Out of Body coa-1 Read online

  “I know where you live,” he told her, and almost bit his tongue when he saw what she thought of that announcement. “You gave your name at the station and you said you lived on Royal. I put it together with J. Clive Millet. The antique people. I worked in the Quarter a long time—I probably know just about every business around.”

  “You followed me here?” she said.

  “No. I didn’t know you’d be here. I came for the same reason as you, to see if I could get a lead on Amber. This is the last place I know she was seen. I don’t expect her to walk through those doors, but I keep hoping.”

  Marley raised her chin, but abruptly her eyes lost focus on him. She seemed…distant, as if she was listening for something. Or to something.

  Gray looked around, but didn’t see anything different. When he glanced back at Marley, she had rested her chin on her hands and closed her eyes. Tingling crept up his spine, and he got that sensation of heat in his lungs and belly again. There was fear in this woman, and urgency. She needed and wanted to do something but couldn’t, not without help.

  The flicker of a memory shoved into his mind. He didn’t allow himself to go there to that place where a small boy was tormented for being “different.” The boy had made the mistake of knowing when bad things were going to happen, and trying to warn the other children. He had been that boy.

  No, that was a long time ago. Whatever he’d thought he knew was dumb kid stuff.

  Marley was so still, he could almost imagine she wasn’t breathing. Under the low lights in the room, her hair glowed a deep, shocking red. Her brows were fine and feathered and even her lashes were dark red. She fascinated him. He’d never considered himself a masochist, but he must be if he was excited by Marley of the laser tongue who walked into a precinct house and announced she could travel without her body!

  She was concentrating on him again and he almost said, “welcome back.” This time sanity prevailed. “You look really nice,” he said. Sanity? With a grin, he added, “You do, but I’m also trying to soften you up. It would be good if you could like me a bit. I’m a decent guy, honestly. Just a journalist trying to make a living and having problems right now.”

  Her stare never left his face.

  The same sensation he’d had in his fingers yesterday afternoon slipped into his head. The very tips of his fingers were still affected. Numbing cold.

  “Tell him he should go home.”

  Who said that? He frowned. Not Marley, but he heard it.

  “If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll leave now.”

  A man’s voice.

  Was he losing it?

  “Marley, did you say something?”

  She shook her head and looked past him toward Sidney, who was making moves to start another set. “You should go home,” Marley said. “Excuse me.”

  Shoot, had he heard someone giving her instructions just now?

  Gray pushed his shoulders back and watched her through narrowed eyes. She disturbed him, yet he didn’t want to leave her. Could someone really choose to leave their body and go “traveling”? That he would even ask himself the question worried him.

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave,” Marley told Gray.

  Gray held his breath. She sounded like a soft echo of the male voice.

  Marley couldn’t concentrate. Her attention was split. Uncle Pascal had never, ever communicated the way he was doing now. He had located her mind—just found it and started talking and telling her what he wanted her to do. And he’d come because he had sensed danger, sensed her alone out here and with a man she knew little about. Did it mean her uncle could find and transmit to any mind—at will? Had he simply never chosen to do so before tonight? That was incredible. She considered herself a strong talent, but her own telepathic abilities were mostly short range and by mutual invitation.

  Marley wondered what Gray would think if he knew she and her uncle were talking about him—in a manner of speaking.

  “Who is he?” Uncle Pascal asked. “Do you know anything about him?”

  Marley responded in thought: “Not really. He’s a journalist who used to be a policeman. I’m not sure what to think, but he could be okay. How did you find me?”

  “All you need to know is that I can.”

  Gray sat opposite her and reached for her hands. She was too surprised to pull away in time.

  “I…I’m not sure, but I think I’m feeling something weird,” he said. “Did you hear a voice? I mean…someone talking without being here? Are you cold?”

  “Uncle, he’s picking something up from us.” The last thing she would have expected was for Gray to mention being cold.

  “He can’t be.”

  “Can you hear what he’s saying?” Marley asked.

  “No. I’m aware of a man with you and what you feel about him. You feel threatened.”

  She didn’t want to discuss that. “He’s a sensitive. I don’t think he even knows it yet, but he could be a problem eventually.”

  “Get home to me. Has something happened, something you haven’t told me about? I think you’ve traveled recently.”

  Marley worked hard to close her uncle out. She must think unobserved for a while. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Marley, do not shut me out. I must be in contact and know you’re safe.”

  He could find and enter her mind, but not see where she was. That was something. “Be patient,” she told her uncle. “This man is hearing parts of our communication. Not much—or I don’t think so—but he’s getting caught up in the open channels between us. We should stop now.”

  “Marley—”

  With an effort that left her weaker, she shuttered Uncle Pascal from her. What he’d just done was unheard of, at least in reputable psi circles. He had simply found her telepathically. She didn’t like it and from now on, she would make it as hard as she could for him. Safety was one thing. Fear of being spied on was another. But he would always make his presence known, wouldn’t he? That was one of the family’s rules of honor. They didn’t just sneak in and out of each other’s heads.

  How had Uncle Pascal known she was in the middle of something bizarre?

