Portals (20 page)

We sorted ourselves into the ATVs once more and waited. Jones quickly formed a gigantic portal nearby and one by one we drove our vehicles through. It was quite dark wherever we were, and the lights only illuminated another forest.

He drove through last and got out of the Hummer to close the portal, but immediately opened another at the front of the line of vehicles. This one led us into bright daylight and a meadow of bright orange blossoms. The air was redolent with an unpleasant scent. It made me wrinkle my nose and roll up the window to block the overpowering and heady odor.

Once more Jones closed the portal behind him and moved to open a new one. We continued our progress across three more worlds, always in an area with no people, buildings or hint as to where we were. Tantalizing glimpses of forest and mountain and that was it.

I wondered why the Light Ones simply hadn’t done that as well, and asked Jones as he walked by. He stopped and looked at me for a brief moment before answering.

“Because, La Fi, I am welcome on these worlds, but the Light Ones were not.”

“Gabriel used some portals when he took Thulu.”

“Yes, but he was in and out very quickly. A steady stream of Light Ones would have certainly caught attention and been stopped.”

“So why not use other worlds than these?” I asked.

“There are many dead worlds which would not sustain life even for a few seconds. It is safer to use worlds we know can sustain us.”

I nodded and Jones smiled before continuing to the front of the group and opening the next portal.

I was surprised to see that it was dark when we arrived in the clearing where the Temple sat. I parked the ATV and took the keys to give to Jones. The portal had already winked out behind us.

I had that tired feeling one has at the end of a trip. A quiet and sense of ending that was almost, but not quite sad. The little sleep the night before had me ready for a nap.

Thulu and I met at the Hummer and pulled out our backpacks. We trudged over to Jones who stood in the center of the clearing. Several of the acolytes had come outside, but none approached or interfered with us. Jones went over and spoke to one who immediately made her way inside.

I leaned against Thulu, almost too tired to stand, and his arm went around me. I felt his lips on my hair, as he whispered, “Not long now, love.”

Jones opened a portal and nodded to Aela and her warriors and they went through. Aela called goodbye to the rest of us and said she’d see us soon and went through.

Jones closed the first portal and opened another for Reo and Sloane. He closed that one and opened yet another one, nodding to me and Thulu. We stepped through the portal into our family room. Shrieks immediately ensued when Jenna saw we had returned.

“You’re home, O.M.G. I’ll tell Carter.” And with that she was gone. Within moments, our dead family had arrived to see for themselves.

Carter must have lost no time telling Erik, as the phone I’d left behind began to sing to me. I answered and Erik’s voice held a strong note of relief. He said he’d be right over with Carter and we were to stay put. That was fine by me. It might be early afternoon in San Francisco, but lack of sleep the night before had drained me, and all I wanted to do was sleep.

Waiting for Erik to arrive, I went upstairs to take a long, hot shower. When I stepped out I felt truly clean for the first time since we’d left for the trip. I was happy to have Earth water I didn’t have to worry about getting in my mouth or nose or eyes.

The shower perked me up a little, and Thulu headed up for his own quick shower as I went downstairs. He had just finished and was back downstairs once more when I heard footsteps on the front porch and someone at the door. It opened and the little ball of energy that was Carter came flying through and into my arms.

“You came back!” he exclaimed, hugging with all his might.

“Of course, I did, sweetie. Didn’t I say I would? You’re my boy, aren’t you? I couldn’t stay away from you!”

“I love you, Mama, I missed you.” It was the first time he’d called me that. Before that we’d been Uncle and Aunt or sometimes Papa Thulu and Mama Fi, names he’d picked up from Jenna. I hugged him back and looked at Thulu with glistening eyes.

“Hey, no hug for me?” joked Thulu and I let go, so Carter could dash to him. Thulu swept him high in the air before holding him in a tight hug.

“Yes, mega hugs for my dad, too. Mama and Dad. I love you.”

“I love you, too, slugger. We both do. We missed you.”

I wiped away the tears that were leaking down my face. Guilt made me wonder if he’d been as okay with the trip as he’d said he was. I suspected that he had told us what we wanted to hear, and I made a promise to myself that I would try to never do that to him again. Even if we had to go away for something, I wanted him to feel like he could tell us if he didn’t want us to go. And even if we had to go anyway, I wanted him to know we loved him and would come back.

