by Jayne Castle
“I’ll brew these up as fast as I can.” Elly set the herbs on the counter and reached for the kettle. “But first I have to make some rez-root tea.”
Grayson suddenly looked interested. “Got any coffee?”
“No.” She opened the canister of rez-root tea. “I don’t drink coffee. I prefer this, instead. It has a similar effect, though. The herbs I’m preparing for Doreen work best when mixed with a stimulant-based beverage. It’s an old trick with analgesics.” She reached for a teapot. “Mind if I make some extra tea for myself?”
“No.” He turned back to the window. “Make some for me, too, while you’re at it. I’d rather have coffee, but I’ll take what I can get. Looks like it’s going to be a long wait.”
“Is there a rule somewhere that says innocent prisoners have to make tea for the guys who arrest them?”
“Just make the damn tea, okay?”
“Whatever you say.” She took three mugs down out of a cupboard and got busy spooning tea into the pot. “Although, I must say, if I were you, I’m not sure I’d want to drink any brew that had been made by a suspected drug dealer.”
Grayson chuckled. “As long as you’re drinking the same tea, it should be safe.”
“I can’t wait much longer,” Doreen whispered in a tortured voice.
“Just a few more minutes,” Elly promised, opening one of the packets.
The water came to a boil. She poured it quickly over the tea leaves, filling the glass pot.
While she waited for the tea to steep, she opened the cookie jar, took out one of Mrs. Kim’s peanut butter and chocolate chip specials, and gave it to Rose.
“Are those chocolate chip?” Grayson asked, watching Rose nibble at the cookie.
“With peanut butter,” Elly said. “One of my neighbors made them. They’re Rose’s favorite.”
“Are they real cookies or some kind of special dust bunny food?”
“They’re real cookies. Rose eats human food.” She took another cookie out of the jar and bit into it.
“Ugh.” Doreen turned her face away. “I can’t watch.”
“Tea’s ready,” Elly said brightly.
She poured the brew into two of the mugs, leaving the third mug empty.
She took a pinch of herbs out of one of the packets and dropped them into Doreen’s mug. “I think I’ll have some, too.” She sprinkled herbs into her own mug, “I can feel a headache coming on. Must be the stress.”
She carried the mugs to the table and set them down.
“Drink it slowly,” she warned. “It’s very hot.”
“Thanks.” Doreen pulled the mug toward her and inhaled the aroma. “Wonderful. Just what I needed.”
To Elly’s dismay, Grayson handcuffed her right wrist to the chair again.
Satisfied that she was secured, he crossed to the counter, picked up the teapot, and filled the third mug. Without asking permission, he helped himself to a cookie.
Rose muttered ominously.
“Take it easy, lint ball,” Grayson said. Mug in hand, he went back to the window. “Plenty left for you. I haven’t had anything to eat since I got the call this morning. That would have been sometime around three A.M.”
“Would that have been the call from Palmer Frazier informing you that he had another hot tip regarding the location of some illicit drugs?” Elly asked politely.
Grayson gave her an irritated look. “Why do you keep going on about this Palmer Frazier character?”
It was Doreen who responded. She touched her bruised face.
“For starters, it sounds like he’s the bastard who did this to me,” she said. “Although he used another name. By the way, he told me he was an undercover cop working on a big drug case. What a coincidence, huh?”
“I think he probably murdered Stuart Griggs, too,” Elly offered helpfully.
Grayson shook his head. “You two can really spin the stories.” He took a sip of his tea and smiled slightly. “But the tea isn’t half bad, I’ll give you that.”
“We all have our talents,” Elly said.
Chapter 34
ORMOND RIPLEY FROZE THE VIDEO FRAME. “RECOGNIZE him?”
“His name is Palmer Frazier.” Cooper studied the image on the screen. “This just turned into an even bigger problem than I thought it was.”
Ripley set the video in motion again.
