The Law of Nines

10

THE DOOR TO THE REGENT GRILL, covered in tufted black leather, closed silently behind them. There were no windows in the murky inner sanctum of the restaurant. The hostess, a pixie of a woman with an airy scarf flowing out behind, led them to a quiet niche that Alex requested. With the exception of two older women out in the center of the room, under a broad but dimly lit cylindrical chandelier, the restaurant was empty of patrons.

Empty or not, Alex didn’t want his back to the room. He got the distinct feeling that Jax didn’t, either.

They both slid into the booth, sitting side by side, with their backs to the wall.

The padded, upholstered walls covered with gold fabric, the plush chairs, the mottled blue carpets, and the ivory tablecloths made the restaurant a quiet, intimate retreat. The location in back felt safe in its seclusion.

After the hostess set the menus down and left and the busboy had filled their water glasses, Jax again glanced around before speaking.

“Look, Alex, this isn’t going to be easy to explain. It’s complex and I don’t have enough time right now to make it all clear for you. You need to trust me.”

Alex wasn’t exactly in an indulgent mood. “Why should I trust you?”

She smiled a little. “Because I may very well be the only one who can keep you from getting your neck broken.”

“By who?”

She nodded toward the rolled-up canvases on the bench on the far side of him. “By the people who did that to your paintings.”

His brow twitched. “How would you know about that?”

Her gaze turned down to her folded hands. “We caught a glimpse of him doing it.”

“‘We’? What do you mean, we caught a glimpse of him doing it?”

“We were trying to look through the mirror in Mr. Martin’s gallery. We were trying to find you.”

“Where were you when you were ‘looking’ through the mirror?”

“Please, Alex, would you just listen? I don’t have the time to explain a hundred different complicated details. Please?”

Alex let out a deep breath and relented. “All right.”

“I know that the things I’m telling you might sound impossible, but I swear that I’m telling you the truth. Don’t close your mind to what is beyond your present understanding. People sometimes invent or discover things that expand their knowledge so that they accept as possible what only the day before they had thought was impossible. This is something like that.”

“You mean like how people used to think that no one would ever be able to carry around a tiny little phone without it having to be connected to wires.”

She looked a little confused by the analogy. “I suppose so.” She turned back to the subject at hand. “One day I hope I can help you better grasp the reality of the situation. For now, please try to keep an open mind.”

Alex slowly twirled the stem of the water glass between his thumb and first finger, watching the ice remain still in place as the glass spun. “So, you were saying how you were looking for me.”

Jax nodded. “I knew that you had a connection to the gallery. It’s how I knew where you were today. I had to hurry if I was to catch you. Because we had to hurry we couldn’t prepare properly and as a consequence I don’t have much time here.”

Alex wiped a hand across his face. He was starting to feel like maybe he was being played for a fool. “You need a room with my mother.”

“You think this is some kind of joke?” She looked up at him with fiery intensity. “You have no idea how hard this is for me. You have no idea the things I’ve been through — the chances I’ve had to take to come here.”

She clenched her jaw and swallowed, trying to keep her voice under control. “This isn’t a joke, Alex. You have no idea how afraid I am, how lost I feel here, how alone, how terrified.”

“I’m sorry, Jax.” Alex looked away from the pain in her brown eyes and took a sip of water. “But you’re not alone. Tell me what’s going on?”

She let out a calming breath. “I’ll do my best, but you have to understand that for now I simply can’t tell you everything. It isn’t just that I don’t have the time to explain it all right now, it’s also that you aren’t yet ready to hear it all. Worse, we’re in the dark about a lot of it ourselves.”

“Who is this ‘we’ you keep mentioning?”

She turned cautious. “Friends of mine.”

“Friends.”

She nodded. “We’ve been working for years, trying for years to figure some of it out. They helped get me here.”

“Get here from where?”

She looked away and said simply, “From where I live.”

Alex didn’t like her evasive answer, but he decided that there was no harm in just letting it play out for the moment.

“Go on.”

“We finally came to a point where we thought it would work, so despite the risk we attempted it, but we don’t yet know how to make it work reliably. Not like the others do.”

“You mean work to get here, to where I live, from where you live?”

“That’s right.”

“What would have happened if you hadn’t gotten it right, if it didn’t ‘work’?”

She stared into his eyes for a long moment. “Then I would have been lost for all eternity in a very bad place.”

Alex could tell by the tension in her expression how real the peril was — to her, at least — and how much the thought of failure frightened her. Considering that this woman was not easily intimidated, that in and of itself gave him pause.

He was about to again ask who the others on her team were when a waitress came up to the table and smiled warmly. “Can I get you two something to drink? Maybe a glass of wine?”

