"What are you doing here?" he grumbled, giving Bergman a slight nod to acknowledge his arrival.

  "Waiting for you," I replied. "Need some coffee, do you?"

  "No." He looked pointedly at my neck and, this is embarrassing, but I'm pretty sure I blushed. Nonetheless, I barreled on.

  "Bergman needs a day to find you a willing donor—"

  "I told you, I can find my own donors," he snapped. He took a minute to regroup. "I am sorry. Waking is never pleasant for me. What I meant to say…" he stopped, took inward stock and started over, "What I now realize is that I do not need any donors, not tonight anyway. I woke with the same longing as ever, but without the need. Last night… the blood I took last night was more… potent… than I realized."

  I cleared my throat. What do you say when you find out your blood is really filling? It's not a manwich, it's a meal! Nope, not going there. "Um, we need to get out of here as soon as possible." I gave Vayl the short version of Rudy and Amy Jo's adventures and my distraction theory. I also told him about my visit with Cassandra. His immobile face registered actual shock when I mentioned the Tor-al-Degan.

  "So you've heard of this thing?" I asked.

  "I have. I do not know how it was vanquished the last time someone brought it forth, but I know many died trying."

  "Well, look, Assan's goon said there was a ceremony tomorrow that seemed to involve the Tor-al-Degan, Assan, the senator, and possibly Aidyn. If we're lucky the Raptor will show up too and we can bowl a strike." I went on, "I figure we eliminate Assan tonight after we get the details we need to crash their party and," like the hero and heroine in a really fine melodrama, "foil their plans."

  "I agree. But we must anticipate what other distractions they may throw at us to keep us from accomplishing that."

  Right on cue, my phone rang. It was Cole. "Lucille? My building's on fire! The pictures, they're burning!"

  "Where are you?"

  "Here! With the fire trucks!"

  Holy crap! "Listen! It's not an accident! Assan is onto you! Look around, do you see any of his men?"

  "No. I don't know. It's… there are dark patches here and there. They could be hiding."

  Through the phone I heard an explosive, popping noise. "Cole? What's that?"

  "The windows just exploded! Oh my God, my business!"

  "We'll work it out for you, Cole. But right now, you need to run—"

  "Hey! What're you doing! Let me go!"

  "Cole, tell me—"

  "Lucille! They've—" the phone went dead.

  I shoved it into my pocket and jumped up. "Assan has Cole!"

  Vayl laid a hand on my shoulder, probably to keep me from sprinting off into the night like some mad cross country runner. "We will get him back. Tonight. But we need to get Cassandra too. She is the only other person who has had contact with us. They may know about her. They may use her as the next distraction."

  I wanted to say something stupid like, "But she's not on the way." I held my tongue. Vayl was right. "I should call her, though. So she'll be ready to go when we come."

  "I imagine she already knows."

  Bergman and I had already packed everything that could be salvaged into the van. The Mercedes would stay put until the dealer came for it at the end of the week. We didn't exactly tear out of the parking lot, but we wasted no time in hitting the road. Bergman drove while Vayl and I sat in the bucket seats behind him, our legs pinned between boxes and trunks. Naturally, since I wasn't driving, traffic cooperated.

  "I am sorry," Vayl said, his voice low in my ear, "I know you cherish your privacy, but your emotions are shooting out of you like fireworks. You have every right to be scared and worried, but you cannot let those feelings take you over. Not tonight."

  A spurt of anger made me want to slap him, as if I was some diva who didn't get the Double Stuff Oreos she'd demanded before her concert. I took a deep breath, and then another. "Okay, reign it in. I understand. I will."

  Cassandra waited for us on the curb in front of her store, two bags in hand, two on the sidewalk beside her. Even after everything I'd seen and done in my life, the Midwesterner in me thought, Wow, that's just weird. But weird in a way I deeply appreciated.

  Bergman helped her load her stuff, giving Vayl and I each a bag to hold on our laps. She kept the other two, tucking one beneath her feet and keeping the other in-hand.

  "No speeding," I told Bergman as he settled back behind the wheel. "You hit a bump going over 60 and your exhaust system is going to snap off like a Lego."

