Avenging Angels (11 page)

“But it was a shot from the twelve-gauge that killed him. I don’t understand what the .22 has to do with it.”

“You will,” Eddie said confidently.

“Do you?” Bree asked.

“Not yet. But I’m working on it.” He ran his hands over the top of his head. “Yeah. I’m working on it.”

Bree kept her skepticism to herself. Hunter, on the other hand, shook his head a little. “I don’t know, Ninja. I know you have this gut feeling. I respect it. But there’s a big difference between what you know and what you can prove. I know you’re sure about this. But even so.” He didn’t say anything more and an uncomfortable silence fell over the table.

Bree kept her cell phone in her jacket pocket, and it vibrated against her hip. She excused herself and walked away from the table to take the call. It was a text message from Ron:

She checked the time. Professor Cianquino lived several miles away, on the ground floor of an old plantation that had been converted to apartments. If she cut her lunch short, she’d have twenty minutes to get there. Meetings with her retired professor were command performances, more or less. She texted Ron, OK, and went back to the table to make her farewells.

“I’ve got to get a move on myself,” Eddie said. “Thank you for the pizza.”

“I promised you pecan rolls,” Bree said, “and Hunter knows I’m not one to forget my word. Are you in town for a while?”

“For as long as it takes.”

Bree nodded. “Yes. Well. Maybe in the next couple of days we can sit down and talk again, Eddie.” She glanced at Hunter, who could be a stickler about these things. “Maybe even take a look at the file?”

“Sure thing. Be glad of another take on the case.”

“You’re still insisting on taking Tully O’Rourke on as a client?” Hunter broke in.

“I’m not insisting on anything,” Bree said pleasantly. “But I feel obliged to, at this point.”

“Obliged?” Eddie asked. “I don’t get it.”

Bree thought of that pitiable cry for help:
I want to go home
.

“My guess is, Mrs. O’Rourke thinks that Bree has something unique to offer,” Hunter said. “And perhaps she’s right.”

“Perhaps she is.” Bree checked the amount on the bill (she always received the bill with her food, at Huey’s) and left the cash on the table. She drove out to Melrose in a thoughtful mood, turning Hunter’s parting comment over in her mind.

Bree has something unique to offer
.

She’d have to ask him what he meant by that.

Tell me before you get onto your high horse
Just what you expect me to do.

—Tim Rice, “Waltz for Eva and Che,”
Evita

 

 

 

Melrose sat, gracious and aloof, brooding over the river. This late in the year, the gardens surrounding the big old house were subdued to a silvery green. Thick hydrangea blossoms had faded to the color of coffee clotted with thick cream. The rosebushes were trimmed back and tied up with twine. The camellias were soft patches of cloud among the bushes, the scent of the flowers drifting through the air like perfume at a premiere. The lawn was green under drifting piles of Spanish moss. The remnants of silvery branches broken off the live oaks littered the paths like elegant bones.

Melrose was three stories high, each story fronted by a broad verandah supported by Doric pillars. Double French doors led from the verandahs to the house itself. Sometimes Bree thought that what she loved most about Savannah was the immense variety of architecture at the heart of the Historic District. French Provencal sat next to Georgian, which in turn shouldered against Queen Anne, Federal, and Southern Gothic. But each time she visited Melrose, which reminded her of Plessey, her own family home back in the Carolinas, she knew it was the distinctive style of the Old South, with broad porches and sturdy pillars, that lay nearest her heart. Professor Cianquino must have thought so, too. He’d retired from Bree’s former law school the year she’d gotten her JD and bought the ground-floor apartment nearest the river and had lived here quietly ever since.

Bree paused on her way up the brick path to the double front doors. The card with Leah’s name embossed upon it was still in her purse. Perhaps, these days, his retirement wasn’t as quiet as he’d hoped it would be.

The familiar scent of lemon wax, hothouse flowers, and the musty, welcoming odor of old house greeted her when she went through the front door into the foyer. The flowers in the big jade vases on the Sheraton lowboy against the wall were fresh.

