The Isis Collar

6

Two nights later I woke because my skin was burning and freezing water was lapping at my body. The sun was coming up. It was freaking cold, but the sunlight was burning every inch of exposed skin that wasn’t soaking wet. I was lying on the beach outside my house, in my pajamas with gulls calling a raucous good morning as they dipped and dived through the air above me.

What the hell?

The last thing I remembered was going to bed at 10:00 P.M. I rose, hurrying across the beach to the house and into the bathroom.

How did I get outside? When had I left my bed? What had I done?

I didn’t know.

Worse, the dreams I’d had were so incredibly clear. I could remember those. The light scent of floral perfume, the sight of that couple hurrying from the opera house to the safety of their car. The sweet, coppery taste of blood laced with fear that filled my mouth and made me shiver. Desperate and terrified, I checked every inch of my clothing for bloodstains. Nothing. No hint on my teeth or gums. Knees weak with relief, I sank onto the toilet and cried until I was gulping huge mouthfuls of air and the floor was covered with soggy yellow tissues. My head hurt worse than ever, but I was afraid to take yet another aspirin because I couldn’t remember what I’d done last night.

What was happening to me? What was I going to do? I’d been following Jean-Baptiste’s advice. It wasn’t working. Nothing was working.

I might have stayed in the bathroom feeling sorry for myself, but the doorbell rang. It’s not a loud bell, but the sound sent a flash of searing pain through my skull. I winced and began limping my way to the door.

The bell rang again—and my temples pounded—again, so I grumbled out loud, “Hold your horses. Jeez, I’m coming.”

I opened my front door and there was Rizzoli. If he noticed my swollen red eyes, he didn’t mention it. Instead, he smiled at me and shook his head as though supremely amused. “You need to cut back on the sauce, Graves. You look like hell. And why are you limping?”

“Been this way since the bomb blast at the school.”

Disbelief was plain on his face. “Shouldn’t you be healed by now? I mean, vampire blood and siren blood notwithstanding, even a vanilla human shouldn’t be limping this much time after a failed attempt.”

I snuffled back what I couldn’t blow out. No tissues next to the couch. I’d have to fix that later. “It didn’t fail. There were two bombs. Neither of them was a dud.” I lowered myself carefully into my favorite recliner and rested my head back into the poofy pillow. He took a seat on the couch, which, while not terribly comfortable, was a pretty white print that matched the wallpaper. “I left you a message about that.”

“I know. I got your calls. And I’m sorry I haven’t come by sooner. The brass…” He paused, trying to come up with a polite way to end the sentence. Apparently there wasn’t one, so he changed tacks. “Why did you ask about other bombs in other places?”

I tried to remember. There’d been a reason. An important reason. Crap. “What day did I call?”

He sighed. “You don’t remember?”

“Just give me some background, okay? Sometimes if you give me some clues the memory resurfaces.”

“Your message said you’d been back to the school, and that you’d gone to see Heather Alexander. She told you she couldn’t talk to you.”

I sat up straight, and it made my head pound. “The guard. The guard at the school said something.”

“What? What did he say?”

I tried to remember, but it was useless. I barely remembered going to the school, let alone specifics of a conversation. I wouldn’t have been able to come up with as much as I had if Rizzoli hadn’t prompted me.

His dark eyes looked me over carefully from head to foot. “You really are in bad shape, aren’t you? What do the doctors say?”

I threw up my hands in frustration. “Nothing. They say nothing. Because they haven’t got a freaking clue.”

He winced. “That sucks.”

“Yeah. It does. But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

His expression grew weary and I realized I wasn’t the only one who looked bad. Rizzoli’s normally a good-looking man if you’re into dark Italian-American types. Every time I’d seen him his suits were well cut, fit him perfectly, and no wrinkle dared appear. Not today. The charcoal suit was still good quality and well tailored, but it looked as though he’d been wearing it for a couple of days straight, only bothering to change into a fresh shirt.

