Dreamveil (27 page)

“
Sí
, Mees Trick? I mean, Chef?”

“Stand right there.” She positioned him so that his back was to the kitchen and her dim reflection showed in one of the windows. “Give me your hand.”

Enrique did, and she pulled on him, and her body began to shift. A few moments later a dusky, gorgeous African-American girl stared back at her from the surface of the window. And lo and behold, she was suddenly the proud owner of a rack that would make a strong man weep.

“Takeisha?” Enrique murmured, his eyes wide.

“You really like me?” she asked him in a low, musical voice. “You should tell me,
amigo
.”

“
Sí
, I should.” He looked dazed.

Rowan stopped pulling on him, and her body resumed its normal dimensions. As she shifted back, his expression cleared, along with the memory from his mind of what she had just done—another odd but routine aftereffect of the dreamveil.

“Chef?” He frowned. “You need me haul trash?”

“No, Enrique.” She patted his shoulder. “I thought I saw a dead rat out here. It’s gone. Go back inside.”

She was about to follow him in when she heard a shuffling sound behind her. She turned and saw the homeless kid stepping into the light.

“I know what you are,” she said. “I saw what you did.”

Rowan swore under her breath. “It’s just a magic trick.”

The girl shook her head, and then held out her arm, yanking back her sleeve and stepping further into the pool of light. She had an old tattoo of a blue ram on her arm, one that had a faint iridescent glow to it.

“Where did you get that?” she asked the girl.

“I don’t know.” The sleeve went back down. “I’ve always had it. There’s one on my other arm just like it.” She jerked her chin toward Rowan’s sleeve. “Like yours.”

There was something maddeningly familiar about her voice, Rowan thought, but she was far too young to be Takyn. The only other one of their kind who was younger than Rowan was Judith, and she was twenty. “You can’t be a . . .”

“What? What am I?” the girl demanded. “Who made me like this? Why can’t I stop it?”

Her anger bewildered Rowan. “Stop what? What’s happening to you?”

“Nothing.” Two wet streaks cleared a path on either side of her dirty face. “Why can’t I be like you are?”

“Do you remember what happened to make you like this?” Eager now, Rowan took hold of her arm. “Where were you raised? Was it a lab? Did you run away? Do you know where it was?”

The girl wrenched away. “There was no lab. I’m not a freak.” Disgust filled her expression. “You don’t know anything about me.” She spun and took off.

Shit, she’d spooked her.

This time Rowan had no intention of letting the kid vanish. She ran after her, moving as silently as she could, avoiding the obstacle-course-style escape route the girl followed. The kid was fast, but she was upset, and she never looked back. That allowed Rowan to follow her up to an abandoned hotel, where the girl went to the boarded-up front door, moving two boards to open a hole. After she climbed in, the boards creaked back into place.

She started to go across the street, and then stopped in her tracks. The old hotel was probably where the girl hid out and slept, and if she went in after her the runaway would no longer consider it safe to stay. If she ran from here, she’d never come back.

Retreating a safe distance from the hotel, Rowan took out her cheap mobile and dialed the number Paracelsus had sent her. It went to voice mail, which meant he wasn’t in a place where he could speak to her freely.

She’d have to word the message carefully in the event someone else picked up his phone. “This is Dee from Aphrodite Dry Cleaning. We have two orders ready for immediate pickup. Would you call back at your earliest convenience, sir? Thank you.”

She ended the call and headed back to the restaurant, where she found Dansant standing in the alley.

“Hi.” She’d taken off at the busiest time of night, she realized. “I had to, um, take a walk. Get some fresh air.”

He looked her over. “You’re covered in snow.”

That she was. She shook out her hair, brushed off her clothes, and smiled. “Better.”

He gave her another long look before he went back inside.

The entire line was working furiously to make up for her absence, but Rowan knew better than to babble excuses or try to make apologies when they were in the weeds. She washed her hands and went back to her station, trying not to feel the angry glares at her back as she worked.

It took the better part of an hour to catch up with the orders, but Dansant took out some gratis appetizers and amuse-bouches to placate the waiting diners. Rowan didn’t take another break for the rest of the night, and kept working by finishing the cleanup while the other line cooks ate together and rested.

Lonzo stayed behind to vent his spleen, and Rowan stood silently and took it as her due. When he was finished calling her seven kinds of a lazy broad who didn’t know her ass from any sort of depression in the ground, and offered his opinion of her state of mind, her value to the restaurant, and the dismal potential of any future offspring she might produce, he told her to report an hour early the next day to make close, personal acquaintance with the next delivery of squid. Then he let her make her official apology, accepted it against his better judgment, and went home whistling.

