Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (21 page)

“Everything?” Gilgamesh said.  He sat squished against the left rear door, with Sylvie in the middle and Van on the other side.  Kurt drove and Gail sat in the front seat.  “You do know what I’m like when I’m ready for battle, don’t you?”  He dropped into the mindfulness meditative state that made him hyper-aware and jumpy, and from other’s descriptions, made him vacant eyed and offputting.  “This may not be the best thing for convincing people.”

“Yippidy yips!” Sylvie said, shrinking back and crowding Van even further.  She shook her head and took a deep breath.  “Well.  I’ll need to get used to
that
.  It isn’t as bad as an Arm in a stalk or a Focus doing
the Focus
.”  She snorted.  “Then again, there’s nothing worse, as a Transform, than an Arm in a stalk.”

“Hunters who’ve lost themselves in combat and terror are far worse,” Gilgamesh said.  Even saying those words made him want to flee in terror.

The car quieted.  Gilgamesh listened to the vehicle hum; the left rear tire was slightly out of balance and it gave the car a subtle shake when it got up to speed.  The shake was the least of the car’s problems.  The vehicle, a beat up 4-door ’66 Pontiac Bonneville, robin’s egg blue, was what Gail’s people called a Buddy Attendale special.  The left rear side body panel was from a similar Bonneville, only newer and still shiny.  The automatic transmission was shot and couldn’t shift up to 3
rd
gear, and so the Bonneville had a top speed of about 50.  There was a small hole in the floor panel under the back seat, from too much salt corrosion, and the hole occasionally leaked dust and the occasional drop of water.  To tie the ribbon into a bow, the wipers made an appallingly loud clattery gear stripping noise when they wiped to the left.

“So, this trip comes from the Arms?” Gilgamesh said.  “The missing baby Arms problem?”

“Uh huh,” Van said.  “Some group or company calling themselves Chrysanthemum is grabbing them.  The person we’re going to interview, a Mr. Todd Collins, is a retired manager who once managed United Toxicol’s special projects department in Kansas City.  If anyone knows anything about Chrysanthemum, it’s him.  He retired rich, and he lives in an eight acre forested estate near Dayton, along with his wife, a maid, a caretaker, and a wheelchair bound old Army buddy of his.”

Gilgamesh thought through things.  Sylvie and Kurt were more than just bodyguards, they were Gail and Van’s best friends and talented investigative reporters, though Kurt was more of an investigator than a reporter.  Van was a different form of investigator, an interviewer, and experienced in the ways of Major Transforms.  Add in Gail and him, both Major Transforms.  They should be able to handle this without a problem.

“Telephone repair?” Gilgamesh said.

Sylvie smiled.  “That will do.”

Gail made an interesting telephone repairman, with curves one didn’t usually see in more traditional examples of the breed.  Even better was her ability to work her way past the maid and the wife using her charisma.  Gilgamesh used his aura (his charisma, as Carol termed it) to calm the family and make them ignore the five person home invasion.

Unfortunately, Mr. Collins wasn’t any help.  “I know, I know,” he said, taking a sip of hot tea.  He sat in a non-reclined recliner, with tables on either side, and a small Afghan over his legs.  Although he was in his middle 60s, he appeared to be a man in his 80s.  “I thought I was going senile, but I can remember what I was doing around the house back then.  The names of my new grandchildren, too.  I just can’t remember anything about the three years I spent as the head of Special Projects.  Well, I can remember movies and plays, and that vacation to Iceland.  Man, was that a vacation.  I never knew there were places with so many volcanoes.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Van said.  He sat in the chair beside Mr. Collins while the rest of them found seats farther away, except for Gilgamesh, who hid in the corner by the fireplace.  Van’s simple, direct and kind manner made him the best interviewer in their group, especially with Gail’s charisma backing him up.  “How much did you know about Special Projects before you became the director?”

“A little,” Mr. Collins said.  “Confidential things, of course.  All those failures, spiced by the hints of tiny successes promising lucrative successes just over the horizon.”

“Does the name Chrysanthemum mean anything to you?”

