Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 (16 page)

His expression softened. "He put you
in danger when he wasn't supposed to."

"We had no idea that park had Powers
in it. There weren't any reports of them in the area."

Joe stood in front of me. "You look
better than what they told me. If I was gonna believe Jason, you
were at death's door."

"Nah. Death hates me. Keeps tossing me
back." I stood and did a few stretches. I felt pretty good for a
Wraith who'd just been shot in the head. "So this Tamera
Moultrie….she say what she was doing in that house?"

"Nope. According to her employer she
was on vacation so no one even knew she was missing. She was damn
lucky you found her."

"Well, it was Geist who found her. So
I take no credit." I smiled at him, and my stomach growled.
Yow…embarrassing. "I want mac-and-cheese,."

"Yes you do." Joe laughed. I liked it
when he relaxed. He didn't do that much lately.

"So…you a cop again?"

"Yep. And because I'm a cop again, and
after having seen those bodies, I have to agree with Captain Little
that putting you in protective custody might be the best
thing."

Gunshot to the head be damned. I
Wraithed on the spot and hovered above the bed. "Oh, no, you're
not. I'm not gonna stay in some cheap hotel room with bedbugs and
eat bad Chinese while some large, round detective plays poker with
his skinnier partner and the bad guys find me."

Joe gave me a withering look. "You
really watch way too much TV. Now get down and stop that. Though I
find that look sort of hot, I prefer just you."

I dropped onto my slippers and stared
at him. "You…you think I look hot like this?" I glanced down at my
ashen skin, black talons, and angry bunny slippers.

"I've said it before, Zoë." He blushed
as he took a step back. "But you know…I read comic books as a kid.
My favorite vacation every year is Comic-Con, so…" He shrugged.
"You look like a hot, sexy, supervillainess. And what's every
fourteen-year-old boy's wet dream except to be caught between
your—"

He blushed.

OMG! He blushed!

"Damn…that just sort of got away from
me, didn't it? Sorry, Zoë, please take that for what it was
supposed to be."

It was a compliment. In a weird,
backhanded manner.

I stared at him for a bit as I shifted
back to plain old me. "So, how exactly are you going to protect me
when I can probably protect your entire force single-handedly? And
how is this supposed to help us find Dags?"

I caught the shift in his
expression, from happy smirky to just…smirky…at the mention of
Dags's name. Poor guy. Darren McConnell was the nicest, most
well-mannered and sweetest guy I knew…and yet somehow he'd
alienated Joe
and
Daniel. "The Society's still working under the assumption that
Maureen's somehow preventing the Seraphim from using the
Grimoire
. But we don't
know how long she can hold out. We're a bit blind getting any
rumors or innuendo from the Ethereal plain since they shut Geist
out of it. Tried to get hold of Azrael half an hour ago, but he's
not answering."

"You tried Geist?"

"Yeah…he's not there,
either."

Weird. Maybe he was reporting to TC
about what happened with this Tamera Moultrie and the bodies. It's
not that I really wanted him to return, especially not looking like
Barry, but he was good to have in a fight. "So, Tamera Moultrie…the
part that's bugging me is that Geist said she'd be there and she
was something I was looking for. Something I wanted."

Joe's eyebrow arched as he started to
make a comment. His phone rang, so he smirked again and retrieved
the little fucker from his jacket. "Halloran."

I heard yelling again from the other
room, and I ran past Joe, out the door, and down the hall. I
stopped just outside the living room when I saw Nick holding
Jason's shoulders. The Revenant was wild-eyed as he grabbed Nick's
wrists.

Umayma stood and came to me
immediately, putting her hands on my shoulders. Tel waved to me,
but he moved around the room to stand behind a very upset
Jason.

"What's going on?" I asked when no one
said anything.