Before Bree could knock at the professor’s front door, it swung open and the professor himself greeted her from his wheelchair. He was elegantly thin. At some point in the past year, his hair had turned completely white, and he reminded her now of old silk paintings of Chinese philosophers. Slender, but not frail, and old and weary with what he knew about this world. And, Bree thought, the next.

“How are you, dear Bree?”

“Quite well,” she said. “And I didn’t think to stop at the Park Avenue Market on my way out here. I was going to pick up some of that shrimp salad you’re so fond of, and it completely went out of my head.”

“Perhaps next time you visit.” He rolled his chair backwards and gestured her inside.

His living room reflected his ascetic habit. A plain leather couch sat at one end of the room facing the windows overlooking the water. The polished pine floors were free of rugs and anything else that would impede his wheelchair. A comfortable chair with a reading lamp occupied one corner of the large room. Except for a small cabinet containing a TV set, that was it. When the Company met, however, it wasn’t in this room, but in the Cianquino library.

Bree followed him across the smooth floors to the curiously carved wooden door that led to it. The door was made of rosewood, and the spheres carved into it were the same shape and size of the spheres that composed the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the house at 666 Angelus Street.

Inside, the contrast to the restraint of the living room could hardly have been greater. Bookshelves covered the walls from floor to ceiling, and they were crammed with volumes from everywhere—and as nearly as Bree could figure out, all ages. Fat, leather-bound books with illuminated manuscript pages jostled science texts, law books, poetry, and archeology. From where she stood just inside the door, Bree counted three versions of the Koran, at least six different versions of the Christian Bible, and two editions of the Torah. Works by Confucius, Lao-Tse, and the Buddha lay open on the long refractory table that ran almost the whole length of the room.

In the middle of the heaped volumes was a large birdcage. Bree had never seen the door to the birdcage closed, yet she’d also never seen its occupant out of it.

“Hello, Archie,” she said.

The bird shifted on his perch, lifted one leg, and pecked irritably at his claw. He was the size of an African gray parrot, but his feathers were the soft black, dusty browns, and cream of a snowy owl. “You’re late, you’re late, you’re late,” Archie complained.

“Five minutes, at most,” Bree said. She took her accustomed seat at the far end of the table. Professor Cianquino rolled his chair so that he sat opposite her. Four chairs sat between them, two on each side. Then, one by one, the chairs were filled with man-high columns of softly glowing light.

“Rashiel,” said Ron.

“I, Dara,” said Petru.

“Mercy me,” said a soft voice in a perplexed way. Then Lavinia’s faded lavender colors whirled into being and she said her name, “Matriel.”

There was a soundless explosion of bright fire, and Gabriel was slouched in his chair, his powerful warrior’s body clothed in a leather jacket and a faded T-shirt with a Harley-Davidson logo on the front. He nodded to Bree, his silvery eyes remote.

Finally, Sasha himself was a warm presence under her hand. “Sensiel.”

She stroked the dog’s ears and waited politely for Cianquino to speak.

“We are assembled, then,” the professor said. “And it is to discuss this newest case of yours, dear Bree.”

“The client’s name is Russell O’Rourke.” She placed her briefcase on the table. “I’ve made a few notes on the file.”

“There are a few things we need to discuss first.” Professor Cianquino passed his hand over his mouth. He seemed tired. Bree was worried about him. In their temporal forms, her angels were heir to all the vulnerabilities of the flesh. How long had it been since the professor had seen a doctor? What were the practical realities of his existence? As far as she knew, he lived alone. Did he need help? Would he accept it from her if she offered? There was so much about this job she’d inherited that she didn’t know. Not to mention the beings that came with it.

At her feet, Sasha stirred and thrust his head under her hand. She passed her thumb gently over the ridged wound under his ear. “Okay,” she said. “What’s on?”

“You didn’t take Sasha with you today.” Gabriel’s tone of voice was mild, but the reproof was clear. “Or yesterday, to the auction house.”

