Out of Body (30 page)

G
ray watched Nat follow Blades back across the street. Agitation pounded at his nerves. He glanced around, expecting to find onlookers staring at him.

“Hey, Gray,” Nat called to him. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Nah. I think I’ll go catch up on a few things.”

Nat raised his brows questioningly, then shrugged and carried on toward the club.

Gray hovered, thinking his way through his next steps and trying to order the sensations battering at his brain. He tried to quiet down. Marley had communicated with him before. True, they had been in the same place, but he didn’t know if she might be able to reach him from just about anywhere by now. He had felt their connection getting stronger.

Royal Street was the only place he could go. He was panicking for no reason. She was the kind of woman who got immersed in her work and probably turned her phone off.

She was there.

“Remember me, Gray?” Sykes Millet seemed to appear from nowhere, just to loom up in front of Gray. “We met here once before and—”

“I remember you. Have you seen Marley recently?”

The man’s face went still, except for his intensely blue eyes. They changed shades and expressions, and Gray didn’t like any of what he saw there. Sykes was unsettled.

“Just answer a few questions for me,” Sykes said. “No, no, don’t try to interrupt. We don’t have time.”

Gray scrubbed at his forehead. “Ask.”

“Do you know anything about a book? I think it’s called
The Book of Way.
That doesn’t have to be the actual title but I think it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The guy turned heads. You couldn’t avoid looking at him, but apart from the good looks even Gray could appreciate there was some undefinable quality about him.

“Why are you asking me?” Gray said.

Sykes didn’t flinch or blink. He gave Gray a long dark blue stare, an unnerving stare. “I think you’re mentioned in the book.”

“What book?”

Sykes made an impatient sound. “Just call it the book of the Millets’ lives. Our history—and to some degree, our future. At least, that’s what I think it is. I haven’t actually…I’ve only seen it, not touched it.”

“So how do you know what’s in it?”

Sykes took a while to say, “The pages have turned in my mind.”

Gray kept on watching the other man’s face.

“Willow told me to come to you. She’s our sister the skeptic, but I couldn’t find anyone else to ask and she said you know things if you want to share.”

“I don’t know,” Gray said.

They were jostled by passersby trying to get a better look at Caged Birds.

Gray moved nearer to the buildings leaving the sidewalk for the gawkers, and Sykes followed him. “Did Willow say why she thought you should talk to me?”

“I read a page in
The Book of Way
. It tells of a man harmed on the inside where most can’t see. He’s a man sent to slay dragons.”

“Slay dragons?” Gray felt the need to move, fast, only he didn’t know where to go. “If you couldn’t touch the book, how could you read so much?”

“I told you. The pages were turned for me. I saw them in my mind.” Sykes raised his hands and they were curled into fists. “If you understand at all, let go of unbelief and tell me. I have to find the book, but that can wait. It has already waited for centuries. Now I have to find Marley.”

“Dragons,” Gray said softly, hearing Blades’s detached Komodo Dragon announcement. “They kill with their teeth.”

“You do know something,” Sykes said, taking him by the shoulders. “Help me to help her.”

“I can’t. I have to follow where I’m led.” He wasn’t sure where his words came from.

Looking at the sidewalk, Gray seemed to see small sparks fire. A force field closed around him, closed him in with Sykes. “She’s in danger,” he said.

“You are Bonded to her?”

He raised his face and nodded. “Yes.”

“When you—touch—you are energized?”

“If that’s all you can call it, yes.”

Sykes gave a thin smile. “And the marks Willow spoke of? On the inside?”

“They’re there.”

“Do you know the reason for them?” Sykes asked.

“To punish me. To teach me obedience when I was a child. I don’t know anything else except that I must have had powers I was afraid to use afterward and I forced them from my mind. I’ve been trying to touch Marley, to bring her to me, but she doesn’t answer. I’m too new at this to know what I’m doing.”

“You are returning to your true self. Do you believe you are part of a world very few come to know?”

Gray said, “Yes,” surprising himself with his rapid response. “Marley and I have been able to communicate…
without speaking aloud. And I’ve seen things she’s seen. I believe I was meant to be with her.”

