Stella Cameron - Out of Mind

“Why?” Marley’s voice rose. “Should I track down Gray?”

Nat shook his head, no. “Not now. I’ve got to make this short and get back.”

“Back to where?” Willow asked. She felt cold.

“ Is it the Embran again?” Marley asked in a low, intense voice.

“Could be.” Nat looked at her hard and she took a deep breath. “We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. But—” He made a visible decision not to say any more on the subject.

Marley nodded, but her face was rigid.

“How long have you been here in the shop—this afternoon?” Nat asked Willow.

She shrugged. “Half an hour at the most.”

“Thirty-seven minutes,” Pascal said helpfully.

Nat thought about that. “How long did it take you to get here—from wherever you’ve been?”

Ben heard Willow swallow. “I don’t know. Not long.”

“Let’s quit the twenty questions,” Ben said, putting himself between Willow and Nat Archer. “Just spit out what you want.”

“I’m here because the Millets are good friends of mine,” Nat said. “I didn’t want to send an officer in an obvious car. If I don’t ask Willow these questions, someone else will. At this point I’m asking off-the-record and hoping I can head off any involvement for her in the future.”

Willow’s heart missed a beat. She stepped from behind Ben. “I went to discuss some orders with one of my bakers. He does the best spun sugar fancies in town. Billy Baker. That’s his real name. Baker Baker—that’s his shop. It’s on—”

“Chartres,” Nat finished for her. “You came straight here?”

She ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth. “Yes. And I hurried so it could only have taken minutes. What is it, Nat?”

“Bucky Fist’s over there now. Billy died—apparently about the same time you were there.”

Willow heard Marley gasp and Winnie rushed past to lean on her mistress’s leg.

“That can’t be,” Willow whispered. “He was fine when I left.”

“Was anyone else there with you?”

She paused before saying, “No. How did Billy die?” she said, horrified that the vital man she’d been with so recently had supposedly died—the moment she left his shop. “He was alive when I left him. Really, he was. He was laughing about having to make two hundred sugar pigs.”

“I believe you,” Nat said, not referencing the pigs. He gave another engaging smile all around. “The woman who found Billy saw you leave the shop, Willow. You’re pretty hard to miss. And everyone around here knows who you are.”

Ben wanted to punch the guy out—even if he was smiling. Willow hated being identified as “one of those strange Millets” everywhere she went.

“Looks like he had a heart attack,” Nat said.

“That’s not acceptable,” Pascal said in his customary formal manner. “Why are you here if he had a heart attack?”

“It was more than just a heart attack. Billy had a bunch of tiny puncture wounds on his face, neck and head. I wouldn’t have been called in and I wouldn’t be here if it was a natural death.” He glanced at Marley. “Doesn’t have to be connected, but some of us know it isn’t the first time we’ve had a corpse with wounds that don’t make sense—at first.”

Willow’s hand went to her neck.

Nat’s cell beeped and he answered, “Archer.” He listened for a long time then said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up.

“What?” Willow said, seeing the fury on Nat’s face.

“Carry on, folks,” Nat said. “Message from above. I’ve got to back off this case.”

This was too much.

Another Embran was in town. He didn’t know where exactly the new specimen had set himself up, or what forms he could change into, but another one of them was in New Orleans and thanks to the last efforts of the creatures from deep in the earth, this one would be better prepared to carry out his plan.

If he succeeded, would his kind pour from below, like battalions of fantastic monsters, to overrun the city? Jude Millet knew the answer, but asking himself the question again gave at least a tiny suggestion that it might be impossible.

They would never succeed. He pushed back the tails of his black coat and planted his fists on his hips. A humming grew within his brain and he gave a grim frown. His force, the power of his gifts, trembled at the prospect of confrontation to the death.

Fuming, Jude paced the attic in the building that housed J. Clive Millet. All he had been granted were a few months of peace since the last giant upheaval, and he didn’t appreciate this fresh intrusion. He wanted, no, needed much more time to consider how to deal with several disparate issues: First, doing what he could to help his family cut off the Embran attempts to destroy them. Second, guiding the Millets and other psi families involved toward finding what he knew as the Harmony, an object purported to contain a treasure they must protect. Also, he longed to help settle the Millet division over who was or was not suitable to be head of the family.

And he must also be sure that New Orleans, and the powerful psychic families who lived there, most in anonymity, continued to thrive. The less talented families, or perhaps the younger ones—in centuries—faced a smaller risk than the prime ones, the Millets, or the Fortunes, or even the Montrachets, but if any of them went down, all would suffer.

He had had his suspicions that the present generation of Millets had not done what was needed to be certain their work with the Embran was finished.

But he had not expected a fresh onslaught so quickly.

This time would be more difficult.

This time there was no willing go-between with that world down there. Or none that he knew of.

With a breathy sigh that filled the attic, he drew himself up to his full height and pointed at the gauzelike web separating him from the “real world.” Even the term made him smile. What did these newcomers know of reality?

The curtain fell away and he walked, albeit unwillingly, to look down from the single gabled window on Royal Street floors below. The last of the sun had mercifully bled away, leaving only wisps of purple amid the murky gray of the encroaching evening.

There were times when his ability to hear whatever he wished to hear could be a damnable nuisance. Today, especially late in the afternoon, he had given in to a premonition that he needed to listen in to his descendants. The games they played! Sykes bringing young Ben Fortune back to New Orleans—not that Jude might not have done the same thing himself. It seemed that the problem child, Willow, had attracted attention from a malevolent force—little doubt about what that force might be—and her brother, Sykes—also Jude’s favorite—was using the occasion to play matchmaker.

Jude wholly approved of a match between Ben Fortune and Willow, as long as that young woman was ready to accept her own talents—and those of her family.

But there would be time enough to deal with that after Ben helped to make sure Willow didn’t manage to stumble into serious or worse trouble. Jude had felt her rushing through the streets, and he had heard her exclamation when she felt something odd. Small, sharp tapping on her neck.

And now some baker was dead, supposedly of a heart attack, but with small puncture wounds on his head.

Ah, yes, signs of Embran were simple to recognize once one knew what to look for.

Sykes had been down in the shop, too. He knew he should not use invisibility to hang around spying on his own family, but couldn’t seem to suppress his natural love of mischief.

Jude sighed. The red-haired issue must be dealt with quickly. Sykes, dark-haired and blue-eyed, should be running J. Clive Millet and looking out for the family since his ineffectual father, Antoine, refused to do so. Pascal didn’t want the job, or said he didn’t, but was too responsible to walk away.