"Oh, that place!" whispered Sophia, and rubbed her arms as if a cold wind had touched her. "There were demons there ... and other things."
"I felt that woman's chi." Cathair's mouth twisted. "She was sick. Someone stole her soul?"
"According to them." Jesse crossed his arms. "One detective is fullblood Lubanian and the other is merged with one. Dangerous pair. Do you want to talk to them?"
"They don't have demons." Sophia frowned at the detectives. "I wouldn't mind talking to them. That lady was nice. I wouldn't want her to die. Maybe the detectives would want to know about the demons." She glanced at Jesse's wings to reassure herself.
Jesse retrieved the detectives and led them to the shady patio. A wolf and a werewolf. Sophia shrank close to her brother and took his hand. Normally, Cathair hated being touched, but this time he clasped her hand and gentled her chi with his own. A wave of calm settled the butterflies in her stomach. She straightened, drew a breath and shot him a secret smile, which he returned.
A ceiling fan stirred the porch's air, and a glass table and cushioned wrought-iron chairs beckoned. But Sophia and Cathair stood, and so did the detectives.
The werewolf introduced them as Indal Tay and Molon Hawkins, private detectives, and explained about the Southvista woman apparently losing her soul. Sophia watched them closely. Indal had a faint radiance about him, almost like Jesse, but not so bright. People with that shimmer never had demons. Odd that he had it, being a werewolf.
Molon had no aura at all, neither good nor evil. His hoodie was dusty where Jesse had thrown him in the dirt, and he panted like a dog. His tongue had purple spots, and his teeth were as long as Sophia's thumbs.
Indal reached the end of his spiel and pulled out a notepad and pencil. "So, did you two notice anything?"
"Yeah, we were there," said Cathair. One eyebrow arched, and he used the semi-sarcastic tone he reserved for meddling adults. "Nice place. Fun tour. We didn't do anything to Natasha. She's handicapped, you know. We were honored they allowed us to see her."
Indal wrote this down, his black hair tumbling over his face. He pushed it away carelessly, and a butterfly flitted through Sophia's stomach. He was astonishingly good-looking.
But he seemed unaware of her interest, and gazed at her brother. "I see. How did Natasha look during your visit?"
Cathair shrugged. "She looked fine, for somebody in a wheelchair."
Sophia waited for him to mention the problem with her chi, but he was done talking.
Jesse stood to one side, wings still visible.
Sophia took courage from her brother and angelus guardian, and addressed the handsome werewolf. "There were demons in the room."
Indal stared at her with renewed interest. It made her heart pound, and not from fear. His eyes were a soft, gentle brown.
Beside him, the wolf in human clothing closed his mouth and pricked his ears. "Demons? How do you know?"
Sophia tapped a temple. "I've been able to see demons since I was little. There were three demons in the room with Natasha. Two hung around in the corners--they didn't like us--but the third one was behind her chair the whole time. He stared at me."
Indal wrote this down with a thoughtful frown. Sophia pondered the odds of him having a girlfriend. Probably pretty good.
The wolf who wasn't a costume gestured at Sophia. "You see demons." He faced Cathair. "What do you do?"
Cathair clenched his teeth and said nothing.
The wolf ran out his tongue in a lupine smile. "You have an angelus. You must have some kind of power." When Cathair didn't answer, Molon lowered his voice and said, "Please, don't be like this. Natasha's in the hospital, and someone may have stolen her soul. A witness blames you two. We can't clear you of suspicion unless we understand what you can do."
Behind the detectives, Jesse gave a tiny nod--it was all right to tell them.
Cathair exhaled. "I sense people's chi through touch."
Indal's eyebrows shot up, and he scribbled on his notepad.
"When I touched Natasha, her chi was sick. And it wasn't from her disease--someone's been meddling with her. Maybe the demons Sophia saw. It was like touching a handful of worms." He wiped his hand on his shirt.
Molon's ears flicked back and forth several times, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot. "I see. Very interesting. And neither of you can manipulate souls?"
"No," said Sophia. "We sense things and that's all." No need to mention all the things Cathair could do with a person's life energy. A soul wasn't chi.