"We're not sure…" Frejya/Umayma's
black eyes focused on Jason. "Jason suddenly fell on the floor as
if he'd been struck, and then—"

Joe ran out of the bedroom and
stopped, looked around, then grabbed my hand. "Come on. We have to
go. As of right now, I'm your protection detail."

"Wh—What's wrong?"

"It's….it's Nona…" Jason said from
where he stood in front of Nick. I noticed again how tall Nick was
compared to Jason.

"Mom?" I looked at Joe. Jason and my
mom had been at one time romantically linked, and Jason maintained
a connection to her. "Joe…"

"Someone beat her up," Joe said as he
squeezed my hand. "They've taken her to Emory University
Hospital."

Chapter Sixteen

I shifted into Wraith and sieved
through the roof and into the night sky. Yeah, I was still mad at
her, and I doubted I could ever forgive her for what she did to
me…but she's my mom.

I soared over the city. I knew I'd
beat Joe there and I could sense Jason was close behind me.
Revenants couldn't fly, not like me, but they were pretty good at
jumping from roof to roof in an Abysmal version of Parkour.
Although I doubted any normal human could reach the heights and
speeds a Revenant could.

I landed on the roof of the hospital
and reached out to find her spirit. One of the perks of being a
Wraith was the attraction to souls. One of the bad things about
being a Wraith was the attraction to souls. My Abysmal self loved
them…sort of like the way I loved Sara Lee cheesecake.

Nom nom nom… So that meant
I had to be extra careful when I was Wraith and in a
hospital
not
to
suck someone's soul right out of their body. It was one of those
things I didn't bring up much. Sort of like the way no one talks
about snoring.

When I found her, I let myself be
pulled toward her, and ended up in the middle of an ICU pod. I made
sure not to actually touch any of the electronic equipment, since
my incorporeal self could play havoc on them. I stood in the middle
and watched as nurses walked back and forth and four of them
answered phones at the desk and fielded calls.

I sensed Mom to my right and made my
way to the room.

Several months ago, I'd had to put my
mom's body in a long-term-care facility when TC kidnapped her soul.
Before that, her body was hijacked by a pair of rogue astral
walkers, former members of my great-uncle's lab experiment—the one
that created my dad—and her soul was stuffed into a Soul Cage.
They'd used a few Eidolons to rip my mom's soul from her body. Then
one of the rogues had overshadowed her and impersonated my mom for
a while. She'd done a good job….

Enough to fool me. I think I was still
a little irritated about that, since the two rogues had been
ass-hats. And then there'd been what they did to me….

Yeeeah. I'm not going to think about
that right now.

That's when things got a little weird.
Okay, weirder than usual.

As I glided along to her room,
everyone else stopped moving. I stopped, too, and looked around. I
felt like I'd landed in a movie still from a reel-to-reel. All of
the nurses at the station were motionless, some on the phone, some
in mid-walk. Even the machines had stopped.

"Zoë…"

I turned at the sound of my name to
see Geist right behind me. I made a small yelp and took a step
back. Even my bunny slippers were making weird little surprised
noises. "What the hell—" I managed. "Is this you doing this whole…"
I waved at everyone "…still life thing?"

"Yes. I need to talk to
you."

"Yeeeah…so why all the theatrics?
That's not really your style."

"It is a necessity. Would you prefer
the witch in your mother's room overhear us?"

"Jemmy? But you know Jemmy, so what's
the big deal?" I wasn't sure I was liking all this cloak-and-dagger
stuff with Geist. And I wasn't in the mood right now. I wanted to
see my mom.

I turned to leave, but Geist put a
hand on my arm. The touch was an electric shock—not strong enough
to hurt, but enough to be an irritant. I pulled away and rubbed my
ashy skin as I gave him a really pissed off-look. "What the
hell?"

"Sorry. Things are a bit crazy in the
Abysmal Plain right now and the Phantasm wants to keep what I'm
about to tell you between us. What we don't want is for any of the
witches to overhear. Joe is nearly here."

