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

I watched Joe for a minute as he held
out his hands and the maelstrom of flying things increased their
speed. I took a step back through the door and into the main
hall.

"Don't worry," Mom said as she
followed me out. "He actually has more control over it than it
looks."

I pointed at the room. "You
say he's learning the Veil spell—but when
you
put
your
stuff in
your
Veil, I don't see it. Why can I
see all that stuff flying about?"

Mom smirked. "The Veil spell isn't the
easiest to master. I know Rhonda said all she did was read it and
poof—magic. That's just not true. I woke up several times to her
crashing stuff in the basement while she practiced it."

Now
that
I could believe. I glanced back
into the room. There weren't as many things flying in the air now.
"Ah…some of them are gone."

"Means he's just about got the Veil
launched."

"Sorry…still don't get
that."

She pursed her lips for a second—and
of course I cringed inside. When I was smaller, that action meant
she was thinking about how to reprimand me. And that particular
face usually meant a very embarrassing punishment was on the
way.

Abruptly, she reached out
with her right hand, and
poof
. She had a book in her hand. She
held it in front of me. I recognized it as one of the record books
from the Botanica. "When you see me do that, what do you
imagine?"

"It makes me think that's where you
hid all my comics growing up."

"
Focus
. What I mean is, even though
you can't see it, what do you think the Veil
looks
like?"

I sighed. I had something I really
needed to talk to Mom about and I wasn't sure where this was going.
I glanced over at the nurse's station, where Nick and Jason stood
talking in low whispers. I figured Nick was filling Jason in on
what he'd learned in Canada. Where was Manuel? He hadn't joined us
in the limo at the airport—in fact, I hadn't seen him leave the
plane. "I think you have a layer of shelves around you—sort of like
standing in the center of a very small Roman coliseum. You know how
the seats are all tiered from small ring to larger
rings?"

"And the seats are the
shelves."

"Yep."

She made a rude buzzer noise. "Wrong.
It looks like that." She pointed at Joe through the
door.

I didn't get it at first, so I looked
back through. There were even fewer objects now, and as I watched,
I saw two of them disappear. A small box and a rock.

That wasn't Tim's rock, was
it?

Then it hit me, and my jaw went slack.
"You mean what I'm seeing is what it really looks like in the
Veil?"

"Exactly what it looks
like."

I involuntarily stepped away from Mom.
"You have things whirling around you at Mach 5 like he
does?"

"They don't spin that fast once
everything's in place." She motioned me back beside her so I could
look in the room just in time to see a plastic bag vanish. That
looked like the last thing. "And I think he's got it."

Joe slowly lowered his arms, and his
eyes opened. He wobbled a few steps. "Whoa…"

"You'll get used to it." Mom walked
back into the room.

I joined her and looked around for any
possible stray object, memories of an angry poltergeist in a house
off of Web Ginn House Road re-running in my head. "So…those things
are still spinning around Joe?"

"The spell gives the knowledge on how
to start the centrifugal force needed on the Astral Plane in order
to create the Veil," Mom said as she demonstrated by gesturing
around Joe in the direction I'd seen all that stuff move. "Most
Veils run deosil in creation. If you run it widdershins, it'll slow
down and all the objects will become visible."

"And hit people."

Joe answered. "That's the theory.
We're not sure that's what'll happen. And that's my next
experiment. I've been trying for a few days to get this working."
He leaned his head to his left shoulder, then his right, as if
stretching his neck. "Wow. This is very…weird."

I tried to process this. So much had
happened just since Daniel and I had gone to Montreal, and I was
going to need one of those handy-dandy flip notebooks I see cops
use just to keep up with it. Yet, I wasn't being as honest with my
reactions as they thought I was. Yeah, I was surprised to see Joe
doing this—somehow I'd been thinking this was just a girl
thing.

What I hadn't shared with anyone was I
had my own version of this. But instead of some whirling dervish
thing, I'd learned to create a Box within the Astral Plane. It
wasn't so hard to do, having seen what Mom had done with the key to
that jewelry box in her bedroom. TC had shown me how after I'd
nearly killed Rhonda a few weeks ago. I had something I wanted to
use against her.

Well, that's not true. I'd dreamed of
destroying her with it. TC stopped me and decided it was better if
I didn't have it quite so close to me. The night I moved out of the
Society House and into the apartment above Joe's, TC guided me
through creating my own personal Box. He had one, and kept things
he readily needed in the Physical Plane.

His Box moved with him. But TC wanted
my Box to be stationery, so we'd built it in a place no one would
ever think of looking. I'd never told a soul about it, or confided
to anyone other than TC that I could do this.

"So…can you grab something out and put
something in, like Mom and Rhonda can?" I asked.

Joe winced. "I'm not sure I want to
that try just yet. I got this far before, and when I tried to pull
something out…"

"Boom!" Mom said, and I jumped as she
laughed. "The whole thing came apart—shot stuff from here into the
nurse's station."

"So, how do
you
do it?" I looked at
mom.

"Time. Practice. Right now
his Veil is spinning fast, like you saw before. But after a few
days, his astral self will adjust and they'll sync. Right now he
really has no idea of what-all he's got in there. So I'd say…" She
looked at him. "In a few days, try and grab something. But before
you do it, try and
see
it."

"See it?" Joe looked
bewildered.

"They'll be shadows at first. But give
it time and you'll be able to know every item you have in
there."

I leaned back against the doorframe.
"Is there a limit to how much he can stuff inside?"

"Depends on how big he made the
space—and the density of the Astral Plane is a lot different than
the Physical."