I’d make sure he knew that, but for now family, living and dead, were starting to arrive. Some had picked up food on the way, and Thulu and I were firmly told to sit down while the others took care of us.

Ally called from the clinic to say she loved us and would catch up later. Mara was unable to get away from her office, so we decided we would wait and fill everyone in when we were all together.

Kalie, Thulu’s five year old niece, cheered and said something about a barbeque because we hadn’t had one in a long time and everything came to an abrupt stop. We had stopped having them when Gabriel had invaded our last one.

All eyes turned to Erik. For a moment, he had that deer in headlights look before visibly shaking it off. He snatched Kalie up and gave her a hug and mussed her hair.

“You are absolutely right, we should have a barbeque this weekend.”

“Yeah, Granddad, before the summer ends.” Kalie hugged him back.

He held her tight before setting her back on her feet.

She ran off with her cousins and Erik gave us a weak smile.

“Life goes on.”

I moved to give him a hug, not saying anything. Just letting him know he still had family who loved him.

“You ready to be my minion, La Fi?”

“Anytime, Dad.” I answered.

For the moment, our family was content to know we were home. We’d give them all the details on Saturday and I’d upload all the pictures and share them on our private family website.

A pleasant afternoon was spent just hanging out, laughing and joking. There’d been no more riots or fires, and the civil disturbances around the world really seemed to have died down.

That night, Thulu and I sat in our window seat, curled up together, with our fingers laced. Carter was long asleep in his own bed. And Jenna and Parker had planted themselves downstairs with Sophie.

I let my head rest against his chest, as we watched the city lights. It felt good to be home.

The next morning we quickly settled back into our usual routine. We’d just finished breakfast when Parker popped in to say we had a client at the office. We hadn’t been to the office since Reo’s shooting. Even before that, our usual office hours had been sporadic while we dealt with the aftermath of the deaths of Nana Fae, Mama Deb and Evan.

Parker was uneasy, and I asked him why.

He hesitated and looked from me to Thulu and back, making sure he faced Thulu so he could read his lips. “She’s human, La Fi. She’s alive.”

I frowned. We didn’t get live clients, except magical ones. Certainly not humans.

“Is she in the office?” asked Thulu.

Parker shook his head. “She’s in the back parking lot. She’s been sitting in a car and every now and then she yells out hello and that she needs a detective of the strange kind.”

Thulu and I laughed, as Thulu added, “Well, that’s us, all right. I guess you can’t get a whole lot stranger.”

“So, she couldn’t see you?”

“Nope, I stood right in front of her. She could maybe sense me, though. She asked if anyone was there and if they were to please let the detectives know she needed help.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“Very interesting,” said Thulu.

I looked at him. “Shall we go see what the lady wants?”

“Sounds like a plan to me, love.”

I moved my tablet from my backpack to my purse, thought about our guns and decided better safe than sorry, so I handed Thulu’s to him and tucked my own into the special pocket built into my purse. I wondered if it was safe to take Carter, but I wasn’t ready to be parted from him yet. We gathered him up and headed to the garage and our SUV.

When we arrived at our office, Thulu carefully pulled into the parking lot.

A car only a couple years old was parked in back, next to our usual spot. It gleamed in the sun. Tinted windows gave us no clue about the person inside.

Thulu got out, and I stayed in the car with Carter. We figured a bit of caution wouldn’t hurt.

Thulu spoke to the woman for a minute or so and nodded to me. I took the keys he’d left in the ignition and pulled Carter out of his car seat and locked the SUV.

The woman was in her thirties, Hispanic, with dark brown hair and beautiful hazel eyes. She was dressed casually in jeans and a pink T-shirt. She wore athletic shoes that had seen better days, but had been recently cleaned.

She nodded as I walked up holding Carter’s hand. I held out my other hand to shake hers as Thulu introduced us. Her name was Lilia Cruz. I wondered why we were talking to her, but Thulu spoke before I could ask.

“Let’s go into our office, shall we?” 

If he wanted to wait until we were inside our office to talk, I’d go along with it. Once we had the door locked behind us, I settled Carter in an area we had set up for him. It had some of his “office” toys and a kid sized table and chairs. He liked to draw and color at the office. He called it his “paperwork.”

