Sleight of Hand (31 page)

Tullah’s mouth compressed into a thin line at that.

“How can I tell when the Athanate side of me starts winning?” I asked, just to see what she would say.

Mary raised her eyebrows. “The Athanate should tell you in more detail. But from what I know, the urges, what they call the imperatives, start changing your behavior. New Athanate need to be desirable, noticeable. They need to attract humans to become blood servants. At the same time, they become more secretive.” She looked me over.

“So if I start spending a lot of time on my appearance, that’s a bad sign?”

“It’s not just that,” said Mary. “It’s the reveling in it. Watch them and you’ll see. It’s almost funny seeing them in constant conflict with themselves. The half of them that wants to attract and the half that wants to remain unnoticed. Also, it’ll be more obvious at night.”

“Why? Is magic stronger at night?”

“No. It’s just the way people are. Everyone has some kind of connection to the energy, even if it’s just in the hindbrain. In daytime, this works against a single user. A million people in the broad daylight who believe you can’t change into a wolf would make it difficult for a Were in the middle of Denver. But at night, out in the woods, those certainties are weaker.” She smiled.

“So my bracelet works better at night?”

“Not quite that simple. Tullah can talk to you about it sometime.” She got up. “We must go. But one last thing, Amber. Adepts can sense users around them. How to explain it?” She paused and made an expansive gesture with her arms. “Imagine the energy is like a huge trampoline. Every user makes a little dent in the trampoline. When they move, you can feel them through the trampoline. Most users are small, so you barely notice it. But if a powerful user taps the energy, it’s like someone really heavy walking on the trampoline.”

I nodded.

“Well, there are usually a couple of very powerful users in Denver. I’ve always attributed that to whoever runs that Athanate House. But this week there are a hell of a lot more.” She stared at me before finishing quietly. “Be careful. And don’t give up hope.”

I gave them hugs and we went our separate ways.

Chapter 38

I went over to Lisa Macy’s and tried on a dress that was so far outside of my experience, it was unreal. It was a dark green dream of silk. I loved it. Werner came over with a pair of shoes to fit, elegant but with a strong heel. He knew I didn’t do stilettos, and these I could dance in. I felt like Cinderella as I tried everything on and turned in front of the mirror. I had to get some photos from the ball for mom. She would never believe it otherwise.

Lisa hissed and tutted over a couple of details I couldn’t even see, but assured me that everything would be fine. Werner insisted I come much earlier than necessary on Friday.

Jen was still at work when I got back to the house, so I sat down in the study-office and opened the mail.

The first was a letter from the Veterans’ Administration. I wanted to bang my head on the desk, but it looked expensive to repair.

Dear Ms. Farrell
and
whereas no charges
have been brought and they would not
venture an opinion
, I would of course understand their position that payments had to be suspended until the conclusion of the investigation. I tossed it aside.

The second was from Krantz. It said simply that my payments were no longer a matter for investigation, but that I would need to re-apply directly to the VA to claim them again.

I sat and worked through some appropriate names for him, gathered from a variety of places during my days in Ops 4-10. Then I started to laugh. I didn’t want the money. The stupid bastard thought he had won some important point, but all he’d proved was that he didn’t understand the situation at all.

I was still laughing when Jen walked in. “Nice to hear, honey.” She bent down and kissed my cheek in greeting. “And nice to see you back before midnight.”

She settled in the other seat and told me that her meeting with Verdoon had had to be moved up and they’d met earlier today. Matt Bierbach had made complete digital images of his computer drives during the meeting, and was sorting out the contents to pass to me.

“I’m sure he’ll finish quickly,” she said, with a sly smile. “Something about a hot date tonight.”

“No! Not Tullah? They only met yesterday.”

“Honestly, I don’t know honey, but that’s where my bets are. They don’t waste time these days.”

Carmen called us in for dinner. Only half a plate of pasta at lunch, and having the daylights scared out of me a couple of times had made me hungry. That was a good thing, because Carmen had clearly decided we were too skinny and we had what looked like half a lamb between us, cooked Mediterranean style. Wondering whether I would need my new dress taken out an inch made me remember the charity ball.