“Good.” A pleased smile gave Sykes a piratical air of satisfaction. “Welcome.”

“Thanks.” It seemed the only thing to say.

“Pascal, my uncle, asked me to find her, but she’s being closed off from me,” Sykes said. “That should be impossible…unless she’s a party to it.”

“You mean she could be choosing to stop us from getting to her.”

Sykes nodded slowly.

“Is it possible for someone else to shut her away?” Gray asked.

Sykes jaw clenched. “Anything is possible.”

“The mentor would know,” Gray said quietly.

Gasping, Sykes took a step backward. “What do you know about the Mentor?”

Gray hoped he hadn’t done the wrong thing in mentioning the shadowy man. “I have seen him. He has spoken to me.”

“Impossible. We don’t even know if he exists.”

“He exists. Not the way we do, but he’s here when he wants to be.”

Excitement raised Sykes’s color. “You were sent to Marley,” he said.

“Should I try to ask the Mentor for help?”

“It’s our way to deal with our own problems. We have never asked for help.”

“But he came to me.” He thought better of saying he found the Millets hardheaded.

“Perhaps he’ll come to you again,” Sykes said, and Gray didn’t miss the hopeful note. “He must have made a decision he struggled with. You are Bonded to Marley, but you are not a Millet. He showed himself to you for his own special reasons.”

“To help me help Marley,” Gray said. “He bent his own rules.”

Sykes gave the ghost of a smile.

“You were at Royal Street?” Gray asked.

“No.”

“Then we start there.”

“Uncle Pascal said she isn’t there.”

“I think she is or that’s where we’ll find something to help us,” Gray said. “I know she was going. I drove her there. That’s where I’ll start looking for her.”

“Let’s go, then,” Sykes said and Gray was glad.

By foot was the fastest way to travel while the traffic was so snarled. They ran all the way, dodging and darting, bringing cars to a screeching halt, raising angry shouts from people who got in their path.

The trip took longer than Gray wanted it to, but anything would have been too long. Finally he turned onto Royal Street and sprinted until a hot-dog cart stopped him.

Sykes, with Gray thumping into him in the process, all but fell through the door at J. Claude Millet Antiques.

They were met by a wildly barking Winnie, who jumped up and down on the ugly gold fainting couch.

“Shh,” Willow said. She and Pascal faced the two newcomers as if they’d been waiting for them.

“Anything?” Pascal said to Sykes.

“Willow was right about him,” Sykes said, hooking a thumb in Gray’s direction. “There’s a Bonding.”

Pascal Millet was a muscular, striking man who shaved his head and looked at the world with yet another pair of those extraordinary green Millet eyes. He assumed the expression of a watchful father looking over a teenage boy come to take his daughter to the prom.

“I was sure there was,” Pascal said. “I felt it.”

“So did I,” Willow said, and when they looked at her she pushed her mouth out in an O. “I mean, I sorta thought…”

“You said what you meant,” Sykes said. “You are in tune just as the rest of us are. About time, too. We all have our jobs to do in this family.”

“Except you,” Willow snapped back. “You think you can do what you like.”

“That’s what you think,” Sykes said. “Enough squabbling, sis, we have to find Marley. Uncle, is my father back in London yet?”

Gray frowned at him, not understanding.

“Yes,” Pascal said. “He went straight back.”

“You and I need to talk,” Sykes said. “And with him. Can we go to your flat?”

Without a word, the two of them took off.

Winnie ran back and forth to the foot of the stairs.

“What is it, girl?” Gray said. A sharp sting crossed his face, caught the corner of his eye and he winced.

Gray kept his back to Willow. Horror choked him. He concentrated and felt drawn to Marley’s workroom.

Winnie squeaked at him. She jumped up and down until Gray approached her. Off she went, up the stairs, looking like a mutant greyhound jumping fences.

“Go with her,” Willow said.

“Make sure your cell phone’s on,” Gray said.

“I won’t need it.”

He didn’t respond. Instead he vaulted, three steps at a time, up the three flights. Already hoping his tested methods would unlock the door, he reached for the deep colors of the leaded glass and grasped the handle.