We offered Lilia something to drink, and she accepted a glass of water. Rather than the more formal setting at our desks, we sat on our sofa in our corner grouping and settled Lilia into a chair. I opened a document on my tablet and made notes as we went along.

“My younger sister is missing. I’m afraid she’s been kidnapped.” She pulled a picture out of her purse and showed us a lovely woman. The family resemblance was strong and it was obvious they were sisters.

“Then shouldn’t you have gone to the police?” asked Thulu.

“Yes, and I did go to the police, but they’re not very interested.” She gave a sigh. I understood how she felt. “She’s an adult and only missing for two days. And she’s different.” She hesitated slightly before the last word.

“Why come to us?” I asked as gently as I could. I sensed something special about this woman. Usually we would have politely sent her on her way, but something was telling me to hear her out. Obviously Thulu felt the same way.

“Another friend recommended you.”

“Could you be a little more specific?” I asked.

“You helped someone last year and gave a message to him from his dead wife. He said to tell you he knows he’s breaking the rules by talking to me, but that you should listen to me because my sister, Daria, is his friend and is like you. I don’t want to you be angry with him.”

I remembered one man from the year before. It had been a simple case. Heated words had been the last thing a young woman had said to her husband before they were hit head on. She had been driving and was killed instantly, while he had walked away with little more than a few cuts and bruises. I pulled out my tablet to bring up the case. The name escaped me. There it was. Lin. Mei and Tommy Lin.

I looked up from the tablet.

“We won’t be angry. What is the man’s name?”

“Tommy Lin,” she said. Bingo.

“Why didn’t he call us?” Thulu asked. “He has our numbers.”

“He did call, but there was no answer.” Thulu and I looked at each other. I had completely forgotten to check my messages yesterday. From the look of chagrin on Thulu’s face, I think he had too.

“Our apologies, we’ve been out of town and only returned yesterday,” explained Thulu.

“I asked him to give me your number and address so I could try to find you.” Her voice didn’t hide the nervousness she felt.

I smiled gently at her. I was curious about her sister who was like us. “It’s okay. We’ll do whatever we can. For now, we need as much information as you can give us.”

Lilia spent the next few minutes giving us an overview of Daria’s activities. She worked part time at one of the restaurants at the Wharf as a waitress and made a decent living. She also had a little side business as a psychic, where she made a nice income. Because she really was psychic.

Daria’s supernatural activities reminded me of Nana Fae’s hiding in plain sight. Well, sort of. Nana had been a fortune teller for a carnival for some years. As an empath, she’d been pretty successful at doing her crystal ball and Tarot card readings.

Daria had set up a small reading room in a new age book shop and had a steady clientele. Psychic was pretty much a catch-all phrase and wasn’t all that helpful. So, Thulu asked Lilia about Daria’s specific gifts.

Lilia frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

We explained the different abilities and Lilia’s brow cleared. “Oh, I see. I can’t tell you exactly what she can do, but I know what she can’t do. Will that help?”

We nodded and began the process of elimination. When we’d exhausted all the gifts we knew of, we knew she didn’t teleport, move objects or fly. Lilia was less certain about some of the others, such as predicting the future and communing with the dead. She was, however, confident that Daria was a telepath and mostly sure about her being an empath. It wasn’t uncommon for someone with abilities to have several.

“So when did you realize she was missing.”

“Almost right away. We were supposed to have dinner two nights ago, and she didn’t show. I thought maybe she had gotten hung up at work. She didn’t answer her cell phone. I called the restaurant where she worked the lunch shift and they said she’d left on time and had talked about meeting me for dinner. She wasn’t scheduled to go into the book store, but I called there anyway. Just in case a last minute client had called. They said she wasn’t scheduled to do any readings until the next day. Yesterday.” Lilia’s pretty face was lined with worry, and her eyes filled up with tears again as she spoke. “I don’t know what to think. She is always responsible. Always. She simply disappeared after her shift and no one has seen or heard from her since.”

‘That’s not quite correct,” said Thulu. “Someone has seen her. Someone knows something. We just need to find them.” He smiled. “And Lilia, I’m pretty good at finding people.”