The recording showed Frazier walking swiftly down a hallway in a back-of-the-house section of the nightclub. He was dressed in the black-and-white uniforms worn by the members of the food-and-beverage staff. One of his pockets was stuffed with what appeared to be small cocktail napkins. A cluster of plastic swizzle sticks stuck out of another pocket.
“I found one of those swizzle sticks at the scene,” Cooper said. “He must have dropped it and never realized it.”
“Probably got pretty excited when he started rezzing blue light,” Ripley said.
Frazier was obviously in a hurry. When he reached the door of the janitorial storage room, he opened it quickly and disappeared inside.
“I’ve been through this video from start to finish,” Ripley said. “At no point does Frazier come back out of that storage room. And there is no video of him leaving the casino through the front entrance that night. He just disappears.”
Cooper rechecked the date stamp on the video. “That was the night he tried to kill Bertha Newell. He must have been here at the casino when he somehow learned that Newell had become a problem that had to be dealt with immediately. Maybe Griggs called him. In any event, he probably knew that he was going to have to kill someone.”
“Realizing there was an outside chance that he might someday need an alibi, he slipped out through my little hole-in-the-wall down in the basement.” Ripley lounged back in his executive chair and steepled his fingers. “He no doubt planned to return the same way. If anyone questioned him later, he could say he was here at work the whole time.”
“But he wasn’t able to return because he melted amber creating the massive blue ghost vortex that he used to trap Newell in the catacombs.”
“He would have plunged into a bad afterburn,” Ripley concluded. “There would have been no time to come back here and act normal for a couple of hours. He had to go somewhere to crash.”
“But first he would have wanted a woman,” Cooper said softly.
Ripley tapped his fingertips together. “He would have wanted one very, very badly.”
“The hooker who was found dead three blocks from Ruin Lane the next morning.” Cooper walked slowly across the room, thinking. “The papers said it was a chant overdose. But the woman’s roommate told the reporters that it looked like her friend had been roughed up by her last client. She called it murder.”
“She may have been right.” Ripley leaned forward and checked a printout. “According to my human resources department, Palmer Frazier, aka Jake Monroe, was hired three months ago. Been a model employee.”
“Got a hunch he’d been planning to set you up for that raid for a long time,” Cooper said.
“Question is, why?”
“He’s a hunter who can work blue ghost light.” Cooper shrugged. “They tend to be long-range planners.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that. The plan seems to have gone along very smoothly until you arrived on the scene. You have screwed things up for him since you hit town.”
“Not me.” Cooper headed for the door. “I think he was setting me up, too, which is kind of embarrassing for a Guild boss to have to admit.”
“If you weren’t the one messing with his plan, who was?”
Cooper paused, his hand on the doorknob. “My fiancée.” He smiled slightly. “He made the mistake of underestimating her right from the start.”
“Fiancée? Didn’t know you were still engaged. Thought the wedding had been called off.”
“Just postponed.”
“Yeah? Well, when you set a new date, be sure to send me an invitation.”
“I’ll do that.”
> Chapter 35
“HE’S NOT DEAD OR ANYTHING, IS HE?” DOREEN ASKED. She looked uneasily at Grayson De Witt, who was stretched out flat on the kitchen floor, snoring gently. “Killing cops is generally considered a no-no.”
“Don’t worry.” Elly finished de-rezzing the handcuff that bound Doreen to the kitchen chair. “Just asleep. But he won’t wake up for a few hours. The dose of red moonseed that I put in the tea was pretty strong.”
“I don’t get it.” Doreen stood, gently rubbing her chafed wrist. “I saw you make the tea. All three of us drank it. Why aren’t you and I snoozing away on the kitchen floor?”
“It’s true, we all drank the same tea, and I did slip a heavy dose of moonseed into it when DeWitt was busy checking the alley.” Elly went to the window, put her back to the wall, and peered behind the shade. “But the additional herbs that I put into the tea that you and I drank were an antidote to moonseed. In fact, when you combine those two herbs you get a brew that is actually a high-energy stimulant.”