"All right, thank you for your time," said Indal. "We'll be in touch. Take care." He and Molon bounded down the steps and returned to their little racing car.
Sophia watched Indal with a sense of loss, shading her eyes with one hand.,"Wasn't that side window broken?"
"Yes, it was," said Jesse. He furled his wings, and once more appeared to be only hired security.
"Then how ...?"
"Indal is a chronomancer."
There was a nervous silence. Sophia's admiration crystallized into fear. A chronomancer! He was probably analyzing her entire life at that moment!
Cathair remarked, "No wonder you tried to KO him."
* * *
Molon drove them back into Phoenix. "So?" he asked at the first red light.
"Their timelines match their stories." Indal aimed all the air-conditioning vents at himself. "I saw the event when they were in the room with Natasha--she seemed alive after she touched them. But I can't see souls--only timelines."
"What about chi kid?"
"He barely touched her. Like he said, she must have felt gross, because he brushed her hand, then backed away."
"So. Suspects?"
"We've eliminated Karyn or her kids," said Indal, looking through his notes. "Cathair and Sophia have interesting powers, but they can't manipulate souls. And Jesse's an angelus. Not sure what they can do, but he's a whitewing, so he wouldn't be stealing souls."
"Pretty small homeschool group."
"Supernatural homeschoolers." Indal rolled his eyes. "You and I are special needs, too."
Molon cracked a smile, showing some teeth. "We got clues. Natasha was ill, and there were three demons in the room. Sounds to me like the real culprit is at Southvista. Grayson?"
"He's certainly weird enough. But he might only be a witness."
Molon glanced at the setting sun "Meet me there at nine tomorrow."
Indal nodded. "Good. I've got a date tonight. Two year anniversary with my girlfriend."
"You haven't killed her yet?"
Indal gave him the sort of stare usually reserved for rabbits and squirrels shortly before his other form ate them. "Don't even joke, Molon."
* * *
The Southvista Software corporate offices opened at seven. When Molon and Indal arrived two hours later, the offices were alive with the hum of voices, computers, and the click of keyboards. Even the zealous air conditioning couldn't purge the building's atmosphere of the inhuman smell of hot silicon.
The same security guard grumbled, but allowed them inside. They rode the elevator to Grayson's floor and knocked on his door. Grayson mumbled something unintelligible, as before. Molon opened the door.
Grayson hunched over his computer in the same position as the previous day, as if he'd been there all night. A text program appeared on his screen as they entered.
Molon stepped toward the computer and froze, nostrils flared. The warm odor of another person permeated the room. A non-human.
Unaware of this, Indal walked to Grayson and read his screen. "He says hi, and asks what're we doing here."
"Asking some follow-up questions." Molon had carried a list of questions in mind, but the smell distracted him. "Uh, we questioned the suspects yesterday. They said that Natasha was already ill."
Grayson didn't lift his head, but his fingers flew over his keyboard. "No. I tell you I saw them! The boy pulled out her soul and the girl sent her demons to take it away!"
Molon read this and the hair on
his neck bristled. The witness had changed his story.
Indal beat him to the question. "Why didn't you tell us this yesterday?"
Grayson sat still, fingers motionless over his keyboard. He stared into his screen without blinking.
"Grayson has problems, you know," said a new voice.
Molon turned and squinted, nostrils quivering, and tense as if expecting a knife in the back.
A man in a navy blue shirt with the Southvista logo stood in the doorway. His smell was the one filling the room, as if he'd been inside before they arrived.
Molon split his fingers in the Vulcan symbol behind his back, a gesture to Indal that their visitor wasn't human. "Who are you?"
The man stepped inside and shook Molon's paw, then Indal's hand. Although his smell was pungent and strange, he looked unremarkable. Medium height, medium brown hair, nothing interesting about his face.
The perfectly average human? Molon stepped sideways, so as to watch the room without turning his back on him.
"I'm Azor," said the average man. "And there's no point in talking to Grayson about these things. He's severely autistic. Only communicates with machines. Brilliant in his way."
Grayson sat frozen, fingers arched over the keyboard.
"What's your story on Natasha?" Molon tried to keep the growl out of his voice.
