Living with the Dead (5 page)

HOPE

Hope awoke and rolled into the middle of the hotel bed. Karl's spot was empty. No surprise there. It didn't seem to matter how late they got to bed – or how long it took them to get down to sleeping after they got there – Karl was always up first. Even when he slept, it was never soundly. On his own since fifteen, he'd spent too much of his life on guard against other werewolves looking for an easy notch in their belt.

Last year, when he'd encouraged Hope to get back into rowing, he'd joked that he'd get up for her dawn practices... in time to meet her for breakfast after. But if he was in town, whether they were at his condo in Philly or hers in nearby Gideon, he always drove her. He'd drop her off, saying he'd grab a coffee and paper and wait, but when she was out on the water, she'd see him, apart from the huddle of sleepy partners and spouses, tucked into some dark corner, sipping his coffee and watching.

A guy doesn't stand in the cold November drizzle at 6 a.m. to support his girlfriend if he's not committed to the relationship. But after a life without family, friends, lovers, what was she to him? The beginning of a new stage in his life? The satisfaction of a suppressed urge to mate? Or a temporary diversion?

Hope told herself to enjoy it while it lasted. Nothing came with guarantees. But the more she saw Robyn spiral downhill, the more she worried about herself.

When her powers first started kicking in, bringing visions of death and destruction, she'd spent years struggling for sanity. Even after she'd learned she was a half-demon, it didn't solve the problem – it just gave it a name. She'd wobbled back onto her feet, but it was Karl who helped her stand firmly. Without him, would she be like Robyn, her world thrown off its axis again?

The hotel room door opened with the clank of silverware. She jumped up to help Karl with the breakfast tray, but he waved her back. He'd been to the breakfast buffet again. Though buffet-style eating didn't meet his culinary standards, he could fill two large plates and eat half of hers, which met his metabolic requirements. Taking buffet food back to your room was probably against hotel policy, but with a smile and a generous dose of charm, Karl usually got what he wanted.

Hope checked the clock. Nine o'clock. Any other day, she'd be late for work. Fridays, though, she usually spent at home writing. Or she did in L.A., where the
True News
office was the size of a boiler room, and twice as hot and noisy.

As Karl handed her a coffee, he said, "So, are you going to tell me what you saw last night?"

"Hmm?"

He stripped off his shirt and crawled back into bed. "At the club. You saw a vision or heard a thought that bothered you. And you conveniently distracted me when I asked."

"Ah. Right. Well, see, there was this jewel thief who stole a celebutante's diamond bracelet..."

"I put it back." He sipped his orange juice.

For Karl, Portia Kane's bracelet was a fat, lazy rabbit hopping in front of his nose, too tempting to ignore. Hope chased tabloid stories to satisfy her less civilized urges; he stole jewels to gratify his. They did what they had to and if when the phone rang late at night while he was out of town, Hope jumped awake with her heart in her throat, certain he was in jail, she wasn't ever going to tell him that.

"Something was bothering you last night," he said. "I'd like to know what it was."

"Just your typical niggling power blip. Everyone seems to be having such a great time at a place like that, but I'm picking up all the bad – jealousy, hurt, anger. Add alcohol and drugs and it's a chaos powder keg. I could feel my nerves twanging, waiting for the explosion."

"We could have taken Robyn and left. I'm sure she wouldn't have complained."

"But I have to get used to it, right? If my powers are getting stronger,
I
need to get stronger."

A low noise in his throat, a grumbling growl. Their major point of contention.

"It was only when Rob started withdrawing from the conversation that I couldn't help picking up other stuff," she said.

"And... ?"

"There was another supernatural there. That's not unusual in a big crowd – especially in L.A., with the Nast Cabal based here. But this felt weird. Wrong."

"What race?"

"That was part of the problem. I got a vision, but it was just random flashes of faces."

"I'd guess necromancer, but you'd recognize that."

