Blue Diablo cs-1 Page 10

  “What does?” He took the last potato skin.

  “Being both cute and sensitive. You deserve to beat women off with a stick.”

  “You think I’m cute?” At that Saldana paused, a half smile playing at the corners of his well-made mouth.

  I sighed. “Please. You know you are. It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  His mama would be so proud of his ability to turn the charm off and on like that. “Of course it does.” Saldana gave me a sorghum smile. “You’re a woman, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but I gave up hot guys for Lent.”

  He laughed. “It’s November, Corine.”

  “See how well I’m doing?”

  “Hmm,” he said, eating the potato skin. “Sadly it’s not my place to question that decision. We may as well get down to business if you won’t flirt back, even a little bit.”

  I didn’t know how much more I could take. “Isn’t that against the rules, Obi-Wan?”

  “Yes. Gifts tend to run in family lines, so...” He made a face, encapsulating his opinion of swimming in your own gene pool. “It’s pretty rare for somebody gifted to grow up without a mentor.”

  My spine stiffened. I didn’t want to talk about how I came to be on my own, with no parental figure to explain about special powers, secret societies, and little blue sparks. Then again, if my mother were still around, I probably wouldn’t have a gift.

  I muttered, “I’m weird. I get it. What’s the deal with the underground?”

  Before he could reply, Betsy came back with his iced tea and took our orders. We both chose a New York strip, but he got a giant baked potato in addition to the skins. I opted for a salad out of respect for the size of my ass, although if I really cared, I wouldn’t eat potato skins.

  He waited until she walked away with a last wistful look over one shoulder, but Saldana was all business now. “Like I said, we have a quiet support network. I’ll give you the log-in information for the Web site, and I know of a few gathering spots. The closest is a club in San Antonio called Twilight.”

  “Web site?” I blinked at that.

  “Good place to get specialized help. We pretend to be a conspiracy theory group: aliens, men in black, all that. The site’s called Area Fifty-one.”

  “Cute.”

  “Mostly it makes us feel less alone,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard being surrounded by people who have no idea what you can do, and if they do find out, sometimes it’s worse. Sometimes it means you have to—”

  “Move in the middle of the night?” I offered a wry smile at his startled look.

  “Yeah. Well, not me personally. My talent is pretty low-key. But I dated a pyro girl for a while.” His mouth twisted. “She was hunted coast-to-coast.”

  Pyro. Firestarter? I couldn’t imagine a positive outlet for that gift, but then I was biased. I shouldn’t let myself get distracted.

  “What happened?”

  To my surprise, he shut down. “We’re not here to talk about my romantic history.”

  Since he didn’t want to talk about it, of course I couldn’t let it go. That aspect of my psyche explained a great deal about my relationship with Chance.

  “White knight complex,” I realized aloud. “You go for the bad girl, the one with problems who blows up your car, trashes your house, and steals your wallet. It’s not her fault, of course. If she only had someone to love and understand her, that shit wouldn’t happen.”

  “Shit.” He regarded me with narrowed eyes as Betsy served two sizzling steaks. “I thought I was the empath.”

  “You are. That’s why this makes perfect sense. You want to save everyone because you know what they’re going through. Must make it hell on dating.”

  “Tell me about it. Try arguing with someone, even if you know they’re wrong, when you can feel the hurt rolling off them in waves.”

  “You just want to wrap her up in your arms and tell her everything’s going to be okay,” I said softly.

  Saldana studied me with bitter chocolate eyes, and to my surprise, his gaze dropped first. He attended to cutting his steak with a care that said I’d stepped too close to something private. We’d just met, after all.

  For a while we just ate, didn’t talk. I thought maybe I’d crossed the line. The white noise of other voices covered the fact that nobody spoke at our table.

  Finally he said, “Yeah, well. I can’t make everything better, but I can put you on the path to meeting more people like us. You already know you can recognize them from the shock. Let’s see, what else? Oh, I’ll write down the Web site address and log-in.” He pulled a pen from his pocket, scrawled something on a napkin, and passed it to me.