“We’ve found evidence of devices having gone off at six different schools. I found out about the one near Denver, Colorado, by sheer accident. It was in the same school district where the high-school shootings happened a few years back, so when the furnace malfunction was discovered in the basement, it made the local six o’clock news and got splashed onto the Internet.”

“And you put two and two together.”

He rested his booted feet on the coffee table and I instinctively motioned for him to put them back on the floor. He did. “Well, actually, all I put together was one and one. But it did make me search the Internet for other weird news and I started calling around to ask whether any other similar reports of post-furnace-malfunction illnesses had come in at the local level. That’s when we found Chicago, Daytona Beach, and Dallas. Boston only got reported this morning, which is why we think there might be more out there.” He yawned wide. “I’m hoping you have coffee, because I’m going to need it for the trip.”

I stood up and started to limp toward the kitchen, saying over my shoulder, “I have coffee, but where are you off to? One of the schools?”

“Not me,” he replied. “Us. I need you to come down to our field office to help me with something.”

That stopped me cold. “The last time you showed up, it didn’t go so well.” That was an understatement, and he knew it. The last time he’d knocked on my door, I’d been living in a different house. He’d appeared in the middle of my Christmas Day party, claiming my going with him was a matter of life and death … not to mention national security.

It had been. I’d barely survived.

He waved his hand at me like I was overreacting, but there was a tension next to his eyes that revealed his words as a lie. “This is a piece of cake—nothing like that last time. But it is important. The assistant director dropped by my office this morning and specifically requested you for this job.”

I raised my brows and then sighed because I now understood that Rizzoli was being pushed. In the FBI hierarchy, the assistant director rarely dropped by the office of a field agent. While Rizzoli had gotten a temporary promotion during a crisis, it apparently hadn’t stuck … or he’d refused it. So I was being “fetched” and he was the delivery boy. The thing was, I needed him available to me when I asked. He was really handy for putting pressure on people I couldn’t because I didn’t have a badge in my pocket. I had a nifty laminated card, but what does that mean?

Because who listens to a bodyguard? Nobody.

Really. A crossing guard has more credibility.

“So,” I said after a long pause. “Two coffees to go then. But while I get cleaned up you’d better heat me up some of the broth I’ve got stored in the freezer. And we need to keep it short because this headache is really hammering me. Maybe I should just cut it off altogether.”

He didn’t comment on that. “Go get dressed. I’ll start the coffeemaker.”

It took a few minutes. I had to dig around to find clothes warm enough for the weather and then we were out the door. Just yesterday, it had been sunny and warm, a typical spring day. But today, winter had returned with a vengeance. “I will never get used to this.” The words came out in a mist of steam that matched the snow covering the ground. No, there shouldn’t be snow in Southern California, especially in March. Blame it on the rift. According to the weatherman, the world’s brush with the demonic dimension messed with the climate. The jet stream was presently somewhere over Brazil and wasn’t expected back anytime soon. On the plus side, glaciers in the Arctic Circle were back to the levels of a hundred years ago and they predicted there wouldn’t be any wildfires this year. I could stand a little snow for those benefits. But relearning how to drive has been a challenge for many people.

Rizzoli had parked his crappy government-issued sedan right next to my sporty convertible Miata in one of three marked places. Though technically, you could probably park fifty cars in front of my beach house if you didn’t mind digging your vehicle out of the sand on a regular basis.

I’d nearly reached his car when he held out an arm to stop me, catching me across the chest. The impact made me cough and stopping short almost dumped me on my fanny in the slush thanks to my bad leg. Rizzoli didn’t say anything or look at me, just pointed what looked like a high-end remote control toward the black sedan. A chirp sounded from the remote, and then another. He kept holding down the button until five tones had sounded and the whole device glowed green. “Okay. It’s safe. We’ll talk once we’re on the road.”

Safe? From what? I eyed the car suspiciously. “Should I be worried about getting in?”