Hope put her plate aside, barely touched. "I have no idea what the supernatural type was, but I know he or she was thinking about Portia Kane. Something about pictures. I thought maybe they wanted to get a photo of her, but there was a definite negative vibe there."

Karl eyed her plate. As she passed it to him he said, "I presume someone like that generates a lot of ill will. Perhaps another woman wanted her picture in the papers and was preempted by Portia."

"Maybe. Anyway, for the next twelve hours, we're off duty. Work for me this morning. Then I'm having lunch with Robyn, and afterward you and I are going apartment hunting. I might invite her to help us look. Otherwise, she'll just go home and work." She paused, coffee cup at her lips. "Is that condescending? Trying to get her out and about?"

"That's why we're here."

"But she's got family. Other friends. Am I being arrogant?"

"You got the job offer, so you came. Robyn is a side project."

Project? That
did
sound arrogant. But at least he was supporting her decision, even if it wouldn't be his. The world had never done Karl any favors, and he saw no need to treat it any differently.

"I'll ask her to come apartment hunting then." She took the
L.A. Times
and passed him the
Wall Street Journal
. "Then, you and I can kick back, maybe take in – "

Hope stopped. There, beneath the fold, was the headline: "Portia Kane Shot Dead." She skimmed the short paragraph on the front page, then flipped to the rest inside.

"Portia's dead."

"Hmmm?"

"Portia Kane. She was murdered last night, after we left."

As Hope reached for the phone, her gaze snagged on Robyn's name in the last paragraph.

She stared at the words. Read. Reread. Then she dropped the paper and scrambled from bed. She pulled out her clothes. The paper rustled behind her as Karl retrieved it.

Robyn was missing. Last seen at the club. Now sought by the police. Hope had caught that vision, known someone in that club had Portia on his mind, and she'd brushed it off, leaving Portia to die and Robyn to be kidnapped. Or worse.

Pants half on, Hope stopped and turned to the nightstand, where her cell phone lay. Karl got to it first.

"I'll call her," he said. "You get ready."

Hope was in the bathroom, brushing her curls back into a ponytail, when she heard him speaking.

"Who is this?" he said, voice sharp.

She threw open the door.

"Where did you get this phone?" he demanded. A pause. "And where is that? What's the nearest intersection?"

Karl finished with a string of curses and punched redial, but his expression said he didn't expect anyone to answer. They didn't.

"Someone found her phone, didn't they? Where was it?"

"He wouldn't say. Hung up when I asked for a street."

"I mean
where
? In a bathroom? A coffee shop? On the side of a road?"

He said nothing. Just hit redial again.

"Karl?"

"Behind a trash bin," he said after a moment.

Hope was out the door before he could stop her.

One advantage to being a tabloid reporter was that Hope knew all the tricks for getting a cop to talk when the department was saying "no comment." It helped that she didn't look like an ambulance chaser... or a hard-hitting journalist. It also helped that she was under thirty, female and relatively easy on the eyes.

Hope wouldn't call herself a natural charmer, but growing up in high society – debutante season and all – gave her the basics, and Karl had taught her the rest. So after twenty minutes nursing a coffee in a shop near the police station, she managed to lure a young officer to her table.

She sized him up and debated her options. She considered the wide-eyed crime groupie routine, but this guy looked like a cop whose intelligence outweighed his ego, so she went for option two. She confessed she was a tabloid reporter. Even flashed her creds.

"But I'm new and I'm assigned to this Portia Kane murder and, well, it's just not like back home, you know? These guys totally play hardball, and they've buried me already. What I really need is a fresh angle."

A nod, not unsympathetic, but wary. "My best advice would be to attend the press conference. I can give you a few tips on how to get your question answered, but I don't have any inside information on Ms. Kane."

"Oh, I wasn't looking for that." Hope scooted forward in her seat. "I need a totally fresh angle, one they're all ignoring. The other woman. The missing PR rep. Are the police speculating on what happened to her? Kidnapped?"