  "I know, I know, I packed too much. I always do."

  He sounded so contrite I backed off. "You wouldn't have brought it if you didn't need it."

  "That's why I like you, Jaz. You never sneer at my craziness."

  "If you could watch a film of my childhood you'd know why."

  He chuckled, the way a person will who's had similar suspicions about insanity in the family. "Where to now?"

  I looked at Vayl. "Bergman's offered us asylum. We get to stay on his turf as long as we make our beds and put our dirty plates in the dishwasher."

  "Excellent. Take us there, if you please." Vayl looked at Cassandra then. "It is good to see you again."

  "Likewise." She looked at me and smiled. "Hello Lucille. Or should I call you Jaz?"

  "Why don't we stick with Lucille? The less you know about me the better."

  "But that is why I'm here."

  "Really?"

  She held my gaze, her eyes like twin wells in the dim light. I nearly kicked in my night sight, but I wasn't sure I wanted to see her that clearly. "When we shook hands, the vision of David came strongest," she told me. "But another vision crept in, like a shadow, and I could not understand what it meant. So after you left I consulted the Enkyklios."

  Vayl nodded as if he knew what that meant, which irritated me. Or maybe it was the fact that Cassandra felt free to nose around my psyche.

  "What's an Enkyklios?" I asked, the suspicion in my voice causing Bergman to flash me a look of approval.

  Cassandra slipped into lecture mode. "An Enkyklios is like a metaphysical library. It is full of the information Seers have whispered to their descendents practically since the beginning of time. For the last several generations we have taken it upon ourselves to travel the world, gathering and storing that information so it won't be lost forever."

  "We?" asked Bergman. "Who's we?"

  "An international guild I belong to called Sisters of the Second Sight."

  "Never heard of it." He sounded as snappish and impatient as I felt.

  "No," Cassandra smiled sweetly, "you wouldn't have."

  I cut to the chase before Bergman came up with a conspiracy theory even Julia Roberts wouldn't buy. "So what did you find in the library?"

  She looked down, hiding her eyes from me. Uh-oh. "I think you need to see it for yourself when we get to a safe place."

  I sat back in my seat and sighed. Then I felt Vayl's cool hand wrap around my own.

  "What are you afraid of?" he murmured, quiet in my ear so no one could overhear.

  I whispered right back. "She's going to tell me my dad's a demon and my mom was a harpy. She's going to uncover the fact that I'm a monster. I don't guess I'll be surprised to hear it. I've always known at some level. After all, it takes a certain kind of someone to be capable of assassination. You just hate to have your worst traits confirmed by a panel of independent judges, you know?"

  I felt Vayl shrug. "I think your perspective is tainted. But if you insist on looking at it that way, is it so bad to be our kind of monster? Look at the evil we have averted in our time together." He squeezed my hand. "As long as you do not corrupt any monks or paint eyelashes on the Venus de Milo, I would say you have nothing to worry about."

  Nothing to worry about. Nothing… nothing… nothing.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bergman pulled into the circle drive in front of his hideaway as Vayl and I gaped at the view out the van's front window. Tastefully lit by low wattage lamps and a couple of well placed spots, the beachfront two-story looked like it would've been just as comfortable on Cape Cod. The landscaping, the wraparound porch, the white wicker furniture for cripe's sake, it might've come from the latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens.

  "This is your safe house?" I asked Bergman.

  "Yeah. Why not?" I waited to reply until he got out and opened the side door.

  "Well," I said, as Vayl and I handed him Cassandra's luggage, "it's just so… pleasant." I got out, grabbed a box and followed him to the front door. "I'd always imagined you in a cave. Or, at the very least, one of those rickety old mansions with droopy shutters and more tunnels than windows."

  "I prefer a really excellent security system." He put the bags down, lifted the lion's head doorknocker, and thumbed a switch underneath it. The lion's head slid sideways, revealing a square of metal and electronics that took detailed measurements of Bergman's left eye before deciding he passed muster. The door clicked several times and stopped.