  “Thanks.” I tucked it into my handbag, a gorgeous beaded creation I’d bought at Mundo E.

  “On those boards you can find witches, warlocks, psychics, far-seers, pyros, empaths—pretty much the whole gamut of talents, though I don’t think I’ve ever run across another handler on there. I don’t vouch for character, though, Corine. Just because they’re gifted, it doesn’t make them trustworthy. So if you decide to see someone off-line, use the same care you would under normal circumstances.”

  Was I the only person in the world who didn’t get on Match.com for a date? “I’ve never done that.”

  “That means don’t tell the person where you live. Meet in a public place. Common sense stuff. But the board is great for finding someone who can help you with specialized research or answer questions about another type of gift. I used it quite a bit to try to understand Heather.”

  “The pyro girl?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t elaborate, though, and I didn’t press. “If you want, I’ll take you to Twilight. We could be there by eleven and they’re open until three. We’d need to spend the night in San Antonio, though.”

  I didn’t know how to take that invitation. “Don’t you have work tomorrow?”

  Saldana shook his head. “Day off. We can hit Twilight tonight, find a place to stay, and then drive back in the morning. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  I hesitated. “If I go, you get me an unofficial look at the purse.”

  “Hey, I’m trying to help you here, and you’re asking for more favors?”

  At that I pushed my plate away. I’d eaten maybe half the steak and nibbled at the salad. “Look, I have only your word you want to help me. I’m supposed to accept there’s a gifted underground just on your say-so? I’m supposed to drive two hours to a club because you want me to? Sorry, Saldana, but it doesn’t work like that. You might be a cop, but you haven’t proven yourself to me. Something bad could still happen if I go off with you, so you need to sweeten the deal. Give me a reason to take the risk.”

  For a minute I thought I’d pushed him too far. His mouth tightened and he threw his napkin on the table like he meant to leave. Well, fine. I had the log-in. I could check things out on my own.

  “Deal,” he said, throwing down some twenties for the bill. “You come with me tonight, and I get you a look at the purse tomorrow. Let’s get going.”

  Traveling Blues

  Talk about surreal.

  Before we left, I called Chuch and asked him if he minded picking up the Camry. This served several purposes. The car wouldn’t sit all night outside Logan’s Roadhouse, Chance would have it if he needed it, and I didn’t have to tell him that I was going to San Antonio with a guy I’d just met. I didn’t envy Chuch that job.

  It also served as personal security. Chuch knew where I was going and with whom. I didn’t think Saldana chopped women up and strewed their body parts along the highway to make them harder to identify, but—

  Well. I knew too much about killers for my own peace of mind, but last I heard, Kel Ferguson was still in prison. And he’d never chopped up his victims as far as I knew. Quite the contrary, Ferguson had killed with a clean, cold precision that made him seem soulless. Ironic that he’d first been arrested on a kidnapping charge, but once he was in the system, his DNA tied him to a whole s
tring of unsolved crimes.

  I preferred to think about the little girl we saved.

  With a faint sigh, I climbed into the cop’s black Forester. Nice ride, with anthracite cloth interiors, though a little surprising. I’d pegged him as an Avalanche kind of guy.

  Saldana played the Dixie Chicks on the way. He didn’t say much, and I couldn’t blame him. My trepidation probably registered on his radar, so it’d be hard for him not to resent it. I wished I could tell him it wasn’t personal.

  He slid me a look I found hard to interpret through the intermittent light from oncoming cars. “So tell me, do you ever let down your guard?”

  The empathy thing would get old, I decided. Women wished for guys who always knew when something was wrong, even when they didn’t tell them, but it was quite another thing to be confronted with the long, tall reality of one.

  “Once. It didn’t end well.”

  That was an understatement. I was talking about Chance.

  The road from Laredo to San Antonio offered nothing scenic after dark. Still I turned my face toward the window because I didn’t want to encourage him. Maybe he even saw in me one of his broken girls, a fixer-upper who needed somebody to understand her.

