again, then pounded the door knocker. Andre owned this town house and shared it with his father, Julius. He’d also taken in Tim, the invisible kid. If they were all still asleep, they needed to be warned.
When no one answered, I let myself in and shouted, “Julius! Tim! To the basement, now!”
I knew they had one. I’d been in Andre’s underground tunnel that led to an empty warehouse across the road. Should I ever have time to spare, I’d look up the history of these old houses, but I was more concerned about any illegal operations Andre might be running.
“We’re coming down!” Julius’s familiar voice shouted back. “Open the basement door for us.” Elegant, imperturbable Julius sounded edgy.
Hoping this house was identical to Pearl’s, I ran down the hall toward the kitchen, located a flat painted door almost hidden by an Oriental wall hanging, and tugged. It opened silently on well-oiled hinges. I flipped a light switch and, thinking a grown man and a teenager could make their own way downstairs without my aid, I hurried to get out of their way. I knew Andre’s cellar was a heck of a lot cleaner than Pearl’s would be.
The gargoyles’ cries were lost behind these thick brick-and-plaster walls. Andre didn’t settle for filthy damp coal cellars, no sirree. His cellar had plaster, and wall sconces, and some kind of rugged stair-tread protector over mahogany-stained and polished wood stairs. Hell, his cellar looked better than any place I’d ever had my bedroom.
The bottom step led to some kind of speckled-tile floor like they used to have in banks and city halls. Doors led off to either side of the corridor, but I had no idea which one to take. The only one I knew was at the end and led to the warehouse.
What the devil was taking Julius and Tim so long? The way they were stumbling and staggering and bumping into walls, it sounded as if they were carrying a pirate trunk down with them.
You’d have to understand Andre to get why my mind leapt to pirate trunks and not sixty-four-inch flat-screen TVs, which most normal men would try to take with them to the grave. Andre reminded me of Jean Lafitte, the gentleman pirate in old New Orleans—complete with slick black hair, swarthy complexion, flashy white teeth, and a distinctly European mind-set.
Even though he called himself Legrande, I knew he’d grown up right here in blue-collar Baltimore. He’d gone to the same school as the wealthy Vanderventers, except I figured he’d done it on a scholarship.
I nearly jumped as the object of my thoughts yelled down the stairs at me. “Dammit, Clancy, doors! Open doors!”
Andre must have taken care of Nancy Rose and cleared the customers out of Chesty’s in record time.
Not bothering to waste breath asking why he couldn’t open his own damned doors, I started flinging open every one in sight. He knew better than to yell at me like I was some kind of low-IQ sheep.
No hoards of pirate gold or exotic harems down here—very disappointing. I’d expected more from our alpha male.
One room had tubes and paraphernalia like a chemistry lab. Another was filled with computer equipment. A third contained a pretty damned extravagant theater that would have made any Hollywood director proud. I was pretty sure the flat-screen TV in here was bigger than sixty-four inches. Clearly either we were far enough away from the Zone for Andre to have his play toys or the underground bunker acted as a buffer against the Zone’s eccentricities.
I threw open the only remaining barrier and found a
“Tina, give us a hand here. Tim’s fading out.”
“Am not,” Tim argued—faintly.
I spun around to see Andre and Julius holding up the corners of one of those shiny, colorful comforters they sell in fancy department stores. Sure enough, Tim had disappeared, and his corner was sagging.
On the comforter lay Sleeping Beauty.
2
“Color, Tim,” I scolded, grabbing the sagging duvet at Beauty’s feet. “Concentrate.”
Tim had been only five when the first chemical flood had spilled through the home of his drug-addicted mother. Small, bullied, and neglected, he’d grown into a terrified gay adolescent who loved plants—and turned invisible when frightened. Made sense in a completely Zonish way, but he’s one of the reasons we don’t like strangers around.
He colored in enough for me to see his hands and feet so I didn’t step on him. I nodded at Julius, whose face was lined with weariness and worry.
Still dressed with flawless elegance, Andre held up the opposite side of the blanket all by himself. This mysterious Sleeping Beauty was sufficient argument to keep my distance from my former boss. Who the hell was she and where had they been hiding her? A few months back, I’d lived in this building for days and hadn’t seen or heard another woman. And how could anyone sleep through this commotion?
That was, assuming we weren’t carting a dead body around. The Zone was paranormal enough—I didn’t need to
Andre backed through the doorway of the hospital room and maneuvered the duvet over the naked cot with a skill born of experience. Anywhere else, and I’d worry about the cleanliness of a bare mattress in a damp cellar, but I was pretty sure Andre would have ionic air cleaners and space shuttle technology to prevent anything resembling so much as a mote of dust.
Andre wasn’t poor, just weird, in a controlling kind of way. He always knew what was needed and where. Maybe it was his Special Ops training.
I’d learned enough not to demand explanations if there was any chance I wouldn’t like the answer, so I didn’t ask any. Yet.
Now that I had time to look, I could see that Beauty was breathing. The wrinkles in the corners of her eyes framed a face too old for her to be Andre’s wife and a little too young for her to be Julius’s. Like her fabled namesake, she appeared lovely and healthy, but also as in the fairy tale, she didn’t wake up, despite the jostling acrobatics of the clumsy men and Andre’s irritated growls.
I’d have said something witty about kissing her awake, except Julius’s mouth sagged with sadness as he tenderly arranged her nightgown and used the long end of the duvet to cover her bare feet. I liked Julius, even if he was Andre’s father. Besides being kind, he had aristocratically chiseled features, distinguished silver streaks in his hair, and an elegant mien Andre might someday aspire to.
Come to think of it, so did Beauty.
“Linens in the cabinet,” Andre stated tersely, punching up numbers on his cell phone. Cell phones worked down here?
I don’t know who he had meant to order about, but Tim was the one who obeyed, not me. After being deemed a Saturn’s daughter, I’d checked out Saturn, and sure enough, Capricorn is ruled by the planet Saturn. If you want to believe astrology, my late-December birthday means I’m goal-oriented, pessimistic, and cautious. And I don’t do orders.
Still suspended between drunken disbelief and fear, I whipped out my phone, too, intending to warn my friends not to come to work in the Zone for the next few days.
I verified that Milo was still with me. From my bag, he batted my hand with his head. Reassured, I ignored a rattle on the stairs.
As I punched buttons, a space suit clattered into sight. My eyebrows probably met my hairline, but I had a sleepy Cora on the other end of the line and couldn’t manage to question and yell at the same time.
Still on his phone, Andre joined me in the hall, seemingly unfazed by Space Man. So I yelled at Cora to stay away, kept Milo in my bag to keep him from being stomped on, and pretended I was on a