“Oh, I forgot to say yesterday. A client has paid for me to attend the McIntire-Harriman ball on Friday. You’re still going?”

I could see Jen’s curiosity about the client, but she restrained herself. “Hell, I’m on the organizing committee, honey, so I have to be there from mid-afternoon,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe the hassle this international delegation have caused. I’ll fix the table seating for you, otherwise you’ll be stuck in a corner.”

I made a mental note to make sure Victor’s guards were able to access all areas in the afternoon. The actual ball itself would be safe with the number of convention center security staff on duty, and our guards could come back to pick us up at the end.

We finished the meal with Jen telling me some stories of the way some of the international delegation were behaving, which had us both chuckling. I hoped it wasn’t one of them who would have the message for me.

She poured herself a glass of brandy. I turned down a rum after the wine we’d had with dinner.

She had reports to read, but before she left me, she turned to ask: “On your desk, there’s a plaque. Who’s Tara?”

My stomach tightened, as it did whenever people asked. “My twin sister. She was stillborn.”

Jen stood in the doorway a moment more. “You see her in the reflection.”

“Yes.” No one had ever figured that out before.

“I’m sorry,” Jen said quietly, and went.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

It was dark in the gym. I didn’t need the lights any more.

The test machine had read 0.49 this evening.

I worked through Master Liu’s forms, and my body was quicker and stronger than it had ever been. Instead of effort, there came a sensation of floating. Up above, in the daylight, I struggled against the thought that I was becoming Athanate. Down here, in the dark, the physical sensations overwhelmed the doubts.

Both Diana and Mary had said that there weren’t any monsters I didn’t bring to the party. I took some comfort there, as I did from knowing more about what was happening to me.

But I was still changing.

The nightmares had stopped. Or I had changed my definition of the nightmare. Last month, drinking someone’s blood was a nightmare. Now blood and sex tangled together in misty dreams that shocked me with their erotic thrill.

I half believed I was sleepwalking, but I hadn’t seen any evidence I’d bitten anyone. Yet.

WEDNESDAY

Chapter 39

Morales had taken us up to his office, collecting coffees on the way from a machine. The coffee tasted as bad as it always had, throughout the building. It was strange visiting this level of HQ. Up here, in Morales’ office, we were at the front between the political and policing faces of the Denver PD. The total count for Denver was less than 1,500 officers, and here was where they did the balancing act to work out where their effort was best focused. Remembering that, I resolved to be kinder to Morales today.

When we were seated, Morales opened with a gesture to the colonel. “Thanks for agreeing to come here. Before we get to the main event, I’d like to start with an issue that has a bearing.”

I realized he and the colonel hadn’t worked out their pecking order. I hid a smile. The colonel didn’t really care, but Morales was a good politician as well as a good police officer. He didn’t want to ruin a working relationship, but he wanted to run the meeting.

“Of course,” said the colonel.

Morales stirred some of the papers in front of him and looked up at me. “I got a briefing yesterday from the team I’ve assigned to the Carter case. He’s in the clear and it’s confirmed that ZK were organizing the illegal shipments. I’m starting to wrap up whatever I can reach in Denver, but inevitably the FBI will get involved.” He shifted uncomfortably.

“You need to understand, this meeting is on my calendar as a liaison meeting with the army. Everything today is for our ears only. But when federal bureaus get involved, I will do everything by the book.”

We nodded. We both understood he was in a very tight spot.

“They’ll want to talk to you, Farrell. There’s your initial involvement, which I guess was straightforward, but yesterday, I was told that there’s a contract been put out on you.”

I shrugged. This wasn’t news to me, and I was doing my best to make things difficult for whoever came in to replace Mr. Obvious.

Morales’ smile was humorless. “Not a local contract, Farrell. This has gone out with a tag of a quarter of a million bucks.”

Even the colonel reacted to that. That was sniper rifle level. The kind of money you’d pay for a political assassination.
What the hell?

