Shaded Vision: An Otherworld Novel (11 page)

“Of course, Claudia.” Orick gave us a two-fingered salute and retreated into what was probably the kitchen.

“Excuse us for intruding, but last night you said that Exo had refused to book a convention?” Chase quietly slid out his pencil and notebook and flipped it open. He kept a gentle eye contact with Claudia, but a nonthreatening one, letting her know through body language that the lead was hers. Wise move. Very wise move. Chase had learned a lot since we first met him.

Claudia paused, then motioned to an appointment book on the coffee table. “I don’t know who it was. Like I said last night, we had a fight over the fact that he turned them down, but I was mostly concerned with the money he said no to.” She coughed, wiping her nose with a tissue.

“That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? I was worried about money…I didn’t trust his judgment and now look what happened.”

“It’s not your fault, Claudia. You didn’t do anything to cause this.” Chase started to pat her hand, then stopped, merely flashing her a gentle smile.

“Yeah, right.” She let out a shudder, then said, “You might find something in his appointment book. This happened about a week ago. It was on a Wednesday, I remember. Thursday is garbage day and I was fretting that Exo had forgotten to put the cans out. He took off for the hotel after the fight, and so I remember asking my son to do it instead.” She lingered over the words, as if simple memories of daily life could erase the pain.

“I suppose we want to look for something that seems out of the ordinary around that time.” I picked up the book as
Chase continued to gently question Claudia. As I flipped through, her voice echoed softly through the room. Camille scooted close to me, peering over my shoulder.

I flipped back to a week and a half ago, starting on Monday. Nothing seemed odd there. Nor on Tuesday. But Wednesday there was a meeting penciled in between two and three p.m. The notation read
V & J/The Energy Exchange
.

“V & J? Van and Jaycee?” The words burst out of my mouth before I could stop them as I jerked my head up, looking at Camille.

Camille blanched, slowly shaking her head. “The Energy Exchange.
Fuck.
We should have checked that place out before. I knew it was trouble from the first time we saw the sign. And I’ll bet…we suspected they had something to do with it.” She looked up as Claudia leaned forward.

Claudia started. “Yes, that was the place he mentioned. I remember now, he said it was a convention for a group of…vampires? No…not vampires, but…I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

As we gathered our things to leave, taking the appointment book with us, I wondered just what we were facing. We’d suspected Van and Jaycee were involved with the club—but we’d gotten sidetracked after we shut down the Koyanni the first time. We suspected the Energy Exchange of being a hangout for the magical set—namely sorcerers. It wouldn’t surprise me if it also attracted necromancers as well. The two groups weren’t all that different. Which might just point to a connection between the pair and Telazhar.

Thanking Claudia, we exited back to the prowl car. All I could think of was I wanted this over and soon. But a creeping feeling in the back of my neck left me thinking we had a bumpy ride ahead of us.

Back in the fresh air, which hung heavy with the scents of rain dripping from cedars, we paused by the children, who were playing on the swing set.

“They have no father now,” Camille said, biting her lip. “But at least they knew he loved them.”

I knew she was thinking about our own father. “True…but not all fathers can show their feelings in the right way. They’ll be okay.” I touched her arm lightly. “They have a strong mother. Claudia will continue to run the hotel. She won’t let Exo’s dream die.”

My cell jangled as I slid into the passenger seat. It was a text message from Tim Winthrop. Tim—aka Cleo Blanco, female impersonator turned computer whiz—ran the website for the Supe Community Council. I scanned his text and sighed.

“People have been overwhelming the site with e-mails—wondering what to do now. And a few of the more shallow have been whining about the dance and asking where it’s going to be held now.”

“Callous idiots, worried about a dance after what happened.”
Camille leaned forward between the front seats, as far as the bulletproof glass would allow. “Frostling was right. We need to call an emergency meeting—but we’d better not advertise it. Go through the phone trees. We don’t want these freaks setting off a bomb in the main area when there’s a big gathering.”

“I don’t know why they didn’t wait till the actual dance.” I pondered the thought and the more I poked at it, the more it bothered me. “Why not?”

“Why not what?” Chase asked, pulling into the right-turn lane. We were headed to Marion’s café next.

“Why
not
wait until the dance? Why set off the bomb with only a handful of victims inside? Wait a few weeks and they could have had a lot more casualties. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe, maybe not. If they were going after volume, you’re right. But maybe they were looking to instill fear instead?” Chase pulled into the parking lot to the side of the Supe-Urban Café. “Let’s run with the thought that they weren’t just looking to kill Supes…what else could they want?”

“To stir up unrest?” Camille said.

“Maybe.” I thought about it for a moment. “What about to throw suspicion on somebody else? To start a hate war between the FBHs and the Supes?”

“But there was clear evidence of who created it—wouldn’t they take the trouble to hide the canya if they were trying to bring it on between the FBHs and us?” Camille shook her head. “There has to be more to it than that.”

“Not if they didn’t think we’d recognize the smell. After all, we aren’t sorcerers. It was Shamas who recognized the scent. And that talisman, it was just luck that we found it. By rights, that metal should have melted in the fire.”

“You have a point there. Then maybe they were trying to drive a schism even deeper between the FBHs and the Supes. But why?” Camille chewed on her lip. “Whatever the answer, we’ve got to find them and soon. We can’t let this happen again.”

Chase cleared his throat. “Yeah. Tell me about it.” He fell silent, then let out a long sigh. “I have something to tell you. I got the results of my tests from the Triple Threat. Aeval summoned me to come out to her barrow at five this morning.”

“And?” We were all ears. Ever since Chase had been given the Nectar of Life, he’d been changing. Powers that had been lying latent within him were coming to the surface, and we’d seen some interesting flashes of what he might become, but nobody was quite sure what the potion had done to him. So Camille had talked to Titania and Aeval, and they had grudgingly agreed to test him in order to ascertain just what was going on below the surface.

