Serafina and the Virtual Man (10 page)

He remembered a lot now, though. And he knew who the body was. More to the point, JK would know too, and before long she’d probably know who killed him. He rather thought that would hurt her.

JK of the mixed messages. She’d liked him; she’d had fun playing the game with him. But he’d read easily enough that whatever attraction sizzled between them, she was untouchable. Fair enough. They were in a VR game, and Adam didn’t exist in any other form. But she did things to his unreal body—why had that part of the program worked quite so bleeding well?—and he had this insane urge to protect her, however tough and mouthy she was. He liked her. And fuck, yes, he’d liked kissing her. So soft and yielding, with passion simmering up below the surface and about to explode… He wanted that. He wanted it a lot.

He’d spent too long in the bat cave before he died. Too long being nerdy and celibate.

He was glad she’d told him the body wasn’t his. He’d been pretty sure his sentience, or whatever this was, would fade from the program with the discovery of his body. Wasn’t that how these things worked? The spirit needed to make things right, see justice done. Or something. He didn’t know, but he could see she believed it, and her best friend and employer was a psychic.

Perhaps it would have been best if he had just vanished into whatever nothing or afterlife was waiting for him, but he was reluctant to leave her just yet and was ridiculously pleased that she obviously felt the same. That was what held him back. Why he hadn’t answered her last night.

Because he’d always sensed emotional damage in her, and he’d suddenly realised he was adding to it. Genesis Adam, supergenius, just not always quick on the uptake. She’d even removed the tape from her webcam again, and he’d just sat back and looked at her.

And fantasised a little. Well, a lot.

Even made-up to lose a lot of the expression that made her so beautiful to him, she was stunning. She had a body to die for—if you weren’t already dead—and he longed to bury himself in it, right up to his balls, and give her the best sex of her life.

He suspected men always fantasised about giving women the best sex of their lives. He wondered how many actually succeeded. Of those, it seemed unlikely that many managed it after death.

Why wasn’t she at her computer? She’d left it on, and he could see through the webcam that she was in her office. He could hear voices, and when he upped the volume, he heard JK and Sera talking about the body with a man who seemed to be a policeman.

Shit, that was quick. And JK sounded weird. No wonder…

“Your dad’s coming this way,” Sera shouted suddenly. “Get out through the flat.”

What? Elegant, tough, don’t-mess-with-me JK still hid from her parents? Amused, searching for distraction, he listened in, heard a door slamming.

“What do you want?” Sera’s voice asked, with enough contempt to ice the blood. Adam was surprised. Sera radiated tough and mouthy, much in the same way that JK did, but Adam had grown up in a similar environment if a different city, and he’d never recognised any malice or reasonless disrespect in either of them. Until now.

“Jilly isn’t here,” Sera said shortly. “Elspeth, would you please go over the road for some milk?”

“No,” said the middle-aged lady uncompromisingly.

Uh-oh
.

But everyone seemed to ignore the insubordination. “She works for you, doesn’t she?” JK’s dad retorted.

“None of your fucking business,” Sera said.

The webcam suddenly moved, as if Sera had knocked the laptop with her coat or her arm, and Adam could make out most of two people: the slim, feminine figure of Sera and a dumpier man in grubby trousers and an expensive brand-name rain jacket.

The man snarled, “You were always a foul-mouthed wee—”

“But at least it’s only my mouth that’s foul. You don’t scare me,
Mister
Kerr.” She slurred the word mister in a deliberately insulting manner. “What’s more, you can’t scare Jilly anymore either. If you were to go near her, she’d break your arm and probably your face. If she got to you first. Me, I’d just mash your obscene knackers.”

The man had gone very still. Adam could imagine his mouth falling open in shock. Adam knew how he felt. Bile rose through him with reluctant, terrible understanding.
Oh fuck, surely not…

“Did you imagine I didn’t know?” Sera was all but whispering. What’s more, it was she who’d stepped closer, crowding her friend’s father. “Do you really think the world’s full of women like your poor wife who can’t live with you or her own silence without a bottle of vodka in every teapot? Stuff that. Let me make it plain. If I ever see you again, if Jilly ever sees you again—hell, if you so much as leave a message on her phone, I’ll find you. And I’ll make sure your so-called friends—inside and outside of prison—know exactly why.”

The man swallowed audibly. Adam felt sick to his stomach.

JK’s dad spoke in a strangled voice. “I’d never hurt Jillian.”

“Not now. She’s too old for you. Plus, she can fight back, and trust me, she still might if she gets a whiff of you abusing anyone else. Even if you
think
about it, you’ll go to jail for what you did to Jilly. Now, get out.”

He got out. Adam was vaguely aware of it, as he was of Sera saying apologetically, “Had that on my mind for a long time.”

