it for you.”

“I’m not an invalid.” But even when he helped her to her
feet and stood up himself, she gave him a blank look and sat down again, hard. “Just tired,” she said.

She looked past him toward her big cupboard and attempted to get up again. “Anything chocolate,” she said. “In the cupboard.”

The bag of broken chocolate pieces was just inside. He took out a piece and handed it to her. Chewing it rapidly, she reached for the bag as she demolished what she had.

A thump turned him around. Winnie was in possession of her Great Dane bone and chomped on it with gusto, her teeth sliding from time to time with a sound that made him wince.

“I think Winnie has some sort of experience when you leave her like that. She sleeps, or passes out. It’s not normal.”

“Of course it’s normal. Dogs are closer to the other world. Winnie’s in touch with these things. She’s trying to guard me.”

Marley pulled the candy bag from his fingers and kept munching. “Where are your coffee beans?” she mumbled.

“That dollhouse had something to do with you leaving or traveling out of your body or whatever you call it,” he said.

Her eyes turned up toward him. A secretiveness veiled that look. She might be stuffing sweets, but she was too thin and pale.

“Now what?” he said.

Marley’s hands stilled in her lap, collapsing the crackling bag in her fingers.

“I saw colors on the ceiling over your workbench,” he told her, then wished he hadn’t. “Probably some sort of trick of the light.” Wishful thinking. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the ghost.

There couldn’t have been a ghost. There were no ghosts. “Those colors,” he muttered. “Trick of the light.”

“No,” she said quietly. Her engrossed study whetted his appetite for some enlightenment.

“Why ‘no’?” he said. “What else could it have been?”

“You mentioned it, I didn’t. Very few people would see
those colors. You’re a latent sensitive and you’re just awakening.”

Maybe he didn’t want to be a sensitive of any kind. “Was what I saw a signal of some kind?”

“They were part of a summons to me. Calling me to enter…to follow instructions. My help…was needed…is needed.”

She blanched totally. Not a speck of pink showed in her cheeks and her mouth was the same color as the rest of her skin. Her hair was shockingly red against the pallor.

Marley erupted to her feet.

She walked into his arms and clutched his shoulders. The spark in her eyes let him know they shared an intense awareness. Her mouth worked and she looked away.

“Tell me,” he said and slid a hand behind her neck. “You’re wiped out. Let me do what you think you have to do.” So far he hadn’t grilled her about what had happened while she’d been away, but he doubted he could wait much longer.

“Nat,” she said. “We need him now.”

His stomach turned. “Are you seeing something I can’t see?”

“I already did that. The exhaustion saps my strength and my memory, but it’s all coming back. Terrible things have happened. I think I’m too late.”

Gray used his cell phone to call Nat who picked up on the first ring. “Archer,” he snapped.

“I think we’ve got something,” Gray said. “Marley has.” He stopped short of mentioning that she had left her body again.

“Where are you?”

He covered the speaker. “He wants to know where to meet us.”

Her eyes were wild. “Not here. You won’t talk about this shop or this place, will you, Gray?”

“No,” he said without hesitation. “What you share with me won’t go anywhere else. Tell me what to say.”

“Meet us in the Quarter. We’re going to walk, I don’t know where. It’s all I can think of. I don’t think I’m looking for a big place or a popular place. It’s a bar or club, I think. We could get together outside Fat Catz on Bourbon Street and fan out from there to search.”

“Fat Catz on Bourbon,” Gray said into his phone, and listened to Nat’s response. “He wants to know if he can bring officers with him.”

“No,” she said sharply. But then she rubbed her face and thought. “Can they come without looking like a cop convention?”

Nat heard her and said, “No problem. They don’t have to be where I can see them for me to communicate.”

Gray told Marley.

“Okay then. Tell him, I think…Tell him we’ve got to find someone, only I don’t know who it is.”

Gray winced and passed the message along.

“Let’s go,” Marley said. “Now.”

Gray bent to pick up Winnie and took a belt across the nose from her bone. Tears stung his eyes, but he stiffened his chin and led the way from the workroom.

In the shop, immobile as if frozen in the moment when Gray and Marley left him, Pascal Millet sat on the chair Anthony had provided. The trainer, his face expressionless, stood guard at his boss’s shoulder.

The one change was the presence of Willow, who was uncharacteristically quiet although she smiled at Gray.

“We’re going out for a…for a meal.” Marley stumbled over her words. “Be back later.”

She hovered in front of her uncle who studied her with both eyebrows raised. He gave Gray several glances.

Marley shook her head and Pascal frowned at her. “Don’t make me regret the trust I place in you,” he told her.

“You say that a lot these days,” she said.

He glared at Gray. “I’m trusting you, too. Not because I
think I ought to but because—” A puzzled frown replaced the glare. “You should go with her.”

“Shall I take Winnie?” Willow asked. When Marley agreed and thanked her, she approached Gray, who put the dog in her arms.

