Water to Burn (39 page)
Authors: Katharine Kerr
Ari let go of me, but his Qi felt ready to hit “boil.” I went to my desk to answer the phone.
“Hey, Nola,” Michael said. “Did you want to talk to me, like maybe a minute ago?”
“I sure did. Hang on a sec.” I glanced back and saw Ari straightening all the books and papers on the coffee table. Anger management had kicked in. “I can talk now. What is this, you knew I wanted to talk with you?”
“I heard it loud and clear.”
“It sounds like you’ve got another talent coming online, the family mental overlap.”
“Epic cool! Better than a cell phone, huh?”
“Kind of. It’ll be erratic at first, though. They all are. Look, I’ve got something here in my flat that you need to see. I’m trying to figure out when we can get together.”
Ari stopped stacking the books by descending size and scowled at me.
“It’s about five o’clock,” I said to Michael. “Would you be up for a late dinner out? Say at seven?”
“I can’t. It’s a school night, and Aunt Eileen would raise serious hell. I could come over right now for a little while. I can borrow Uncle Jim’s truck.”
“Okay. How about you get here in an hour? I’ll see you then.”
We signed off. Ari appeared calmer, but I felt his Qi gather and begin to flow toward me. I registered an oddly neutral quality that could have flipped into either rage or desire. I stayed standing in case the Qi swung the wrong way.
“Where were we?” I said.
“I was merely pointing out that I dislike seeing you strut around in public in tight clothing.” His British accent was getting thicker by the word. “You’re not a prostitute, and I don’t like you pretending to be one.”
“I really don’t understand that. I can understand how you’d be uptight if I actually turned tricks, but I never would. I mean, yuck!”
“The men seeing you don’t know that.”
I heard the ghostly voice of my old religion teacher from high school, Sister Peter Mary, whispering in my mental ear about the perils of slutty clothing.
“Aha!” I said to Ari. “Some other guy might think I’m a hooker and look upon me with lust in his heart. Is that what bothers you?”
“What man wouldn’t be bothered by that about the woman he—” Ari paused for a fraction of a second, “he was involved with.”
The pause and reboot bothered me. He’d really wanted to say that he loved me. I saw another stake drop into place in the picket fence of domesticity.
“Well?” Ari snapped.
“Well what? I did it because I needed street cred if we were going to find Reb Zeke. It worked, didn’t it?”
“I have to admit it brought results.” He scowled again. “But—”
He hesitated. I waited, hands on hips. I kept my own Qi neutral, but if I was going to lead this team, I couldn’t let him steamroll me.
“What other kind of cover story would you suggest?” I said.
“If the need arises again,” Ari said, “perhaps you could just pose as a drug dealer or some such thing.” He paused again. “If you agreed.”
“It would depend on the situation, but that’s a possibility, yeah. We can work out the details when we need to. And speaking of details, I need to get started on my reports.”
Ari looked as if he were thinking of saying more, then shrugged. “Very well. So do I.”
I picked up e-mail from TranceWeb, most of it from NumbersGrrl. I printed those out, sans routing details, for Michael. When the doorbell rang, Ari let Michael in.
Ari ordered pizza and salad on his expense account credit card. We all sat down in the living room to wait for the pizza delivery. I’d been thinking over how to break the news about Dad, but I’d decided that once again, there was no easy way. I took the letter out of the envelope.
“Someone who can walk the worlds gave me this,” I told Michael. “Unfortunately, he’s too ill to teach you anything. He can’t even provide more details, really, he’s so sick.” I held up the letter. “You won’t recognize the handwriting, but it’s from Dad.”
Michael reached for it like a striking snake. I gave it to him, then sat down next to Ari on the couch to watch him read it, which he did methodically, slowly, and twice. When he finished, he nodded as if he’d made a decision and looked at me.
“Okay,” Michael said. “How are we going to get him out of there?”
I realized that Aunt Eileen had spoken the simple truth. I had raised him right, after all.
“Well, we can’t organize a jailbreak or anything,” I said, “but he mentions being paroled. It comes down to getting the collar off, I guess.”
“We’ve got to find him first.”
The doorbell rang.
“There’s the pizza,” I said to Ari. “You need to go sign for it.”
“Right.” Ari got up from the couch. “And I don’t need to hear you two discussing illegal activities.”
I realized that I might have a future problem on my hands. I waited to point this out to Michael until I heard Ari clomping down the stairs to the front door.
“Listen, not one word more,” I said. “What we’re going to have to do is help Dad violate the terms of his parole.”
“Oh.” Michael looked stricken. “I guess that would seriously piss Ari off.”
“Possibly. Leave all this to me.”
“Sure.” Michael waved the letter in my direction. “Can I keep this?”
“No, but I’ll make you a photocopy. I want Aunt Eileen to have the original. It’s up to her to decide what to tell Mom.”
“Oh, right.” Michael shuddered. “Mom.”
Ari came back upstairs with the pizza boxes. I gave him a vague smile and went into the kitchen for napkins and plates.
We’d just finished eating when Aunt Eileen called Michael. She wanted him to come home and tend to his English homework. With my multifunction printer, I made two copies of Dad’s letter, one for him, one for me, and gave him the original, which I put into the manila envelope of e-mails.
“Be careful with the letter,” I said.
“You bet,” Michael said. “Aunt Eileen’s going to want to keep the real one.”