  "Wait," said Bergman as I reached for the latch. Another couple of seconds passed and then I heard a final click. Bergman nodded, so I turned the knob. As the door swung open Vayl said, "Just remember Bergman, sooner or later you will have to give us a way to get inside without the benefit of your eyeball."

  "No problem. As soon as all our stuff is unloaded I'll modify the system."

  I stepped into the front hall and a piercing whistle stopped me in my tracks. Knowing Bergman, if I moved any further a cannon would descend from the ceiling and blow my head off.

  "What is that?" Vayl asked as Bergman came in to give me a critical look.

  I held up my hands. "I didn't do anything."

  "But you did. That's a wavelength sensor. You're sending some sort of signal."

  "Is it the watch?" I asked, snapping the band to see if that stopped the alarm. Nope.

  Bergman had run out to the van. He brought back a box, dug around inside and came out with a hand-held wand that looked like a super-sized cigarette lighter. Starting at my head, he swept it down my body. As soon as it reached my navel it sent out its own warning beep.

  I raised my shirt. "It's your belly-ring," Bergman said, adding urgently, "Give it to me."

  I took it off and handed it to him. He jumped back into the van, started it up and raced off. In the time it took us to figure out how to turn the alarm off he returned. "I planted it on an ice-cream truck. Whoever's following that signal will hopefully zero in on the truck and forget the signal stopped here for a couple of minutes."

  "Pete said I had to break it to activate it. That only then would our backup team get involved."

  Bergman grimaced. "Somebody activated it remotely."

  "The same somebody who supplied it in the first place?" wondered Vayl.

  "Well it's not one of mine," said Bergman.

  "That's how they found us," I said. "Those God's Arm fakes on the road. Liliana at the restaurant. Mr. and Mrs. Magoo in the hotel. All they had to do was follow the belly-ring signal." I clenched my jaw, trying not to kick a hole in the wall. "When I get hold of this senator I'm going to rip his ears off and stuff them down his throat."

  "What about the Raptor?" Vayl asked.

  "I'll leave him to you, as long as you promise to make it vile. God, that pisses me off!" The anger wasn't going to help me think clearly though, so I tried to walk it off by exploring the house. Its interior lived up to the exterior's promise. Wooden floors, colorful throw rugs, overstuffed furniture and antique accessories in twisted iron and oak made the house feel like the set for one of the daytime dramas Granny May used to love to watch. She called them her "stories," and never failed to shake her head sadly when last season's true love became this season's big breakup.

  I just about had it back under control once we unloaded Bergman's van into the living room, a light, airy place with pale blue beadboard walls and a huge fishing net hanging from the ceiling. A long, mahogany bar separated it from the kitchen/feed-a-party-of-thirty dining room. A hallway, painted pastel green, led to three bedrooms and a bathroom. Stairs just to the right of the doorway led to a large family room, a home office and a master bedroom with a view that made me wish I could sail. I thought there might be some truth to the idea that surroundings influence mood. Maybe I should paint my apartment.

  Once everything was in, Cassandra and I started unpacking while Bergman and Vayl set everything up. Several of the boxes held computer components, and before long they'd transformed the dining room table into a communications center. Four PCs sat back to back, connected to each other, the Internet and a central printer through a maze of cords that lay like a big, sloppy coil basket in the middle of them all. Our laptop sat beside them and yet separate, a snooty, secretive step-sister. The table was so long that half of it still remained free for other purposes.

  Bergman and Vayl began setting up a mini lab on the bar while Cassandra stored the empty boxes in a downstairs bedroom, so I got to work elsewhere.

  "Jaz, why did you rearrange the furniture?" Bergman asked a few minutes later, staring curiously at me over a row of shiny glass beakers.

  "What do you mean? I'm just—" I looked around the living room and realized I'd done it again. Without any conscious thought, as though an entire section of my brain had switched to blackout mode, I'd reproduced the same design I'd created at Diamond Suites. "What the hell?" I murmured.

  Cassandra came down the hallway, took a look at my little project and sent me a look of trepidation that cut straight to my heart. Vayl's forehead creased and the corners of his lips drooped. For him it was the equivalent of a thunderous frown.