He shrugged. “Probably not. But careful keeps me alive. This remote checks for both traditional bombs and anything magical or demonic that might affect the car or anyone in it. If I hadn’t already adjusted it, you wouldn’t have been able to get inside with those fangs.”

Sweet! I needed one of those. “Ooh … where’d you get it?”

His dark eyes twinkled despite looking bloodshot and tired. He gave me a small smile over the roof of the car that told me the remote wasn’t a consumer model. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

Of course. The government got all the good toys. Still, I was betting I had some he’d never seen before.

The engine purred quietly after he put in the key and pressed the start button, but the thrumming under my feet told me there was more under the hood than I’d find in similar cars on the showroom floor. I waited impatiently while he steered out onto the open road. “Okay. So what’s up?”

“We detained a foreign national last night. I need you to get some information out of him before bad things happen.”

Um … excuse me? I turned my throbbing head to see if what he was suggesting even bothered him. “Just so we’re clear … how were you planning I’d do that?”

He flicked his eyes away from the road long enough for me to see that he knew exactly what he was asking. “You’re a siren. Do I really need to say it out loud?”

I glared at him. “No.”

When I didn’t say any more, he was forced to ask, “No, I don’t need to say it, or no, you won’t help?”

“Both.” No way in hell was I going any further in this plan, regardless of whether it would get him in trouble. Because I was controlling myself, my voice didn’t come close to the outrage I was feeling. “I can’t believe you’d even ask! I nearly wound up in prison for mental manipulation, Rizzoli, and that was before I even realized what my psychic abilities could do to a person. So, no. There’s nothing you can do to convince me to help you. Just take me back to my house. Find someone else to help you.”

He sighed and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. I could see it out of the corner of my vision. I stared out at the scenery, refusing to look at him, admiring the ice crystals dripping off waving palm trees. His voice was serious as death when he spoke next. “It’s important, Graves. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”

I felt my eyebrows rise high on my forehead. “Yeah? I’m pretty sure it’s not more important than my spending the rest of my life in a cage too small to sit up straight in. In fact, if I remember right, magical torture is banned by the Geneva Convention. Me using my innate abilities to force someone to talk is torture. It just is. Is this more important than winding up in front of the judges in The Hague? Turn around, Rizzoli. My answer is no.”

Another exit whizzed by on the interstate and the car didn’t slow. Rizzoli reached down and pulled something from his pocket. Okay, that time I looked. He pressed a button on the cell phone and held it up to his ear.

“Report. Have you secured the siren?”

I suppose it would have been sporting to tell Rizzoli about my enhanced hearing. But … nah.

It was a little surprising to hear the annoyance in my driver’s voice. I got the impression it wasn’t because of having to call in but because the speaker referred to me as the siren. Interesting. “Her name is Celia Graves. Yes, she’s with me in the car. But we have a problem. I need to explain the situation. Fully.”

“That’s need to know, Agent. And she doesn’t.”

“Sir, if you want her cooperation, I’m going to have to tell her at least some of what’s going on.”

There was a long, charged silence.

“We need her. But understand that I’m holding you fully responsible for her behavior. Understood?”

“Understood.” Rizzoli ended the call without another word. Maybe the other guy had hung up on him, but I didn’t think so. It made me wonder if he was going to get in hot water because of me. I hoped not. But he was right about one thing. If they had any hope of getting my cooperation they were going to have to tell me what in the hell was going on.

“All right, listen up. I told you that there were bombs in other locations. They were always in pairs. The first one hooked to the air ducts would go off first, freezing people in place and disbursing … well, we don’t know what just yet. The second wipes all evidence and memory of the first.

“The guidance counselor at the school in downtown L.A. happened to be a level-seven mage with a black arts defense background. Sheer fluke that, just like you, he felt a pair of bombs go off. He recognized the first one as something very dark and forbidden—something even the big boys in the sorcery circles don’t play with. We’ve had our best people working forensics on the magic and they keep saying it’s a mess, that the results they’re getting just aren’t possible.”