"Kidnapped?"

"She's missing, right? And you're looking for her."

"Sure, but not as a victim. She's our prime suspect."

ROBYN

To say that running from two crime scenes was the stupidest thing Robyn had ever done put it at the top of a very short list. Robyn didn't make stupid mistakes. Her father had always said that he'd never had to teach her to take care before crossing the street, because she naturally looked both ways – twice... then reconsidered whether she needed to cross the road at all.

The biggest chance she'd ever taken was Damon. They'd met at the wedding of his sister, a casual friend of Robyn's. They'd been seated at the same table and talked through dinner. At the end of the night he asked her out, but she'd been seeing someone – Brett, an ad exec she'd been dating since her freshman year. He was a good guy who treated her well, and they had a comfortable relationship that both expected would lead to marriage, a minivan and a house in the suburbs.

When she'd turned Damon down, he'd gone to his sister for details. Was Robyn engaged? Living with her boyfriend? No on both counts. So he sent her an invitation to a club where his band was playing. She didn't go. He sent a card, asking her for coffee – no strings, just coffee. She said no. Then he sent her a CD of him singing "500 Miles." The band at his sister's wedding had played that and, after one and a half glasses of wine, Robyn had proclaimed it the most romantic song ever.

She'd listened to the CD. More than once. Then she called. He invited her to coffee again, but she couldn't justify meeting a guy she knew wanted more than friendship. Not when she was involved with someone. The only alternative was to end a good three-year relationship for a "coffee date" with a near-stranger. Madness, of course.

That night, she told Brett it was over and called Damon back. A year later, they'd been celebrating their own wedding.

As incredible as that payoff had been, though, she'd never seen it as proof she should take more risks. Just as a sign that she'd probably used up her life's allotment of good fortune.

Yet that potentially dumb move wasn't even in the same ballpark as this one. How did someone
accidentally
flee from not one but two crime scenes? In one night?

She hoped Judd was still alive, but she doubted it. His attacker had been shooting to kill. And who had his attacker been? Someone from his former days as a cop? A disgruntled current client?

No, Robyn was sure
she'd
brought a killer to Judd Archer's house. Whether it was Portia's murderer or a partner, it didn't matter. Robyn had run to Judd for help and she'd been followed. She'd gotten him killed. And then... And then she'd done nothing.

It was almost morning. She'd been sitting on a park bench for three hours. People passed. Some glanced her way. None ran screaming for the nearest cop.

She almost wished they would.

After hours of wandering, exhausted and shock-numb, she'd stalled on this park bench, wanting nothing more than to stretch out and sleep. If she did, would
that
make anyone notice? It might if she still looked like Robyn Peltier. But this bedraggled woman in oversized sweats and old sneakers? Just another homeless person. No one would care. From respectable to forgettable overnight.

She pulled up her legs and closed her eyes.

ADELE

Colm stared out Adele's bedroom window. Through his reflection in the glass, she could see his eyes, blank, his mental gaze searching for the woman. For Robyn Peltier.

He couldn't do it, of course. He was too young. But she'd let him try, let him feel useful.

A clairvoyant didn't read minds or see the future. Instead they got the power of remote viewing. They could fix on a subject and see through their eyes.

Unless the subject was nearby, fixing on her wasn't as simple as picturing her and jumping into her head. The clairvoyant needed either a personal object or a personal connection, built up through exposure and effort. It had taken Adele months of constant surveillance to establish a connection with Portia. There was no way Colm could fix on Robyn Peltier after chasing her around for an hour the night before.

They were in Adele's tserha, the house she shared with Lily and Hugh, Niko and his wife. There were four houses on the kumpania property, four tserhas – households. Colm and his mother, Neala, shared the neighboring house. Adele and Colm usually met here, away from Neala's watchful eye.

