Serafina and the Virtual Man (5 page)

But Sera had gone home. He could follow and convince her she wanted him after all. Which she did. She’d just chosen to walk away. Because sex, after all, was only sex.

And blood was only blood.

At the street corner, he bumped into a young woman hurrying home. Blair had no time to waste on charm. He just hooked her, mesmerised her, and drew her back into the alley with him. Then he bent and sank his teeth into her sweet-smelling, willing throat. She gasped and pushed into him, torturing his rock-hard erection. He concentrated on her blood.

It wasn’t Sera’s, but it was good.

****

Jilly ignored the pall of dread that settled about her as she walked down the familiar street toward the flat she grew up in. Early in the morning was the best time to go there.

The postman was delivering letters on the other side of the road. A man ran past her toward the bus stop. Somewhere, in one of the flats, a child was crying. The sound set her teeth on edge, reached right inside her before she could prevent it. She hated to hear children cry.

And so there was actually an element of relief when she turned away from it into her parents’ building, pushed open the permanently broken security door, and ran up the stairs to the first floor.

She used her old key and entered her old home.

It stank vaguely of rubbish, smoke, and stale alcohol. But at least there were no voices apart from a low-volume radio mutter drifting from the kitchen. Jilly walked up the narrow hall and pushed open the door.

Her mother sat at the kitchen table, pouring vodka into a cup of tea.

“Bit early, isn’t it?” Jilly said, striding across the room to throw open the window.

“Hair of the dog,” her mother said. “Want tea?”

“Go on.” Jilly grabbed a mug from the sink, rinsed it, and poured her own tea from the pot on the table. She didn’t sit down. “How’re things?”

“Same as always. Still working for Sera?”

“Aye. Andy in?”

Her mother shrugged. “Probably. In his bed.”

That’s why visiting home was best first thing in the morning. Less of them were up.

Mug in hand, Jilly strolled out of the kitchen and across the hall to Andy’s room. She shoved open the door and walked in.

“Oi. Wakey-wakey.” She picked up a pair of jeans from the floor and threw them at the huddle on the bed.

Andy jerked upright, arms flailing. “Jillian, you cow! What’d you do that for?”

“To wake you up.”

“There’s no need.” Andy jerked his head in the general direction of their parents’ room. “He’s been fine.”

Jilly grunted. “You and George got arrested for robbing a big house outside the city last August.”

“Charges were dropped,” Andy said with dignity.

“Why?”

“Bloke lost interest. What’s it to you?”

“What bloke?” Jilly leaned against the doorframe and sipped her tea.

“The owner.”

“Dale Ewan?”

Andy reached for his cigarettes and cast her a sardonic grin. “Friend of yours these days, aye?”

“No. So he just withdrew the charges against you? Wouldn’t the police want to prosecute you anyway?”

Andy shrugged. “He withdrew the complaint. We never got anything anyway, so the police let us go.”

Jilly frowned. “Why?”

“I just told you!” Andy said, hurling the empty cigarette packet on the floor in annoyance.

“No, I mean why didn’t you nick anything?”

Andy lay back down. His short, fair hair stuck up in spikes, emphasising the harassed expression on his sharp features. “The house was supposed to be empty. That’s why we went out there. Only it was crawling with people. When we heard the gunshot, we just fucked off.”

Jilly straightened, staring at her brother. “
Gunshot?
”

“Aye. Assumed it was aimed at us and ran like hell. Too good to be true, a house like that standing empty.”

Jilly roused herself. “Who told you it would be?”

“Can’t remember. Heard it on the grapevine.” Andy propped himself up on his elbow, scowling at her with obvious unease. “What’s it to you anyway? Don’t go raking it all up again, Jillian.”

“How’d you get past the alarm system?” she asked.

Andy grinned and touched the side of his nose.

“Oh, come on, Andy. That’s state-of-the-art stuff.”

“Think I can’t deal with that?”

“I know you can’t,” Jilly said, unimpressed.

Andy sighed. “We knew it wouldn’t be switched on.”

Jilly frowned. “Why not? How did you know that?”

“None of your bloody business! We just knew, all right?”

Jilly mulled it over in silence.

“Get us a cup of tea,” Andy suggested.