He took another deep breath before continuing at the same breakneck speed. “In the meantime we’ve been monitoring the teachers, kids, everyone involved, trying to figure out what the first bombs do. So far we can’t find anything wrong with the kids. But the adults in the schools … that’s a different story. They’re dying at an alarming rate, but none of the deaths seem to be magical. They’re just showing up at the hospital with what seem like mild symptoms, say they’re in extreme pain, and then … they never check out. Nobody in the press has put it together yet, thank heavens. And in one case … something happened. I can’t tell you about it. But if it gets out, all hell’s going to break loose. Even as it is now, people are eventually going to start to notice. In a few days the story is going to be impossible to contain.”

Crap. I believe in disclosure. I believe the public has a right to know. But I also know how much damage mass panic can do. I wouldn’t want to be the one calling the shots on this case. Hell, I wouldn’t even want to be in Rizzoli’s shoes.

“So. Someone cast a spell, but nobody knows what it does. What does the guy you have in custody have to do with it?”

The nod said he expected the question. “We started watching the Internet, low-key stuff in the anti-American chat rooms, hoping for anyone who claimed responsibility or bragged about it. What we found was far more disturbing. The event was definitely organized. There were indications that this is a timed magical event. That there are more bombs, and that when they’ve all detonated the spell will be released full force.”

“Do you have a date?”

“Not yet. That’s one of the things we want to find out. If there’s a deadline, we need to know what it is.”

“What about the two guys the cops arrested at our school?”

“No good. They were hired wands. Didn’t know a thing other than how to set up the device. But the guy we have now—we think he can tell us what the spell does. But we have to be careful; as soon as they figure out he’s been captured, they’ll pull the plug. They put a curse on him that will activate if we use physical force. But it can also be remotely detonated. Our agency witch confirmed the curse. It’s one of the worst and could take out the building if it activates.”

I wasn’t even sure what to say. My mouth opened several times, but no words came out. Finally, I managed to sputter, “If you’re trying to encourage me to help, you’re failing miserably.”

He let out a small sound that deepened the creases in his broad forehead with both worry and fear. It reminded me that he wasn’t just a desk jockey for the FBI. He was a field operative. If this scared him, it was worth being scared about. His voice lowered to a deadly growl. “My boy was in the school in L.A., Graves. I spent half a night putting together Mikey’s first two-wheeler so he could have the birthday he’s been talking about all year. I want to know what that asshole and his friends did to him, or so help me God—” His eyes were flashing and his grip on the steering wheel was white-knuckled.

Whoa. I’d never seen Rizzoli like this. Not during a political crisis or even a demonic one. This was personal to him and it was going to make him call in every favor and push every button he had on me and everyone else until he had answers. “And you’ve already had your son checked out?”

“Doctors, witches, and even some psychics and priests. The witch found a spell on him all right but not one that could be removed. It’s somehow melded to his skin, has become a part of him. They don’t know what it does, who cast it, how to get rid of it, or even what culture the magic is from.”

The doctor’s words echoed through my mind: I haven’t found a base I know yet. Well, fuck a duck. I already have a spell like that, too. A death curse was put on me when I was a child. So far it hasn’t killed me, but I’ve been told removing it might. Even with the caster long dead it hasn’t faded much. The last thing I needed was another one and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. “How long do you have before they know the guy you got is missing?”

“Could be anytime. He might already be dead. But if he’s not, I want to know what he knows.”

I understood but … “I won’t force him to talk, Rizzoli. I don’t have any control over that particular ability yet. He could wind up brain-dead.” Let’s not mention to the nice federal officer that I’d left several other people like that fairly recently. Admittedly, they were bad guys who were helping a demented siren turn me into a mental vegetable … but still.

He didn’t turn to look at me, but the smile that curved his lips creeped me out. “No, I have something very special in mind for you, Graves. And I don’t think you’re going to mind doing it. In fact, you might really like it.”