Chapter 9
As soon as she walked in the door, she threw the bolts and checked the rest of the house to make sure all was secure, then dropped in a graceful sitting position in the middle of the living room and contacted Stefan.
Instantly, he flicked through her mind. What’s the matter?
I’m home again. Alone. What I couldn’t say earlier is … I got two letters from him.
Who is him? Stefan asked cautiously.
London came, and we picked up all the mail since I’d left the country. A huge bagful, plus, what was inside my PO Box. Among all the hate mail were two envelopes, one full of poisonous aconite—monkshood is the more common name—which can cause a severe reaction, even death through physical contact of open skin. Dried belladonna root—more commonly known as deadly nightshade—was inside the other. I didn’t open the envelopes. I could smell and see the different shades of green all around them. The whole bag was full of it, but I didn’t say anything to them.
Did you tell London the letters were full of poison? Stefan asked in alarm.
Of course. I told them to warn the lab to be careful.
Good, Stefan said in a brisk tone. Now we must find out where he is, who he is, and what the hell his problem is. Because he’ll apparently do anything he can to take you down.
There was silence for a long moment, and then she asked in a small voice, Do you really think so? I’ve been gone for six months. All this mail was just sitting here. I’m not sure he’s doing anything right now at all.
And yet you got that threatening letter, Stefan reminded her. One telling you Reginald would die if you didn’t get back to the country in twenty-four hours. Stefan waited a moment and then said, Now that he’s missing, how do you feel?
She winced. Better now that I think he may be alive somewhere. As you remember, I did follow the letter’s instructions. I came running back. And yet there was no sign of Reginald when I got here.
Did you tell anybody about the letter?
Stefan could hear her speak, but he couldn’t see her unless he focused at a much higher level. She was nowhere near as good at the telepathic stuff as he was, but she’d joined a group in England and had worked hard on her own to get to this level. I warned Reggie. I tried to tell the CIA and FBI before I left England. Grant. I told him, no one else. She hesitated, then said, You know they won’t believe me.
Was it just London with you and the mail or was somebody else with him?
His partner, Steve.
Was Steve involved the last time the murders occurred?
He wasn’t. I’m not sure what happened to London’s previous partner. He just kind of up and disappeared—probably reassigned. I think the FBI wasn’t terribly impressed with his performance or something. She snorted. Which I’ll take to mean he didn’t believe I was guilty.
Not all FBI agents are bad, Stefan cautioned her.
Not all are good either, she came back instantly. She groaned. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.
You need to find out where the energy is coming from. I presume the only reason the toxin cloud set so heavily still on the envelope is because it was tied up in the back of the post office.
Yes, and jammed in with hundreds of other letters in my box too.
He nodded. Of course, if he’s psychic, he also could’ve set a trap, Stefan said. And you may have just tripped it.
She glanced around the room. How the hell did I do that?
You disturbed the energy of the poisons. That would have triggered the trap.
She rubbed her temple. Will he know? She shook her head. What does that mean? Is he likely to come here? Does he know I’m home?
He won’t know if it was triggered at the post office, police station, your car, or house. Unless he can track the signature of who triggered the trap.
Right. So, if the post office gets broken into … she said on a note of sour humor.
I do have people not too far away who could set up an alarm for you. You need a security system to make sure nobody can get in.
What kind?
One that works. Like we did for you in England. In other words, not electronic. Wires can be cut. Video feeds can be shut down. This one rarely fails.
And just like that he disappeared from her mind. She opened her eyes to find she still sat in the center of her living room.
After one of these sessions with Stefan, it was always the same. A moment of disorientation, then a sense of being confined. Going from a world with no lines, levels, or limits, back to a room with walls, a floor, ceiling, and doors was always a hard adjustment.
She slowly got to her feet, did a couple stretches and walked into the kitchen. The faint odor of the poisons still wafted atop the table and floor where the letters had been. It would dissipate with time. According to Stefan, she must follow it before that happened. She had had no real success with that the first time she did it.
She considered the problem, remembered some things she had heard from her special UK friends and got a candle, then lit it. She held the candle right in the middle of where the poisons lingered. Instantly the smell intensified, making it harder to discern the two poisons, but together they blended into one much stronger. She sat in a chair at the table and gently laid her fingers on the tabletop amid the mist. She closed her eyes, reached out a hand and touched the ivy plant on the sideboard. To ground her. To connect her with nature. She could barely reach it, but, once her fingers touched it, the dirt inside the pot and the energy around her fingers tingled.
“Show me the way,” she whispered to the empty room, her eyes still shut. “Show me the pathway.”