“Fuck off,” Jilly said amiably and took her own cup back to the kitchen, where her mother was yawning and flicking through the pages of a newspaper.

Jilly walked past her, and rinsed her mug under the tap. “Got to go.”

“You not going to wait and see your dad? I’ll wake him up.”

Jilly stared at her. “I can’t stay. I’ve got work.”

Her mother’s eyes fell. “Aye. Right enough. I’ll tell him you came by.”

“Don’t bother,” Jilly muttered, brushing past to the door, where she paused and glanced back at the huddled figure of her mother, pouring another cup of tea. Would she put vodka in that too? Just for an instant, pity swamped Jilly’s anger.

“You should get out of here, Mum. Go and live on your own.”

Her mother turned her head and gazed at her. “What would I do that for?”

Because it’s better than what you’re doing now, than what you’ve always done: nothing.
Before the bitter words got out, Jilly walked away and left the flat. She ran down the stairs and outside, gulping in the fresh air with massive relief.

****

She was glad when Sera answered her doorbell. Often, now, Sera stayed at Blair’s place, and no way was Jilly going there. On the other hand, she did want to talk to Sera without the others around, so she was prepared to risk running into Blair in the flat above Serafina’s.

“Hello,” Sera greeted her, standing back to let her in. “How was Dave?”

“Wanker,” Jilly said briefly. “I kneed him one.”

“Good,” Sera said with unstinting approval. She closed the door, scanning Jilly’s face as she often had over the years for signs of distress. Obviously finding none, her face cleared. “I was just on my way.”

“Wanted to talk to you first,” Jilly returned, following Sera upstairs to the flat. “About the Ewans.”

“Fair enough. There’s coffee in the pot. Help yourself while I grab my stuff.”

Jilly jerked her head at the bedroom. “Is he in there?”

“No, but even if he was, he’s not likely to blab, is he?”

“Point.” Almost the only thing Jilly liked about Blair was the fact that he couldn’t talk. He communicated telepathically with Sera, which was fine. Jilly didn’t like to be reminded of his mouth at all, since it contained sharp fangs for biting humans.

So she brought Sera up to date on what had happened on her computer last night and what she’d found out from Andy this morning.

Sera swore with gratifying awe. “How does that not count as a traumatic event?” she wondered. “Break-in, gunshots… Who did the shooting? Did Ewan shoot at Andy and George?”

“They didn’t wait to find out. But it could be why the case was dropped. You can’t go around shooting at unarmed burglars without the police getting anxious, even if they’re in your house.”

“See if Ewan has a firearms license.”

“Already checked. He has a shotgun for hunting. But there was no mention of gunshots in the police report of the break-in. What’s more, there’s something funny about the whole burglary thing. Somebody told Andy and George it would be safe, that the house would be empty and the alarms switched off.”

Sera sat down and grabbed her half-finished coffee while she shoved her feet into short boots. “That’s bizarre. Were they supposed to steal something in particular?”

“To order, you mean? I don’t think so, though Andy wouldn’t tell me stuff like that anyway. I think they were set up, Sera. What if they were meant to carry the can for whoever got shot that night?”

Sera straightened, staring at her. “Genesis Adam? You mean he was shot but didn’t die? I suppose that would explain what he told you. Or what someone or something told you.”

“Maybe. Only it doesn’t seem that anyone
was
shot that night. Like most things Andy and George get involved in, it didn’t work. And they beetled off before anyone could frame them for anything. Only how this all fits in with the Ewans, let alone their poltergeist, is way beyond me.”

“Well, if the poltergeist has been there since the shooting, I suspect someone
did
die,” Sera said, her voice grim. She stood up with an air of determination. “I need to get hold of this poltergeist again, and you need to talk to Exodus.”

****

Dale Ewan sat in his study and switched on the computer, trying to calm his growing sense of panic. The launch of the new system was only two months away, and nothing was falling into place as it should. He had good people working for him, the best in project managers, programmers, engineers, graphic artists, and even musicians, and yet the integration of software with hardware was so slow he was having to consider a postponement to the launch.