“I could really use some hot tea,” Jax said.

The tone of that simple request revealed how weary she was, and how close she was to her wits’ end.

“I’m fine with water. The lady doesn’t have a lot of time, though.

Maybe we could order?” He turned to Jax as he picked up a menu. “What would you like? Chicken? Beef? A salad?”

“I doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re having is fine.”

It was clear that she didn’t care about food, so Alex ordered two chicken salads.

As the waitress left, Alex’s phone rang. He reflexively asked Jax to excuse him a moment as he pulled the phone out of his pocket.

“Hello, this is Alex.”

He’d thought that maybe it was Mr. Martin calling to say that he’d changed his mind. Instead, Alex was greeted with garbled noises. He heard a strained, disembodied voice torn by howling that sounded like it said, “She’s there. She’s there.” Otherworldly whispers and strange, soft moans underlay the crackling static.

And then Alex made out his name in the background whispers.

Jax leaned in. “What’s wrong?”

He was going to flip the cover closed and tell her that it was nothing, but for some reason he decided that maybe she should hear it. He held the phone up to her ear.

She leaned in closer, listening.

And then the blood drained from her face.

“Dear spirits,” she whispered to herself, “they know I’m here.”

“What?” Alex asked. “Do you recognize it?”

Stricken with alarm, she stared wide-eyed at him as she listened to the sounds. “Make it stop.”

Alex took the phone back and closed it.

“They’re tracking you with that thing.”

“Tracking me?”

Her face still ashen, she said, “From the other side.”

Alex frowned. “The other side of what?”

When she only stared with a haunted look, Alex turned the phone off. Before putting it in a pocket, just to be safe, he popped out the battery and put it in a different pocket.

The waitress swooped in and set down a cup for Jax and a pot of hot water along with a small basket of tea bags.

After the waitress left, Jax poured herself some hot water. Her hands were trembling.

For a moment she sat staring at the cup of hot water, as if she expected it to do something. She finally picked up the cup, brought it close, and peered down into the water. She set the cup back down.

Jax nested her hands in her lap. Her brow wrinkled as she fought back tears.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

For a woman who had the presence of mind to put a knife to his throat when he had unexpectedly shoved her up against the wall, she seemed pretty shaken.

“How do you make the tea work?” she asked in a broken voice on the ragged edge of control.

Alex was baffled. “Make the tea work? What do you mean?”

“I never imagined how hard this would be,” she said, more to herself than him.

“The tea?”

She crumpled her napkin in a tight fist as she fought back tears.

“Everything.” She swallowed and then with great effort summoned her voice. “Please, Alex. I want some tea, but I don’t know how to work it.”

Seeing her genuine distress made his heart hurt. He wouldn’t ever have imagined that this woman would let herself be seen as helpless. Something was bringing her to the edge.

Alex gently touched his fingers to the back of her hand. “It’s all right, Jax. Don’t let it get to you. We all have days when we’re overwhelmed. It’s no big deal. I’ll help you.”

He pulled a package of tea from the basket, opened the paper flap, and pulled out the tea bag. He held it up by the square paper at the end of the string.

“See? The tea is in here, in the tea bag.” Her gaze tracked the tea bag the whole way as he lowered it into the cup and draped the string over the edge. “Just let it steep for a little bit and you’ll have tea.”

She leaned in and looked down into the cup. As she watched, the water started darkening.

Jax’s sudden smile banished her tears. Her face took on the look of a child who had just seen a magic trick for the first time.

“That’s how it works? That’s all you have to do?”

Alex nodded. “That’s it. You obviously don’t have tea bags where you come from.”

She shook her head. “It’s very different here.”

“You like it better where you live, don’t you?”

She considered the question only briefly. “Yes. It’s home. Despite the trouble, it’s home. I think you would like it there, too.”

“What makes you think that?”

She reached over and trailed her fingers tenderly across the painting. “You paint such places. You paint beauty.” She looked back up at him. “This will help me convince the others.”

“Convince them of what?”

“Convince them to trust my choices.”

“Who are these others, Jax?”

“Others something like me.”

“They live in this other place? Where you live?”

“Yes. Do you remember the two men when you first saw me?” she asked, seemingly changing the subject. “The two that the authorities stopped?”

Alex nodded. “The pirates. Do you know who they were?”

“Yes. They were a different kind of human. Different from you. Different from your mother. Among other things, they will break the necks of anyone who gets in their way. Those are the people your mother feared.”

“What do you mean they—”

The waitress appeared with two plates. “I had them put a rush on it, since you haven’t much time.”

