Voodoo Shanghai, page 8
I smiled. The next one was for the captain. “That this goes on record as a federal consultation, not through the Portland or Seattle PD.”
This time Aaron hesitated. “I don’t foresee Stephan having a problem with that, but it will piss Marks off.”
I shook my head. “Tough. It’ll help with my federal practitioning licence application to have a federal case under my belt.” I said it casually, matter-of-factly, but Aaron’s frown only deepened.
“A federal licence— Kincaid, that’s—”
I arched my eyebrow, daring him to finish.
“Ambitious,” he settled on. “The cost of the application alone—and then there’s the insurance, professional organization fees—you have to maintain a standing with the Paranormal Law Enforcement Association to qualify for cases.”
And it all cost ten times more than at the state level. Nate liked to blame video games for the invention of pay-to-play. He’d clearly never dealt with government-regulated licensing. And God knows why I’d need insurance—everyone they’d bring me in to talk to is dead.
“Believe me, my bank account will be hurting from that little racket over the next few months. But think about it, Aaron. I’m one of—what?—fifty practitioners in the US who’ve consulted for police departments? The only reason I don’t work out of state is because I don’t have a federal licence. I’ve never had the money or inclination to try. Now?” It wasn’t that I hadn’t considered applying for a federal licence before; it had just always been outside my grasp. But since I was no longer working on retainer for the Seattle PD, and with the Youngs’ retainer, maybe even this consult in Portland…
I’d started thinking bigger.
“Just think. With a federal licence, I could maybe even afford a place like this in a few years,” I said, gesturing at Aaron’s apartment—superior in both location and structural quality.
Aaron nodded, but his expression was far from convinced. “I don’t argue with your reasoning, Kincaid. I think it’s a fantastic idea. I question the timing. You’ve only just gotten back on your feet, and—”
I felt my cheeks heat up with embarrassment. Son of a bitch didn’t think I could do it. Still, I said, “And what? It would open up an entire country’s worth of work for me? You said it yourself: despite what Captain Marks says, I’ve got a decent reputation. How many paranormal units would be willing to call me up if I had the federal licence?”
“A lot,” Aaron said. “I don’t doubt it.” The words were right, but there was tension in his shoulders, and that way he looked at his feet…
Finally, he glanced up, leaned across the table and folded his hands. “I think you should wait.”
I stared into my coffee cup. There was still a quarter of a mug left, but I’d suddenly lost my appetite. Aaron didn’t think I could do it.
“It’s not that I don’t think you’re ready, Kincaid. I just think you should wait until you have a few more clients under your belt, and a safety net. And maybe wait until you can patch up your relationship with the Seattle PD.”
My embarrassment quickly morphed into anger. “My relationship? You call that ambush with Captain Marks a relationship?”
“I’m not saying it’s easy, and I’m not saying you’re wrong.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I’m saying that you’re in a better position if you’re a friend of the Seattle PD than an antagonist.”
“Aaron! The reason I’m applying is that Captain Marks can’t stand me. God knows it’s the easiest way out for everyone involved. Captain Marks doesn’t want a paranormal team, you’ve said as much. He reluctantly gave you and Sarah your positions back because not even he could cover up two paranormal murder sprees in the span of a month, and the city is pressuring him on poltergeist season. I’d think he’d be thrilled I’m applying for my federal licence. Hell, he ought to help me—I’d be out of his hair for good!”
“I still need you here. And I think the city would be worse off without you. I think you should fight for your place here—then get your federal licence. That’s all I’m saying.” Aaron didn’t break eye contact with me.
He needed me.
I don’t think he’d ever said that to me before—not the years we’d been working together, and certainly not the year we’d been dating…
Maybe Aaron was right. Maybe I wasn’t ready yet. I mean, out of the two of us, look who had their life together? Aaron wasn’t living in a just-shy-of-condemned warehouse alongside students and artists with an eighties cartoon fetish. He’d had a bank account for years longer than I had. He probably had things like investments, and a 401(k). Suddenly, all the accomplishments I’d been so proud of, the parts of my life that I had managed to get back on track these past few months, didn’t seem so impressive anymore.