The door wasn’t even closed.

Gray shot inside and shut the thing behind him, leaned on it, almost afraid to go farther into the room.

Pressure held him, pummeled him. His ear drums hurt so badly he sank to his knees.

Wet. Winnie licking his face with desperate fierceness focused him and he got to his feet. The whispering voices
bombarded him, forcing themselves to find space, one over the other, vying for his attention.

“I can’t understand you,” he said.

The ceiling whirled with a kaleidoscope of colored lights, spun faster and faster. Gray forced himself to keep his eyes down and made his way through Marley’s projects to her bench.

Curls of red lacquer littered the worktop as did pieces that seemed to be broken off the house. He picked up a piece. It was so hot he almost dropped it.

He turned it over on the bench and saw it was the door that had been at one corner. The walls came together as if it had never been there now, except that rather than red, the finish was a dark salmon color, and painted to look rough. Like stucco.

“You have to go.”
This was no whisper. This was a clear voice and Gray saw what he expected, the ethereal image of the one who called himself the Mentor.

“Go where?” he said. “Tell me. Quickly, please.”

“Look at the house. It’s there. She told me it would be.”

“Marley told you?” Gray said.

“No.”
The man sounded impatient.
“The one who gave Marley the house for safekeeping. Belle came to me and said the house holds the key. Now get to work.”

“I can’t do what Marley does.” He touched the roof and raised his hand. “See, nothing happens. I don’t feel anything.”

“Be patient.”

“I can’t.”

“I am Jude,”
the man said.
“They called me Judas because they blamed me for the evil acts of someone I should not have trusted. A woman who caused the family to be shunned and driven from their home. I married that woman.

“They said I proved the Millet curse of the dark-haired ones—that evil befalls the family whenever a male Millet child does not have red hair. I have been patient waiting to
clear my name. You will be patient finding what you want most. Continue with the house. It will give us the answer.”

Gray rubbed his hands together and picked up a little chisel that felt ridiculously flimsy.

“You can’t stop until we have the answer.”

He slid the thinnest end of the blade beneath loose lacquer and peeled it away. More of the pinkish-brown finish appeared.

Abruptly, his face stung.

He had been slapped, hard.

She was him and he was her. One. Bonded.

The pain was hers.

They were hurting Marley.

W
ith her hands tied behind her back and her ankles lashed together, Marley leaned against a wall to keep her balance.

Her cheek hurt and the corner of her left eye felt as if one of Sidney’s nails had cut the skin.

The slap had come without warning. Sidney stood in front of her and brought her face down to Marley’s. “Pretty pattern,” she said, poking at the marks she must have made. “Ugly, freckled white skin.” She tugged Marley’s hair. “Ugly hair.” She pulled until Marley sucked in a breath.

Sidney laughed. “You can cry, if you like.”

How silly she had been to come with Sidney just because she had begged and cajoled. They had sneaked out of the Court of Angels through the alley gate and driven away—who knew where—in Sidney’s BMW.

The room where she’d been taken finally had pretty furniture, old, not as old as most that Marley dealt with, but nice. “You said you needed my help, then you do this. What’s your point?”

Sidney hit the other side of her face and grinned. “You’ve interfered. Now you need to tell me what I have to know. I’ll make points that way—those are the points that matter. I need information to pass along. How did you find out about me?”

Marley frowned. “You were Amber’s singing partner. Amber’s missing. I found out about you that way. When I
saw you at Scully’s that was the first time I saw you. I heard about you that afternoon.”

“Don’t pretend you’re dumb. We know what you’ve found out.”

“Then you don’t need to ask the questions, do you?” Marley said, bracing for another slap.

Sidney put the tip of a high heel on Marley’s sandal-shod foot and applied weight.

Tears welled in Marley’s eyes and she choked with pain. She wrestled with the rope around her wrists, and she listened, longing for the whispers of the Ushers.

At first there had been a few moments when she had been left alone and that music she had heard before played. The music reminded her of the creature, but she still expected to reach help, most especially Gray. But then a sensation like slick fluid washing over her left momentary numbness in its wake. Since then she had been unable even to try to touch another mind. After that, she had not felt or seen anything beyond her immediate surroundings.