I tried to laugh it off. “Damn, I’d shoot myself for that much.”

Morales didn’t laugh. “I don’t know who you ticked off, Farrell, but I suspect it may be this man. He was in charge of the smuggling operation.” Morales pushed a grainy photo across. “Frank Hoben. He’s the boss’s son.”

Shit. Onebrow.

“The feds are going to see that sum as an anomaly that they want explained,” he went on. “Coincidentally, a gang war seems to have broken out. ZK foot soldiers are being killed. And your car has been recorded in the vicinity of incidents. They’re going to see connections whether they’re there or not.”

He was doing me a real favor here. I did
not
want the feds talking to me, not ever but most certainly not now. Of course, that wasn’t my car any more, but unless Altau had gotten really cute, it would show as being registered to me at the time of the incidents.

With a sigh, I passed a USB across to him. “This contains an analysis of calls made on cell phones belonging to a couple of ZK foot soldiers and this man,” I tapped the photo of Onebrow, and continued in my most careful police-speak. “I took the phones when the men tried to intimidate a prominent local businessperson. I believe this was to do with ZK acquiring a legitimate business front.”

Morales’ eyes bored into me. I didn’t need to tell him exactly what had happened. I’d had a key person in the ZK hierarchy in my grasp and I’d let him go.
Shit again.

I was going to have to tell Jen I’d screwed up on this, trying to play macho mind games.

A thought diverted me; the attack could have been to prevent damage to an existing ZK legitimate business front. Had I been looking at this the wrong way entirely? Did they secretly own Tucker Beacon? My mind darted off in a third direction—maybe ZK wanted to buy Tucker Beacon. Stopping a rival bidder would make that easier and cheaper.

Morales was looking at me to see if I would share my thoughts, but I didn’t have enough to go on. I wanted to talk this through with Jen first to get her take on it. And find out whether she wanted to keep me on the case after my news about Onebrow.

Morales had put the drive straight into his laptop and checked he could read the files. His eyes widened and he grunted in appreciation as he saw the detail on his screen. “Good. Thanks for this. But now I’m going to ask you to back off. Any more involvement with ZK is going to hamper our efforts, and get the feds on your case.” He indicated the files on his screen. “With this and what we have, we should roll them up quickly anyway.”

I nodded, only a little reluctantly. It made sense for them to take this. If they could wrap it up, I wouldn’t need to worry about an assassin stalking me. The phone records had to be a gold mine for the police, at least on the ZK operational side. My run through them confirmed to me that regardless of how the rest of ZK operated, Onebrow knew what he was doing. His cell had only been used for a restricted number of calls. My impression was that this was his ZK cell phone. He would call Daddy on another phone. The cut off in his call history also showed he’d cleared the memory recently. The others hadn’t been so careful.

“You have other news, I understand,” Morales said.

“Denver’s more complicated than we thought,” I said with a tight smile for the understatement. “When we started this a year ago, we thought we knew that there must be a small vampire community, largely keeping to itself. For the army, the interest is security and military. For the police, crime. For me,” I stopped. What had I wanted? It all seemed a long time ago. “I guess, it’s now knowledge about what’s happening to me.”

The colonel registered that with a nod.

“Not only is the vampire community more complicated than we thought, but there are other paranormals. The colonel has confirmed, from some evidence I gave him, that we have werewolves.”

Morales wasn’t surprised; he had been the one Jen had asked about the weird stuff at Silver Hills.

“The vampires will provide me with an introduction to the Weres. There seems to be some interaction between the two communities. I can’t say any more, other than suggest someone in your department collect any police reports of wolves, big dog attacks and the like for me to review. I’ve no indication that Weres are any less law-abiding than most vampires.”

“The vampires are helping you? Why?” asked Morales.

I shrugged. “I’m nearly one myself, Captain.”

“There’s no cure?” Morales had known that I had been infected once we’d had our meeting with the colonel last year after the incident with the rogues. I guess he thought, as I had, that I was handling it. That there was a way out.