When a door opened and closed downstairs, Adele went still. If it was Lily, she was safe – they'd been raised as sisters and Lily would never tattle on her for being with Colm. But there was no way of knowing who'd come in without looking. Only the most powerful clairvoyants – the seers – could remote-view other clairvoyants. But the footsteps receded and the door opened and closed again, and Adele relaxed.

She moved up behind Colm and rubbed his back. He leaned into her fingers, eyes closing, like a cat being petted.

"It's not your fault," she said. "We'll find her."

"One minute," he said. "That's all it would have taken to grab her purse. I saw it there in the kitchen. Or her dress, on the bed. If we had that, we could find her now."

Adele said nothing. She hadn't mentioned that she'd been even closer to Robyn – having clocked her in the alley. All she'd had to do was wrench her up and grab that cell phone. But hearing the cops, she'd panicked and run. A mistake she would not repeat.

Nor would she make the mistake of admitting her failure to Colm. His resolve was shaky enough. The story she'd told him was that she'd been tracked down by a Cabal VP, Irving Nast, while Portia had been lunching with Jasmine. To avoid trouble, Adele had gone outside with Nast, promising to talk to him, planning to bolt at the first chance. Then, as she was remote-viewing Portia, she saw her snap a photo of Adele and Nast. She could only guess that Portia figured out Adele was the photographer selling those most unflattering photos of her to the tabloids. Adele couldn't risk that photo getting back to the kumpania – the punishment for speaking to a Nast was death. So she'd tried to get it back. A plan that hadn't gone quite as she intended...

Now Portia was dead. Adele had her cell phone... and had discovered that Portia sent the photo on to Robyn Peltier to be passed on to the tabloids. The same Robyn Peltier who'd seen her at the murder site. The same one who'd snapped her photo in the alley.

"We'll take something from her apartment," she said. "Then we'll find her, get her cell phone, get that picture, and I'll be safe."

Colm turned, his freckles bunching as his face screwed up with worry. "What if she's already sent it to the tabloids? If they print it, if the phuri see it – "

Adele lifted onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. He pulled her against him and kissed her, hard from the moment their bodies brushed.

So young. So eager. So hungry.

That's what made it so easy. A fifteen-year-old boy, expected to mingle in the human world but keep himself separate. Look but don't touch. No friends, no girlfriends. Colm had never even been on a date. Nor would he. Not with anyone but her.

The elders – the phuri – had already decreed they were to marry when he turned eighteen. It didn't matter that Adele was five years older. It didn't matter that they'd been raised as brother and sister. Keeping the blood pure was all that counted.

Clairvoyants were the rarest of the races. Even within the bloodlines, there was usually only a 10 percent chance of inheriting the power. The kumpania boasted odds of 75 percent, through careful selective breeding. To most clairvoyant families, 10 percent was already too high, considering the eventual sentence of madness. But the kumpania's training methods virtually eliminated that threat. They promised all the benefits of clairvoyance and none of the disadvantages... except for the small matter of surrendering your free will, living in a commune, supporting the group by working as a "celebrity photographer," marrying whomever they chose, and breeding more clairvoyants.

Adele touched her stomach. She'd done the breeding part, all right. Just not with the right partner. Her child would be a more powerful clairvoyant than she could have produced with Colm – the Cabal was certainly convinced of that – but to the kumpania, what she'd done was an atrocity, her child an abomination.

Another reason for Adele to leave the group before they found out. But if she jumped at Irving Nast's current offer, he'd see her eagerness and take advantage.

Adele was supposed to meet Irving again that morning. She hadn't dared – couldn't risk him smelling her fear. So she'd called his answering service, leaving a message saying she couldn't make it and would call to reschedule. He wouldn't like that. The longer she postponed, the sooner he'd sense trouble and try to find her.

She had to get those photos and eliminate every trace of them. If that meant killing again – or having Colm do it for her – that was fine. After all, they were only humans. Outsiders. Inconsequential.