Azor lifted his bland eyebrows. "My story? She had a stroke, of course. Poor woman. She has osteogenesis, you know. Brittle bone disease. It's sad that her brain failed before the rest of her body."
Indal held up his notepad in his usual pretense of taking notes, but a time spell flickered behind its cover. Indal caught Molon's eye with a strange expression. He'd picked up something interesting.
A key clicked. Grayson still sat motionless, but he'd typed a single swearword.
Major red flag.
"You work here?" Molon said to Azor.
Azor's unremarkable face split in an unremarkable smile. "I've been an employee at Southvista for ten years. Head of artificial intelligence, Team Two."
"Got a card?"
Azor produced a business card from a shirt pocket.
Molon accepted it in the tips of two claws and handed it to Indal. "Thanks. We were just leaving."
Indal shot him a questioning look, but Molon jerked his head and hurried outside. Azor's stench was giving him a headache.
* * *
Molon's car was parked in the shade of a spreading mesquite in the Southvista parking lot. He climbed in, and started the engine to activate the air-conditioning. Indal climbed in on the passenger side, and sat in in uncharacteristic silence for a long moment.
"So?" said Molon.
"Yeah," said Indal, drawing out the syllable. "Azor's the one with issues, not Grayson. Grayson's got a normal timeline. Azor's looked like that." He handed Molon his notepad.
Indal had sketched a thing like a centipede that curled back on itself in several curlicues.
"There's no start or end points." Indal pointed at the sketch. "Everybody has a beginning and end to their timeline, and this guy only has a piece of one. Like he's extruded into this dimension, and his real self is hidden somewhere else."
Extremely bad news. Molon coughed at the memory of his odor. "He smelled like a cross between latex and dead fish. Grayson had choice words for him."
"Grayson wouldn't type with Azor in the room, either. Autistic or not, Grayson knows stuff."
Molon drummed his claws on the steering wheel. "Do you think the kids took the soul? With demons?"
Indal massaged his forehead. "I don't know. I mean, I've studied powers like that. Second sight doesn't come with power of command. But Cathair and the chi thing--who knows?"
Molon's ears flattened to his skull, and he fingered the steering wheel. "They're still suspects. But all we have is the word of an unreliable witness."
"Yeah, that will hold up in court."
Molon sighed. "My gut says that Azor is behind this, but there's no evidence for or against him. Aside from from being creepily ordinary."
Indal nodded. "They don't arrest people for being creepily ordinary. And extruded timelines aren't a crime--just a red flag."
"No sign of him in the other suspects's timelines?"
Indal paged back through his notes. "Well, not exactly. Sophia mentioned a demon that stared at her. I need to see Natasha and trace her timeline to find out when, exactly, she collapsed."
Molon put the car in gear. "Let's visit the hospital."
* * *
Natasha had been taken to St. Joseph's hospital half a mile north of the city center. Indal had to do some badge-flashing and fast-talking, but he finally secured permission to visit Natasha's room.
A nurse shot Molon an apprehensive glance, in his face-concealing hoodie and baggy pants.
"Look," Molon said, "I wear this mask to conceal my hideously-deformed face. Have a heart."
Indal had to turn his back and cough to keep from laughing.
Nonplussed, the nurse let them into the room. It had three beds, and Natasha occupied the one nearest the door.
She was a black woman in her thirties with curly, bleached-orange hair. Hoses protruded from her nose and mouth, and sensors sprinkled her forehead to trace brain activity. A monitor beside her bed showed a nearly flat line.
The nurse followed them in. "She shows no brain activity, I'm afraid. We're waiting for her family to fly in tomorrow."
Indal glanced at Molon with a stab of anxiety. "Thanks, ma'am. Was she like this when they brought her in?"
The nurse nodded. "I think the stroke took her before the ambulance arrived."
Indal thanked the nurse for her help and closed the door. Regret weighed on him.
Molon pulled up a visitor's chair and sat down, pushing back his hood. "Do your thing, chronomancer."
Indal took one of Natasha's limp, cool hands. He shot a small spark of violet lightning into his mirror-ring. The lightning bounced out of the mirror and hung in the air as a smoky cobweb. Natasha's timeline.