Thulu asked her for a moment and closed his eyes. I felt the familiar energy as he kicked into his zone. After only a minute or so, he shook his head and opened his eyes.

“Fog.” He looked at Lilia. “I apologize, Lilia. Something is blocking my ability to see Daria.”

Tears started to well up in her eyes once more, and he quickly reassured her. “That’s not necessarily bad news. It means there’s a good chance she’s probably alive; otherwise there’d be no reason to hide her location. I’m going to try to see if I can’t pinpoint the blank spot and try to backdoor in that way. We also have a friend who is a telepath and empath like Daria, and we can see if he can connect to her that way.”

Thulu leaned forward and looked earnestly at Lilia. “The thing is, Lilia, we have options here. It might not be as simple as me tapping in and finding her immediately, but we have a chance and that’s a lot more than we had when we started.”

Lilia nodded, wiping her eyes. I handed her the box of tissues we kept on the corner table. A box that rarely got used by clients.

We got Lilia’s contact info, and I added that to her file. Before she left, she reached into her purse and handed us a hairbrush in a sealed plastic bag. There were dark strands on it. “This is Daria’s. I wasn’t sure if you needed something that belonged to her. If you need something bigger, I can get clothing.”

“Lilia, this is perfect. Thank you for being so careful,” said Thulu. He opened the bag and slid only a small part of the brush out, in order to touch the bristles on one end. Thulu didn’t need to touch an object, but sometimes his ability could be clarified by doing so. He closed his eyes once more, but shook his head after a few seconds.

“There’s definitely something blocking her, but this is the perfect thing for our friend.”

Lilia nodded and we walked her to the back door. I took her hands at the door. “My husband really is good at what he does, Lilia. I’ve yet to see him fail. We can’t make promises, but if he says our chances are good that she’s alive, I’m going to put my faith in him.” I looked into her eyes. “Our friend is also very good, and we will do the best we can. That much I can promise you.”

She nodded and leaned forward to give me a hug. We watched as she walked to her car and drove away. Back inside, Thulu turned to me, annoyance on his usually open face. “I’m getting very tired of things interfering with the people or things I want to find.”

“Do you think all the new magic could be interfering?”

Frowning, he thought about that for a moment. “That’s possible, Fi, but I’m not sure that’s it. This feels more like someone is deliberately blocking her. Much as the relics were blocked.”

“What about what you told her about trying to find the blank spot?”

“I’m going to try that now.” He went over to his computer and booted it up. I went to the corner where Carter was drawing and pulled out my tablet to read.

Thulu’s gift mystified even me. I had no real clue how it worked, in spite of his careful explanations. I wondered if he’d tried the reverse process on the relics. I didn’t recall him saying anything about it.

After about fifteen minutes, Thulu let out a heavy sigh and sat back in his chair. I turned to watch him. He gave me a rueful smile.

“Nothing. I’d hoped this time I could try to find what was blank, but every time I think I’m close, it goes sliding off.”

“Could a Light One be doing it?”

“No, definitely not a Light One, but I don’t know what it is. There’s an energy there that I simply don’t recognize. It shoves me away, and when I try to fix on where the energy is, it slips to the side.” He gave another sigh.

“What bothers me even more, though,” he continued, “is that this is somehow connected to Reo’s shooting. Something is going on. This isn’t just one person, either.” He pulled out his phone. “Time to talk to Reo, and Lassiter, too, I think.”

Thulu called Reo first and quickly filled him in. He agreed to come over that afternoon. We’d give him a firm time after we talked to Lassiter.

Lassiter’s phone went to voice mail, so Thulu left a short message with only his name and a request to please call. No number. I smiled approvingly at his caution.

We admired Carter’s drawing of Parker, Jenna and Sophie and carefully rolled it up to put on the refrigerator at home. I thought Carter had some talent. I said so to Thulu, who raised a skeptical brow, as he said, “You are such a mom.”

“I shall take that as a compliment,” I replied loftily.

Lassiter returned our call on the way home and Thulu tapped the bluetooth button on the steering wheel. We arranged to meet for lunch at our house. We quickly called Reo and he said that would work. He was busy getting ready to return to his show that night, but said the break would be perfect.