There was something weird about the
way he said that little speech, but if TC wanted Geist to tell me
something in private…maybe he'd found something important? And
since he and I knew Jemmy and Mom were best friends, perhaps he
didn't want to put Mom in danger in case Jemmy told her?

That was a huge train of deductive
thinking for me. Made me tired enough for a cookie. I wanted
everyone to start moving. "Sorry…I just didn't know you had this
kind of power. So what is it TC wants you to tell me?"

"TC…" Geist frowned and then smiled.
Or Barry did. I still wasn't comfortable with him wearing a dead
lover's face. "Ah, yes. Your name for the Phantasm. He told me to
tell you your mother was attacked for the stones."

"Stones?"

"Yes. The stones of power.
The Seraphim believes Nona has them and wants to use them to
control the
Grimoire's
custodian."

Okay, that was a lot to process.
Stones? What stones could the Seraphim use—

Holy Hell…

The Eidolons!

I stepped toward Geist. "They want to
use the Eidolons to control Dags…why? If it has Dags and the book
and Rhonda, then why not just take them? That's what my father told
me they were going to do."

"The Seraphim cannot get to the
custodian. There is an Abysmal Presence preventing them. Therefore
the Seraphim wishes to use the power of the stones to command the
custodian to destroy the influencing problem."

Abysmal Presence preventing
them…Maureen? Maureen was preventing the Seraphim with all its
power? I couldn't wrap my head around that. A Familiar
verses
the
Seraphim?

Wow…Maureen could kick ass if that was
true.

"Zoë," Geist said, bringing me out of
my hero worship of Maureen. "The Seraphim wants the stones and they
will stop at nothing to find them. No one is safe."

As far as I knew, Mom only had one of
the Eidolons, the green one that held the power of Creation. Had
they taken it? She usually wore it around her neck. But in the
hospital, they would have taken it off with her jewelry. I started
to ask Geist if they took that one, but stopped myself. I don't
know why I did…maybe it was my own suspicious nature.

That, and still having a hard time
believing that Maureen was holding off the Seraphim. The more I
thought about what Geist said, the less I wanted to believe him.
Especially when I analyzed the sentences. "You used contractions.
You usually don't use contractions."

"Things change. Joe is approaching,"
Geist said. "Do you know where the stones are?"

I looked Geist—Barry—in the eye and
shook my head. "No. Not since they were used on me."

I couldn't read Geist's expression
before he vanished. I jumped a little as everything moved and made
sounds again.

Why did he have to leave?
Was it
because
Joe
was coming? I dismissed it for the moment as I entered my mother's
room.

I'd seen my mom unmoving before. She'd
been that way in Miller Oaks. But back then, the worst thing I'd
seen was the catheter bag and an IV.

This…

Oh, dear God….

"Zoë?" Jemmy said from where she sat
in a chair by the bed. "I can't see you, but I know you're
there."

Jemmy Shultz was my mom's neighbor in
Little Five Points, and she was Mom's closest friend. Jemmy knew
about me, about Dags, about all of us, because Jemmy was a witch,
just like Mom.

I approached the bed and stared down
at the woman buried inside the tangle of wires, tubes, and….
"Mommy?"

"Child, if you're going to stay like
that, don't touch anything. Nona's not going to be able to live
without those machines for a bit."

My breath caught in my throat and I
took a step back, suddenly terrified I might inadvertently touch
something and mess it up. I knew there were cameras in the room, so
I turned, looked into the corners, and found them. I stepped out of
their direct line of sight and slowly shifted into…me.

Jemmy put a hand on my shoulder as I
stood rooted to the floor. I listened to the whump and hiss of the
respirator, watched as my mother's chest rose and fell. But it was
so hard to look at her face. Her eyes were swollen shut, her cheeks
a mass of bruises. "What happened?" I whispered, not because I
didn't want the cameras to hear me, but because my voice had left
me. "Who…what…what the hell happened…?"