McKenna skittered after the group, his round face pulled long in disapproval.
As they entered the kitchen, Martha was rattling the pans, preparing dinner. She straightened and stared. “What is it now? You’ve decided to raid the refrigerator?”
Caleb knew then neither Martha nor McKenna approved of the eccentric group of Chosen.
Too bad. They were stuck with one another.
The kitchen was a relic of a bygone age when the New York aristocracy catered parties for all of society, when three dozen servants worked for a week to prepare and decorate enough food to feed two hundred hungry mouths, when no one had ever heard the term “efficiency” in regard to the labor of cooking. The room itself was as big as a lobby, with open pantry shelves, cupboards that reached to the twelve-foot-tall ceiling, a gas stovetop with six burners and a grill, three ovens, a huge refrigerator, and a freezer built to hold an entire steer. The long granite tabletop was so heavy, it required a jack to lift it, and only a massive oak frame could support its weight. The floor was below ground level, the ceiling above. The windows were set high on the walls and looked out on the sidewalk, and as the Chosen Ones grabbed chairs and benches and settled themselves around the table, they saw the legs of pedestrians as they walked by.
Irving settled at the head of the table. Of course.
Aleksandr yelped and advised everyone not to knock their knee into the table leg, because it hurt like a son of a bitch.
Isabelle decided the table was too cold and asked for a tablecloth, and when McKenna and Martha glared, she searched in the pantry until McKenna gave up in disgust and found one for her.
The kitchen was warm, it smelled good, and everyone felt at home.
“This is exactly as it should be.” Charisma nodded as she poured coffee for Jacqueline, Irving, and herself. “Friendly. Being sunk in the earth like it is, it has good vibes.”
“Jacqueline, check out your present.” Aleksandr set his Coke on the table, flipped his chair backward to the table, and straddled it.
Jacqueline opened the gift bag, tossed out the leopard-print tissue paper—obviously the wrapping was the work of the women—and discovered a box. She opened it to find a shiny red cell phone crusted with large rhinestones.
On the bench beside her, Caleb blinked. “That’s bright enough.”
Jacqueline pulled it out. “Wow. This is really . . . something.” Obviously, she didn’t know what.
“It was Aleksandr’s idea.” Irving looked befuddled by his Chosen, but proud, too. “I’m glad I suggested him.”
The boy preened. “I may not have a woo-woo gift like the rest of you, but I can help in this way.”
“We’ve all got one.” Aaron showed Caleb his phone. It was black. “They’ve got a linking GPS. Unless you’ve got one of these phones, you can’t access the location.”
“Aleksandr did the programming for that, too.” Samuel handed Caleb a package. In an undertone, he said, “It’s yours, and it’s black.”
“Thank you.” Caleb used the same quiet voice. He did not want rhinestones. More loudly, and to Aleksandr, he said, “Thank you. You solved one of the problems that has haunted me—how to keep track of and communicate with the Chosen Ones. Especially Jacqueline.”
Jacqueline waited until the laughter had died, then in all sincerity said, “You guys are the best!”
“I picked out the phone, and set and aligned the stones to protect you from harm.” Charisma smiled with satisfaction.
“You can align man-made stones?” Jacqueline asked.
“They’re not man-made. Irving provided them.” Charisma leaned across and touched one reverently. “They’re diamonds.”
Horrified, Jacqueline tossed the phone in the air.
Caleb caught it.
“I can’t have diamonds. I lose cell phones!” she said.
“You won’t lose this one.” Aaron looked grimly vengeful. “See that big diamond? The one surrounded by the little yellow diamonds? That’s the button you push to call if you’re in trouble. So if you lose the phone or, God forbid, someone steals it, and that guy presses that button, we’ll all arrive at his side—”
“And he’ll be sorry he was ever born,” Aleksandr finished.
“Besides, no one’s going to steal a cell phone that looks like that,” Samuel said.
“I think it’s pretty!” Charisma said.
Caleb wasn’t sure, but she might have had her feelings hurt.
Apparently he was right, because Isabelle put her arm around Charisma, cast a dark look at Samuel, and said, “You’re right. It is pretty.”
Caleb had to give Samuel credit. He moved to correct his mistake at once. “I meant no guy would steal it. It’s too froufrou.”
“Thank you all.” Jacqueline gingerly accepted it again. “No one’s going to take it from me, and I will make sure I never, ever lose something as precious as the gift my friends have given me.”
“You mean your fellow freaks.” Aaron bumped her lightly with his shoulder.
“That, too. But first . . .” She held the phone in both hands and looked down at it, then up at them. Her face was serious. Her fingers trembled. “Caleb and I have to tell you what we’ve learned.”
Chapter 37
“Tyler was our traitor. We all know that.” Jacqueline slid her hand over the cell phone, over the expanse of glittering diamonds. “But while he was dying, he said something. . . .”