Dansant had his turn next. “You did not deserve that.” “Not all of it. Maybe seventy- five percent.” She recalled she was speaking to the owner of the restaurant that, according to Lonzo, she might as well have set fire to. “I am sorry that I was so inconsiderate tonight, Chef.”

“Why did you leave?” he asked. “Where did you go?”

“I had a run-in with that homeless kid who hangs around the alley.” She blew out a breath. “She’s in trouble, and I thought I could help. But she rabbited on me, and I went after her.”

His eyes narrowed. “You pursued this child in the snow, in the streets, in the middle of the night?”

“It wasn’t the middle of the night. It was ten o’clock.” Oh, that made all the difference. “I’m fine. Nothing happened.”

“You cannot run about the streets by yourself at night,” he told her. “As we both well know, it is not safe.”

“What are you, my mother?” She didn’t know why she was so angry, and tried to clamp down on her temper. “I appreciate the concern, but I can take care of myself, Dansant.”

“I disagree.”

“I’m not afraid of the streets. I used to live on them, remember?” She turned her back on him. “Just let it go. I’ll clean squid until everyone feels better about me.”

“You are like a child.” He spun her around, and he wasn’t Dansant anymore; he was some dark, furious stranger with rough hands that dragged her up off her toes. “You run about as if all the world were blind to you. They
see
you, Rowan. They see how lovely and young and vulnerable you are, and they know they will never have someone like you. It drives them mad. It makes it easy for them to give in to their urges. When you don’t think of these things, when you run off like that,
you
make it easy for them.”

“You think I ever had a choice?” There went her temper, right out the window. “When I was a kid, my mother went crazy. One night she just snapped and came after me with a knife. She almost killed me, and then she went and took a bath to wash off the blood, and slit her wrists. My father blamed me, and became a drunk, and I had to . . .” No, she wasn’t going to think about that. “I ran away a year after she died. Since then I’ve been on my own, and no matter what you think, I don’t make it easy for anyone. I can’t.” She swallowed against the break in her voice. “Least of all me.”

He brought her face to his and kissed her, hard and fast. By the time she went rigid with shock he had wrenched his mouth from hers.

Dear God.
That kiss had lasted all of ten seconds, but in that time he had taken her from furious to aching. All of her nerves were jangled, her ears buzzing, and she had her hands on him. She wanted him, right here, on the floor if need be. And that desire, that soul- shredding wanting, was as strong with him as it had been with Meriden.

Dansant swore in French and set her down. “You’ve made your choice. I cannot stay.”

Without another word he left her there to stand and stare after him, her heart pounding, her hands knotted at her sides.

Rowan knew then why she had become so angry with him. Why she bitterly resented everything she’d said to him in the office, and every moment since. Dansant was wrong; she hadn’t made a choice. No woman would choose this.

For the second time in twenty-four hours, she’d fallen in love.

“The identity won’t hold up under a microscope,” the man warned as he accepted an envelope of cash and thumbed through the edges of the bills. “It’s only good for public use and to fool the cops. Your girl messes with the FBI or another agency, they’ll rip it to shreds.” He took another folder from his bag and handed it over. “The originals you gave me. I don’t keep ’em or dispose of ’em.”

“A wise policy.” He held out his gloved hand. “Until we meet again.”

“Yeah, hopefully not in the joint.” The man shook his hand and left.

Taske placed the keys to the motel room on the table before exiting himself. When he reached his car, which was parked two blocks from the motel, his driver met him at the back passenger door to open it for him.

“There was a call for you, Mr. Taske.” He handed him his mobile. “They left a voice mail.”

He checked the number on the missed calls list. “Thank you, Findley. Take me back to the hotel, if you would.”

As they drove from New Jersey back to New York, Taske listened to the voice mail Rowan had left for him. He was not aware of any other Takyn residing in New York, so her request for him to pick up two “orders” perplexed him. He called her back at once.

“Thanks for getting back to me,” Rowan said. “The situation has changed. I’ve found a kid who may be Takyn. I’m not sure what happened to her, but for the moment she’s homeless and pretty desperate.”

“How old is this child?” he asked.

“Maybe sixteen. I know, she’s too young,” she said before he could speak, “but she has the tattoos on her forearms.”

“I won’t remind you how many people in this country voluntarily have their forearms tattooed.” He didn’t care for the way her voice sounded. “And she is far too young to be one of us.”