Her powers were being contained, but she had no idea how.

Was it this place that restricted her, some element there?

“Eric will be back soon,” Sidney said, smiling. “He’ll persuade you to help us.”

Eric was Sidney’s brother. He had been waiting for them in the black BMW after Sidney had managed to get into the shop and find Marley without being seen. Marley hadn’t noticed Eric in the backseat until he tapped her shoulder. Less striking than Sidney, he was still good-looking and dressed like a successful businessman in a dark silk suit.

Marley hadn’t liked the expression in his eyes. He looked at her with flat dislike, she thought.

Sitting in the front passenger seat, with Sidney driving and Eric behind her, she discovered she had read his feelings about her accurately.

Marley had been helpless to stop him from tying a blind
fold around her eyes. The gun Sidney pointed at her, even without looking at her, made sure she didn’t try any heroics.

They had brought her here before removing that blindfold.

“You’ve made him angry,” Sidney said.

“Eric?” Marley said. “How?”

“You know who I’m talking about and it isn’t Eric. You’ve done something stupid and now we’re in danger. You’ve got to be stopped and he will do it.”

Marley was convinced she must be very careful what she said. The agitation she caused Sidney came from her having something the other woman needed and she could only think it was the red house—yet Sidney had seen it on the workbench and shown no interest.

There could be only one explanation: Sidney had no idea that the miniature was significant.

Carefully, Marley asked, “You wanted us to believe Danny was involved.”

Sidney waved a dismissive hand. “You and Gray will have mentioned that to the police by now. I did what I wanted to do. Suspicion of Danny will divert them when the time comes.”

Spoken as if Sidney was certain Marley wouldn’t be around to interfere.

Marley’s courage wavered, but if she didn’t stay strong, she would be finished. “But you don’t really think Danny has anything to do with anything?”

Sidney laughed. “You made it so easy.” But there were dark marks under her eyes and a tightness about her mouth. Sidney Fournier was very afraid of something.

A thought and an image came to Marley unbidden. Her mind felt clearer. She made herself weigh the wisdom of it before she said, “I want to see the little girl,” Marley said. It was worth a try and she watched Sidney carefully for her reaction.

That came immediately. Sidney’s face blanched and she turned away.

She spun back, the corners of her mouth drawn down. “Who do you know in this house? Who’s telling you things?”

Bingo. Marley pressed on. “I’d like to see Erin, please.”

Sidney’s mouth worked.

“Now,” Marley said.

Sidney rushed at her and pummeled her head and shoulders. “Shut up! Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about. What have you done to make…? You’ve made people angry. I won’t suffer for what you’ve done.”

“Don’t,” Marley said, bowing her head to avoid the blows.

She stumbled sideways and fell, heard the door open as she hit the floor.

“What’s this?” A man’s deep voice asked. “What are you doing, Sidney? Oh, this poor girl, let me help you.”

Marley struggled to raise her head and shoulders. The man had thin, white hair and a lined face, but gave the impression he was not as old as he seemed although he used a cane. The hand he extended was smooth.

He patted her shoulder and looked at Sidney. “Are you mad?” he said. “Is this a friend of yours you’ve brought here to treat like this?”

“I’m sorry,” Sidney mumbled.

“Help me,” he told her. He sank awkwardly to his knees and untied Marley’s hands. “Give them time for the blood to flow back. My, my, what must you think of us?”

While he helped her sit up, Sidney loosened the knots at her ankles. When the rope was removed it left red marks behind to match the ones on Marley’s wrists.

“She asked to see Erin,” Sidney said, sullen.

“How nice,” he said and to Marley, “I am Bolivar Fournier, Sidney’s grandfather. Who are you, young lady?”

“Marley Millet,” she told him without hesitation. Disoriented, she tried to reconcile her treatment at the hands of his granddaughter with this distinguished and charming man.

He looked at her sharply, but with kindness in his eyes.
“Not Antoine Millet’s daughter? Or one of them, should I say?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, evidently delighted, and shook his head. “How is my old friend? I haven’t seen him in many a year.”

“He’s well and living in London.”