“Huh. Guess that explains why I’m feeling like I could go to the gym and work out.”
“My compliments on the great acting job, by the way. I thought you really were about to throw up all over De Witt’s nice shoes.”
“Frankly, it wasn’t too far a stretch for me. I wasn’t feeling very good at the time. But I’m much better now.” Doreen moved around the table. “See anything?”
“A couple of guys on the rooftop across the way. Looks like DeWitt wasn’t kidding when he said he had men watching the street and the alley.”
“Oh, jeez. That means we don’t dare leave.”
“Not via the alley or the street, that’s for sure.” Elly reached for the wall phone. “I’ve got to warn Cooper.”
“Wait.” Doreen’s eyes widened. “Not that phone. It might be tapped. Remember what you said about cops and bugs.”
Elly stared at the phone in her hand as though it had become a chroma-snake. “You’re right.” She slammed the instrument back into the receiver. “I’ll use my personal phone. I left it in my tote.”
“Do you think the cops can bug personal phones, too?”
Elly halted in the doorway, appalled. “I don’t know.”
They looked at each other for a long moment.
Doreen turned to stare at Grayson DeWitt. “Why not use his phone?”
“Good thinking.” Elly rushed back to crouch beside Grayson. She patted his pockets and found a small phone inside one of them. It was a very attractive and expensive brand, she noticed.
She rezzed the phone and punched in Cooper’s private number. He answered on the first ring.
“Cooper, where are you?”
“Just left The Road. What’s wrong?”
He spoke in the flat, cold voice she had only heard him use when he dealt with emergencies or major Guild politics.
She gave him a quick rundown of events.
“And now DeWitt’s passed out cold on the kitchen floor,” she concluded. “You can’t come back here, Cooper. There are men on the rooftops waiting to arrest you.”
“Frazier is a bigger problem at the moment. I don’t know where he is. You and Doreen have to get out of that apartment.”
“There’s only one way out that probably isn’t being watched,” she said, meeting Doreen’s anxious eyes.
“Your little hole-in-the-wall?” Cooper asked.
“Yes.” Elly scooped up Rose and signaled to Doreen to follow her toward the stairs. “We’re on our way downstairs now.”
“Any chance Frazier knows about it?”
Elly looked at Doreen. “Did you tell your ex-boyfriend about my private little bolt-hole?”
“No. Subject never came up.” Doreen made a face. “And even if it had, I wouldn’t have told him. Frazier and I had some fun together, but it wasn’t like I was in love with the bastard.”
“Spoken like a true ruin rat,” Elly said wryly. “Okay, that answers that question,” she said into the phone. “He probably doesn’t know about my secret tunnel entrance.”
“I still don’t like the idea of you going down there,” Cooper said.
Elly, with Doreen behind her, reached the bottom of the staircase and hurried across the space to open the cellar door.
“We’ll be okay,” she assured him. “Doreen is a very good tangler. She can handle any illusion traps we might come across. Rose will give the alarm if there are any stray ghosts drifting around that section of the tunnels. We’ll steer clear of them.”
“What about an exit strategy?”
“I’ve got the coordinates for Bertha’s hole-in-the-wall. We’ll head for it. There’s no reason DeWitt’s men would be watching her shop.”
“You’ve got plenty of tuned amber?” Cooper asked.
She glanced at the amber locket around Doreen’s neck. “Doreen has hers.” She touched her earrings. “And I’ve got mine.”
“Give me both frequencies.”
She rattled off her own and then held the phone away from her mouth. “Doreen? What’s your freq?”
Doreen gave it to her. Elly repeated it into the phone.
“Got ’em,” Cooper said.
“We’re heading into the cellar now.” Elly led the way down the steps into the pool of darkness below. “We won’t be able to keep this phone connection much longer.”
“Be careful, both of you,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at the exit point in about twenty minutes. I want you and Doreen in safekeeping at Guild headquarters before I go after Frazier.”