  “You look so serious, Marley.”

  “Could have been just a fluke this time,” she said carelessly, still feeling his hands holding hers.

  “What?” Gray said.

  “Um. You asked me if I’m feeling cold?” She couldn’t risk involving him in her world. His fingers were icy. Apparently he was too cold to know her hands were also deeply chilled. “Are you sick?” She didn’t know what else to say and looked at the way he held on to her, at his big, well-used hands and the way they covered hers.

  “I’m not sick,” he said.

  He was a man who would be noticed wherever he went. Marley decided she would certainly notice him and felt uncomfortable with the idea. She stood up, pulling away from him as she did so. “I have to talk to someone,” she said. Rather than starting another set, Sidney was getting ready to leave.

  “Sidney?” Gray said. “You want to talk to her before she leaves.”

  Marley didn’t respond. She didn’t have to, but was it an easy assumption that she would try to talk to Sidney before she left. Or had Gray picked up on her intentions again?

  Hurriedly, she left him and walked the length of the club.

  Sidney was much taller than Marley, who had to look up at her.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Marley Millet. Could we talk for a few minutes?”

  “I don’t think so,” Sidney told her in a slightly nasal, purely upper-crust New Orleans accent. “Maybe another time.”

  “It’s about Amber,” Marley said. “And you, of course.”

  That earned her a more interested look down Sidney’s elegant nose. She took the card Marley offered, but barely glanced at it.

  “You’re with Gray Fisher,” the woman said.

  “You know Gray?”

  One shoulder rose, causing the front of a
black dress to gape.

  Sidney laughed low in her throat. Her lashes fluttered. “I suppose he’s decided I’m good enough for his little story now.”

  “That’s not what I wanted to ask—”

  “You were always good enough for a story, Sidney,” Gray said, joining Marley and cutting off whatever she had been going to say next. “You’re in my lineup. Or I hope you’ll agree to be.”

  Sidney watched him through narrowed eyelids. “Would I have been in your lineup if you hadn’t lost two of your preferred interviews already?”

  “If that’s what you believe, I won’t try to change your mind. Let’s forget we had this discussion.”

  “I will not, Gray Fisher,” Sidney said, all but purring. “I’d be honored to talk to you, but not tonight. My family worries if I’m out too late.”

  “When, then?”

  “I hoped we could talk,” Marley managed to get in. “Could I call you?”

  Sidney smiled at her, but spoke to Gray. “Give me your number and I’ll get in touch with you.”

  He was taking a card from the inside pocket of his jacket when Marley saw her brother, Sykes. Or rather, more-or-less saw him.

  Nearby, one ankle crossed over the other, his weight braced against a post, stood all more than six and a half feet of Sykes Millet. His black hair curled to his collar and his brilliant blue eyes laughed at her. The smile that curved his lips would be a killer to any other woman looking at him.

  No other woman looked at him tonight because only Marley would be able to see him. And she could see straight through him to the wall behind.

  Chapter 9

  “Marley! Wait!” Gray caught up with her when she reached the curb in front of the Hotel Camille. “Marley—”

  “I can’t talk to you anymore.”

  “Never again?” he asked.

  She glanced at him, but didn’t crack a smile. “Most likely.”

  Gray prepared for battle.

  “Sidney won’t call you,” he told her.

  “Do you really think she’ll call you?” she asked tightly, scanning the street in both directions.

  “Yeah, I do. She’s still ambitious enough to want publicity. You saw that. Amber was the talent. Hey, you don’t live so far from here. We can walk.”

  Marley stepped off the sidewalk. “I’ll get a cab,” she said, searching up and down the street again then back at the hotel entrance.

  The Camille wasn’t the kind of place that kept twenty-four-hour doormen around. No help would come from there.

  The street was silent and empty.

  To the west, even the neon flare from Harrah’s Casino looked subdued against the hazy sky.

  The first chill of early morning slithered off the Mississippi, barely shifting the odors of old buildings, old beer, or the scent of flowers in hanging baskets.

  “You don’t need a cab,” he said. “I’ll walk with you and you’ll be fine.”

  A ship’s horn bleated from the river and Marley jumped. Standing in the street with him on the sidewalk, she seemed even smaller. “I’ll be fine?” she said, only it wasn’t a question really.

  He threw up his hands. “Oh, for God’s sake. Do you really think I’m some sort of perverted killer?”

  “I don’t know what you are,” she said.

  No, of course she didn’t. He pulled out his wallet and searched through it. “I may have a cab number in here somewhere,” he said. Why fight her logical arguments? In her position he wouldn’t want him to walk her home, either.

  Mentally, she had moved away from him again. He felt it without looking at her, but when he did glance up, he knew he was right.

  Green, gold and pink, Scully’s neon sign pulsed over Marley’s shuttered features.

  “Marley?” he said, deliberately quiet.

  Her face moved in his direction, but not her eyes, or not immediately. “Doesn’t look as if I’m going to get a cab,” she said finally.

  He took another look through his wallet.

  “We can probably be home before I get a ride,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced. “Let’s go. If you’re sure you don’t mind.”