“I—ah…” I might have said more—I might have told him right then and there that he was right, I’d wait on my application—but I didn’t get the chance, as my pocket heated up. My compact. Only one ghost I knew made the compact heat up.
“Ah—I have a call. I need to get this,” I said, fumbling my phone out of my blazer pocket and heading for Aaron’s balcony. I waited until I was outside and had the door closed behind me before flipping my compact open. I braced my arms around myself, warding off the chill—from the breeze outside and the Otherside—as I stared at the ghostly script making its way across the glass.
Have you delivered my mirrors yet?
Jesus, the ghost picked the worst times to nag.
“No,” I said, knowing full well Gideon could hear me. “It’s next on my list.”
Apparently that was acceptable to Gideon because, wonders of wonders, he didn’t complain.
I’ve had a change of heart for our lesson this evening. Instead of convening at your home, I want you to meet me in the archives at the university library at 5 p.m.
That was cutting it close. “We’ll only have an hour before the library closes—”
I’ve arranged it already. Just be there at five with the remaining mirror and your dampening cloak.
I’d have to stop back home after Lee’s and pick up the mirror, but it’d also allow me to cram something into my stomach besides coffee before our lesson.
“Fine, 5 p.m.,” I said, shooting a glance at Aaron, watching me from the kitchen. “Anything else?”
Get inside or put on a coat. It’s freezing and I can see you shivering.
I snorted at that, despite myself. But no more scrawl came, which meant Gideon was done. I pocketed the mirror and stepped back into the apartment. It was noon now and I needed to leave.
“Ah, work,” I said to Aaron. “I need to go—wrap some things up.”
Aaron didn’t press, which I was glad for.
He walked me to the door and waited for me to slide my bike jacket on. “Please, Kincaid, will you go to Portland?”
I finished strapping my boot and stood up. Aaron was standing perfectly still by the door. I think it was the please that got me. And maybe my own ego.
“You’ve got me, Aaron,” I relented as I eased my satchel over my shoulder, not wanting to jar the mirrors inside.
Aaron visibly relaxed. He hadn’t been sure I’d say yes. Somehow that made me feel better about it. “Can you catch a flight down to Portland at six? Tomorrow? In the morning?”
I whistled. “Aaron, I thought you wanted me to help from the side of the living—not the dead.”
He raised his eyebrows, giving me an imploring look—one he’d used to great effect many times before. It caught me off guard, as did the flutter in my stomach. It was always harder to think things through when he turned those pretty blue eyes on me.
“You’re going to owe me one,” I said, wondering how Gideon would take this. I mean, technically, my day job trumped our sessions, so travelling to Portland for a murder shouldn’t raise any protest.
“Thank you, Kincaid.” He grinned. “Do you need me to pick you up?”
“No,” I said, perhaps a little too quickly. “I’ll meet you there. You’ve got my details for booking?”
He nodded and there was another pause. “I’ll see you at the gate at five-thirty? Ah—promise you won’t—”
“I promise I’ll make it to the airport in time. Just make sure I get the boarding pass tonight…Really,” I insisted when the worried look didn’t disappear.
An awkward silence stretched and I suspected the conversation was turning in a personal direction I didn’t want it to go. Hoping to cut it off at the pass, I went for the door. “I’ll keep an eye out for the boarding pass,” I said.
“Kincaid…”
The ambush, strong-arming me into Portland, his disdain over my federal licence…My thin patience was at its end. I whirled on Aaron. “What?”
“We’ve barely talked since Max and Randall…” Aaron paused. “I just wish you’d tell me how you are doing.”
But that wasn’t what he was asking. He wanted an explanation—for all his calls that I’d let go to voice mail, my avoidance. Reluctantly, I could understand why.
