Haunted (14 page)

“I was going to say ‘You didn’t need to…but thank you.’ So what have you learned?”

He confirmed that Nixen, like all forms of cacodemon, thrived on chaos. “Thrived” might be the wrong word, implying that they needed it for survival. For cacodemons, chaos is like drugs or alcohol. They get a rush from it, and they’ll seek it out whenever they can. Some are addicted, but for most it’s a luxury, something to be indulged in sparingly.

He also discovered that Nixen share a couple of common demonic powers. One, they can teleport. Second, like most demons, Nixen possess superhuman strength. Given what the Fates had said, I was certain the Nix could still teleport. As for superhuman strength…I was definitely adding that to my list of things to ask them about.

“Great stuff.” I leaned over him. “I owe you.”

“And you can repay me by satisfying my curiosity. What happened after the hospital?”

I didn’t get past the part about my epic battle with Janah before he laughed.

“Pummeled by an Angel?”
he said.

“Glad you’re amused. Next time, you can handle sword-ducking duty.”

He smiled. “Next time I suspect it’ll be Janah doing the ducking. I’ll admit, I’m envious. I’ve always been curious about the angels.”

“Well, keep helping me and you’ll probably meet one yourself. Might not be what you expect, though.”

I told him about Trsiel. His brows arched.

“From what I’ve heard, they’re usually more…otherworldly,” he said.

“Maybe he’s playing up the human side for my benefit.”

I peered across the room. While I’d been telling him about the case, dawn had erupted into daybreak. I finished my story, then promised to return for another update when I could.

I found Jaime in her condo, awake earlier than I would have expected. She sat on the living-room floor, in front of the TV, following along with a Pilates tape. She was balancing on her rear, legs up and crossed at the ankles.

“Christ,” I said. “I’m dead three years and that crap’s still alive?”

Jaime thumped over backward, legs still entwined in a position that looked damned uncomfortable. She peered up at me, eyes narrowing.

“That reminds me,” I said. “Something I forgot to ask you yesterday.”

“How to approach a necro without scaring the shit out of her?”

“Uh, right.” I took a seat on the sofa arm as she untangled her limbs. “Might seem obvious, but it isn’t. I can’t phone first. Can’t knock. Can’t even walk loudly. I could sing…no, that’s pretty scary, too. How about one of those discreet, throat-clearing coughs? Read about them all the time, but never tried it myself.”

“Just make noise. Any noise. Preferably not right at my ear.”

“I’ve always preferred the element of surprise, but I’ll give it a shot.” I walked to the TV and made a face at the screen. “I can’t believe this crap is still around. Doesn’t it put you to sleep?”

“It relaxes me. Gets the tension out.”

“So does kickboxing. More useful, too. What do you get from this…besides bored?”

Her eyes narrowed to slits, like she was trying to figure out whether I was making fun of her. When she decided I wasn’t, she relaxed and shrugged.

“It keeps me toned.”

“So does kickboxing. And it’s a damned sight more practical, too. Some guy jumps you in an alley, what are you going to do? Assume the lotus position?”

“The lotus position isn’t Pilates. It’s—” She shook her head, then flicked off the tape, and grabbed her water bottle. “And what do you need, Eve? I assume you aren’t here playing personal trainer.”

“Looking for intel, for the next part of my quest. I need to find the Nix’s last partner.”

Jaime gave a slow nod. “Okay. So she’s dead?”

“Probably not. This time I need your hands, not your necro know-how. There’s a serious lack of Internet service providers in the ghost world.”

“So you need me to search and find a suspect—”

I shook my head. “Just search and print, based on some criteria I’ll give you. That should square us for yesterday’s haunter extermination job. After that, we’ll work out payment as we go along.”

“You don’t need to repay me for something like this. Consider it my karmic payback.”

“Uh-uh. Pay as you go, that’s my way.”

Jaime studied me for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. So what will you do with this last partner? Get her to tell you about the Nix?”

I slid onto the seat cushions. “Bit more mystical than that. The hosts are still linked to the Nix. They see images of her, what’s she’s doing, stuff like that. Those images can then be passed to me through an angel.”

She stopped drinking her water, mid-chug, and frowned. “A what?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said, too. Demons I understand. But angels?”