As he parked the car, then turned off the ignition, his hand seemed to shake for a moment. “They said they’ve never seen anything quite like it. Most humans, when they drink the Nectar of Life, pretty much just stay the way they are only…a little stretched out as the years go by. They looked into my past—I don’t know how, so don’t ask—and Aeval said that I don’t have Fae in my background, but I do appear to have had some great-great-great-great-and-so-on grandmother or grandfather who was part elf. It’s not much—just a drop in the bucket—but enough to set off my powers.”

Camille snapped her fingers. “I knew it had to be something. You always had a glimmer that was beyond the normal human energy signature, but I knew it wasn’t Fae. But that means…”

He grimaced. “What it means, apparently, according to Aeval, is that I’m related to my girlfriend. And to Queen Asteria. They were able to trace it.”

As Camille sputtered, I stifled a laugh. It seemed so ridiculous…our detective, who was so very human, was related to the Elfin Queen.

“That’s why you have been having these bursts of power come through. It’s coming from the buried elfin heritage.” Camille nodded as if she’d just made a discovery. “Of course…but it’s going to be severely fucked with due to the fact that you are mostly human. You’re going to be in the
same position, relatively, to my sisters and me—powers amok because of the mixed blood.”

“That’s pretty much what Aeval said. As I said, my elfin heritage is terribly diluted—so much that I wouldn’t ever think to call myself an elf. But it’s apparently enough that the Nectar of Life set things off. She couldn’t tell me exactly what those powers are, except that I’ll have my best attempts if I learn magic dealing with the astral plane or with the voice. Language, commands, communications, and astral travel are apparently my strong areas.”

He stared up at the sky. The clouds were thick, promising fat raindrops, and while the chill of winter snow was gone, now we were in the throes of the days of icy rain. Everything felt waterlogged: the ground spongy, the very air laden with moisture.

“I have no idea what to do or where to go from here,” he said softly.

“Take it one day at a time.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “And about being related to Sharah—you’re such distant relations, that isn’t a problem.”

“No,” he whispered. “I suppose not.”

Then, turning, he headed for the door and we followed, just as silently.

Marion was in her office. The smells of hefty biscuits and pie and old-fashioned meat loaf smothered in gravy filled the diner, which was packed as usual. The Supe-Urban Café served Supes from all over the city, but also a fair number of FBHs came here to eat, totally stoked by the quality of the food.

My mouth began to salivate as we entered the room, and I decided that I wouldn’t be leaving without one of her cinnamon buns. But for now, we followed the waitress through the maze of tables to the back, where we found Marion hunched over her desk, patiently adding up a column of numbers.

Her face was placid, calm—and I wondered just how the coyote shifters dealt with death. They followed the Great Trickster, and where he walked, danger always followed.

As soon as we entered the room, she popped her head up and gave us a half smile, rising to greet us. She motioned for us to sit down and we did so, Camille and I in the chairs in front of her desk, Chase taking a side seat as he once again pulled out his notebook.

“I dug through everything I could think of, but I’m afraid I don’t have very much for you. Except…perhaps one thing and I don’t know whether it’s going to help or not.” Marion wasn’t one to stand on ceremony.

“What’s that?” Chase asked, taking his cue from her.

“Trixie has a new boyfriend. He’s a vampire. Trixie’s always had a thing for the bloodsucker set. I disapproved, and our parents disapproved, but she was a grown woman and we couldn’t do anything about it.”

“That’s hard,” Camille said, and I knew she was thinking about Trillian and our reaction to him when she first started dating him.

“Yes, it causes a lot of stress and we knew that if we said anything, she’d just hide the relationship. So we…tolerated him. Anyway, they went out clubbing not long ago and Trixie came in the next day, upset. She told me the whole evening, a group of Bryan’s friends—Bryan is her boyfriend’s name—kept badgering her for information on the coyote shifters in the area. So much so that she got uncomfortable and left.”

I sucked in a deep breath. “Let me guess, the name of the club was the Energy Exchange?”

Marion shifted in her seat, a worried line creasing her brow. “Yeah, how did you know?”

“Exo Reed was contacted by a group from there. They were trying to schedule a convention or conference or something at the Halcyon. And we think that the group was headed by Van and Jaycee, the sorcerers who were working with the Koyanni to produce the Wolf Briar.”

One beat. Two…and then Marion said, “Okay, but why the fuck are the Koyanni getting mixed up with the vampires, then?”

“We think the Koyanni have gotten themselves involved with a very powerful necromancer, who is also connected with
the sorcerers—at least with Van and Jaycee. Now, some vampires hang around necromancers, at least back in Otherworld they do. It could be that Bryan was trying to cadge information out of Trixie to give to them. They’re probably paying him something. My bet is he’s one of their toadies—a rogue, not connected with the local vamp groups. They probably singled him out and formed some connection, whether paid or through blackmail. How long did you say Trixie has been seeing him?”

“A few weeks. She was so excited. As I said, she’s got a real thing for the vamp set.” Marion began to rifle through her desk.

“How many people knew she liked vampires?” It occurred to me that if it was common knowledge that Trixie liked vamps, it would be easy to orchestrate a meeting between her and Bryan.

“Too many. She frequented several chat rooms, but mainly the one called Fang Girl Wannabes.” Marion shook her head. “Trixie was always too open. She never learned that it was dangerous to give too much away. She even used her own name online. But why would they kill her? Was she targeted?”

“We don’t know that yet. But there has to be some connection there, if they were badgering her for information.” I glanced over at Camille. “We’re going to have to dig deep into that damned club.”