“Look, Aaron, it’s…” I hesitated. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Aaron. I’m not ready to talk—about any of it,” I said, surprising myself with what I’d been avoiding telling him: the truth. I nodded at him and headed down the hallway.
I heard Aaron’s front door shut behind him and winced.
“Kincaid, wait.”
I stopped just shy of the elevator doors and braced myself.
“I’m trying, Kincaid,” Aaron said as he reached me. “God knows I’m trying to understand—”
My temper flared. “What about my grieving isn’t right for you, Aaron? Come on, I can see you’re itching to tell me what I’m doing wrong with my life this time.”
To his credit, he didn’t take the bait. He shook his head and tried to make eye contact with me. “We don’t talk anymore. At all.”
“We just spent the last hour and a half—”
“Please just look at me.”
Against my better judgment, I met his eyes.
“We used to talk about everything. Not just practitioner politics and the Seattle PD—the Otherside, Nathan Cade, hell, even the hypotheticals on long-lived zombies and the underground cities. But ever since—our—my problems,” he corrected himself, “we’ve barely said a word unless there’s a case involved.”
He wasn’t wrong. I stepped around him into the elevator. “I’m sorry, but we’ve grown apart. I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing.”
Aaron stopped the elevator door mid-slide. “I won’t deny our relationship problems are my fault.” He stared into my eyes, imploring me. “If that’s really all there is to it—tell me and I’ll stop giving you so much space. I thought that’s what you needed, but…”
If only it were that simple…The part of me that craved the familiarity, stability and warmth he offered—what had been missing from my own family—wanted to say yes. But another part of me, albeit darker and colder, said that our troubles ran deeper than a change of scenery. As much as it pained me, that was the voice I listened to.
Part of me also wanted to tell him everything, about Gideon, Nate, Lee—but I didn’t—couldn’t—trust him like that anymore. And I felt guilty about it.
I stared at the polished elevator floor, anywhere but at Aaron’s face.
“I’ll see you at the airport tomorrow, Aaron,” I said.
This time he let the doors close.
If only Aaron had said something weeks ago, after the debacle with Cole and Mindy—but that wouldn’t have solved things either. Things had changed in my life, and Aaron was less and less a part of it. There was no sense dwelling on what might have been. As I rode down to the garage, the guilt morphed into something more sinister: hate for the weak part of me that still needed someone to trust and confide in.
Love stories always seem to be about a tempestuous affair that ends dramatically, or an unrequited love. But what about the loves that die a sick, slow death? Something that should have been cut off a long while ago but you’ve let its roots grow for so long that they’re wound deep inside you, tightening by the minute. How do you extract something like that?
I couldn’t love Aaron anymore, not with everything we’d been through. The mistrust and betrayal hadn’t gone away—I still felt it keenly. And now that I was at Gideon’s beck and call, well, that was an added complication, to say the least.
No, I was never going to tell Aaron about Gideon. I couldn’t. Without a doubt, he’d never, ever, understand.
Aaron might be hurting, he might disagree with me, but he’d respect my space.
For now, a small voice inside my head said as I climbed on my bike and gunned it out of Aaron’s underground parking. Why did he have to push, every single time? Or was there something wrong with me? I turned onto the road and shivered as a gust of wind hit me.
Maybe the Otherside had deadened me a little to the world of the living? Maybe it served me right.
I felt more alone than I had in months as I made my way back into Seattle to drop off the mirrors at Gallery 6.
As I headed for Richan’s, the two mirrors tucked safely in my satchel, I pushed Aaron from my thoughts, replacing him with something useful, namely, the strangeness of the murders and Katy in her frozen state. As I rode, I set my mind to puzzling out just how the hell she’d got that way.
CHAPTER 4
TYING THE DEAD UP IN KNOTS
I reached Gallery 6 a little before 1 p.m., and even managed to find street parking near the front window. I checked the two mirrors first before lifting my satchel off the back, and was glad to see they hadn’t chipped or cracked.