“You’re breaking up,” Jaime said, her frown deepening. “Damned cosmic editing.”

I twisted to look at her as she recapped her bottle.

“That’s what I call it,” she said. “There are things ghosts aren’t supposed to talk about, so I just catch words here and there, like a CB transmission breaking up.”

“Oh, that’s right. Necros can’t ask about the afterlife. I guess angels cross the same boundary.”

“You’re cutting out again.”

She stripped off her tank top and streaked on deodorant.

“What if I spell it?” I said.

She pulled on her shirt. “Never tried that. Could get you in trouble, though.”

“No place I haven’t been before.”

She smiled. “Go for it, then.”

“A-n-g-e-l.”

“Nope. Not even a letter.”

“Charades, anyone?”

I stood and pantomimed a wings and halo.

“Oh, weird,” Jaime said. “You blinked right out. Disappeared.”

“Damn, they’re good.”

She chuckled. “If only my e-mail spam filter worked so well.”

“Ah well, it isn’t important. Speaking of e-mail, we’ll need a computer.” I looked around the room. “I’m assuming you have one.”

“I do. Only one problem.” She checked her watch. “I have a show in Milwaukee tonight, and I need to check out the theater before noon, which is why I’m up bright and early. But my afternoon is free, so if you can tag along, or meet me there…”

“Better tag along. Less chance to lose you.” And less chance for Jaime to change her mind. “We can find an Internet café. Libraries usually have free access, but this isn’t something you want to be seen researching in a library.”

She pulled on her jeans. “Internationally—well, okay, nationally renowned spiritualists can get away with stuff like that. Catch me researching murders, and people just assume I’m on the job.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “Trouble is, they also assume it might be newsworthy. Wrong person catches me looking up murders, and it’ll be splashed across next week’s tabloid headlines. Then my phone will start ringing off the hook, people wanting me to start looking for their loved one’s killer.”

“And you get enough of that.”

She fussed with the button on her jeans, gaze downcast, answering with an abrupt nod. “I think we can manage part of the search without the Internet.” She rooted around in her purse and pulled out her cell phone. “Direct link to a discreet journalist.”

I gave Jaime my list of criteria. She wrote it down, then made her call. I waited on the sofa. Though I was too far to hear someone answer on the other end, I knew the moment someone did, by the look that crossed Jaime’s face—half delight, half abject terror.

“Uh, oh, Jer—Jeremy,” she stammered. “It’s me—it’s Jaime. Jaime Vegas, from the, uh—” A short, embarrassed laugh. “Right. Well, just thought I’d make sure, in case you didn’t recognize my voice—er, not that I’d
expect
you to recognize it, but you might know other Jaimes…or you might have forgotten who I was since the council meeting, uh…oh, I guess that was just last month, wasn’t it?”

The moment Jaime said “council” combined with “Jeremy” I knew who she was talking to. Jeremy Danvers, Alpha of the werewolf Pack. Never met the guy. Never even heard of him until after I was dead. Now Savannah spent an increasing chunk of her summer vacations hanging out with the werewolf Pack, so I’d come to know all the players. Jeremy was as far from the stereotypical werewolf-thug as one could get. He not only tolerated my kid running around underfoot, but paid attention to her, always listening to her problems and helping her with her art. Savannah adored him. And judging by the cringe-inducing display I was witnessing right now, she wasn’t the only one.

“So, uh, oh, right, I was calling for Elena,” Jaime finally managed to get out. “Is she there?”

Slight pause.

“Oh, umm, yes, I have her cell number, and I could call, but, uh—” Nervous laugh. “Well, if she’s out with Clayton, it can wait. Or it had
better
wait. Not that he’s—well, you know—”

A pause, and a high-pitched laugh. Jaime closed her eyes and mouthed an obscenity. The only thing worse than acting like a fool is hearing yourself do it and not being able to stop.

“So I’d better not disturb them if I want to stay on his good side—well, assuming I am on his good side, which, of course, I can never tell, but I figure as long as he’s not paying much attention to me one way or the other, that’s probably not a bad thing.” She took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut, wincing. “Anyway, I’ll let you go and I’ll call Elena later. I just wanted her to check the newswire for me—”

Pause.

