Sizzle and Burn (30 page)

R
aine pushed aside the remains of her peanut-butter-on-toast breakfast and studied the message on the flyleaf of
Winter Journey
. “I hate to tell you this, but it turns out I may not be an ace psychic detective after all. I still haven’t got a clue what Aunt Vella meant by the references to Wilder Jones’s mask and my birthday.”

Zack was at the counter, pouring coffee into a mug. “Did Wilder leave any of his things with Vella?”

“Not that I know of.” She tapped the end of the pen against the tabletop, thinking. “But then, I hadn’t even realized she had an affair with him until Andrew told me. If Vella kept any souvenirs of her time with Wilder Jones, they would be at the Shelbyville house.”

“You said the basement was filled with boxes and cartons.”

“Yes. Most of them contain her paintings. I suppose we’ll have to go through them. It’s going to be a job. There must be two or three hundred pictures in that basement. As far as I know they’re all masks.”

The doorbell chimed, startling Raine into dropping the pen. “It’s six-thirty in the morning. Who in the world?”

“Got a hunch that’s your babysitter.”

Zack put down his coffee mug and went into the living room. Robin and Batman trotted along at his heels, ears perked and tails high. They had adopted him, Raine realized. As far as they were concerned, Zack was now part of the gang. She tried to recall the name for a group of cats. Clowder. That was it. Unfortunately it didn’t sound very exciting, let alone cool. No wonder people didn’t use it to describe those of the feline persuasion.

She heard the front door open and the rumble of a deep bass voice that sounded like it came from the heart of a mountain. She got to her feet, exercising some caution because her ankle was still tender, and went to stand in the doorway.

A big, dark-skinned man a few years younger than Zack occupied a considerable amount of space in her small living room. His head was completely shaved and gleamed as though it had been waxed. Dark glasses veiled his eyes. A gold ring flashed from one ear. He was dressed in khakis, a dark blue pullover shirt and a battered suede bomber jacket. She caught a glimpse of a shoulder holster beneath the jacket.

He gave her a smile that could have lit up the stage of a large theater.

“You must be the client,” he said.

She didn’t even try to resist the smile. “You must be the bodyguard.”

“This is Raine Tallentyre,” Zack said. “Raine, meet Calvin Harp.”

Raine extended her hand. “A pleasure, Mr. Harp.”

“Call me Calvin.” He shook her hand and then looked down at the cats, who were sitting directly in front of him, gazing upward with unblinking stares. “Who are these guys?”

“Batman and Robin,” Zack said.

Calvin beamed. “What do you know? Couple of my favorite masked avengers.”

He went down on his haunches and held out his hand. The cats sniffed his fingers in an assessing manner and appeared to be satisfied. Calvin rubbed their ears gently with one huge hand and straightened.

“Looks like you’re in the club,” Zack said. “How about some coffee?”

Calvin’s smile got even bigger. “Excellent idea. Any chance of some food? I’ve been a little busy since I got Fallon’s call a few hours ago. Wasn’t anything to eat on board the company plane except a couple of boxes of doughnuts. Had to share ’em with the pilots.”

“How do you feel about peanut butter?” Zack asked.

“Works for me.” Calvin looked toward the kitchen with great interest. “Hell, I’m hungry enough to eat the cats’ food.”

Zack looked at Raine. “The only downside of working with Calvin is that you have to feed him. A lot.”

Forty-seven

Z
ack used a gadget from his J&J tool kit to let himself into the small studio apartment. He did not expect to find anything that pointed to Pandora as a member of Nightshade but he had learned the hard way not to let the personal get in the way of the logical.

The tiny space was decorated in what could only be described as High Goth. The ceiling was an elaborately detailed night sky, complete with crescent moon and stars. The walls were painted midnight blue, the window and door trims picked out in a paler shade. The furnishings were eclectic and mostly black punctuated with the occasional bloodred pillow.

He checked the refrigerator first. One of the things they had learned in the Stone Canyon affair was that Nightshade’s version of the formula had to be refrigerated. With luck, that was still true.