  "You deceived me about this, didn't you?" he demanded, waving his hand to indicate the new room arrangement. "This is not how it once looked at your house." I shook my head. "What else have you lied to me about? I cannot abide liars." His tone, straight out of the Knucklecrackers Handbook for Schoolmarms, made me grit my teeth. Before I could defend myself, or launch a vase at his head, or plan a massive spitball campaign with Jimmy and Susie that would probably get us expelled but would be well worth the trouble, Cassandra spoke up.

  "I may be able to explain that better than Jasmine."

  She brought out the smallest of her four suitcases and set it on the ottoman I'd moved from its spot beside the couch not five minutes earlier. Now it sat center stage. I sank onto the couch beside her. Vayl, still looking irritated, sat opposite us in a wing chair upholstered in blue twill.

  Cassandra opened the case, reached into it and brought out a foot-high pyramid made of multicolored glass orbs, each about the size of a large marble. I moved the case out of the way and Cassandra gently set the piece on the ottoman.

  "Is this what I think it is?" I asked.

  "The Enkyklios," she said, nodding. "My vision of your… my second vision is recorded here." She touched the top marble of the pyramid and the whole thing shivered in response. "You may want to watch this in private."

  "No," I said, challenging Vayl with my glare, "let's keep this all wide open. That way nobody can accuse me of more lies, and later we can talk about how I can't abide people who leap to judgment!" I let the anger carry me, give me the strength to sit in the living room like a regular person rather than lock myself in a closet like a scared kid. It's hard, it hurts to stop hiding. Riding another, and probably my last, wave of anger, I said, "Let's do this."

  She pressed on the top marble, which bent but didn't break, like the Jell-O molds Granny May used to make because she thought we liked the taste of rubbery strawberry letters and two-legged elephants.

  "Enkyklios occsallio vera proma," Cassandra whispered. Well, that's what it sounded like anyway. She kept going, reeling off a list of words that sounded like Latin but weren't. As she spoke the marbles shivered again, then began to roll in random directions, though they never completely lost touch. It reminded me of clock gears, and yet no one movement seemed to trigger another.

  The pyramid undid itself, rolling into a variety of other forms that resembled the prow of a ship, a sailor's hat, a Harley Davidson, a strand of DNA.

  "That is so cool," I whispered, despite my pounding heart and a nauseating fear of how Vayl would react to the new discovery. Bergman had left his lab/computer center, a miracle in itself, and sidled over to the empty wing chair. He stood behind it, looking as if he wanted to attack the Enkyklios with a bat.

  At last the marbles stood in vertical rows of three, forming a sort of plateau with a single, bluish-gold globe sitting above the rest. "Is that me?" I whispered, feeling a little faint as Cassandra nodded.

  "Are you ready?" she asked. I rubbed sweaty palms down my pants.

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get it done." My voice sounded fake in my own ears, a recording in definite need of a remix.

  She touched the marble and said, "Dayavatem!" She pulled her hand away and sat back, making room for the images that rose from it, digital quality holographs in living color and sound.

  I saw myself, 14 months younger and light years closer to innocence, sitting in the living room of what looked like an old frat house. The stuffing peeked out of several holes in the couch and love seat, the coffee table had once been a working door that now sat on a double-high pile of cement blocks, and the chairs only rocked because their legs were uneven.

  "Look, Jaz," said Bergman, "the furniture in the picture is arranged the same way you did it just now."

  "The same way she always does it," Vayl said, folding his arms across his chest.

  "Since you're so determined to be mad at me, go right ahead," I said, "but the fact is I never knew why I kept moving the furniture around. I wasn't usually even aware I was doing it. Then you said something, and it seemed like such a strange thing to do," I shrugged, "I made up a reason so you wouldn't think I was crazy."

  Did I detect a slight softening in Vayl's expression, or was I just fishing? Never mind. The show had gone on. In a room it hurt my heart to see again, my band of Helsingers and I sat around the recycled door playing a card game I knew I'd been good at but could no longer remember the name of.