Dangerous Calling (The Shadowminds) (5 page)

“I did what I said I’d do,” she said.

“You did,” I said. “Thank you.”

Janine grunted, got out of the car and slammed the door. She leaned down to the open window and looked at us both. “I don’t ever want to see either of you again.”

She turned and walked away without looking back. Shane and I watched while she slowly mounted the stairs and went back into her apartment. The door slammed like a gunshot. A woman came out of the adjacent unit, looked up and down the walkway, rolled her eyes and ducked back in. Shane kept the car in park.

“Well.” I rubbed my face with both hands. “Some kind of high-end brothel?”

“What kind of brothel has one girl in it? And what kind of girl needs two security guards?”

“Good point. But what is it, then? What the hell did that guy mean by ‘deliveries’?”

Shane blew out a breath. “I couldn’t tell. I was too concerned with getting out of there without making him suspicious.”

“So do we just...break her out? Go in guns blazing? I’m not even sure that’s what she’d want.”

Shane shook his head. “We’ll go back tomorrow night. Set up some wireless cameras, see if we can figure out what’s going on.”

“Brilliant. That’s brilliant.”

“I have my moments.” His phone buzzed, and he picked it up.

“Hey, Bruce...Wait, what?” Shane’s brows drew together. “Slow down—what happened?...What do you mean you can’t...okay, okay. We’re on our way.”

“What was it? Is Lionel all right?”

Shane’s face was like stone. “He wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone.” He put the car in gear.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” He hit the accelerator.

Telepathy isn’t quite as good as a radar detector, but we made it to the B&B without getting pulled over. A minor miracle. I was out of the passenger side before Shane put the car in park. Both of us ran down the hall to the kitchen. Every lamp was on, and the softwood floors glowed red-gold in the light. Bruce was at the kitchen table, drinking a beer. He stood up when we walked in, and I saw the man sitting opposite him.

Shane and I froze in the doorway. The guy had wings.

Chapter Five

He stood up when he saw us. “Cass Weatherfield?”

I nodded slowly, and he walked forward. He looked young, but I knew better than to trust my eyes when it came to guardians. His hair was buzzed but might’ve been dark blond when it grew out, and he was tan and green-eyed. His arms were corded with hard muscle and covered with tattoos. A black dagger, an ornate cross covered in twining roses, a woman’s name, Emily, in old English capitals. That last one looked fresh.

“Susannah said to give you this.” He held out a card, and I took it automatically. It was one of the Sand Angel business cards, sea green with hot pink script. On the back, in surprisingly elegant script, she’d written
Favor
No
1.

“Are you...”

“Ian West. New guardian of Baton Rouge.” He said the words as though they weren’t familiar. I had a brief moment of regret that he wasn’t ours.

“How new?”

“Very.” He stirred his wings. “Susannah said you’d give me a place to lay low for a while. Said I should make myself useful.”

“With what?”

Ian shrugged. “She didn’t say.”

I was genuinely perplexed. We hadn’t told Susannah why we’d brought Janine to see her son. Then I remembered the telepathic cashier. He’d probably lifted the whole story from my mind while I’d been waiting in that line.

Ian’s wings were nothing like Susannah’s—hers were white tipped with dark gray-blue, like a gull’s. The only other guardian I’d met had been in San Francisco. His wings had been pure crow-black.

Ian West had wings like a red-tailed hawk. Variegated brown and russet with hints of black and gold and cream. Complicated. They were huge, and he carried them away from his body, as though he wasn’t quite sure where to put them.

“Right.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Well, I’m Cass—I guess you knew that already—and you already met Bruce, and this is Shane Tanner. His uncle Lionel owns this place.”

Ian held out his hand. Shane gripped it briefly, his face impassive. For the briefest of instants, I thought I felt a flare of hostility from the guardian, but it was gone in the next moment. His expression was perfectly blank, and my quick scan of his surface thoughts came up with next to nothing. The most I could get was the flavor of his thoughts, and there was no sign of anger in them. I couldn’t even find nerves or uncertainty, only resigned trepidation. It reminded me of the way I’d felt as a foster kid meeting a new set of would-be parents. The absence of hope where it should be rampant.

“Why exactly do you need a place to lay low?” Shane asked. His tone was one shade shy of conversational. Ian projected the same passionless calm.

“Can’t go to Biloxi,” he said. “Out of my territory.”

I didn’t miss that he hadn’t answered the question.

“Does Lionel know?” I asked Bruce.

Bruce shook his head. “I didn’t want to wake him. He’s been feeling poorly, and you know he’d just stay up late fussing.” This was true, but it wasn’t the only reason I was glad. I wanted to check this guy’s story before we gave him an official welcome.