He opened the door with gloved hands. There was an assortment of leftover takeout, several bottles of water and a couple cases of soda. He took the small metal stick Fallon had given him out of its leather case and inserted it into the milk carton, just to be sure. It did not change color. He rinsed it off at the sink and tried the bottle of vinegar. No change.

He went through the rest of the apartment carefully but there was nothing to indicate that Pandora was anything other than what she appeared—a creative young woman with a flair for the offbeat and the dramatic.

He went out of the apartment, made his way down the three flights of stairs and walked the two blocks to where he had left the rental car.

Pandora emerged from the back room shortly before noon. “How does pizza sound?”

Calvin, sprawled in a chair with a cup of coffee, gave her a mockingly earnest look. “Don’t toy with me, woman. You never want to ask me a question like that unless you’re serious.”

Pandora’s answering laugh was light, almost a giggle, and so unexpected that Raine, standing behind the counter, could only stare at her in disbelief. She had never heard Pandora laugh like that.

“The restaurant at the end of the block makes great pizza,” Pandora assured Calvin. “I’ll go pick one up.”

“Oh, man,” Calvin said, big hand covering his heart. “The perfect woman. You with anyone?”

To Raine’s astonishment, Pandora actually blushed.

“Not at the moment,” she said lightly.

“This is definitely my lucky day,” Calvin declared.

Pandora looked oddly flustered. She turned hastily to Raine. “The usual? Olive and veggie?”

“Sounds good to me,” Raine said, still trying to get used to the sight of a sparkling-eyed Pandora. “If that’s okay with you, Calvin.”

“Sure.” Calvin took out a wallet. “Get two. Make sure one of ’em’s extra large.”

“That’s okay,” Raine said. “Lunch is on the house.”

“Nah, let’s let J&J pay for it.” Calvin crammed a fistful of cash into Pandora’s hand. “I’ll bill the pizzas as expenses.”

With a last lilting giggle, Pandora hurried out the door with the money.

Calvin watched her go with a besotted expression. “I think I’ve just met the girl of my dreams.”

Raine folded her arms on the counter. “I thought you Arcane Society folks relied on your own in-house matchmakers to find partners.”

“I like to do my own hunting.” He went back to watching the street in front of the shop. “Besides, arcanematch-dot-com isn’t what you’d call one hundred percent reliable. Just ask Zack about his fiancée.”

“He told me about Jenna,” she said.

“No telling what Nightshade might have been able to do if they had succeeded in marrying an operative off to Zack,” Calvin stated.

“I can see where it would have been a big coup for Nightshade to have an agent married to a member of the Jones family.”

Calvin snorted softly. “Not just any member of the family, the Number One Jones.”

She stilled. “I beg your pardon?”

Calvin glanced at her. Surprise and then amusement dawned on his broad features. “Sorry about that. I forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“When Fallon called me he said something about you having been raised outside the Society. Guess you don’t know much about the politics of the organization.”

“I’m aware that the Society was founded by a Jones and that the Jones family has always been extremely influential.”

“That’s putting it mildly. In the last century the Society went through some major changes. Members of the Governing Council are elected now, for example. But one thing hasn’t changed. The head of the organization has always been a Jones, usually a Jones from Zack’s branch of the family tree. Society’s pretty strong on tradition.”

She nearly collapsed on the counter. “Are you telling me that Zack is slated to be the next Master of the Arcane Society?”

“The US branch,” Calvin clarified. “The UK has its own Master.”

“Another Jones?”

“Afraid so.”

“Good grief. I had no idea.”

“Zack’s appointment is supposed to be confirmed by the Council anytime now. It gets officially announced at the Society’s annual Spring Ball. Problem is, ever since his fiancée died, Zack’s been telling everyone that he’s decided to opt out of the job. No one’s taking him seriously, though.”

She frowned. “Zack doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who changes his mind once it’s made up.”

“True, but in this case folks figure he just needs some time to get past what happened last year.”

“Don’t know about you, but speaking personally, I can see how finding out that you nearly married a Nightshade operative and then having said operative try to poison you might make you reconsider your goals and objectives in life.”