Mr. Collins frowned.  “You know, it should.  It’s…it’s…naw.  The name doesn’t ring a bell.  Except as a flower.”

Gilgamesh excused himself then, suspecting the worst.  Their unknown Major Transform enemies had gotten to this manager, and no matter how much Van, Sylvie and Gail pried, he wouldn’t be able to tell them a thing.  They had wiped his memory clean.

---

“That was a complete waste,” Sylvie said, the first comment about business since they left Mr. Collins’ estate.  The car headlights lit up another exit sign for Lima.  They were all frustrated, frustrated enough to spend an hour badly singing car songs.  It was possible Kurt had the worst singing voice Gilgamesh had ever heard.  Sylvie turned to Gilgamesh.  “Where were you, anyway?  I know you said you wouldn’t be visible during the interview, but where did you go?”

Gilgamesh smiled.  He hadn’t wanted to intrude on their angst, or brag.  His little side adventure would give them a lot of work to do, likely all fruitless.

Gail sighed.  He couldn’t hide his emotions from Gail.  Never could.  “Gilgamesh, what did you do?”

“A minor amount of breaking, entering and searching.  You see,” Gilgamesh said, pleased with himself.  He just hoped Gail and her crew valued initiative as much as Carol did.  “Men of power tend to take papers with them when they retire.  Not official records, but their own notes.  Their own records.  Mostly it’s junk.  Business trip mementoes.  But often the information needed to write memoirs from.”

“And…” Gail said.

“They’re in the trunk.  Six boxes of them.”

---

That night he still wasn’t able to sleep peacefully in Gail’s household.

Carol Hancock: September 30, 1972

“Can you get me a glass of water, Amy?” Gail asked.

“Get your own water, Focus,” Haggerty said.

Excellent.  Gail put out Focus charisma like a fire-hose, and Haggerty finally beat it off.  I had wondered if my boss would ever develop any resistance.  Haggerty, Webberly, Sibrian, Whetstone, and Gail all sat with me in the living room of my house in Detroit.  I ached after my extended sparring session with Webberly from earlier today; I was close to perfecting my new combat capabilities and she didn’t KO me even once.  Chrissie Duval huddled in a corner, watching and learning and attempting to avoid any attention.  The late afternoon sun made the pale furniture glow golden.  We had spent the early afternoon in combat training, including Gail, who we all worked on mercilessly to train up her speed, quickness and hand to eye coordination.  The only one who thought Gail shouldn’t be here had been Duval, but only before Gail decked her.  Gail would never be as combat capable as a mature Arm, but with a little more work we could make her as capable as a young Arm not burning juice, and nearly as good as Lori.

Now we rested, training, variously, predator effect and Focus charisma.  Gail’s performance while I had been gone, rolling my Arms, indicated the need.  Unfortunately, I suspected that Gail got the most out of this session.  Damn, she was deadly with her charisma.

Gail even looked like a baby Arm these days.  She was muscled like an Olympic athlete under her halter top and shorts, a small basketball player or a tall gymnast.  She still looked female, and I suspected she always would, but she now far exceeded even the most talented of Inferno’s Transforms in her muscular development.  Except for the hair and the unearthly beauty, she might have been one of Keaton’s students, at about six months or so.

Well, except for her lack of a killer’s eyes, and the fact the only wounds she carried were a few minor cuts and bruises, and she lacked the air of someone living on the edge of madness, as Chrissie Duval did.  Instead, she carried with her the raw chaos of her household and its dozens of projects and the crazy people her household attracted.  I was still attempting to get my mind around the idea of Daisy Schuber, Gail’s sister in law and legitimate Arm groupie, and Hank-class brilliant PhD student at U of M.  Who I swore picked locks as well as I did.  She now lived in Gail’s household because she thought the place
relaxing
.  Utterly insane.  And she was just one of a dozen or so hangers-on who floated in and out, most not even realizing I was an Arm.

Gail grinned.  “Fantastic!  You got it this time.”  She relaxed in her chair, and Haggerty smiled a small smile of relief.  “I really am thirsty, though.  Would you mind?”