And, with a method she hadn’t used since she was a child, she slowly let her body dissipate, the same as the gases would. She could feel parts of her becoming one with the gas, with those tiny toxic particles in the air. In her mind’s eye, she saw it drift out the back door. She followed, urging it ever onward. Pouring energy, light, and bright intense feelings of will into the green fumes, as if she could force it to do what she wanted it to. With a piece of her consciousness firmly attached to the vapor, the aroma, that tiny essence of the poisons, the rest of her body relaxed in the kitchen chair as she followed the gentle pathway, trying to see it in the bigger cosmos. The trail was so very faint as she made it outside her house and past the back fence. And there she lost it. It dissipated into the houses around her. It told her nothing.
She opened her eyes, noting how dark it was outside except for the moon and stars, then waited a moment to regroup and reached out to Stefan. It didn’t work.
You didn’t try hard enough.
She shook her head, stood. I’ve been trying since forever.
Don’t force it. When you want to do it, it will happen. You should be letting it do its will and taking you along with it.
How did any of that make sense?
Standing to shake off the intensity of the last few moments, she looked out the front window to see a small black car drive slowly past her house. Instinctively she stepped behind the corner of the wall. The car didn’t pick up speed, and it didn’t slow down. It was almost at a crawl. She hated to think that people were once more doing drive-bys—probably getting ready to egg her house again. She hadn’t done anything wrong the first time. She sure as hell didn’t need to be slammed a second for not murdering people.
She couldn’t see the license plate from where she stood, and that was frustrating. Slowly it drove on.
She stepped back inside her house, locking the rear kitchen door. Shaking her head, still thinking of how she could possibly “try harder” as Stefan had said, she wandered into the living room, hitting the light switch, and turned, letting out a shriek. Stefan—in ethereal form—stood before her. She glared at him. “Would you stop scaring me like that?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You know perfectly well it’s much easier for me to travel like this.”
“Well, how about bringing a bell with you and ringing it before you suddenly arrive at somebody’s house?” Then she realized he hadn’t come alone. She turned her gaze on the faint form of a man beside him and frowned. “I don’t know you.” She hated that her voice was stiff, hard. But she’d met way too many men and law enforcement officers who weren’t on her side. The last thing she wanted was somebody who was against her in her own home.
Even if he was in ghost form.
Stefan said, “This is Detective Drew Sutherland. He has a couple very beneficial talents he’s been working on. One of them is the ability to travel, like I am now. And he’s very good at security. He’ll spend twenty minutes making sure your house is set up for the rest of the night—early morning now really—okay?”
She nodded. The two men went to work, and she stood back. “I wish I could see what you are doing.”
Sutherland turned toward her. “Shift your third eye to the left slightly and peel back a layer. Every time you do that, you will see more and more. If you’re good, you can just blink hard and tell your mind you want to see the colors.”
“Colors?” She reached up with her hand and mimicked peeling a layer off her third eye. Instantly the room glowed a soft yellow. She frowned as Detective Sutherland turned away and continued to work. She did it several more times, then got frustrated and blinked hard, ordering her mind to do what he’d said. When she opened her eyes again, it was to see blues, greens, oranges, and reds all around the surfaces in the living room.
She gasped in awe. “How beautiful.”
The windows were surrounded by a vibrating bright yellow color. The front door too. As she checked every window and door, she realized Detective Sutherland and Stefan were both securing these frameworks with some sort of energy.
“What happens to someone who tries to cross that?”
“The bad guys get burned, possibly fall or a blast could send him backward,” Detective Sutherland said cheerfully. “I’m always happy to see what happens.”
She shook her head at him. “And if I need to get out?”
He reached out a hand and touched her shoulder. Of course he wasn’t physical. He was here at zero-body, almost ghostlike, but, as soon as he touched her, a jolt shot through her system. But it wasn’t an electric shock; it was more like a warm heating blanket suddenly wrapped around her.
“Now the energy is of the same frequency as you.”
“So I can come and go anytime I need to?” she asked, making sure she understood.
“Exactly.” And just like that, the men were done.
They convened back in the living room, and she saw Detective Sutherland’s form fade quickly. She said in a rush, “Thank you very much.”
He sent her a bright smile. “You’re welcome. Stay safe.” And he was gone, just like that.
She turned to look for Stefan, but he had already left too. She was alone again in the massive family home.
*
London pulled up to his brother’s house. It was dark outside, past 1:00 a.m. after all, and, of course, not a light was on inside. His brother had likely run, like he always did. When had this behavior started? Probably in childhood. Never outgrowing it as an adult.
He remembered Fern saying something to that effect as well. At the time, London had been angry. It felt like she was dissing his brother undeservedly. But now, as he looked at Derek’s behavior, he realized she’d been right all along.
“Damn.”
He walked up to the front door and knocked. No answer. On an off chance Derek might’ve gone to bed, he pulled out his keys, unlocked the door and walked inside.
“Derek, you home?”
Silence.
The house had that empty-nest feel to the atmosphere, signifying that his brother had, indeed, left. The question was, had he gone away for only a few hours and, if so, where?
He didn’t have a new girlfriend, and he wasn’t leaving the condo to sit in a movie theater all alone. But he had become the kind of guy who would sit in the pub solo. London wandered through the bottom floor of the house, realizing more than just an emptiness was here. There was a cold feeling.