“I’m calling Susannah,” I announced, and walked out onto the back porch.

She must’ve been expecting my call, because she picked up on the first ring.

“Are you going to explain what this is about?” I asked her, betting she’d know what I meant.

She did. “Get him out of sight—he can’t keep his glamour up long.”

I glanced through the window. The soft gold light illuminated Ian’s wings all too well. “He’s not keeping it up now. What is he doing here?”

“Just make sure he isn’t seen. He won’t be any trouble.”

I stepped off the porch onto the patio and walked to the old outdoor kitchen. It was a freestanding brick structure, a relic from a former time. Lionel was using it to store garden tools. I ducked behind it to shield myself from view. “Why, exactly, would I expect him to be trouble?”

She paused. “I’ll let him tell his own story.”

This was not reassuring. “Why send him to us?”

“He’s too new to be far from his anchor point. I needed someone close by I could trust.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be worried or flattered that I made the list of people Susannah could trust. “This is worth more than one favor,” I grumbled.

“We’ll see,” she said, and hung up.

Back in the kitchen, everyone was silent. Ian and Shane stood at opposite ends of the room with their arms folded while Bruce studied his beer.

“Well,” I said, and they all looked up, “looks like your story checks out.”

Ian only nodded.

Shane sent me the impression of his doubts on a tightly controlled mental line. “
You sure about this?
”

“
He could be an asset.
”

“
He looks more like a liability.
” Shane regarded the guardian with the barest darkening of his eyes, and I knew he was scanning Ian’s thoughts. Shane had always been better than me at getting through mental blocks, but I could tell when he came up with nothing, just as I had moments before. He shook his head. “
I
don’t trust
her,
much less him.
”

“
I
made a deal.
Not much we can do about it now
,” I sent him, and he gave me the mental equivalent of a resigned grunt.

“Right,” I said to Ian. “I’ll, uh, get you settled.”

He gave me an efficient nod and picked up an army green duffel bag at his feet. It had a long way to go. He was easily over six feet tall, and I had to crane my neck to look up at him. He walked past Shane without looking at him.

I led him up the stairs toward Mina’s old room. She was Shane’s twin sister, but she was living in San Francisco now. Lionel was still secretly hoping she’d come back, so he hadn’t converted her room to a guest suite yet.

“Can you hide those while we’re in the hallway?” There was no telling when one of the guests might stumble down the hallway drunk. I could probably write him off as a costume party guest, but I’d rather not have to try.

Ian didn’t answer, but his wings flickered in and out of focus, like an automatic camera trying to lock onto an image. After a moment, they went watery and indistinct and disappeared, but I could still see the ragged holes he’d torn in his black T-shirt to make way for them. It would have to do. I led him down the hallway.

Mina’s room was still crammed with her stuff—vintage music posters on the walls, bright pillows and blankets, the clothes she hadn’t packed—but there was room enough for Ian’s things. His wings snapped into view the second we walked in. He stood stiffly on the rug between the bed and the fireplace and folded them tightly behind him.

“You really can’t let the guests see you with those,” I said.

“I’m not supposed to let anyone see me, period.”

I decided this wasn’t the time to ask. “There are toiletries and things in the bathroom. Shampoo and soap and stuff.”

He glanced to the bathroom door. Mina’s robe hung on the hook—a bright red silk thing, long and embellished with tiny black flowers. At the sight of it, the first hint of emotion washed over his face, a tide of regret mixed with raw, ragged longing. It was gone in another instant, and when I tried to read his emotions, I came up blank yet again.

“Let me know if you need anything.” I tried to make the words encompass more than just shampoo. I didn’t know why he was here, but I was betting the story didn’t have a happy ending. He didn’t take the bait.

“I’ll do that,” he said.

All I could do was nod and leave him to unpack his enormous bag. I hoped there wasn’t a body in it.

* * *

Shane and I stayed the night at the B&B, in what used to be Shane’s room. Lionel had turned it into a guest room since he’d left, and it was almost unrecognizable—new sage green paint on the walls, new bed linens and photographs of swamp scenes above the fireplace. The antique bed was the same, though, and we fell into it gratefully. We were both exhausted, and anyway, we’d need to be here in the morning. Bruce would never forgive us if we made him explain the situation to Lionel alone.

Of course, Lionel knew something was going on the moment he woke up. The three of us were already in the kitchen making breakfast when he came down. He really did look like he was feeling poorly. He had a runny nose, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was also frowning. Lionel never frowned.

“I was going to let you sleep—” Bruce began, but Lionel cut him off.

“Who’s the young man in Mina’s old room and why does he feel so strange?”