“What if there were others after us?” she asked. “They could have started the experiments again somewhere else.”

“There is always a remote possibility of that,” he conceded, “but what makes you believe this child is Takyn? Did she demonstrate some ability?”

“No,” Rowan admitted. “She saw me shift, though, and she didn’t freak out. She doesn’t seem to know anything about us, but I didn’t scare her. She asked me some really strange questions, too. You remember, the kind I used to ask you when we first met online.”

“ ‘Who did this to me, where can I find them, how hard is it to kill someone, where can I buy a gun?’ ” He chuckled. “Yes, my dear, I do remember. But until we can verify that this child is one of us, we must proceed with caution.”

“I know where she’s squatting, and I think with some backup I can coax her out of there and talk her into coming with us.” She hesitated. “If I’m wrong, then we can take her someplace safe, get her the help she needs.”

“You have a compassionate heart, Aphrodite.”

“When it’s not being schizophrenic,” she muttered. “How much more time do I have here?”

“I purchased traveling identification for you tonight. Jessa will have something more permanent prepared by the end of the week. I expect you should begin packing up your things tomorrow, and if all goes well we will arrange our rendezvous for the next day.”

“So soon.” She sounded startled. “Okay. Besides the kid, there’s only one problem left. I haven’t a fucking clue what you look like, P.”

Taske laughed. “I’m rather hard to miss. Does that phone of yours accept photo images?”

“Too cheap for that.”

“Well, then, you should be on the lookout for the tallest man in the immediate vicinity with silver-blond hair, a full beard of the same shade, dark Asian eyes, and a very inconvenient limp which requires him to employ a mahogany cane bearing the head of silver lion.”

“Wow. He sounds gorgeous.”

He eyed his gloves. “He would gladly trade it all to be a short, dumpy accountant from Cleveland, I assure you.” A tingling sensation in the base of his spine made him reach forward and tap on the divider glass. Findley nodded and pulled off to park the limo in front of a busy nightclub. “I must attend to something else now, my dear. Keep your phone at hand, and I will see you soon.”

He handed the phone to his driver, gritting his teeth as the tingling sensation intensified to small spikes of pain. He hadn’t endured an episode in months, but he hadn’t been immersed in so much humanity in years.

“Do you wish me to accompany you, Mr. Taske?” Findley, a veteran of such episodes, watched him carefully.

“Not this time, I think, Findley.” A serpent of heat had coiled itself around his spine, but as much as it hurt, it also strengthened him. Only when it began to fade did he know he had arrived too late to take matters in hand. “This should not take too long. Stay with the car.”

Taske climbed out, removing his coat and placing it on the seat before he limped forward. The bouncer attending the velvet rope glanced at the car and then Taske’s face before coming around to meet him.

“Welcome to Club Soleil, sir,” the young man said, ignoring the groans and catcalls from the long line of people waiting along the sidewalk.

“Good evening.” An image formed in Taske’s mind. “I’m looking for a friend. Has a young lady in a red-and-silver evening dress arrived recently?”

“Yes, sir. I let her through a few minutes ago.”

Taske pressed a hundred-dollar bill in the bouncer’s hand, holding on to it briefly. “Call nine-one-one and report an assault in progress. Quickly, my boy.”

The bouncer, whose eyes had taken on a glazed look, nodded slowly.

Taske entered the club and wasted no time looking for the woman. He could feel her heartbeat in his head, strong and steady, and used it as a guide. The rest of the club’s patrons faded to shades of black and white as he limped through them.

“Where are you?” he muttered, turning his head from side to side. His attention became focused on a series of doors at the back of the place; the club’s private rooms.

The pain snarling his spine flared as the heartbeat in his ears increased its rhythm to a frantic pace. It was happening, right now, and it pushed him along until he reached the center door, which was being guarded by a man in a suit.

The suit held up his hand. “You can’t come in here, sir.”

Taske didn’t have time to negotiate, so he delivered a short, brutal blow to the suit’s diaphragm, which knocked the air out of his lungs and drove him to his knees. Taske nudged him aside and went in.

The man on top of the girl was well dressed, beautifully groomed, and had paid handsomely to reserve the room for himself and his guests. In it he had raped and killed six women in as many months. He had his hands around the throat of the one he intended to make the seventh.

Taske grabbed him by the back of the collar and lifted him into the air.