Haggerty was halfway to the kitchen when Webberly’s snicker alerted her.  Sibrian managed to keep her face straight and Whetstone remained too intimidated by the older Arms to think anything humorous.  Me, I wanted to pound my head on the wall.

“Fuck,” Haggerty said.  “I fell for it again, didn’t I?”  Gail just grinned.  Our favorite Focus was having far too much fun with this entire exercise.

Then her face fell to a woebegone expression of disappointment, and she batted her eyes and took on the aspect of a Hallmark angel.  “I really am just trying to get a glass of water.  Can you get it for me, Rose?”

“Get your own water, Focus,” Webberly said.

“Nope,” I said.  “You missed on that one, Gail.  Your signals weren’t consistent and there was no subtlety.”

“Oh, hell.  I think I’m getting tired.  I’m sorry, but I do need to get home early tonight.  I’m going to have to take a pass on this evening.”

I gave her a smile of my own, a smile with a little predatory edge.  “You’re going to need to do a lot better than that if you expect to roll me, Focus.  You still owe me three more hours in the gym.”

Gail frowned.  “Gym time?  Hank sent over nearly fifty pages of new juice patterns he wants me to work on, and I need to get a start on them.” There was more than a hint of annoyance in her voice, annoyance edging toward challenge.

“Four hours,” I said.  Her incessant juice pattern practice was making her a better witch, true, but I wasn’t happy with the slow speed of her physical improvement, and her juice pattern practice generated enough dross to push Gilgamesh to his Guru limits.

She wrapped her arms around her torso, stared up at the ceiling, and didn’t answer.  She wanted to challenge me.

I waited.  She relaxed, slowly, the challenge easing out of her before she spoke.  “Teacher, why?  If it’s the dross issue, well, I can move my juice pattern practice outside of my apartment complex.”

Better.  “Until we hit your structural limits, your physical improvements are what’s behind your improving capabilities of natural juice regeneration as well as your native resting juice count.”  Not that I could metasense this.  My information came from Rizzari Super-Focus 101, part of Lori’s training program for aspiring witches.  “This affects more than you.  We’re also attempting to change what Focuses think of as the ‘proper Focus’.  If we succeed, in the future the first thing we’re going to do with baby Focuses is the same thing we do with baby Arms – get them exercising.  Not for the combat benefits, which for a Focus will be secondary, but for the juice benefits.  Consider how much better your early career as a Focus would have been without the constant low juice headaches.”

“Fine.  Yes, Teacher.”  She wasn’t sold, but she did let loose a few giggles.  “Sorry.  I keep thinking about what Allison Silvey’s reaction is going to be to all of this.  She considers being sedentary as one of her life goals.”

“Carol, I need to talk to you alone.” Haggerty caught me just after late dinner.

I nodded and then indicated the war room.  In a house full of Major Transforms, its soundproofed walls provided the only privacy available.

“Do we have a problem, ma’am?” I said.

Haggerty stood over by the newly mounted wall map of the US.  She had her arms crossed, and glared at the floor.

“Not we, me,” she said.

I frowned, worried.  “Is this something to do with Gail?”  Amy had been getting more uneasy each time Gail rolled her.

She turned to me and took a deep breath.  “Not Gail.  Polly Keistermann.  When I’m following one of Gail’s orders, it makes me happy in a strange way I can’t describe…the same way doing favors for Polly makes me feel.”

Holy crap.  “You’re on a first name basis with the president of the Focus Council?”  Keistermann had the best Focus charisma of any Focus I knew, and that included Tonya Biggioni and Lori Rizzari.

“Well, you know,” Haggerty said, looking down again.  “She’s on Long Island, I claim New York.  Most of the time.  I visit her, and, well, Sinclair and Duke Hoskins’ barony.  We talk.  And other things.”

Haggerty was visiting Polly Keistermann and screwing Duke Hoskins.  I wanted to hit something.  “You never said anything about this before,” I said.  I kept my voice respectful.  It took work.

“She asked me not to.”

“She asked you not to.  So now you’re thinking she’s been rolling you with her charisma.”

“I don’t know for sure.  It might be a possibility.”