Elly knelt down to open the concealed trapdoor in the floor of the cellar.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Guild Boss,” she said. “See you soon.”
A wave of psi power wafted up through the opening in the floor.
She cut the connection and dropped the phone into her pocket.
“I’m the tangler here,” Doreen said. “Stand back; I’ll go first.”
“You know something?” Elly said, “When it comes to the catacombs, people have been saying that to me for my entire life. One of these days, I’m going to be the one who gets to say it.”
Chapter 36
SOMETHING HAD GONE WRONG. AGAIN.
Palmer hit redial on his phone for the third time. There was still no answer from Grayson De Witt.
He went to the window and stood looking out across the rooftops of the Old Quarter.
What was going on over there on Ruin Lane? The scheme was cut and dried. Everything had been on schedule since he’d made the phone call to DeWitt early this morning.
In his last call, De Witt had reported that he had found the dope in Elly’s car and that his men were in position on the rooftops.
What could have gone wrong this time?
Frustration and rage threatened to choke Palmer. His left hand clenched and unclenched.
Boone had figured out the second setup, he thought. It was the only explanation. The son of a bitch was probably on his way back to the safety of his office at Guild headquarters in Aurora Springs right now, leaving Elly behind to take the fall for the drugs.
So much for his working hypothesis, Palmer thought. He had been so damn certain that Elly St. Clair was Boone’s one weak spot. Now it looked as if he had miscalculated.
He knew that it was time to pull another disappearing act, but he hated to walk away from the plan at this stage. He had spent so much time and money on this project. Every detail had been so carefully thought out. He had killed twice to preserve the integrity of the plan.
If Boone was on his way back to Aurora Springs, it meant that everything had fallen apart.
“Bastard. Bastard. Son of a bitch bastard blue freak.”
He slammed his fist against the side of the window and then sucked in his breath when pain flashed across his knuckles. He looked down and saw blood dripping on the windowsill.
“Bastard,” he whispered. “This is all your fault, Boone. Everything has gone wrong, and it’s all your fault, you damned freak.”
He went into the small bathroom and ran cold water over his bruised knuckles. The mask in the mirror stared back at him. Every day it looked less and less like him. He was falling apart.
Control. The key was control. If he didn’t regain it, he would fall into the blue vortex.
He took some deep breaths. When he felt steadier he turned off the water.
Think like the Guild boss you were destined to be.
Deal with facts, he told himself. All right, something had gone wrong with the final stage of the revised plan. There was nothing to be done about the disaster. Escape and survival were his priorities now.
He had to get back underground as quickly as possible. In the catacombs he was the master of blue energy. Down there he was invincible.
He had made preparations for this contingency, he reminded himself.
He went back out into the unfurnished room and wiped down everything in sight with a damp cloth. It was doubtful that anyone would ever find this place, let alone connect him to it, but he was not going to take any more chances. There were rumors that some police detectives had a kind of psi talent that enabled them to detect whether a suspect had been in a room at some point in the recent past. The authorities claimed that was an urban legend, but he knew a little something about Guild legends, and he wasn’t taking any chances. Courts required proof. He didn’t plan to leave any.
When he was satisfied that he had erased all traces of his presence in the small, dilapidated apartment, he picked up the duffel bag that held his emergency supply of cash and some extra chant that he could sell if he ran short of money. He had a change of clothes and his journal in the bag, too.
He let himself out the door, not bothering to rez the antique lock. The old flophouse had been abandoned years ago. He’d been lucky that someone had neglected to shut off the water.
He went quickly along the empty hall and took the fire stairs down into the deep basement.
The psi energy pouring out of the hole-in-the-wall revived and calmed him. Down here he was in control.
He slipped through the jagged opening in the quartz, climbed into the sled, and paused to check the fix on the locator. He wished he could leave town right that instant. It made him nervous to hang around any longer than necessary now that he knew his plan had failed.