“Hey, what—let go of me!” The man struggled, swiping at Taske, who snapped his arm, tossing the man over the table and into the wall beyond. The man fell to the floor and lifted his head, then collapsed.

“It’s all right . . . Jessica.” Now that he had her name, he bent to help her to her feet. Her pretty red-and-silver dress was torn down the front, and she was rigid with terror, but her attacker had not had enough time to do more. “The police have been notified. They will arrive shortly.”

“How . . .” She coughed, pressing a hand to her bruised throat. “How did you know?” she finished in a hoarse whisper.

A question he wished he could answer, he thought as he led her out of the curtained room and off to the back hall where the club’s offices were located. There he told her what he told all of them.

“It was not your time.” The pain in his back had eased, but it had been so ferocious that he had to look. He stripped off his right glove, and took her hand in his. As soon as he touched her, he saw the bright thread of her life, stretching out far into the future.

No wonder he had been compelled to find her. Her timeline would affect millions of others.

“You will not meet him in places like these. He will find you at a museum. In front of . . . a Picasso.” He smiled a little. “His name is Harry, and he is an artist, like you.”

“Like me,” Jessica repeated softly, her gaze riveted to his face.

“You and Harry will have a good life together.” He caught a glimpse of an event further along her timeline, the event that would change all the others connected to it. “As will your daughter and her husband, and their son.”

He could tell her that her grandson would someday discover a treatment for a deadly disease that would save millions of lives, but she would never remember it. He could only plant the suggestion deep in her mind that would navigate her life toward the event.

“When your grandson Charlie is ten years old, you should persuade his mother to give him the microscope for Christmas.” That was the event that would propel the boy along his destined timeline, the single most important act Jessica would ever perform in her life.

“Charlie. Microscope.” She nodded thoughtfully, and when he released her hand, she blinked. “I’m sorry, mister, what did you say?”

“I must leave you now. When the police arrive, tell them you fought off your attacker.” He smiled down at her. “Farewell, Jessica.”

Taske took the back exit out of the club, and by the time he limped back to the car, a squad car with flashing lights was parked at the entrance to the nightclub.

Findley stood waiting by the door. “I trust everything went well, sir.”

“This time, yes.” There had been other episodes when circumstances prevented his interventions, and an important life had been lost. When that happened reality shifted in subtle ways, and Taske’s limp would grow a little worse for several weeks as he endured the pain of the loss.

Every person had a meaning and purpose to their lives, but some, like Jessica, had enormous impact on the future. If she had been murdered tonight, her loss—and by extension, the loss of her future grandson—would have altered the course of human history.

As he went to get in, Taske’s bare hand touched the upholstered seat back, and the other half of his ability flooded over him. He blocked it as he sat down, took out his phone, and dialed Vulcan’s number.

“David White.”

“Can you talk, my friend?” Taske winced as two naked and too-familiar bodies appeared writhing on the seat across from him.

A faint buzz came over the line. “I can now.”

“We have a minor complication, Drew,” he told him, ignoring the litany of obscenities being exchanged by the couple having sex in his car. “Our young friend Rowan believes she has found another member of our extended family.”

“That’s always good news.”

“This new discovery is sixteen years old.”

“That’s . . . definitely not right,” Drew said on a chuckle. “Minimum age for the Takyn is twenty. Rowan knows that.”

“So it would seem. Drew, I need you to do some checking on the acquisition of new properties by the Catholic Church within the last twenty years. Look for purchases of large parcels in remote, difficult-to-access areas where there are few roads and no local residents.”

All the humor went out of Drew’s voice. “You think they’ve restarted the experiments.”

“I think it is a remote possibility.” He realized the images he was seeing were because he had forgotten to cover his bare hand, and after tucking the phone between his jaw and shoulder he pulled on his glove. “Let me know what you find out as soon as you can.” He ended the call, and then said to his driver, “Would you mind terribly if I ride in the front with you, Findley?”

“Not at all, sir.” Once Taske had moved to the front seat and they were back on their way, Findley asked, “Is something wrong, Mr. Taske?”

“It seems our gardener has been making use of the car for personal encounters with his amour. Most energetic use.” He sighed. “A deserted island in the South Pacific becomes more attractive by the day, Findley. What do you think? Should we relocate?”

“The fishing would probably be wonderful, sir,” Findley said, “but I can’t imagine you living in a grass hut.”

“Agreed.” And now he would have to have a word with the damned gardener about his work ethic and poor choice of spots for his romantic rendezvous. “We’ll have to be content with whatever the future may bring for me and the Takyn.”