“I could tell,” the older woman said faintly.

“Not a word to Jilly,” Sera warned.

“Poor little Jilly…”

Poor little Jilly indeed. Adam wanted to take her in his arms and soothe away the nightmare, make her forget. He wanted to smash her father’s face in, destroy the monster who’d so hurt a child, his own child.

A man, it seemed, could do worse things than abandon his kid.

Shoving back his chair, he leapt to his feet and paced around the large room, kicking and punching the walls, because, after all, no one could hear him. It made his knuckles bleed, but he didn’t care.

Online friends were a large part of JK’s life. He knew that. What was he except a form of online friend? Where was the harm in that? If she needed him, if she just liked hanging out with him, he should be there, for as long as he was allowed to be. She was strong enough to have survived childhood abuse by the person who should have protected her most, so yes, she was more than strong enough to survive a kiss with the virtual Genesis Adams.

Smiling with rueful self-mockery, Adam flung himself back into his chair and typed.

Exodus: Where do you think I am? A man has to sleep after beating up the Nazis.

Chapter Ten

Jilly was damned if she’d let her father interfere with her morning’s plans. She just hoped Sera didn’t break any of his bones, because the bag of shite was quite capable of pressing charges. Of course, they both knew how to talk him out of that one, but Jilly really didn’t want to waste her time on it.

Finding a couple of pounds in the pocket of Sera’s coat, she caught a bus up to the Scotsman Hotel, and since the receptionist there smiled so brightly at her, she asked for Roxy. The receptionist looked slightly flummoxed.

“Do you have an appointment with Miss May?” she asked at last.

“No, but she’ll be glad to see me,” Jilly lied. Roxy was here incognito. No one was meant to be aware of her presence. Therefore, the receptionist would reason, hopefully, that Jilly must be Roxy’s friend to be in the know.

“One moment,” the receptionist said and bustled over to the back office.

Oh well, reception had only ever been a courtesy. Jilly already knew the room number. She turned smartly and skipped off up the stairs.

Converted from the old Scotsman newspaper office, the hotel was not an easy layout to grasp, but it didn’t take Jilly long to track down the right room. She knocked briskly and hoped her quarry had the decency to be in.

She had. Roxy opened the door with a flourish, a glass in her other hand.

“Hello,” said Jilly, brushing past her. “Remember me?”

“Sure,” Roxy said after a pregnant moment. “Won’t you come in?”

“Sorry,” Jilly said without much sincerity. “I skipped past reception; don’t want the staff to come upon me skulking outside your room.”

Roxy let the door go, and it slid to an expensively silent close. “I can understand that. Er—why were you skulking outside my room?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Roxy frowned. “How did you know I was here? Did Dale and Petra tell you?”

Jilly opened her mouth to lie, then changed her mind and sat down on the opulent sofa. “No. I hacked the hotel register.”

To her surprise, Roxy’s lips twitched. “Wow. You really did want to talk to me. What about?”

Jilly took a deep breath but held the other woman’s gaze. “Genesis Adam.”

“Are you a journalist?”

“No. I work for a psychic who’s trying to exorcise a poltergeist from the Ewans’ house.”

“Shit,” Roxy said, turning away toward the open-bar cupboard. “I’m going to need another drink for this. Want one?”

Jilly never drank during the day. Not with her mother’s example. Or Elspeth’s, although the receptionist had been good as gold about the demon drink recently. But right now, she felt she needed one, and besides, people talked more with a drinking companion.

“Go on, then,” she said and watched Roxy slosh whisky into two glasses.

“
Salute
,” Roxy said, passing one glass to Jilly and sitting down beside her.

“You’re Italian?” Jilly asked.

“Half Italian, half Irish. Suppose I picked the wrong half to toast in whisky.” She raised the glass to her lips and regarded Jilly over the top while she drank. She lowered the glass. “I probably won’t tell you anything, but what do you want to know and why?”

Jilly liked her. Which gave her a nasty pain somewhere in the pit of her stomach. She could imagine Adam with this woman. They’d have made a striking and eccentric couple.

Jilly swirled the amber liquid around the glass, watching the colours change in the light. “I don’t know if you believe in this stuff or not, but we think the Ewans’ poltergeist is somehow mixed up with Adam. I want to know how as well as why.”

“Bizarre,” Roxy murmured, still gazing at her.

Jilly took a sip of the whisky—smooth and smoky on her tongue, burning its way down her throat. Then, because she had to start somewhere, she blurted, “When did you last see Adam?”

“Nearly a year ago. March. When he dumped me.”

Jilly’s mouth fell open. “
He
dumped
you
?”