  However, if this underground existed, then I might be able to use it to search for Min. I wasn’t sure what use I could make of it, but I knew better than to waste resources. As it stood, we needed every edge to figure out what the hell was going on.

  Poor Chance.

  Saldana chose the one conversational gambit guaranteed to catch my attention. “You going to tell me what went down at the warehouse?” While I weighed the likelihood of that, he went on, “You have fresh cuts on the backs of your hands, consistent with flying glass. Now, I happen to know something about that, but I don’t give you anything until you come clean. Feel like trading info?”

  That sounded like a variation on “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” a game that got me into trouble more than once. I narrowed my eyes. “You could be bluffing.”

  What could he possibly know?

  “I could be,” he allowed. “But I’m not. Feel free to think it over.” With an irritating half smile, he went back to driving.

  I did, but the lights of San Antonio spread out before us before I made up my mind. “We went to check out the crime scene,” I said finally. “I found a button that showed me what happened there.”

  “Which was?” To my surprise he accepted my words matter-of-factly. Then again, why wouldn’t he? “No, wait. Get to that later. What was the deal with the windows?” He shook his head. “The department can’t figure out what caused the pressure change that blew all the windows inward simultaneously. They’re throwing around all kinds of ideas.”

  Reluctantly I explained, though I didn’t need to say much. Saldana was familiar with such things, though he couldn’t present it as an official explanation. “That’s a heavy-duty working.” He shook his head as we exited toward San Antonio College.

  “Tell me about it. There aren’t a lot of people who could bring that much power to bear, and they don’t come cheap.”

  Coplike, he followed my train of thought, though Chuch had already mentioned it. “Which means they’re working for somebody who has money. What kind of range are we talking about here? Could it be sent from halfway around the world?”

  “I have no idea. Rituals aren’t my thing.”

  No, that’d been my mother’s forte, and I hadn’t turned my hand to one in a good ten years, not since I gave up all childish dreams altogether.

  He thought about it. “I might know somebody we can ask while we’re here. Not sure if she’ll be in this late, though. We’ll see.”

  “Seriously, why do you care?” The question got loose before I could stop it.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Don’t ask me that again. I know some cops don’t give a shit, but I’m not one of them.”

  Wow, I pissed him off, got past the kind, patient persona. For some reason, that delighted me. I cocked a brow at him. “Is that right?”

  Oh, I was asking for it.

  “I’m your mentor, Corine. That means I’m here to help you.” Saldana thumped the dash for emphasis. “Maybe you’re not used to this, but I have no hidden agenda. I want to help you figure out how to make the most of being gifted. I know sometimes it sucks and you feel like you’re all by yourself. I’m here to assure you that you’re not.”

  “So you’re taking me under your wing out of the goodness of your heart.” I sounded so cynical.

  “Is that so hard to believe?”

  I thought about it. “Pretty much. What’s your angle?”

  He glared at me before realizing he wasn’t going to sell me on the idea of him as a good Samaritan. “By helping you, I help myself, if you turn up something I can use to close the books on this one. I may have to tweak the language in the file, but it’s better than an unsolved mystery.”

  “Got it,” I said, satisfied. “You’re tying a string to my tail and sending me into the maze. You’ll use me to write your report when it’s all said and done.”

  “Christ. You make it sound so sordid.”

  “I don’t mind. People never offer an open hand, and if they do, you should step back to avoid the slap.”

  Saldana offered me a look that said I’d made the short list of women he’d like to rehabilitate toward a brighter outlook. Too bad. I liked my attitude just fine. We drove through the city in silence for a few minutes.

  “Anyway, it’s my turn to spill. The security guard who found the handbag wasn’t supposed to be there. He isn’t a bright guy and he somehow didn’t understand that he’d been let go. Warehouse was closed, no new shipments coming in. So Lenny lets himself into the building and it ‘smells funny,’ he says.”