Willow peered up into his face. She cleared her throat and frowned and the instant before she lowered her eyes, he saw a film of tears.

She disconcerted him utterly. This reaction, for the second time, felt more personal than it should. There was no reason for Willow to behave as if he upset her.

“Bless you, sis,” Marley said, squeezing Willow’s shoulders. “If it gets late I’ll leave her with you tonight.”

“Leave her with me anyway. She keeps me company.”

Gray and Marley made their parting remarks and left the shop. They headed directly for Bourbon Street.

“Can you tell me anything?” Gray said. “You’re worried, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Scared sick would be closer. Something weird happened.”

He wondered how weird something would have to be for Marley to call it that.

“I saw Liza.” She paused, squeezing her eyes shut. “It was so horrible, and it wasn’t now, it was right after she went missing. I went back in time. That’s never happened before. She…she…she got hurt badly and I couldn’t stop it.”

“But you’ve got an idea where she is now?”

“No. It was what happened after I left Liza that could help. I’ve got to find a place, a building.”

She ran along beside him and slipped her hand into his. He gritted his teeth before he smiled and felt the world lighten. Marley was letting him know she trusted him, and maybe even that she’d like to be closer to him.

Oh, yes, fate smiled on him. He wanted her more with every passing second. He wanted her, out-of-body experi
ences, whispering voices, colored lights, ghosts, weird family, pigheaded dog and all.

What he felt for her was new and irresistible to him.

And that was as deeply as he wanted to look at it right now.

The good-time seekers were out in force. Tourists sipping daiquiris from white plastic cups laughed and fell against each other. Nearby a guy leaned from a balcony swinging rows of bright beads over the heads below. He spied a buxom wench and sent a, “Hey gorgeous, want some bling?” in her direction.

The woman raised her cup to him and he jiggled the beads. He winked at her and made motions as if he had something on his chest that needed drawing attention to.

Seconds of laughter later the man got what he wanted when the object of his “affections” handed off her daiquiri and hauled her thin white tank top above her breasts. She added a little shimmy to set twin peaks wiggling and was rewarded with at least two dollars’ worth of bright, flaking plastic beads.

“Some things never change,” Marley said, unmoved.

Gray laughed. “This is the stuff a lot of them come here for.”

A guy dropped his pants and shrieks went up when part of his prize landed on him like a perfectly thrown fairground hoop ringing its target.

Gray didn’t think he liked Marley snickering at something crude like that. “He could get arrested for that,” he said.

“Double standard,” Marley responded and laughed—a sound he was glad to hear coming from her.

They reached Fat Catz and didn’t even get to slow down. Nat whipped out of the shadows, placed himself between them and linked arms. He thrust all three of them forward.

“Next right,” he said and aimed them into a tiny entry road at the back of some shops. “Now talk to me, Marley.”

She gave a big puff. “A gravel alley. An empty building with a bike rack inside. A bike in the rack. Stuff scattered on the floor. A woman’s stuff, like lipstick.”

When she fell silent, both Gray and Nat shifted from foot to foot, waiting.

“There’s a neon sign you can see through the doors—when they’re open.”

“Huh.” Nat continued to wait.

“It could be an animal or a bird. I wasn’t sure. Not a girl or a martini glass with a swizzle stick or anything like that.”

“I see.”

“The neon was mostly turquoise and yellow and the sign lighted up at the top first then moved down until it was all on. Then it went off for a second. Then it started again.”

“Yes,” Nat said. “Okay. And this was where?”

“If I knew that we wouldn’t need you,” Marley said, her voice growing higher. “You get paid to solve these things. All those people you’ve got will have some ideas about where that sign is and they’ll solve it. They’ll find the place.”

“From a gravel alley, an empty building with a bike rack inside, and a flashing neon sign that could be an animal or a bird? You want to make a guess about how many neon signs there are in the Quarter?”

“Forget it,” she said and spun away from them. “I’ll do it myself.”

Gray had her elbow in his grasp before she went five feet. “We’ll do it together and Nat will help. Be reasonable. It’s going to take just the right little memory jog to give us a real lead.”

“I’m not playing silly games with people who sneer at me.” She shot a look at Nat. “If you’re doing so well on your own, why do you need me anyway? You don’t believe anything I tell you.”

Gray thought Nat looked like a man in the company of a woman who puzzled him. But then, he was.

“Okay, everybody, calm down,” Nat said. “I need to put out some information and instructions.”

While they waited, Marley surprised Gray by putting her
arms around his waist and resting her face on his chest. “I’ve got to wake up,” she said in a shaky voice. “I usually have time to get strong again.”

He didn’t answer, just let her talk while he tried not to let her know how his body reacted to the feel of her layered against him. He surrounded her shoulders and bent down to put his chin on top of her head.

“I think it’s too late, but I can’t give up until I’m sure,” Marley said.

“Did you see someone, Marley? Someone else?”

She rubbed his back. “Yes.”

“Do you know who it is?”