“About a dead man,” Caleb prompted. “He said he’d been talking to a dead man.”
“Yeah, right,” Samuel said.
Jacqueline scooted closer to Caleb on the bench. “No, it’s true.”
The silence that fell in the kitchen was profound. The Chosen Ones glanced at one another.
Then Isabelle asked, “How do you know?”
Jacqueline slipped the phone into the pocket of her jeans. “I had a vision in Mrs. D’Angelo’s attic.”
Caleb whipped around to face her. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“When would I have told you?” She made a face.
“All right.” He acknowledged that truth. “But why did you go up to the attic?”
“Because Mother was dead and you were in danger, and I had to do something.” Remembering the tears and the crisis that had led to her decision put a husky edge to her voice. “I wanted to see if I could direct a vision, to help myself discover who had sold us out. And I did . . . sort of.”
“Tyler sold us out,” Aaron said.
Irving shook his head. “No. Or rather, he’s not the only one. Without the codes, there is no way Tyler smuggled an explosive device into both the Gypsy Travel Agency and my own home. Not even all of the directors knew those codes. So who gave them to him?”
“A dead man?” McKenna sounded incredulous.
When everyone turned to face him, his Celtic face flushed a ruddy red. “I’m sorry, sirs, madams. I spoke out of turn.”
“But you’re right,” Jacqueline said. “It was a dead man. I heard him. He’s angry and he’s hostile. He hates everyone, especially the people who were once his friends, and he feels betrayed.”
“But how could a dead man communicate with Tyler Settles?”
“Tyler Settles was a mind controller and a mind speaker,” Samuel said slowly. “He rummaged around in my head, trying to exert an influence, and I think he could do that with other people. I’m merely surmising, now, but if he could get into the wrong mind, that mind could communicate with him. Perhaps that mind could even take him over.”
That made sense to Jacqueline. “I don’t think Tyler Settles needed much of a push to become evil. From what he was saying, he had quite a lucrative business going, swindling sick people out of their bank accounts.”
“How did he get picked to become one of the Chosen Ones?” Aaron asked.
“If he was already in communication with this dead man, he may have been able to use the dead man’s knowledge of the Chosen Ones and his own skill in controlling minds to inveigle his way into the
organization,” Samuel suggested.
Aaron sat back and looked Samuel over. “The way you think is a little scary, too.”
Samuel had never looked so wicked. “I am a lawyer.”
Martha freshened Jacqueline’s coffee, and as she poured, she asked, “But what about this dead man? He has to have been associated with the Gypsy Travel Agency to be able to give up the code. How are we going to find him?”
“Where is he buried?” Aleksandr asked.
“I saw a street in New York. There’s a hospital, an abandoned church, and a graveyard. The only clue I have is that he can hear water dripping . . . a constant, eternal torment.” Jacqueline listened in her head, and sighed. “I can hear that water dripping right now.”
“So all we have to do is figure out who knew or knows the protective codes for both the Gypsy Travel Agency and this house and go looking for him in a cemetery.” Aaron obviously didn’t completely believe Jacqueline’s vision.
Jacqueline didn’t mind. She thought it was stupid herself. If only she hadn’t heard it and seen it. “There was a voice speaking in his mind, offering him a new chance at life.” She wrapped her hands around the warm cup. “All he had to do was betray the ones who had betrayed him. I recognized the voice.”
“The devil’s voice,” Irving said.
Samuel shook his head and smiled.
Irving drew himself up with all his elderly dignity. “I assure you, Mr. Faa, I am not an enfeebled old man.
I recognize the devil’s modus operandi. Offering temptation is a tradition with him.”
“Yes, it was the devil.” Jacqueline was really chilled now.
Caleb took off his jacket and wrapped it around her, engulfing her in his heat and scent, reminding her how much she had gained when she fell in love with him.
Gratefully, she took his hand.
“What is the dead man? A vampire?” Aleksandr’s voice rose incredulously. “Because my grandfather says there’s no such thing, and in this case, I’d like to believe he’s right.”
“No. It’s nothing like that.” That hadn’t even occurred to Jacqueline. “He’s not hungry for blood. He’s all human. But he’s in the dark in a tomb where nothing ever changes.”
“So in your vision, you were in the dead man’s head.” Charisma wet her lips. “I’ve been reading as much as I can of Irving’s library, trying to see if I could help you, and your visions—they’re dangerous. Only the first seer could transport herself to another setting and really be there, and only three other seers could be one with another person, and none of them could do both.”
“Dangerous.” Caleb repeated the word that had snagged his attention. “How?”
Trust him to go right to the heart of the matter.
“The other seers were all members of . . . the Others,” Charisma told them.
Caleb gave a bark of laughter. “Then that is further proof that the world is changing, because Jacqueline could never turn to evil.”