  “Are you sure?” There wasn’t much he liked about this. She behaved as if she were acting under pressure. “We could go back inside and find a phone book. Hell, someone in the club will know who to call.”

  Again she looked away and thought about it. “That would be silly. You know I’ve had…It’s been hard today. I don’t go around telling people about myself, not the stuff they’ll only laugh at.”

  She didn’t need more grief, not after what she’d taken from Nat earlier. “Okay, then.” He grinned and offered her an arm. “I didn’t laugh when you said you saw things…or people, was it? When you aren’t in your body you see them?”

  “Thanks,” she said, “but you’re laughing now.”

  She started walking.

  “No, I’m not,” Gray said, catching up and falling into step beside her. “I’d like to know more about…more about it all.” What did bother him was hearing voices, or feeling things he shouldn’t feel.

  “There’s nothing more to know,” she said.

  She was probably right and it might be kinder to his health to think so. Anyway, he knew better than to press her again on the subject and they went in silence to the corner of Iberville Street and made a left. His shoes rang on the sidewalk. The soles of her shoes must be soft.

  “Tell me how you got to know Liza and Amber,” Marley said. “Why did you choose them? Detective Archer said you were a good cop. Or he more or less said that. So why be a journalist at all?”

  Gray wasn’t sure what to say, or if he ought to tell her anything at all. But it couldn’t hurt to see if talking about himself a bit would put her at ease.

  “My old man was a cop,” he said, unsure why he started there. Then he knew. “So I wanted to do what he did. He was…is a good guy.” Talking about his father was easy.

  Illness had shrunk Gus Fisher from the big, strong man he’d been into a memory of himself. Sometimes Gray thought of his dad as two people, the one who slew a boy’s lions and seemed invincible, the other still wise and funny, but who had reversed roles with his son. Gray was his father’s rock now, or he was when Gus would allow him to be.

  “I like to hear people talk about their families,” Marley said.

  Gray gathered himself. “You work with yours, don’t you?”

  She laughed. “Yes.”

  When she didn’t go on, Gray let it go. “Gus didn’t really want me on the force. I thought he did, and he pretended that’s the way it was, so we fooled each other for years. He was proud to have me there. When I made my first moves up through the ranks, he was about ready to pop, he was so pumped. It didn’t matter to him that he was what he called a plain cop and always would be. That was good with him.”

  “You love him a lot,” she said and he heard her soften.

  “I thought I was a cop for life, but I only got more frustrated because I wanted something else. Long story short, with my dad’s blessing—and I knew he’d give it—I took time off to see if I could make it as a writer.”

  She was quiet once more and her pace slackened. They walked slowly through the heavy night. As they got farther from the river, nothing moved but the two of them. Gray didn’t remember the city being so quiet at this time of the morning. But then, he didn’t hang out in this area anymore.

  “Whew,” Marley said. “It’s so muggy.”

  His turn to laugh. “That’s new?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and smiling up at him. “I’ve never liked the real heat even though I was born here.” Her smile faded very slowly.

  She’d gone away from him again. And his spine began to tingle as it had several times in the hours since he met her.

  He almost laughed at himself. Even journalists had libidos. Marley Millet had his doing contortions, not that he knew why. She was good to look at in a kind of breakable way, but that wa
sn’t it. The lady appealed to his need for challenge. He wanted to know her and know about her.

  Come on, Gray. You think she’s got something to do with this case.

  “You were going to tell me about Liza and Amber,” she said.

  And so she persisted—because, like him, she wanted something. They wanted things from each other.

  “Writing about jazz singers in New Orleans is a natural,” he said. “It’s not a new idea, but maybe it is the way I’m doing it. I’m not going after people who are institutions already. It’s the strugglers who interest me—mostly the women. Women always came, but not in the numbers there are now. What is it that makes them want to make it badly enough to come here? This can be a dangerous place for a woman more or less on her own.”

  “From where I’m looking, it is a dangerous place,” Marley said. “Liza and Amber know it is, too.”

  Gray figured he’d walked into that.

  Marley would not have gone two steps with Gray Fisher, alone, if Sykes hadn’t threatened her with a fate worse than death if she didn’t.

  “How,” he had asked, “are you going to find out if the guy’s a threat without giving him a chance to jump you? Trust me and do it.”

  She hadn’t laughed, or not on the outside…

  While she listened to Gray, Sykes loped along on the journalist’s other side. Now that he had Marley’s attention, Sykes had dimmed himself. When she saw his face, it was almost clear, but the rest of him blended into the background and appeared as a figure made of transparent shadows.

  And Sykes had never had any trouble making himself heard and understood whenever he felt like it. Unlike Uncle Pascal, they all knew Sykes was a scary-when-he-didn’t-smile, scarier-when-he-did-smile, outrageously powerful paranormal talent.

  “What do you make of Danny Summit?” Gray asked. “I didn’t know he was so involved with Amber till tonight.”

  “I don’t know anything about him,” Marley said. “Maybe he’s just what he seems to be, worried about his girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend?” Gray snorted. “Neither of them said a word about it to me.”

  “Until tonight,” Marley said.