Roxy smiled lopsidedly. “Thank you for being so surprised.”

Jilly flushed and tried to pull herself together. Why did the idea make her so happy? It wasn’t as if it made Jilly or even Adam himself any different. “Can I ask why you split up?”

Roxy hesitated, sipped her whisky, then: “He was right,” she said abruptly. “I loved him to bits, and he was fond of me, but we weren’t going anywhere. We had nothing together that was more important than what we did apart, if you see what I mean. I was touring all the time, and he’d go off into development mode for weeks at a time so he might as well have been touring too.” Her lips twisted. “The tour times didn’t necessarily coincide.”

“So…you grew apart,” Jilly said slowly. No big bust-up, no falling out over drink and drugs. “Did you live with him?”

“God, no. Adam was impossible to live with. Bloody good fun, though.” She blinked rapidly and took another sip of whisky.

“Did you ever do drugs with him?”

Roxy regarded her quizzically. “Are you sure you’re not a journalist? Are you recording this?”

“No and no,” Jilly said, taking off her coat and setting her phone on the low table in front of the sofa by way of proof. “So, did you?”

“Once or twice, but he never took anything stronger than cannabis. We got drunk together more often, but even that was a rarity. Adam didn’t like to cloud his mind. He liked it sharp.” She smiled faintly. “Some people don’t need narcotics to boost their imagination. He had it already. In spades.” Her eyes came back into focus, large and miserable. “Which is why it’s so awful he sank into that trap in the end.”

“Were you in touch with him at all after March?”

“E-mailed a few times at first. But he was insanely busy on his new project, and I was working on the new album and then the American tour… I’ve wondered since then if I should have stayed. You see, it was after I arranged the American tour that he decided we should split up as a couple and just be friends. Maybe he needed someone to be there, and I couldn’t see that…”

Jilly’s throat closed up. After a moment, she managed to say, “Did he ever give you that impression?”

“That he needed me or anyone else? No. He didn’t even need Dale. Anyone could have run the business, made a success out of the games Adam came up with. But he never wavered from Dale.”

“Then they were close?”

“Yes, in the old days. Before Petra.”

“He didn’t like Petra?”

Roxy shrugged. “He liked her, all right. More than I did, to be honest. And no, not just because she’s easy on the male eye. Adam always looked beneath the surface and usually found something pleasant the rest of us were too lazy to look for. In everyone, I mean, not just women who fancied him.”

Jilly felt her eyes widening again. Perhaps it was the whisky, but she no longer cared. “Petra fancied him?”

“Well, Dale’s all right, you know. Nice guy, but put him beside Adam and he just doesn’t shine.” She curled her lip. “I’m biased, of course.”

“Did she go out with Adam? Before she married Dale?”

“No, and they didn’t have an affair either, to my knowledge. Doesn’t mean she didn’t look.”

I’d have looked too, Jilly thought wistfully. But he’d never have seen her, not if there was anyone else.

Jilly set her glass on the table. “Did he ever talk to you about Australia? About emigrating?”

“Never.”

“Was he ever…violent?”

Roxy stared at her. “Violent? You mean did he hit me? No, of course he bloody didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Jilly assured her. “I mean, did he get into fights? Was he an aggressive man?”

“No. He’d stand up for himself or a friend, wouldn’t let anyone push him around, but he never went around thumping people. He was pretty good-natured, in fact.”

“Then…you couldn’t imagine him ever…
killing
someone?”

Roxy drew in her breath. “All right, what’s this about?”

“The police think he murdered a hit man called James Killearn. We dug his body up in the Ewans’ garden last night.”

“Whoa.” Roxy flopped back on the sofa. “You’re making this up.”

“I wish. Did you ever meet James Killearn?”

“Not to my knowledge. What did he look like?”

“I have no idea. He’d been in the soil for five months when we met.”

“Fuck,” said Roxy, “you’re really
not
making this up, are you?”

“No. Are there any circumstances you can think of that might have caused Adam to kill someone?”

Roxy actually thought about it, tried to drink from her empty glass, and thought some more. “Maybe if this guy was trying to kill
him
or whoever he was with. He’d definitely have weighed in to stop it. But I can’t imagine him deliberately killing anyone.”

But then Roxy couldn’t imagine him taking drugs or getting drunk on a regular basis either.

“When did you last hear from him?” Jilly asked.

“July, I think. Maybe early August. Why?”

“How did he seem?”

“Busy. Excited.”

“Different?”

She frowned. “Not really, no. Just…Adam.”

They’d been lovers for years off and on, according to Dale. Wouldn’t Roxy have noticed his rapid descent into addiction? Even by e-mail? Or had he deliberately hidden that from her, in shame?