With a deep breath, I turned towards the gallery. Okay, Kincaid, let’s get this over with.
Richan’s space was right in the heart of downtown Seattle, near the convention centre, a tourist hot spot brimming with expensive hotels and a popular neighbourhood for wealthy Seattleites. It wasn’t that I was intimidated—I was a guppy out of water. And I felt as if the people I passed on the sidewalk knew I didn’t belong here as well.
Self-consciously, I slid off my leather jacket and tucked it into my bike satchel before pushing one of the tall glass doors open. I walked by two seaside paintings, one of a perfect day on a beach, the other the same beach but now with a storm brewing in the background. The contrast between the two was oddly soothing.
Richan might be a soothsayer, he might have made his fortune and business on the backs of ghosts, but goddamnit, I had to admit the man had taste.
I was relieved to see there were only three people in the gallery. A couple were speaking to Richan in front of an abstract painting in shades of yellow with splashes of black, orange and brown. I caught his eye, and though his silver eyebrows arched in recognition—not the pleasant kind—he didn’t drop his salesman pitch for even a second.
I held up my open satchel and arched my own eyebrow, making sure to let a glint of the mirror’s glass slip through, just enough grey to let him know what I was here for.
A brief flicker of surprise crossed his features. The smile didn’t falter as he held up a hand with all five fingers, the universal sign for five minutes.
I nodded back and decided to peruse the art. Might as well. I had liked Cameron’s art and hung the painting he’d given me above my couch. I’d refused to sell it when money was tight, even though it was easily the most valuable item in my apartment—no, make that the most valuable item I had ever owned. Still, I wouldn’t part with it. Cameron had given it to me.
A nearby sculpture caught my eye. A life-sized kneeling man wearing a Venetian mask with a beaklike nose and brightly coloured robes. At first glance it looked as though he was prostrating himself to the heavens above, hands outstretched in prayer or pleading, a depiction of piety. And then I noticed the white finger bones reaching out of the ornate sleeves.
I leaned in closer. Sure enough, the glimpses of skin were mottled with a mixture of bone, tendons and muscles peeking through. Below the mask, the lower half of his face showed the same decay—half of his mouth was youthful, lifelike, pretty even, with full lips and a strong jawline, whereas the other half was bone, sinew and bared teeth. It was an incredibly realistic sculpture.
I peered through the eye slits of his Venetian mask. Two brown, lifelike eyes stared back at me. The artist had widened them into an expression of horror, not devotion.
Jesus Christ.
“It’s a fantastic sleight of hand.”
I jumped and swivelled.
Beside me, much closer than I would have liked, stood Samuel Richan, local soothsayer and self-made art expert, his presence every bit as cringe-inducing as I remembered.
He smiled, pleased with the discomfort he inspired. “The lifelike stare? More morbid than my tastes usually go, but the colours, the shape of the man—the inherent beauty in his build and bone structure, the clothes, the mask—it all distracts from the rot that’s settled in. I had to have it.”
Did he realize that the description suited him too? I opted not to point that out.
“Kincaid Strange. To what do I owe this pleasure?” he said. His mouth was fixed in a polite smile as he spoke, his voice was amicable, but his eyes conveyed a different sentiment entirely.
“Mr. Richan,” I said, as politely as I could, trying my best to control the disgust I felt in his presence. I opened my bag to show him the mirrors, a smile plastered across my face, though I doubted it was anywhere near as convincing as Richan’s. “I’m playing messenger today, I’m afraid. An acquaintance asked me to bring two art pieces in, of the mirror variety,” I added, with emphasis.
Richan’s eyes widened a fraction, but he only made a pleased sound, and held out his hands. “Ah, I was expecting these. Please, may I have a look?” He gestured towards the back of the gallery. I didn’t want to go any farther into Richan’s gallery than I had to but didn’t see much choice.