“Lots of places don’t allow dogs,” Bree said. “Even here in Savannah, which is about as dog-friendly a place as you can get. And I hate to leave him in the car. He’s a part of the Company, I know, and more resilient than a normal dog, but he’s still recovering from the gunshot wound. And the vet said he should be taking it easy for a while.” She blinked. “I guess I thought that’s why Miles and Belli are back. Because Sasha’s not up to speed right now.”

“Guesses,” Archie said. He clicked his beak with a sound like spears being sharpened. “Speculation. Not good, not good. She is moving ahead too fast.”

“Miles and Belli are the muscle,” Ron said. “Sasha’s an early warning system. Two separate functions entirely.”

“The
canes belli
are much further up the Path,” Petru added. “You must have both protections, my dear Bree.”

Bree pressed the heels of both hands into her forehead. “I need you all to give me more information than you have up until now,” she said firmly. “I’m confused. I don’t know enough. It isn’t fair.”

Lavinia sighed. “Fair,” she said, rather wistfully. “Not much about this life is fair.” Then, with a somewhat challenging look directed at the professor, she said, “You just go ahead and ask us your questions, child.”

“And you’ll answer them?” Bree said.

“If we can,” Archie snapped. “How much is an airline ticket? Answer me that one, Matriel. What is the sound of one hand clapping? What about that one?”

“You hush up,” Lavinia said. “My goodness, you’re an annoying body.”

“Archie does have a point,” Ron said. “But so does Bree.” The column of spring green light that was her secretary spun faster, took shape, and Ron’s familiar figure sat upright in the chair. “I vote we tell her what we know.”

Gabriel shook his head. “We’ve always been ready to tell her what we know. Answers aren’t going to help.”

“Probably not,” Ron said. He smiled at Bree. “But we’ll do the best we can, boss. Ask away.”

Professor Cianquino nodded his agreement. “If we have an answer, you shall have it.”

Bree looked up and down the table, struggling with her surprise. “You’ll tell me everything?”

“She has been feeling excluded,” Petru rumbled. “I told you all this before. We are failing her.”

“
You
were the one who said it was too soon,” Ron said tartly. “If she’s ready, she’ll understand the mission and all that goes with it. If she’s not, she won’t. That’s what I’ve said all along.”

“I’m ready,” Bree said firmly. She dug her yellow pad out of her briefcase, put it on the table, and uncapped her pen. A warm, very gentle laughter sighed briefly in the room, and someone thought at her:
Notes? You’re going to take notes?

Bree thought it might be Lavinia, but she wasn’t sure. She looked ruefully at the pen. “I always take notes.” She looked at the faces of her Company again. “Habit,” she said. “Pretty useless, I guess.” She put the pen away. “Okay. First question.”

There was an expectant silence.

“My mother,” Bree said. “Leah. Who was she? How did she die?
Why
did she die?”

“Leah is one of a long line of temporal advocates for the damned,” Professor Cianquino said.

“I figured that much out for myself,” Bree said before she could bite back her rudeness. “Sorry.” She glanced at Striker. She’d thrown a barrage of questions at him on her first case, and he’d told her then that he could only respond to specifics. She was beginning to understand, a little. Archie was right: You couldn’t buy an airline ticket unless you knew where you were going—and where you were coming from. An answer of two hundred dollars made no sense at all.

Striker watched her think this through. His gaze was almost sympathetic.

“You said she
is
. That she
is
one of these advocates.” Bree leaned forward. “Is she still alive?”

Archie screeched and rattled his wings. “Wasting time, wasting time.”

Cianquino raised one pale hand and Archie subsided with a mutter. “We will begin with the Path,” he said calmly. He passed his hand over the tabletop and a spinning globe of light appeared under his palm. “We are all members of the Sphere, dear Bree. And we all begin here, at the bottom, and wind our way up the Path.” His forefinger traced a continuous line around the globe from the base around and around toward the top. “If you see the Sphere as Knowledge—and many do—you increase your understanding as you go.”

“What’s at the top?” Bree asked.

“And the bottom?”

“And my mother?”

Cianquino passed his hand over the top of the sphere.

“And me?”

Cianquino just smiled at her.