  Blood rituals and demons tend to make a place smell funny, all right.

  “Got a last name for me?”

  He grinned. “No. I won’t tell you that Lenny Marlowe works for Delta Security, the agency that just terminated a contract with IBC, the company that owns the warehouse.”

  I had a feeling IBC might have ties to Southern Sanitation as well, so I made a mental note. “Thanks for nothing then.”

  The area where we parked qualified as seedy, a strip on Main full of Goth bars and gay clubs. I don’t know what I expected, but I felt vaguely let down by the faded brick building on the corner. Just a small sign in violet neon proclaimed TWILIGHT.

  “In the rest of these clubs,” he said as we got out, “you’ll find wannabes and college kids looking for something different. Occasionally they hit up Twilight as well, but by and large, if you find somebody hanging out there, they’re the real deal. Be extra careful—they get the occasional demon as well.”

  “Doesn’t the smell give them away?” Laugh if you must, but I had limited experience with such things.

  Saldana laughed as we walked up to the black metal door. “They don’t all reek of rotten eggs, Corine. Some can be quite charming, but—and I’m sure I don’t need to say this—don’t sign anything, no matter how good the deal sounds.”

  “Got it. No selling my soul to the Dark One. Anything else I should know?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You look good in green.”

  As I followed him into the club, I glanced down at my cardigan. Chance hated this thing, woven of nubbly yarn in uneven hues. He’d never gotten the appeal of hippie chic, but it went with my long hair at least. Considering I’d bought it at a thrift store for two bucks more than three years ago, I’d gotten my money’s worth. I liked how the extra length covered the biggest part of my ass while the belt accentuated my waist. It went over any camisole, and tonight I’d paired it with a pair of embroidered khaki pants and wedge heel sandals with glittery jade beads on the toes.

  “Uh. Thanks.”

  Twilight’s interior boasted a faded carpet, red lights in wall sconces, and maroon striped wallpaper. The dark wood timbers gave the place a rough, unfinished look, bu
t the place had a schizophrenic feel—part Texas roadhouse, part dilapidated brothel. Even the music set the mood slightly askew. I didn’t know how I felt about entering to the tune of “Devil’s Dance Floor.” Not my usual thing but toe-tapping nonetheless.

  I glanced around, saw half the tables occupied. Nobody looked out of the ordinary, but then again, what did I expect? Horns and tails from folks like me? Disgusted with myself, I turned to Saldana, who took a seat at the bar and waited for the ’tender.

  Judging by her freckles, a natural redhead came over after she finished pouring beer for the guys sitting two stools down from us. They could’ve been construction workers in their dusty hats, plaid shirts, and Wrangler jeans.

  With her coppery curls caught up in a pigtail, she radiated country cute. “Hi, Jesse. It’s always good to see you.”

  A place where everybody knows your name... and you’re always glad you came... if you’re Jesse Saldana, that is. I wasn’t so sure of my own welcome. I’ve had to move in a hurry too many times to take anything at face value.

  “Hey, Jeannie. This is Corine. Make her feel at home, will you?”

  “Oh.” The bartender’s scrutiny gained weight and intensity.

  I could feel her searching me as if she could tell by sight alone what my gift might be. Despite my intention to be cool, no matter what the night brought, my fingers curled. I didn’t want to show my scars any more than I wanted to hide them from squeamish strangers. If I flashed them, I’d bet she would observe that I hadn’t been born gifted, as if I’d stolen this ability, and I was tired of hearing it. Salt in the wound, so to speak.

  I wasn’t a killer, although my mother had warned me of people who shed blood to take other people’s magick. Rapt, I’d listened to her stories the same way other girls my age clung to fairy tales. I just hadn’t known it was possible to give power away.

  Not until she died.

  The moment passed, but damn if I knew what Jeannie read in me. “What’ll you have?” she asked.

  “Corona for me, please.” Saldana glanced at me. “You?”

  “How are your margaritas?” I wasn’t the designated driver anymore.