“No, past stuff. Well, recent past. Murders. Not the kind of thing you’d read, of course—”

Another pause. Another spine-grating laugh.

“Oh, right. That’s exactly the kind of thing you read. Gotta keep your eye out for those brutal wolfy slayings—er, not that all werewolves are brutal or, uh, well—” Deep breath. “Let me run it by you.”

Within ten minutes, she had a page filled with cases, a few complete with names, but most with just locations or details that would make further searching a snap.

“Wow,” she said. “You’re amazing—I mean, your memory is amazing. Not that you aren’t—Oh, someone’s at the door. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. Really appreciate—”

She winced and I could see her literally chomp down on her tongue. She signed off quickly, then slumped forward, muttering under her breath.

“You should ask him out,” I said.

She shook her head sharply. “No way.”

“Please don’t tell me you think guys should make the first move. That is so—”

“Trust me, I have no problem taking the initiative. It’s just—he—Jeremy—is not the kind of guy you walk up to and say, ‘Hey, let’s go grab a beer.’”

“You could try.”

She must have considered it, judging by the look of terror that passed behind her eyes. She reached up, tugged out her hair clip, and wound her hair around her hand, walking to the mirror as she did. Nothing more painful than a crush. I remember my last one. Greg Madison. Deep dimples and a laugh that made my heart flutter. Damn, that had been painful. Of course, I’d been fourteen at the time, not forty. But I suppose infatuation is infatuation at any age, and maybe even worse when you’re old enough to recognize the symptoms, be mortified by your reaction, and still not be able to do anything about it.

13

JAIME’S DRIVER WAS DOWNSTAIRS WAITING TO PICK HER
up. My first thought was “Wow, she has a chauffeur,” but once we were behind the soundproof tinted glass in the backseat, she assured me that the driver was a rental, hired for the trip by her production company. Jaime didn’t own a car—she was rarely home, so a car would have sat in the parking garage. Milwaukee was less than a two-hour drive from Chicago, so there was no sense flying. The driver was just a bonus, the kind of luxury that comes with being semifamous.

We spent the afternoon in the hotel business lounge. Other people came and went, popping in just long enough to check their e-mail or send a fax. One stuck around, a guy in his early thirties, still young enough to be impressed by the posh hotel his company had put him up in, and to expect others to be equally impressed. When that and his pricey suit didn’t win him coy glances from Jaime, he switched to that modern-day equivalent of dragging in a freshly killed hunk of meat—attempting to wow her with his computer skills.

She assured him that she could handle it, but he still hovered at the next terminal, pretending to work, stopping every few minutes to make sure Jaime was “still doing okay,” hoping she’d become hopelessly snarled in the Web, and he would swoop to her rescue, maybe win an invitation back to her room and hours of acrobatic sex with a gorgeous flame-haired stranger. Hey, it happens in the
Penthouse
letters column all the time, and they don’t put stuff in there that isn’t true.

When Jaime finished, she escaped with the old “just running to the ladies’ room” line. Now, if it’d been me…but it wasn’t me, so I kept my mouth shut.

Once back in the hotel room, Jaime grabbed a roll of hotel-supplied Scotch tape from the desk, and plastered the walls with the printouts so I could read them. There were over a hundred pages, detailing twenty-three cases, some obvious suspects, some your garden-variety domestic murders but with something extra that had warranted national attention. When she ran out of wall space, she laid pages on the bed and sofa. Then she checked her watch.

“I’m supposed to be in makeup in twenty minutes.”

“Go on.” I looked around. “This is fine.”

“So long as housekeeping doesn’t decide to slip in and turn down the sheets.” She glanced around the room and shuddered. “Even the showbiz spiritualist gig wouldn’t explain this.”

“I’ll cast a lock spell on the door.”

My spell wouldn’t work on a door in the living world, but there was no harm in trying, if it made her feel better.

“Good luck,” I said. “Or is it ‘break a leg’?”

She gave a wan smile. “Sometimes I think a preshow broken limb wouldn’t be such a bad thing.” Her eyes clouded, but the look evaporated with a blink. “I should be wishing you luck, too. If you need anything, just pop by the theater.” She hesitated. “But if you do pop in—”

“Don’t really
pop
in. Got it.”