His certainty warmed Jacqueline’s heart.
“What if she gets caught in a vision?” Charisma asked. “It’s happened. People go mad.”
“Charisma, don’t worry so much.” Jacqueline leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “When I had my first vision, I was in real danger of being killed. I think Tyler was right. I think I could have been killed, and Zusane saved my life by pushing me out of the plane. But when I had that vision, I was alone and afraid. Today, when I went into the vision, I knew no matter what, Caleb loved me, and that love grounded me in the real world.”
“Awesome.” Charisma’s bracelets rattled as she applauded Jacqueline and Caleb. “So his love strengthened your gift.”
“Exactly.” Jacqueline smiled as joy burst in her. “That’s it exactly!”
Everyone in the kitchen joined in Charisma’s applause.
Caleb lifted Jacqueline’s hand in his. “I’d like you all to be the first to know—Jacqueline and I will be married as soon as the state of New York will allow.”
Now everyone came to their feet to hug and kiss. Martha and McKenna gave up their displeasure with the invaders in their kitchen, and bustled around dusting champagne flutes, popping corks, and laying out another round of exquisite hors d’oeuvres.
Jacqueline hugged Caleb, wondering how she could have been fool enough to run from him when everything she wanted . . . was here.
In her lovely soothing voice, Isabelle said, “Jacqueline and Caleb have won us our first victory. We’re starting to become a cohesive group, and I am so glad. But we have to decide what our next move will be. We have decisions to make and there will be times when we must make them.”
Caleb pulled Jacqueline onto the bench. “Isabelle is right.”
Everyone shuffled into their seats.
McKenna and Martha set the hors d’oeuvres on the table.
Isabelle remained standing. “I think it would be best if we first voted on a president, and then used Robert’s Rules of Order to direct the meetings.”
“She’s right. We need a leader,” Aaron said.
“It should be Isabelle.” Samuel projected an authority as weighty as any judge’s.
Everyone looked between him and Isabelle.
“Isabelle,” he repeated. “She has been trained to run her sorority, to raise funds for charities, and to organize elaborate parties in honor of politicians and bankers. She never raises her voice, she never breaks a sweat, and she never fails. Is there anyone here who would resent taking orders from Isabelle?”
Aaron scratched his chin and declared, “I’m good with it.”
“Me, too,” Aleksandr said.
“That is too cool!” Charisma leaped to her feet and threw her arms around Isabelle.
Jacqueline beamed at Samuel. If he kept this up, she might come to like him. “See? I knew we could do this.”
“You’re warm and dry and fed, surrounded by safety and by each other, and your first adventure came out well.” Irving poured the first flutes of champagne and passed them down the table. “Are you prepared for the adversity that follows? The Others are better manned, more learned, and so far, they have defeated us in almost every way. I promise, until we find the prophecy that will give us direction, matters will only get worse—and even then, there’s no guarantee of improvement.”
“Irving’s right. To merely survive will take all our skills and dedication.” Aaron had never appeared more serious, more intense.
Jacqueline had to speak. “It’s going to take something more important. I met you all only a few days ago. I didn’t know you. I didn’t want to know you. I didn’t want to be part of this mission. But as I stood outside the chalk circle, I felt something . . . a blast of heat, and the cool wind of change, and I knew I couldn’t be a coward. I had to step inside. With you. In the days since, I’ve gotten to know you all.” She looked at Isabelle and Charisma. “I like some of you.” She looked at Samuel. “Not all of you.”
“Thanks.” Samuel leaned back, unfazed.
She looked at Caleb. “And I love you.”
Caleb kissed her once, hard.
She continued. “But now I know one thing. When we stand alone, we are all targets for our enemies. But if we stand together, we can defeat them.”
As she spoke, she stripped off her gloves. “We are only six—some call that the devil’s number—and until the seventh makes an appearance, I swear on my soul I will watch your back. I want to know that you will watch mine.” She put out her right hand, tattoo clear and bright and healed. Then she offered her left hand, with its newly etched mark of power.
A collective gasp went around the table.
“Yes. This is proof. Things can happen for the better.” She placed her right hand on the table, palm up. “So will you swear on your soul and everything you hold holy to be true to us, to the Chosen Ones?”
Six hands came out and the palms slapped, one by one, on top of hers.
She looked toward Caleb. “You, too. And you, Irving. And Martha. And McKe
nna.”
The two servants stiffened and looked around, uncertain of their place in this new order.
“It’s really not proper,” McKenna said.
“I have no gift,” Martha agreed.
“And we are not seven, as we should be, but only six,” Samuel said.
With the vigor that accompanied her every word, Charisma said, “Yet we can’t sit idly by while we wait for the seventh to show her—or his—face. We have to forge ahead in a new direction.”