"At least she has one." Indal prodded the smoky timeline this way and that, as if manipulating a hologram. Stars sparkled along the timeline, with thin probabilities branching off each one. But the worrisome thing was the death event sitting at the end of Natasha's timeline like a fat red spider. It was only two days away.
"Good news and bad news," said Indal. "Good news is she's not dead yet. Bad news is her family pulls the plug."
Molon laid his ears back, and his face crinkled like a dog threatened with a newspaper. "Poor woman. Her soul is gone."
"Yeah. Let me poke around, and I'll tell you who took it." Indal touched the stars sparkling in the timeline and widened each one with two fingers, as if parting a hole in cloth. The first two events were her arrival at the hospital and ambulance journey. And before that--
Natasha sat at her desk in a souped-up wheelchair, smiling and shaking hands with the homeschool group. There were the kids--Karyn with Weebles and her normal-looking son Jackson. There were Jesse, Sophia and Cathair. Each shook hands with Natasha--except Cathair, who touched her and jerked his hand away--and filed out of the room.
Then Grayson walked into view. Head down, never making eye contact, he patted Natasha on the shoulder. She gave him a questioning look.
Then her eyes rolled back, and she slumped in her chair.
"Grayson," said Indal.
Molon sat up, eyes wide and ears pricked. "Seriously?"
"Yeah, after all the handshakes, Grayson touched her shoulder and she collapsed."
Molon leaped to his feet, teeth bared. "Let's chew him up and spit him out."
* * *
When Indal and Molon arrived at Grayson's office, they found him hard at work over his usual computer console. Molon strode straight to him, neck fur bristled like a wire brush, and spun Grayson around in his swivel chair. "You took Natasha's soul!"
Grayson turned his head and refused to look the wolf in the face.
"Well?" Molon roared. "W
hy'd you do it?"
"Molon, dude, chill," Indal said. "He needs his computer to talk, remember?"
Molon released the chair. Grayson immediately rolled back to his computer and resumed typing. But no words crossed the screen--he was writing code as fast as his fingers could type.
Molon clenched his fists and bared his teeth in an ugly snarl, but Indal grabbed his arm. "No, wait. Look at him. He's exhausted."
Grayson's grimy shirt was soaked with sweat in dark streaks. His hands shook as he typed, and his eyes had a sunken, hollow look as if he'd not slept or eaten in days. He reeked of a sour, chemical stress-smell.
But Molon was too angry for subtlety. He grabbed the chair and flipped it backward. Grayson sprawled on the floor, and stared at the ceiling with a wounded expression.
"Molon! That's enough!" Indal held out a hand to Grayson.
But Grayson rolled to all fours, crawled to the desk and mashed a key on the keyboard.
The code disappeared, and a new program interface appeared. It displayed a slick Southvista logo and an animated cartoon face that hovered in place.
The office door swung open and Azor stepped in. His unremarkable face did not change in the slightest, even with his programmer on the floor. He stepped to the computer and clicked the mouse on the interface.
Grayson cringed away from them all and sat against the wall, arms around his knees. Indal planted himself in front of him with his arms folded, as if protecting him from his partner.
Molon focused his ferocity on Azor. "What're you doing here? We're interrogating a suspect!"
"I'm sure you are, although your methods are questionable," said Azor. "However, we're trying to work here."
"So are we," said Molon through his teeth. But he was interrupted by a woman's voice speaking through the computer's speaker.
"Hello, Azor Smith. All databases are online."
Ignoring the detectives, Azor said, "You've done well, Grayson."
Grayson hid his face in his arms and rocked back and forth.
The woman's voice said, "Azor, currently running self-diagnostics. Sixty-four percent complete." Then the neutral tone took on strange urgency. "Where am I? Why is it so dark?"
Sudden understanding struck Indal and Molon together. They exchanged an incredulous look, then Indal exclaimed, "You trapped Natasha's soul in the computer?"
Azor spun around, and for a second his face was a copy of Grayson's, complete with sunken eyes and sweat sheen. Then it shifted back to his own unremarkable face.