Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (52 page)

“Thanks,” he said, cautiously.

“Eat, drink, and be merry?” Carmichael asked.

Henry winced, thinking of the rest of the quotation. “Let’s hope not.”

“I never thought you’d be superstitious.”

Henry forced a smile. “Come on, Carmichael, have you ever met a flyer who wasn’t?”

“Lindbergh.”

“He doesn’t have to be.”

“Touché.” Carmichael grinned. “Say, about your team — which is it, Gilchrist or Segura?”

Henry considered pretending he didn’t know what the reporter meant, but that would only put him at a disadvantage. “I believe it’s still Gilchrist professionally,” he said. “She married Lewis — Mr. Segura — last year.”

“She’s a hot ticket,” Carmichael said. “So she and Sorley are partners — business partners — and then she married this Segura? While he was working for her. Would you say she wears the pants there, Mr. Kershaw?”

“That’s a hell of a question.”

“Off the record,” Carmichael said.

Right. Henry would believe that about the time he got an invitation to go ice skating in hell. He said, “Alma’s first husband died too young — he was gassed in the war, and never really recovered. I’m just pleased she’s found someone.”

Carmichael’s eyebrows quirked up. “And what about this Dr. Ballard? What’s an archeologist expecting to dig up in the air? Or is he just another of Mrs. Segura’s friends?”

“Off the record?” He still didn’t believe it, but at least it bought him time.

“Off the record, Mr. Kershaw.” Carmichael’s voice was suspiciously solemn.

“Dr. Ballard’s done some test work for me before.” He winked. “We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeve.”

For a second, he thought he’d gone too far, but then Carmichael nodded slowly. “Thanks, Mr. Kershaw. That’s good to know.”

“Off the record, mind,” Henry called after him, and received a wave in answer. Alma wasn’t going to be happy, he thought. Hopefully she’d be too busy flying to notice.

M
itch had found a nice quiet spot indoors beside the buffet table, where he'd loaded a plate and then retreated to a corner to browse. It wasn't that he was so hungry, but nibbling gave him something to do, a reason to look busy. He couldn't very well just stand in a corner like a suit of armor all night. He certainly didn't want to trail along after Alma like Lewis was doing, looking like a vaguely threatening bodyguard behind her. Lewis hadn't been more than two steps away from her all night and was managing to look like every stereotype of the jealous Latin husband who was afraid to let her out of his sight. Of course Mitch knew it was probably that Lewis was scared to death, and hanging onto Alma's sleeve was the way to make sure nobody ever talked to him. Alma, on the other hand, seemed calm and smooth as a breeze. Sure, she did this every day.

Mitch put his empty plate down on a side table and glanced over the titles on Henry's bookshelf. It was fairly quiet in the house, most people out by the pool, crowded around the bar he could see through the open French doors. Maybe he could just pick out something and settle down and read in Henry's study for a while. His fingers walked along the shelves.
Undine and Sintram
by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué....

"You like fairy tales?"

Mitch turned around and looked way down. The woman was a good foot shorter than him, with graying chestnut hair cut in a bob at the back of her neck, perhaps closer to forty five than forty, with brown eyes and a smile that made you want to talk to her. "Sometimes," Mitch said.

"So do I," she said. "There's something wonderful about those old stories we grew up with, isn't there? The watersprite who traded her immortality to be with the man she loved."

"Sprites are good, but I think I like the valkyries better."

At that her smile broadened. "Oh so do I," she said. "You must be Mitchell Sorley."

"Must I?"

"Well, you're on Henry's team and Lewis Segura is out there, and you're certainly not Mrs. Segura." She glanced toward the doors. "So that makes you Mitchell Sorley, doesn't it?"

"Guilty as charged," Mitch said. "But I've got no idea who you are."

"Beatrice Patton," she said briskly. "I know Henry through his other work." She paused. "Not his aviation interests."

"Ah." He'd known Henry had invited a bunch of Lodge people from all over the network he corresponded with, and most of them were strangers to Mitch. "You're here in LA then?"

She shook her head. "DC at the moment. But my husband is originally from LA and we're here on family business. Henry asked if we'd like to drop by." She shrugged, her eyes drifting to the crowd by the bar. "My husband is mad for aviation. He says it's the wave of the future, so of course we had to come."