“Ah,” Mr. Fournier said as if she had explained a great mystery. “Well, you must see the little girl. You know all about this nastiness here in New Orleans, I suppose?”

Marley swallowed. “The missing singers? Yes.”

“Sidney’s a singer, you know,” Mr. Fournier said. “Pipes is her new partner since, well, her former partner is one of the women who disappeared. A terrible thing. We took in Pipes and her daughter because Pipes didn’t feel safe living alone in the Quarter anymore. We’ve got plenty of room here as you can see, and we can keep the child safe.”

He got to his feet, planted his cane with a sharp rap on wood and helped Marley up with surprising strength. “Marley,” he said. “There is a sickness in New Orleans. So many people are afraid. I would have expected the police to solve the problem by now, but just like the last time, they seem helpless.”

Marley nodded. If she asked to leave now and go home, what would happen? Chances were that the risk of disaster was too high.

Eric slipped into the room and stopped as if he needed a new battery—just inside the door.

“This is Marley Millet,” Mr. Fournier said. “I knew her father. Take her to visit Pipes’s little girl.”

Eric nodded, backing from the room, and Marley followed on feet that tingled.

“You, too,” she heard Mr. Fournier say, and Sidney caught up.

Neither brother nor sister would look at Marley. They walked into a circular, white marble entry hall. As soon as they were alone, Eric and Sidney hovered, looking at each other.

“Hi!”

Marley turned to see Pipes Dupuis running downstairs.

“We’re taking Marley to meet Erin,” Sidney said through lips that barely moved.

“She’s downstairs. I was on my way there.” Pipes’s voice shook. She couldn’t get any paler.

Marley glanced at Eric to find him staring at Pipes with complete absorption. What glowed in his eyes resembled possessiveness. It also spoke to lust—and perhaps frustration.

“Hey,” he said. “Great. We’ll come with you.”

Pipes looked blank. She stood in the impressive hall with its marble busts and looked from Eric to Sidney, as if waiting for instructions.

Eric laughed into the silence and Marley’s stomach turned at the sound.

“We’d best get on,” Eric said, but he smiled at Pipes and touched her face lightly.

Marley’s skin crawled. He was obsessed with the singer.

‘“This way,” Pipes said and sped on behind the base of the other staircase and along a corridor. Marble gave way to dark paneling and still they kept hurrying along.

The nerves in Marley’s spine jumped. She got an impression. She remembered it all because she’d been there before. Then she heard what she’d longed for, the whispers that were beloved now. Nothing she could actually make out, but the familiar excited tumbling of sibilant voices.

She kept moving, but she concentrated hard. Her inner awareness was opening wider by the instant. Deliberately, she brought Gray’s face into focus. They were Bonded. It was to him she should turn now. Together they had the promise of enormous strength.

His scars showed and she felt the impact of a blow. He was hurting and that’s why she could see those hateful marks.

The vision of his face turned toward her so that she looked
directly at him. Slowly the shades of gray turned to color and his brilliant eyes pleaded with her. His mouth moved.

“Gray?”
She tried to reach him. He showed no sign of hearing her and no answer came.

A door lay ahead. Pipes pushed it open and Marley followed into a kitchen with Eric and Sidney.

She shrank back, head light, sweat breaking out on her neck and brow.

“Where is she?” she managed to say. “Erin?”

“You don’t look well, my dear,” Eric said, pulling a chair forward.

Marley slumped onto the seat. She had to, that or perhaps fall. “Where’s Erin?” she mumbled, keeping her gaze on the floor, the white, tiled floor, the bottoms of cabinets, the legs of a table.

“Erin’s playing,” Pipes said, her voice faint.

“In the basement, I expect,” Eric said and gave another barking laugh. “What is it about basements that encourages play? Let’s go and find her.”

Marley heard another door open and looked sideways, her eyes still downcast. Inside a room, like a cupboard, she saw string-tied brown packages piled on the bottom of a stack of shelves.

“Come on,” Eric said. “I’ll help you, Marley.”

The last time she heard him talk in this room, she had been in Liza’s mind. This must be the madman who had terrorized New Orleans.