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.
* * *
HOPE
After getting all she could from the officer in the coffee shop, Hope made a pit stop at the True News office. Checking in, getting her mail... Hardly critical under the circumstances, but if Robyn was a fugitive and Hope was her best friend in L.A., eventually the cops were going to find their way to her door. And when they did, she might need to prove she'd been going about her day, business as usual.
After that token appearance, Hope and Karl returned to the club. He stood watch as she circled the exterior trying to find the place closest to the crime scene. If she could find it, she might catch a vision of what had happened last night. It took some fine-tuning to pinpoint the spot, but eventually the vision came.
Hope saw a dark room, with Portia leaning over what looked like a table. Doing lines, it seemed. She was anxious, worried about being caught, feeling guilty, telling herself this would be the last time. At a noise, Portia had jumped, a small burst of chaos exploding. She wheeled to see someone in the doorway.
"Hello?" she said, forcing attitude into her voice. "This room's taken."
Whatever she saw, Hope didn't. A vision wasn't like the reconstruction of an event, where she could move around and see the whole thing. It was a single-camera scene. What she saw is what she got - whatever angle, clarity and length.
As usual, her focus was on the victim.
"I need to use your cell phone," the intruder said. It sounded like a woman, the voice pitched high with stress, the waves flowing off her twice as strong as Portia's.
"Like hell. There's a pay phone in the
- "
"I need your cell phone."
"Buy your own, bitch. Now get the hell out before I call my bodyguard."
"You didn't bring one. You only take one when you want to show off."
Portia inhaled sharply, chaos blasting off her. "Wh - what - "
"It's called a gun. Now give me the fucking cell phone."
Portia opened her mouth. Only a split-second shriek escaped. Then the chaos surged, so strong it blocked the rest of the vision. Hope had to replay it twice to see the ending. Portia started to scream, reeling back, then the first bullet hit and the scream died in her throat. A second bullet struck as she was already going down, the silenced shots barely more than loud puffs of air.
It was over quickly, the chaos surge brief but powerful, that final explosion... exquisite.
The first time Hope had seen a vision of a recent death, there'd been no pleasure in it. Too intense. Too uncomfortable. She'd taken solace in that. It was one thing to get a thrill from hearing strangers arguing. But to enjoy another's death? She wouldn't know how to deal with that.
Soon she had to. As her powers grew, she started to enjoy death. It was the purest, most perfect chaos imaginable. The ultimate high.
Even if she stopped chasing weird tales for True News and investigating rogue supernaturals for the council, she couldn't escape the experience of death. Passing the site of a recent car crash was enough. Short of locking herself into a room for life, she had no choice - she had to learn to deal with it.
With Karl's help, she was learning to accept the demon in her. She'd come to think of it that way: the demon. That didn't mean it was a separate entity - she could never make that mistake. It was as much part of her as Karl's wolf was of him. But it didn't need to rule who she was. She had to learn to appease it and control it. Accept the demon, master it and use it to her advantage, to protect herself and help others.
If it sounded like she had it all worked out, she didn't. Intellectually, she understood the lessons Karl taught her about acceptance and control. But that didn't keep her from feeling like a ghoul.
When Karl came looking for her behind the club, she was huddled against the alley wall, hugging her knees, forcing herself to replay the vision over and over, through that endless cycle of bliss and self-loathing until she'd wrested every last clue from it, fighting and cursing when he hefted her over his shoulder and carried her away.
So, no, she didn't have it worked out. And she was starting to think she never would.
* * *
ROBYN
There had been a moment, after waking on the park bench, when Robyn had reflected back on the events of the night and decided the answer was simple. She'd cracked.
After one too many glasses of champagne, she'd gone into that dark hall at Bane, and like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, she'd emerged in some hellish alternate reality of her mind's own making, where Portia had died, then Judd, and she was the primary suspect.
A shrink would claim the whole scenario was a subconscious manifestation of illogical guilt over Damon's death. Whether it was indeed a complete mental collapse or simply a drunken nightmare, she was relieved. A mental hospital she could deal with. Not like she hadn't expected to end up in one anyway.
Her relief lasted until she passed a newsstand outside the park and saw the newspaper headlines. It was like someone cut her power cord again, and she meandered for an hour, shocked, confused, lost... and thoroughly disgusted with herself for it.
A few years ago, when she and Damon had passed a poster for a book called The Purpose Driven Life, Damon joked it must have been written by Robyn's long-lost twin. She always had a purpose, a goal, a plan. Even on vacation, she never left without researching the locale and drawing up an itinerary. That didn't mean she scheduled every moment, but she'd hate to later hear someone talking about some hidden gem she'd missed.
In high school, she'd taken a test to identify where her strengths lay, and the answer came as a surprise to no one. Logical reasoning, organization and planning. Public relations might not have seemed the ideal fit for her, but it was. No matter what scrape a client got herself into, Robyn could say, "Give me a minute," and come up with a solution, usually two or three.