"He's probably right."

"He's often right. Except when he's colossally wrong." She smiled again, her too high heels shifting on the mission-tiled floor. "Are you going to win Henry's race for him?"

"We're going to try," Mitch said. He pulled the copy of
Undine
off the shelf. "But right now I think I'll settle for hiding from the press."

"They are persistent, aren't they?" she said. "I confess I'm a little shy myself."

She seemed about as shy as an organ grinder's monkey, but Mitch shrugged. "Do you Work with Henry?"

"Not with his group, but in the same tradition. You?"

"The same," Mitch said. "We branched a few years back."

"As so many did: Alpha and Omega, Stella Matutina, Whare Ra, Isis and Serapis..."

"Aedeficatorii Templii," Mitch said, identifying his own branch.

"Isis and Serapis." She smiled again. "That makes us almost kin."

"Kissing cousins, as my mother would say. Well, if my mother had ever heard of a Lodge."

"So how do you find the Work?" she asked.

There was a racket as a group of six came through the French doors, two reporters and a group of men around a woman Mitch thought looked vaguely familiar. Her white evening gown and platinum blonde permanent was very Hollywood. She gave the reporters a brilliant, lipstick pout.

"Maybe we should move this conversation down the hall," Mitch said. "Henry's office should be quiet."

"Indeed."

It was at the end of the hall, down the long tiled corridor covered in its bright Turkish runner, the one light on a side table halfway along turned off. Mitch frowned. Henry kept a good many esoteric things in his office, but there was no prickle as they approached the door, no familiar desire to go do something else that should signal a warding to keep random partygoers out. There was no reason for anything stronger, just a simple thing to make sure that anyone wandering around the downstairs didn't find that end of the hall very appealing. And yet there was nothing. No prickle. Nothing.

Beatrice frowned as though she thought it was odd too.

Mitch put his hand to the door handle and opened it. There was no resistance. And that was wrong. There should at least be something, a sense of breaking through a barrier, of being somewhere a guest shouldn't be. And that's what it would feel like to an ordinary person — a sense of guilt, of discomfort at intruding sharp enough to make it unpleasant to enter.

The office was quiet and empty, leather chair behind his desk, the lights off except for the green shaded reading lamp. The curtains were drawn on the window which overlooked the pool terrace. Everything was quiet, everything in place. There was no reason for anyone to be in here tonight or probably tomorrow either, unless Henry planned to get some work done in the afternoon after the race began. He sure wouldn't be here at the crack of dawn. He'd be over at Grand Central watching his team at the starting gun.

Her frown deepened, and he saw Beatrice sway just a moment on her feet, eyes unfocusing.

Mitch came around the desk. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," she said. For a moment her eyes had looked black, the way Lewis' did when he was seeing something that couldn't be seen with outward sight. Then they focused on his face, brown and ordinary. "But there's something wrong."

Mitch nodded. "I know. There are no wards."

"Someone's taken them down." She looked at him. "In the last hour. Someone's been in here and they were up to something they shouldn't have been." She cast her gaze around the walls. "They stood right over there. I can feel the residue. They dispelled the wards rather than breaking them."

He drew a deep breath. Something was well and truly rotten in the state of Denmark. "Ok. Stay right here. I'm going to go get Henry."

J
erry Ballard had escaped. Since he wasn't technically part of Henry's race team, just a passenger, he didn't actually have to make nice to the photographers and race sponsors. He didn't have to answer a million questions or try not to. He could leave that to Alma, who seemed to revel in it, and find something quieter to do. He chatted with some old acquaintances from Henry's lodge that he hadn't seen in years; it was nice to catch up and talk shop in his own field rather than aviation. He ran into Bullfinch by the pool and had a nice gab about the ongoing excavations at Halicarnassus, a useful and interesting topic.

By ten o'clock he'd talked enough. Alma was determined to get down to the airfield at dawn and that meant getting up around four, something he didn't enjoy at the best of times - and this was not the best of times. It was looking like this party was going to drag on interminably into the wee hours.