Since Sophie had never seen a pizza, I bagged up a couple of slices for her, then walked Michael down to the front door and sent him on his way home. When I came upstairs, Ari was channel-surfing in the living room. We’d set up the TV opposite the couch. I was expecting that he’d be simmering, but he looked mostly bored as he clicked through the dismal offerings with the remote. I remained wary. Any minute, I figured, he’d start lecturing me on the need to follow the laws of whatever alien world had trapped my father.
“Come sit down.” He clicked off the television. “Please.”
I sat close to him but turned so I could see his face, not that his carefully arranged expression told me anything. His Qi read as neutral.
“Wherever your father is,” Ari said, “is out of my jurisdiction. Completely and utterly beyond any sphere in which I’m authorized to operate as a police officer or in any capacity except one.”
“Which is?”
“Your bodyguard.” His mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. “I thought I’d best remind you of that.”
“I’m glad you did. Thank you.”
When he held out his hand, I took it. I knew that we’d completed a bargain, even though I couldn’t find the words to define what that bargain entailed. I felt so grateful that another stake dropped into the picket fence, so quietly that I almost missed hearing it.
CHAPTER 14
I
ENDED UP FILING MY AGENCY REPORTS EARLY the next morning. While I finished the last details, Ari phoned San Francisco General and heard that yes, Reb Ezekiel had died in the night. He called Itzak Stein to pass the news along.
ENDED UP FILING MY AGENCY REPORTS EARLY the next morning. While I finished the last details, Ari phoned San Francisco General and heard that yes, Reb Ezekiel had died in the night. He called Itzak Stein to pass the news along.
“He said he was sorry to hear it,” Ari told me afterward. “So am I, oddly enough. We may have been furious at the old man, but he was always part of our lives, even when we hadn’t seen him for years.”
“I can see that, yeah,” I said. “My sympathies.”
Ari glanced at his watch. “Our first appointment’s in an hour. How far away is Pacifica?”
“Not very, but I’d better get my butt in gear and hurry anyway.”
I put on the glen plaid skirt suit with the teal silk blouse, sensible low heels, and the official-looking shoulder bag for our quick tour of local police departments. Ari just wore slacks and took his sport coat rather than wearing the police suit. He had his Interpol ID; I had my cross-agency version. We introduced ourselves to various officers, who gave serious attention to our case of an internationally known blackmailer. All of them promised help when necessary.
After each stop, we lingered in the safe territory of the police station parking lot while I ran scans. I never got a clear focus on Caleb. I could pick up the edge, as it were, of his Shield Persona. Beyond that, he disappeared into a cloud of mist. Now and then I heard the bubbling noise of air rising in water that possibly meant I’d caught a glimpse of Belial. As far as I could tell, he was sticking close to Caleb. I could only wonder why.
“I don’t like this,” I said to Ari. “Something’s wrong, but I can’t find what it is.”
“We’ll need to be very careful then,” Ari said. “I may have to make an arrest as we leave the restaurant. It’ll be harder for Donovan to sort things out for his father, unfortunately, but if it’s necessary—”
“Yeah, go for it. You might want to warn Jack it could happen.”
“I will, yes.”
After the official introductions, we drove home under a dark gray sky. Rather than meeting us at the Boulevard, Jack stopped by our place first. Thanks to the force of karmic gravity, he had Dad’s old desk in the SUV with him, a solid oak number with drawers on each side of the kneehole. Kathleen had insisted he take it in with him. She’d supplied an antique oak captain’s chair and a couple of needlepoint seat cushions to go with it. Ari changed into jeans for the furniture moving job.
While the guys unloaded the SUV, I changed into the gray glen plaid trousers with the teal sweater and a pair of blue suede athleisure shoes. After a quick look out the window at the sky, I also got out my burgundy raincoat. Between them, Jack and Ari carried the desk and the chair up the outside stairs and into the lower flat, which we were planning on turning into an office. With it came two big cardboard cartons of the things my mother had been keeping in it. Those they brought upstairs. I put them next to my desk in the living room for sorting later.
“I bet some of these papers are in Irish,” I said. “If not all of them. I’ll have to get out the dictionary.”
“I’m surprised you’re not fluent,” Ari said. “I’m assuming your father was.”
“Yeah, but the family didn’t use it much. Not everyone’s as good with languages as you are.”
While Jack went over the strategy for the meeting with Ari, I went downstairs to take a look at the desk, just out of nostalgia. Dad had found it at a garage sale, and I remembered how he, Dan, and Sean had all struggled to load it into his truck and get it home. Made of solid oak, it stood over three feet high and had heavy drawers on either side of the kneehole.
The men had left the drawers piled up on the floor. I put them back into their proper places.
I had just finished sliding the last one in place when I felt someone watching me. I spun around and saw a transparent blue woman standing in the doorway to the living room. Long dark hair hung down to her narrow hips. She wore a long dress slit to reveal her heavy breasts. Since I had no talent for seeing ghosts and speaking with the dead, I assumed that I was merely objectifying the vibes of the person who’d committed suicide in the flat.
“There’s one more drawer,” she said to me.
“I don’t see one,” I said.
“Oh.” She fixed me with a sad stare. “Too bad.”
I raised a hand and smiled. “Go in peace,” I said.
She smiled and disappeared.
Ari knocked on the door of the flat and called out that Jack had just left for the restaurant. We followed in the Saturn. Ari carried the Beretta in his shoulder holster under his gray sport coat. He also took his beaten-up old army trench coat. I made a mental note to replace that at soon as I had a chance.
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