Out of Mind

do.”

Ben bit back a protest. She couldn’t be left alone, but it looked as if they would have to make her think she had been. With his mind, he told Sykes what he intended to do.

“Are you sure she won’t pick up on you?” Sykes said.

Ben gave a short laugh. “If I can’t manage this, we’re in big trouble. Talk to Marley, will you? And Pascal, of course. And Gray. If necessary I’ll pull in Liam and Ethan—or even Poppy.”

“Not unless we have to,” Sykes said. “We have to be able to control this.”

Their exchange took only an instant, and Willow turned away, heading for the door. She shot them a warning glance over her shoulder.

Chapter 16

Cabs weren’t her thing, but Willow took one back to Royal Street. First, she wanted to get there fast. Second, when Ben and Sykes followed her out of Fortunes, she wanted to be out of sight already.

“Now you know you gotta keep to the center of things?” the cab driver said, starting the same old lecture she’d heard before. “Don’t be wandering off the beaten track on your own. Don’t matter what time of day it is. Be safe. And if you need a cab—” he shoved a card over his shoulder “—call me.”

Holding Mario, she thanked the driver when he stopped a few yards short of Millet’s and paid him too much. He tried to give her change but she pressed it back at him.

He took a good look at her then and a pleased smile creased his deeply tanned face. “Guess you don’t need my help,” he said. “You’re one of them.”

With that, he drove off, and she heard him turn up his radio. Swamp pop pelted the damp and ever-hotter air. Bobi Jackson’s “Alligator Woman” started her shoulders rolling.

One of them. The cabby had called her that.

The turmoil Willow felt had not lessened, but she knew what she wanted to do about it. She had a mission, and she had to take control—for the sake of others. Or she would try, just in case the thoughts she had weren’t imaginary.

They probably were imaginary, which would be good, because then she could put her powers behind her again and go back to being normal.

The sidewalk was thick with the wanderers and the striders. A kid scooted up beside her and cracked his skateboard onto one end, startling Willow. He grinned at her, deftly used a sneaker toe to flip the board into the air and caught it.

All she wanted was to be normal, just plain old normal. Why was that too much to ask?

As quietly as she could, she opened the ornate iron gates to the alley leading to the back of the Court of Angels.

She hugged the wall of the shop and crept forward, trying not to make the gravel crunch under her feet. If Pascal heard her, or any other family member, she would have to face an inquisition. Mario struggled and she put him down. He sat at once and stared up at her.

What would she do if someone came to claim him? The way he’d shown up was strange, but he was part of her life already. She tried to take comfort in not having heard or read a thing about someone looking for a little red dog.

She darted across the alley, skirted the big storeroom where she kept her scooter and the trailer and entered the courtyard, grateful for the cover of palms, lush ferns, and bamboo that exploded from every area. White impatiens, tall but dense rather than leggy, bobbled softly among the dark green fronds. Water trickled like liquid silver from the fountain angel’s shell, and she smelled the vanilla scent of creamy clematis climbing railings and scaling over windows.

Deception.

This was a stage set to give a false impression. Why she had never thought of the place that way before, she didn’t know. Peace was a facade, and behind that facade, intrigue seethed on every side. And this was exactly where she was supposed to be at this moment.

She had not told Ben or Sykes, but she thought the picture she had been shown of the woman resembled some of the angels in the courtyard.

Willow looked at the ground, listened and opened herself to feel anything that wanted to approach.

Mario trotted forward and disappeared into a bed where lilies unfurled their pointed blooms.

Willow inclined her head to see where Mario had gone—and the faintest shade of pink washed slowly down to color the scene in front of her. Her stomach turned. Pink blended to mauve and she closed her eyes.

She couldn’t move, yet movement was all around her.

A strong current, a blast like high wind, buffeted her this way and that. If her feet weren’t rooted to the ground, she would fall. She tried to open her eyes, but couldn’t.

“Can you hear me?” A man’s voice sounded so familiar that she reached out. “You over there. Can you hear me?”

Was he talking to her?

“Are you embarrassed because you’re naked?” the voice asked. “I won’t look, but you’ve got to say somethin’ to me, girl. Let me know you’re alive—if you are alive. We don’t know how long we’ve got before someone comes back. We gotta get out of here first.”

Willow was too hot. The wind settled to a whirling stream. Behind her eyelids she saw something small, a writhing thing she couldn’t make out. But she was sure the voice came from this.

Pale, partly buried in bright yellow granules and walled off by glass, when the creature stopped twisting for an instant it became invisible, blended with the yellow-white of its surroundings.

Of course she knew the voice. “You’re Chris,” she said, amazed and not certain whether she spoke aloud. “Chris? Where are you? Who’s with you?” He had not been talking to her before, after all.

He didn’t answer. The tiny shape turned over and over, like a minuscule shelled shrimp.

“Girl,” Chris’s voice said again. “We gotta talk. We gotta help each other. I’m Chris. What’s your name?”

The next sound Willow heard was a muted crying, so soft she had to strain to hear it at all.

“Yeah,” the Chris voice said. “Good. You’re not dead—yet. I’d like to cry, too, but there’s got to be a way out of this. Hoo, mama, this is weird. Did you, er…did you meet someone interesting before you came here? You know, interesting in a sexy way?”

The female sound rose to a thin wail.

“Okay, okay, we won’t talk about it right now. But it was somethin’ wasn’t it? I couldn’t see her, but I could sure feel her. Geez, no one ever came on to me like that before. Were you blindfolded, too?”

“We can’t get out,” a female voice said. “We can’t climb the glass. We’d just slip back down.”

“Stay with me,” Chris said. “We’ll figure it out.”

“We’re going to die.” The other one sounded as if she had already given up. Then she said, almost inaudibly, “I’m Caroline. I don’t want to die.”

“No. We won’t. If we were going to die, we’d be dead already. We were captured for some reason. I just want us out of here before they get a chance to show us what they think we’re good for.”

Slowly, Willow’s eyes opened. The mauve haze had deepened to a shade of purple she had already seen once today.

Stumbling, parting ferns to step into one of the plantings, she went to the first stone angel she saw and stared into its face. Then she moved on to another, this one tall and very slender, its marble drapery falling in intricate folds.