But at least he didn't have to stay inside. Jerry looked out across the lawn beyond the swimming pool toward the circular drive, the hangar buildings paler shadows beyond that, barely lighter than the hillside. The Terrier was pulled up on the grass just where they'd left it when they’d all posed for photos earlier, right out in the middle of the lawn where anyone approaching it would be in full view of the entire party. Yes, it had gotten dark since then, but with no trees to shade anything the Terrier gleamed in the moonlight, the roundel on its tail shining faintly. Jerry knew it was a trick of paint, not anything more esoteric, but he still found it obscurely comforting.

The ground was firm beneath his cane, and Jerry started off across the grass toward the plane at a good clip. Nobody seemed to notice he’d left, and Jerry popped the side door. He'd just climb in and get comfortable in one of the rear seats. Maybe he'd even take a nap until the others were ready to turn in for the night. Then he'd speak to Henry about having someone watch the plane overnight, just in case. He turned the handle and stopped. A shadow moved. Someone was standing at the nose.

"Who's there?" Jerry called, his hand tightening on the heavy walnut grip of his cane.

A woman stepped out from behind the plane, striking a pose against the distant lights, slender silhouette in a drop waisted dress, a little handbag in one hand and a cigarette holder in the other. "Dr. Ballard," she said in a throaty alto. "I was hoping to catch you alone."

"You were?" Jerry asked. He had no recollection of ever having seen her before.

"I saw you earlier," she said. "When they were taking photographs." She took two steps forward, a thin woman in strappy black shoes that buckled around her ankles, black as her hair and her simple dress. "I hoped that I might have a chance to talk with you alone."

"About what?" Jerry said.

Another step, and she raised the hand with the cigarette holder to his lapel. Her nails were long and scarlet, but she wore no jewelry at all. "Your work is so fascinating. I've followed it breathlessly for years."

"You have?"

"You can't imagine how it feels to finally meet you," she said, dark eyes meeting his on the level, closer to thirty five than twenty five, and wearing no cologne for all her sophistication.

Jerry fumbled for his handkerchief to clean his glasses off. "I'm charmed, I'm sure," he said. "And just who are you?"

"Countess Anastasia Rostov," she said. "Oh, the title is just a courtesy now days, I'm afraid! What with that horrible man in the Kremlin and my dear family scattered to the winds!"

"I'm terribly sorry," Jerry said, though the Russian Revolution was decidedly not his fault.

"Oh don't be!" she said, lifting her other hand to his lapel as he stepped back. "Like you, I now lead a gypsy existence, a lonely exile. So lonely."

"Um," Jerry said, stepping back again. Unfortunately, that put him directly against the open door, the steps against the back of his knee.

"But I know that you are the other half of my wandering soul."

"Not really," Jerry said, putting one hand on her arm to push himself around her. "I think we'd better get back to the party, don't you?"

"But isn't this the perfect opportunity for us to get to know each other better?" She gave him a sultry glance beneath black eyelashes. "Dr. Ballard, I know that you and I will be the best of friends."

"Friends," Jerry said swiftly, maneuvering her away from the plane. "Let's be friends. And let's go back to the party."

Those eyelashes batted again. "Are you afraid that if you're alone with me you'll compromise my reputation?"

"Exactly!" Jerry said. He could feel cold sweat running down the back of his neck. "I'd never want to do that. Let's go back to the party!"

"But the night is young, and this is such a lovely airplane," she said. "I bet it has nice seats inside."

"I'm sure it does." Jerry slammed the door. "But we're not supposed to be out here. Let's go join the others before Mr. Kershaw gets upset."

She shrugged prettily. "If you think so, but...."

"I do," Jerry said quickly.

"But who knows when this opportunity will come again." She took a step closer, lips opening.

"It might be a long time." Jerry took her arm and all but dragged her away from the plane, making his best time across the lawn with her in tow. "But c'est la vie. Que sera, sera."

"Carpe diem. Mazel tov," she said. "Dr. Ballard, I want to know you better."

"And I'm going to find the necessary," Jerry said quickly, dropping her arm at the edge of the terrace. "Bye."

He all but bolted into the pool house and its changing facilities, the ones marked MEN. Hopefully that would put her off for a bit. God help him, these parties of Henry's were getting stranger by the year!