Jilly lifted her glass again. “Did you know there were already rumours circulating that he was spiralling downhill into drink and drugs? That he checked into a rehab clinic?”

Roxy shook her head. “No,” she said, low. “I was in America. Someone from home said something once. I assumed either she was being catty or it was the British gutter press at it again. Never thought about it at all until I heard he was dead.”

“Were you surprised when he moved to Australia?”

“I was surprised to
hear
about it. I didn’t know he’d done it… You get so wrapped up, you know?” She raised her eyes to Jilly. “I didn’t even know he’d sold out to Dale. That’s the one that really knocked me flat. Why the hell did he do that? Dale couldn’t develop his new project, not without Adam.”

“I think Adam had all but finished developing it. Dale only has to sell it.”

“Easy-peasy,” Roxy murmured. “And if it’s everything Adam said it was, Dale can retire forever.”

Jilly nodded slowly. “Is that what Dale wants?”

Roxy shrugged. “They’re both pretty high maintenance. Petra likes yachts off the Riviera and homes all over Europe and America. Dale likes to be lavish on his entertainment. Or did before I went away. I guess Adam’s death hit him hard. Anyway, the bottom line is, Genesis does very well and made them both rich, but Dale and Petra live well beyond their means. Even that house”—Roxy waved one arm in a generally southern direction—”cost an arm and a leg.”

“You must know the Ewans pretty well too.”

Roxy eyed her with suspicion. “Ask.”

Jilly’s lip twitched. “Could you imagine
Dal
e killing anyone? Killearn for example?”

Roxy opened her mouth, then paused and smiled. “No,” she said. “I couldn’t.” She stood up. “Another drink?”

“No, thanks. I have to go.” Jilly grabbed up her phone and her coat. “Thanks for being so helpful.”

“Not sure how
any
of that helps with your poltergeist.”

“Neither am I,” Jilly said ruefully. “But I’ll let you know, if you like.”

“Yeah. Do that.”

Jilly paused at the door, twisting the handle. “Roxy?”

The singer looked over from the drinks cabinet.

“Don’t sit drinking in your hotel room at eleven o’clock in the morning,” Jilly said in a rush. “You’re not that sad.”

“Fucking am,” Roxy whispered. She tried to smile.

“Fucking aren’t,” Jilly said. “So don’t dull the brilliance. He loved your music. It’s all over his house. Make some more.”

****

By the time Jilly sat on the bus heading back to Serafina’s, the question was nagging at her.
Why
was Roxy’s music all over his house? Why had he not taken her CDs and his other music with him to Australia? Why had he left her portrait when it had meant enough to keep it on his wall after they’d split up? A complete break? Or hadn’t he cared for anything anymore?

Or had Jilly been right last night when she’d imagined that Sera had found Adam’s grave, when the possibility had struck her that he’d never gone to Australia at all?

****

“Sera back yet?” Jilly asked, hanging the borrowed coat on the stand.

Jack, who’d reclaimed his computer but was busily writing by hand, merely shook his head.

“She shouldn’t be long,” Elspeth contributed.

Elspeth had been in the office when she’d run out. Jilly could pretend that had never happened. Or she could be up-front. She looked Elspeth in the eye. “Did she get rid of my dad?”

“Utterly,” Elspeth said, her gaze steady.

“Good,” Jilly said defiantly.

“I think so,” Elspeth agreed.

Jilly let her mouth relax into smile, and Elspeth gave her a small one in return. Jilly felt an overwhelming rush of gratitude, of sheer emotion, because it seemed as if her allies had just doubled. And because she realised that Elspeth, apparently so prim and conservative —if you ignored the vodka—was an ally worth having.

She turned hastily to her desk and woke the laptop, which was still open on her desk where she’d left it.

Exodus: Where do you think I am? A man has to sleep after beating up the Nazis.

Her heart seemed to explode. He was back.

****

“But that isn’t possible,” Sera argued. She glanced around Elspeth, Jilly, Jack, and Blair, all sitting, lounging, slouching, and sprawling around the large table in her office. “Is it?”

“That I can talk to the spirit of Genesis Adam in a VR game? No,” Jilly agreed. For some reason, her heart sank at the disbelief of her friend. She so needed this to be real, for reasons she didn’t even want to think about. “But it happens all the same.”

Unexpectedly, Jack said, “I don’t see why it should be more impossible than any of the other crap around here. Only three months ago, Sera, you told me there were no such things as vampires, although you’d been talking to dead people all your life. And now…” He waved one expressive hand at Blair, who stood up to give an ironic bow before sprawling back into the chair that looked far too small for him. He was wearing biker’s leathers, which was how he got around in the hours of daylight, and even Jilly had to admit he looked good in them: big and sexy and dangerous.