Now there was a citywide alert out for her, and here she was, wandering aimlessly, as if hoping someone would catch her and save her the trouble of taking action herself. When she heard a man call "Robyn," she turned to embrace her fate.
It was a testament to her mental state that it wasn't until the dark-haired man stopped three feet away from her that she recognized him.
"Karl?"
"It's all right." He moved forward slowly, hands outstretched, as if approaching a timid deer. "Hope sent me."
She nodded.
He took a cell phone from his pocket and held it out. "I'm going to take you to her. Do you want to call her? Check first?"
Robyn shook her head and let him lead her away.
They drove in silence to a motel. Karl parked right in front, checking to make sure no one was watching, then hustled her to the door.
Hope was inside. She closed and relocked the door as Karl strode past, scanning the dark, cool room, shades drawn.
You'd almost think they were harboring a murder suspect.
Robyn tried to laugh, but couldn't. Hope led her to the bed, where icy bottles of water, sandwiches and brownie bites waited. Robyn eyed the food, as if she could mentally will it into her hand. Hope handed her a bottle and told her to drink slowly. She did and it seemed to unstick her brain.
"How did you find me?" she asked.
"We found out where that undercover officer lived," Hope said. "Was he a friend of yours?"
Undercover officer? Judd? So now she was the main suspect in a cop killing?
When Robyn didn't answer, Hope went on. Something about knowing Robyn wouldn't have taken a taxi when she might be wanted for murder, so she couldn't be more than a few miles from Judd's place.
It was plausible, she supposed. But that was still a lot of area to cover. And why leave Hope behind when two sets of eyes and legs could have searched twice as fast?
"We need to talk about what happened," Hope said.
"I didn't kill them."
"I know. But you need to tell us exactly what happened so we can figure out what to do."
Well, at least someone was taking charge and making plans.
Robyn told them everything. As she talked and drank and nibbled on a sandwich, the deadening layer of shock lifted enough for her to look around and realize the situation was real, and she couldn't take refuge in fantasies of madness.
"I should turn myself in," she said finally.
"You will... just not right now. Karl talked to a friend. He's a lawyer who specializes in this sort of problem."
There was a specialty in this?
"He advised us," Hope continued, "and, if we need him, he'll come down. He's in Oregon, but he's licensed to practice in California. Anyway, the main thing now is to keep you in L.A., just away from your apartment or anyplace you could be recognized. That way, we can say you weren't on the run, just in shock. But that excuse will only work for a day or two, so we have to work fast. We need to give the police another suspect - preferably the real killer."
"You're..." She looked from Hope to Karl. "You're going to solve this yourselves?"
Hope smiled. "Hey, I'm True News's weird tales girl, remember? Solving mysteries is my thing. Karl's helped me before. He used to be in security."
"I'm not sure..."
Karl spoke from across the room, his first words since they'd arrived. "You don't have a lot of options right now, Robyn."
Hope shushed him with a glare, but he was right, and his cold realism felt somehow more reassuring than Hope's bright optimism.
Hope cracked open a water bottle. "I can't promise we will solve it. But we're going to try, and if we're no closer tomorrow than we are right now, we'll get our friend's help, let you turn yourself in and keep on w
orking. We have some leads already."
"You do? How?"
"Like I said, there's an advantage to having a tabloid reporter on your case. I have the perfect excuse for snooping, and people aren't nearly as reluctant to talk to the tabs as they let on." She took a long gulp of water. "There's a rumor that someone heard Portia arguing in that back hall. She was talking about a cell phone. And maybe something about a picture."
"Cell... ? Wait. Before she died, Portia mentioned her cell. I thought she wanted me to use it to call 911, but that didn't seem to be it."
"Her cell phone wasn't with her body. She had it earlier, didn't she?"
"She must have. I always swore it was surgically attached."
"What about pictures or photos? Does that ring a bell?"
"People were always taking Portia's picture. The only time she snapped shots was when she wanted to show something - a purse or an outfit she liked. She did send me one yesterday - from her cell actually - but it was just of Jasmine Wills."
"Jasmine?"
"In an ugly dress. Portia's been having this passive-aggressive feud with her, and she wanted me to send this picture to the tabloids."
"How big a deal would that be? I mean, I can't see anyone shooting Portia to stop her from getting a photo published, but maybe Jasmine tried to get it back, waved a gun and it went off. Sounds farfetched, but you did think the killer might have been a woman."
"At first. But Judd's killer was a young man, so maybe I was mistaken."
"That could have been a friend or someone Jasmine hired, after she realized you'd seen her." Hope shook her head. "Okay, that really does sound farfetched."
Maybe, but people killed for less every day. Robyn had a scrapbook to prove it.
"We should look for more likely explanations," Karl said. "Was there anything else about the photograph? Was this girl holding something - drugs? Kissing someone's husband? Was there anything else in the frame? Something or someone Portia may have accidentally photographed?"