“Nah. Zack was born for the job. Sooner or later he’ll realize it.”

“Would it be the end of the world if he did opt out?”

Calvin shrugged. “Like they say, no one’s irreplaceable. And lord knows, there are plenty of other Joneses around. Thing is, Zack’s grandfather, the current Master, and the majority of the Council, which includes a lot of intuitives, by the way, feel that Zack is the best guy for the job. There’s a lot of pressure on him.”

“What makes him so unique? You said yourself there are a lot of Joneses.”

“He’s the first Jones in a long time who is a level-ten mirror talent.”

“So what? Why does that make him the best person to take on the Master’s responsibilities?”

“Mirror talents are so rare they’re the stuff of legend within the Society,” Calvin explained. “The Council and the old man at the top are thrilled with Zack. See, the ability to intuitively second-guess the opposition is just exactly the kind of talent you need in the Master’s Chair when you’re up against some real bad guys. And Nightshade is definitely a world-class collection of bad guys.”

Forty-eight

H
e left the car in the herd of vehicles clustered in a lot that served a small city park and walked a block to a sprawling six-story condominium complex.

Bradley Mitchell’s home security was stunningly low-end. Then again, maybe hotshot detectives assumed that the bad guys wouldn’t dream of burglarizing a cop’s home. Talk about a state of denial.

He deactivated the simple alarm system with the same J&J gadget that he had used to open the front door.

Once inside, he found himself in a one-bedroom apartment decorated in surprisingly good taste. He had been expecting a cluttered, dust-laden bachelor pad filled with cheap rental furniture, a lot of high-tech media equipment and the kind of artwork that was ripped out of girlie magazines.

The state-of-the-art television and sound system were present but the sofa, chairs and coffee table were comfortable and modern in design—clearly several steps above rental quality. The pictures on the walls were Ansel Adams prints. Maybe the biggest shocker of all was the well-stocked bookcase.

Okay, so he had been hoping that Mitchell would prove to be a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal with no redeeming traits. He should have known that Raine would never have been attracted to a man who didn’t exhibit some civilized behavior patterns and a degree of intelligence.

He brushed against the first ghostly images when he took off a glove and touched the bed. The scenes were very faint, little more than gossamer flickers slicing through his mind. His powerful intuition conjured up a vision of two people engaged in heated sex. One of them—the one who left the strongest impression—wasn’t enjoying the act, at least not in a normal, healthy way. For one of the two lovers, sex was a weapon—no, a tool—that had been used to achieve some objective far more vital than a momentary release. Power was the goal.

He steeled himself against the visions long enough to absorb the few clues they offered and then suppressed them, temporarily at least.

Moving more quickly now, he pulled the glove back on and went into the kitchen. Disappointment shafted through him when he found no unmarked vials inside the refrigerator but he used the little metal stick to sample a carton of orange juice and the milk, just to make sure.

He closed the door and stood quietly in the middle of Mitchell’s neat, tidy kitchen, thinking about things. All his parasenses were yelling at him, telling him that the drug had to be somewhere in the apartment.

He went back into the living room and stood listening intently. Nothing. Then he went down the hall and opened a closet door. There was a stacked set of apartment-sized appliances inside, a washer and dryer. He finally heard it: the high-pitched whine of a miniature refrigerator, the kind designed for a den.

The little unit was sitting in the corner, plugged into a wall socket. When he touched the handle, another whispery vision slashed through him, strong enough to penetrate the glove. He opened the door and saw a small, unlabeled vial. There was a trace amount of clear fluid inside.

Bradley shoved the key into the lock of his front door. He moved into the foyer and looked at the small white control panel on the wall. The security system was off. That wasn’t right. He was sure he’d set it before he left the apartment. The damn thing was broken again. One of these days he would have to get around to replacing it.

He thumped the panel box a couple of times. The lights didn’t come on. He was about to hit the box again when he sensed a presence behind him.

He spun around, hand going inside his jacket. But Zack Jones already had his gun out.

“Guy in your line of work should probably get a better security system,” Zack said.