With his suspicions thoroughly aroused, he walked into the kitchen and looked around. It was super clean, as if nobody had been here for days. He opened the fridge and found it empty. In fact, his brother hadn’t been here recently.
He pulled out his phone and dialed Derek’s number. It went to voicemail. He left a message. “Derek, I’m at the house. Where the hell are you?”
He put away his phone and walked through the downstairs, then headed upstairs. He found his brother’s room with the bed slightly tossed, but half the clothes in the closet were missing, and a lot from the dresser. His brother wasn’t just not home; he’d gone. London pulled out his phone and called again. “Where the hell did you run to? Why aren’t you here? And when did you leave?”
But, of course, voicemail had no answers. He pocketed his phone again, feeling the frustration building inside. Goddammit, his brother should be where he was supposed to. Especially now that they’d found the hate letters he’d written to Fern. His brother had to tell London what that was all about and if Derek had done anything else. They were past the point of needing answers. They needed honest answers.
He walked back downstairs and into the kitchen, standing in the quiet, dark room for a long moment, as if the space would give him the information he needed. His intuition had always been strong, and now it buzzed. But not in the sense that there was danger. More that something damn sneaky had gone on. He hated that. And it always happened around his brother.
He had been communicating with him for days. London grabbed his phone and stared at it. Even though Derek had been responding, he wasn’t calling from home. And why hide? If he had run, why? Was it because his hate mail had been found?
Frustrated and irate, London walked onto the rear deck and stared at the backyard, slapping his phone against his leg. The small yard was fenced-in with plants all up and down the sides. Hearing an odd sound, he pivoted about, finding the next door neighbor standing on his porch, staring at London. He pushed the button to start the video on his phone then waved it as if to say ‘hi.’ “Have you seen Derek lately?”
The man shrugged. “I haven’t seen him for a while.”
That wasn’t good. London asked, “Any idea when you last saw someone here? And who it was?”
“A woman was here recently. Small, long blond hair, kind of a crimp wave to it, as if she’d just taken it out of a braid.”
London pinned him with a hard stare. “How old?”
He shrugged. “Late twenties or early thirties. Slim. Used to see her a lot before, but it’s been a long time.”
Again London nodded. “Any idea when you last saw my brother?”
The neighbor shook his head. “Not for a while. Not for a long while.”
London turned and headed back inside the house. Once in the kitchen, he closed the door. He could certainly get the owner’s name for the house next door from the property records. But that didn’t mean the man who stood there was the owner. Just to be sure, London sent the image to Steve and texted,
Can you confirm this is the neighbor on 627 Laurel Road? My brother’s neighbor. No sign of Derek, and, according to the neighbor, the last person here was Dr. Fern Geller.
His information sent, he wanted to face Fern and ask her why the hell she hadn’t said anything about having gone to his brother’s house. Why the hell had she been here in the first place?
He sat in his car for a long moment, then said to himself, “I’ll find out now.” He made a U-turn in the middle of the block and headed to Fern’s house.
He walked up to the front door and pounded on the wood with a heavy hand. He waited a long moment, then she opened the door. The look on her face said she was unimpressed at having him back again.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside. “To bad if you don’t want to see me, because I want to see you.”
“Now what?” she snapped.
He sent her a look, turned on the lights so he saw the expression on her face as he asked, “Why did you go to my brother’s house once you returned?” If he hadn’t been watching carefully, he wouldn’t have seen the surprise and dismay before she masked it. His heart sank. He reached out and shook her hard. “What the hell game are you playing at, Fern? Don’t you realize if you’re convicted this time, chances are you will not escape a life sentence?”
She shrugged off his hands and glared at him. “Who the hell are you to talk to me about that? You’re the one who sat in the court proceedings as everyone accused me of killing my boss. I didn’t, and you know that. Nor did I have anything to do with Reginald’s disappearance either. For all I know, your brother is involved.” She glared at London and said, “I went to Derek’s place after I landed because I wanted to ask why he lied. Why he hates me so much. But he didn’t answer the door. I walked around for a few minutes and left.” She swung open her front door. “You can leave now. Maybe you should just forget my address too.”
He stared at her in frustration for a long moment, and then something snapped inside. He reached out, grabbed both her shoulders and hauled her into his arms. “Goddammit, I wish I could,” he growled just before he closed her mouth with his.
*
Things were heating up. Just not enough. Good thing the asshole Derek had disappeared. He hadn’t wanted to take him out—at least not yet.
That would always be the end game.
But Derek was only one of the threads to be cleaned up.
Although, depending on where he’d run to, there could be a problem finding him. He might have been useful, but he was also weak. A coward.
Still, for now, if he stayed out of sight, that was a perfect plan. Made him look guilty.
He’d find Derek eventually.
He would take care of him then.
Besides, right now, it was more fun to watch London suffer a little more every day.