Joe rubbed his head. "Sort
of like the Tardis on
Doctor
Who
?"

Mom blinked. "The what?"

I held up a hand. "I got the
reference. And I think that's what she meant, Joe. What happens
when you take everything out?"

"It collapses." Mom held up her own
hand, and looked at me and then Joe. "It also collapses if you lose
consciousness. And that can be very dangerous. Also, if someone
else removes everything from that Veil, the jolt will knock you on
your ass for a while, Joe. And the longer you keep the Veil, the
harder its abrupt disablement will be."

"I got it, I got it." He put his hands
on his hips and focused on me. "The theory is Zacharel somehow took
everything out of Rhonda's Veil and then jumped in. Maybe he took
advantage of her weakness when he did that."

"That's my theory." Mom
nodded.

"So, you think a disembodied spirit is
flying in orbit around her?" I chuckled. The image was kinda
funny.

Joe must've picked up on the mental
image, too, because he laughed. "Yes and no. Like Nona said, the
Veils will slow down to a slow orbit and I'll instinctually know
where items are. Though, I think I'm going to be a bit…off balance
for a while."

"Correction," Jason said as
he and Nick entered the room. Jason's voice was deeper, and his
eyes were black. Mephistopheles was large and in charge. "A
lot
off balance. I've
seen many magicians over the centuries who've attempted this spell.
It was used during the Inquisition to hide their books of power.
Grimoires and such."

"Would have been nice to know about it
that day in Rodriguez's little lab of torture." Joe rubbed at his
chin. "Rhonda'd been hiding it in her Veil, but I'm sure Dags would
have appreciated not having that book shoved inside of him if she'd
just have kept it in."

"Dags would not have survived if
Rhonda had not used the book, and the spell she wove, to save his
life," Mephistopheles/Jason said.

Joe frowned and looked over at Jason.
"How do you know that? You weren't there."

"The tale has passed from First Born
to First Born since the experience was shared, Joe." He
winked.

I loved it when Mephistopheles was
out. Don't get me wrong—I adore Jason. But his First Born was
fun.

"Exactly how do you expect to expose
Zacharel if he is indeed hiding within Rhonda's Veil?"
Mephistopheles/Jason directed his question to Nona.

I looked from Joe to Mom,
and asked a question of my own. "I got one better.
How
did you figure out
that's where the Dominion is hiding out?"

Mom looked at Joe. "I think Joe can
answer both of those questions better than I can."

Joe ambled over to a hospital bed I
hadn't noticed before and sat down on it. A screen to his right
came to life and started feeding out readings, presumably of
Joe.

Impressive.

And a bit spooky.

He looked at me. "Zoë, did Nick fill
you in on what happened here? With Rhonda and Dags?"

I nodded.

"Then you know I spoke to
Maureen?"

Somehow, hearing that out of Joe gave
me hope. "Yes. And she told you to get me and work with Nona and
the Revenants."

He nodded. "When I took
over the spell—which, incidentally, I didn't know I could do—I
could
see
the
Veils, Nona's and Rhonda's. Only I didn't know that's what I was
looking at."

"He told me about it after he
recovered. We were talking and he started describing these…" Mom
glanced at him. "What did you call them?"

"Oversized donuts." He held out his
arms and sort of tried to demonstrate. "I could see motion and
shadows in Nona's. But Rhonda's was…" He shrugged and lowered his
arms. "Smoggy."

"Smoggy?" Jason said.

"It's the only way I know how to
explain it. Hers was different. And then when Dags—I mean
Maureen—ran into that whole spell-freeze zone—the smog actually
moved on its own and formed a face."

"That would freak me the hell out." I
shivered at the thought, and I'd seen some freaky stuff.

"It did. Which is why I told Nona
about it, and she told me I'd seen their Veils."

"When he said he'd seen
whatever it was in her Veil moving, I conferred with Umayma and
Tel. We're pretty sure that's where Zacharel is. So he's not
really
possessing
her."

"But…" Joe held up a finger. "It
explains why she's been walking around talking to herself these
past few days."

Which also confirmed to me that her
taking Dags from me, rewriting his memories, and becoming the
ultimate in a frenemy was Rhonda's own doing. No outside influence
there.

She was a bitch all on her
own.

"So this freezing spell," Jason said,
his voice no longer echoing with Mephistopheles' deep tones, "made
the Veils visible."

"Yep." Joe said.

"And you can recreate that
spell."

"Yep."

"And you know how to remove the
Dominion from the Veil."

"Nope."

I snorted. "So we have a way to see
it—we just can't get it out."

"As it all stands now." Mom nodded.
"That's it. Joe figured if he knew more of the mechanics of the
spell—and could perfect his own Veil—then he might be able to
reverse engineer how that bastard got in there, and get him
out."

There was a strange silence for a few
seconds before Joe stood and put his hands on his hips. "Zoë, how
about a proper hello?"

I didn't hesitate when it came to Joe
Halloran. I'll admit, when we first met, I thought he was pretty
much a cocky bastard. No double entendre intended.

I always thought of him as the big
brother I never had—and always wanted. I never brought up the kiss.
I kept that experience safely tucked away in the deepest parts of
me. It was a feeling I'd never repeated.

And didn't want to.

Unless it was with Dags.

It felt good to be in Joe's
arms. He was few inches taller than Daniel, and though there wasn't
a real difference in body temperature, I think knowing the fact he
was human made it all the more enjoyable. And when I hugged him, I
knew I was hugging
just
Joe, and only Joe.