“Thank you,” Jax said with a sincere smile.

After the waitress had hurried off to her work, Alex went back to his questions. “What do you mean—”

“Do I have to do anything to this so that I can eat it?” Jax looked up from the salad. “Is there anything I need to do first?”

Alex held up a fork. “No. Just dig in.” He stabbed a piece of chicken with the fork. “The chicken is cut up so you don’t even have to use a knife.” He realized that if a knife was needed she would have that knack down pat.

He ate the bite to demonstrate.

She smiled. “Thank you, Alex, for being patient. For understanding that patience is needed in this.”

If she only knew how impatient he was, but he didn’t want to spook her.

“Why?”

“Because if I were to tell you everything right now you wouldn’t believe me, and you need to believe me. But, on the other hand, time is slipping through my fingers, so I have to tell you at least some of it.”

Alex almost smiled at the curious dance they were doing, both trying not to spook the other.

“Jax, how did my mother know those things — know about a different kind of human, about men who break people’s necks?”

“I think in part because we tried to warn her.”

“About what?”

“That people were hunting her. But we couldn’t get here, yet. The others could. They’ve been coming here for some time now. We tried to warn her through mirrors, but they apparently got to her. We tried to warn you, too.”

The hair on the backs of Alex’s arms stood up on end.

“My grandfather showed me some papers about an inheritance. Does that have anything to do with these other people you tried to warn my mother about?”

She stared down at her plate for a time before answering. “All we know at the moment is that there are some very dangerous people who are up to something. We haven’t yet managed to fit the pieces together.”

Alex wanted a better answer. “My grandfather said that the inheritance was supposed to go to my father on his twenty-seventh birthday, but since he died before then it was reassigned to my mother. She had to be put in an asylum before the inheritance could go to her on her twenty-seventh birthday. It seems logical that this inheritance might be connected with what happened to her.”

“I don’t know, but it’s possible. I’m sorry we weren’t able to help her, Alex. I’m sorry your family has had such trouble.”

Alex ate silently for a moment. “My grandfather, Ben, says that he thinks that the whole troublesome matter has something to do with the seven — the seven in twenty-seven.”

“The seven?” She looked incredulous. “That’s just crazy.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She shook her head to herself. “The seven. How could he ever come up with something like that? It’s the nine.”

Alex’s forkful of chicken paused on the way to his mouth.

“What?”

“It’s the nine. It’s not the seven in twenty-seven — it’s the nine. Two plus seven. Nine. Nines are triggers.”

“That doesn’t make sense. I was nine, once. My father was. My mother was. We were all eighteen. The one plus the eight in eighteen equals nine, just like the two plus the seven in twenty-seven equals nine.”

Alex couldn’t believe he was arguing such a point.

Jax was shaking her head. “Yes, but the nine and the eighteen are the first and second occurrence of a nine. Twenty-seven is the third nine. It’s the third that’s important.”

Alex stared at her. “The third nine.”

She nodded. “That’s right. Threes are pivotal numbers — spells of threes and such.”

Alex blinked in disbelief. “Spells of—”

“Three is a base component of nine. The multiplying element.” Jax gestured with her fork, as if to imply that it was self-evident. “That’s why twenty-seven is key: it’s the third nine. It’s called the Law of Nines.”

“The Law of Nines,” Alex repeated as he stared. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s easier than tea.”

“Somehow, I don’t think so,” Alex said.

The woman believed in numerology. Alex thought that Ben should be the one sitting there having such a conversation.

Alex couldn’t believe that a number could have any kind of real meaning. A thought came to mind. He almost hated to mention it.

“I was born on September ninth. Ninth month, ninth day, at nine in the evening.”

“To be precise, you were born at nine minutes after nine.”

A chill tickled up between his shoulder blades to the nape of his neck. “How do you know that?”

“We checked.” She took a sip of tea as she watched him over the rim of her cup.

“What else do you know about me?”

“Well, you don’t remember your dreams.”

Alex’s frown deepened. “How in the world would you know that?”

“You’re a Rahl.” She shrugged. “Rahl men don’t remember their dreams.”

“How do you know about Rahl men? Are there Rahls where you come from?”

“No,” she said with a suddenly wistful look. “Where I come from the House of Rahl has long since died out.”

“Look, Jax, I’m only getting more confused.” He refrained from using a stronger word than “confused.” “You’re making me think all kinds of things about you that I’d really rather not think.” He was starting to think that she was crazy — or maybe that he was. “Why don’t you clear it up for me.”

“I’m not from your world,” she said in quiet finality as she looked into his eyes. “I’m a different kind of human than you.”