Shane and I looked at each other.

“You-all can handle this one,” Bruce said, and turned back to the pancakes he was making.

“Have some coffee, Uncle Lionel.” Shane telekinetically sent a mug floating over.

“I don’t want coffee, I want to know what’s in Mina’s room.” He ignored the mug, which floated insistently in front of his face. Shane left it there for a few hopeful moments before resting it on the kitchen table. Lionel didn’t break his gaze with Shane once.

“Well,” I said, “Last year, I made this deal...”

I explained the arrangement I had with Susannah—I’d never told him the details. I shouldn’t have been surprised when Lionel took the whole thing in stride.

“All right, then. We’ll just have to bring him his meals.” Trust Lionel to think of the food first. He had some kind of compulsion about making sure people were fed.

Shane and I decided to wait until dark to go back to Diana’s house, and the wait was brutal. Shane made me promise not to go alone, or I would have been camped out in the bushes across the street. I made beds and dusted antique carved mantels in a state of distraction, staring at my phone in case Diana called. She didn’t.

It seemed to take forever for Shane to get home. When he walked into the B&B in his work clothes, carrying a plastic shopping bag from an electronics store, I went limp with disproportionate relief.

“Did you find everything you needed?” I asked him, following him upstairs to his old room.

“Think so.” He set the bag on the floor and unbuttoned his Charlie’s Auto Body work shirt. He wore a plain white T-shirt underneath, and I couldn’t help watching the way his muscles rippled as he shrugged off his button-up. “Did she call?”

“No. I’ve been going a little crazy.”

Shane sat on the bed to take off his boots. “I found out a little more about that house.” He pulled out his phone. “Current owner is Annette Perrin. She bought the place right after Katrina.”

“Really?” I sat down behind him and looked over his shoulder. “How did you find that out?”

“Real estate tracking sites. I got into them when I bought the condo. Anyway, I called around, and there’s nothing going on at that address. No cable, no internet, no phone number listed.”

“That’s suspicious.”

“Yeah.” He pocketed his phone again. “Now we just have to wait for dark.” He cocked his head so he could see me from the corner of his eye. “You gonna survive?”

I fell back on the bed. “Probably not.”

Shane twisted around and ranged himself over me, bracing himself on his forearms. He smelled of the harsh soap he used to clean his hands at the shop. He dipped his head and kissed my jaw, then my neck. “Come on,” he whispered in my ear. “No rescue missions on an empty stomach.” He rolled off the bed and brought me with him.

We ate pan-fried redfish with Lionel and Bruce while we waited for the sun to go down. When it finally grew dark, we dressed in black clothes and brought our bag full of cheap wireless cameras to the most expensive neighborhood in the city.

We hopped over the wall the same way we had before and snuck into the elaborate landscaping of the place next door, a mock-antebellum mansion with a white columned porch and a three-car garage. They’d planted some conveniently enormous ligustrum on the property line.

“
How many?
” Shane sent. I took a moment to scan the house and the lawn for minds that weren’t asleep.

“
Three
,
I
think.
Same as before.
Two on the lawn and one in the house.
”

“
That’s what I’m getting too.
”

The one in the house wasn’t moving, and I suspected again that it was Diana.

“
This is probably a good spot.
Up in that tree.
” Shane pointed toward a smallish oak a few yards from the property line. It had plenty of crooked branches.

I nodded, and he sent the first of the cameras floating into a high branch. He followed it with a brown nylon tie-down and secured the camera in place. I cut off the hanging tail of nylon with a focused mental jab. Shane extended the stubby antennae on the camera and took my smartphone.

“
Explain to me again how this won’t get us sent to prison?
” I said.

“
Easy.
We don’t get caught.
”

I laughed quietly and watched as he worked. In a few moments, I had a green-tinted image on the screen of my phone. It showed a nice view of the back garden, which featured a stone fountain with one of those half-naked Renaissance-era women pouring water out of an urn.

“
Next?
” Shane said. We had three cameras left.

We found two more trees, one closer to the front yard alongside the garage and another on the opposite side of the house. I held my breath when one of the guards moved in our direction, but he was only smoking a cigarette.

“
Do you think she’s in there?
” Shane pulled the third camera feed up on my phone.

I made another gentle pass through the structure, but I didn’t know her well enough to recognize her sleeping mind. “
I
can’t tell.
”

Shane frowned as he set up the fourth camera. “
I
wonder—
”

My phone gave a loud chirping noise. I nearly dropped it. Shane and I both ducked and held our breaths while I fumbled for the silent switch.

“
What the hell was that?
”

“
Motion alert—look.
” He pointed toward the house. “
Someone’s driving up.
”