Some of it was Dale’s fault, of course. Always a realist, he acknowledged that. He spent too much time here these days—Petra hated being alone in the house since the poltergeist had begun making its ugly visitations—and not enough at the office overseeing things. Adam had been better at that side of it all anyhow: rolling up his sleeves and mucking in with the workers, yet presiding over the apparent chaos that miraculously produced a product in good time. He squashed the stab of grief and regret before it pierced too deeply. There was no time for that. The best he could do for Adam now was make a success of his new system.

Petra was doing spa things and lunch today in Edinburgh, so he’d use the opportunity to go into the office and force things along. It was still doable. And it was a good excuse to avoid lunch with Roxy. Petra could fend off Adam’s ex far better than he could, and with a lot more sympathy. He just hoped she wasn’t going to come up with some kind of a claim to Adam’s inheritance. Of course his lawyers would nip that in the bud. Adam’s relationship with Roxy, such as it was, had been over for almost a year.

He leaned forward and took up the mouse, about to set the alarm system on the test lab, when his spine shivered involuntarily. The psychic, Sera MacBride, had said poltergeists were just mindless, negative emotion. If that was true, how come Adam had spoken to him so rationally by computer last night?

Fancy a pint?

Of course, it could have been a fluke, or some residual instinct just resending a message that had been sent from Adam to him so often before. He’d been too freaked to check it out last night.

And so, before he set the alarm, before he checked through his e-mails for anything urgent, he examined his chat history. Exodus was indeed still there as a contact. And a bit of basic investigation traced the computer used to…one in his own network. A machine in the test lab.

Involuntarily, Dale’s gaze flew to the half-hidden sliding door. He realised he was holding his breath, that the physical pain in his stomach was caused by a pointless and incredibly stupid wish for Adam to be in there, sending him annoying messages for a laugh. Like it used to be.

He exhaled loudly. All that was left of Adam, if, indeed, it was Adam, was the poltergeist’s fury. And the idea of that in his test lab was unthinkable.

Slowly, Dale stood and went to the keypad on the wall. He tapped in the code and waited, his heart thundering in his ears as the door slid open.
Please, please, please…

It looked like it always did since Adam had installed the new machinery. A bank of computers, the first one switched on but sleeping; a wide, empty space with the new equipment above the old bench.

Dale breathed a sigh of relief and closed the door.

Chapter Five

Before she communicated again with the mysterious person pretending to be Genesis Adam, Jilly did a little more Internet research, aka hacking, until she discovered the Australian death certificate and documents relating to Genesis Adam’s emigration—which hadn’t, in fact, had time to be approved. He’d only been granted permission for a long stay. She also found out where he’d lived in Edinburgh and discovered his home was now on the market. On impulse, she called the estate agent and got an immediate appointment to view.

“Tell Sera I’ll be back by lunchtime,” she called over her shoulder as she left Serafina’s.

It wasn’t far to walk to Adam’s home, which turned out to be the top-floor flat of an impressive building in Drummond Place.

“It’s a fabulous apartment,” the estate agent gushed, her smile professional and well lipsticked. Her name was Emma. “So spacious and all the original features intact.”

The entrance hall itself was almost as big as Jilly’s entire home. The decorative ceilings were hugely high, with beautiful, ornate cornicing, the floors of lovely, polished dark wood, although large rugs the size of carpets added warmth and colour. Jilly’s eagle eye picked out a few frayed edges in those rugs, a couple of worn patches, and for no other reason that she could think of, the massive, gracious flat began to feel like a home.

The huge rooms hadn’t been cleared out. There were even pictures hanging on the walls: a couple of Highland landscapes that looked as old as the building; a modern portrait of an interesting-looking girl who looked vaguely familiar, with a guitar in her lap; a vivid Edinburgh scene that seemed to push at you from the wall. The pictures didn’t seem to be in any particular style, just bought on impulse, perhaps.

“Nice furniture,” Jilly observed, walking across the main front room, which the estate agent called the drawing room.

“Antique pieces,” Emma said lovingly. “They are available by separate negotiation if you’re interested.”

“Won’t the owner be taking them with him?” Jilly asked innocently.

“Hardly. Mr. Adam sadly passed away.”

“Oh dear.” Jilly trailed her hand along a carved wooden bookcase. It was stuffed with a chaotic collection of classic literature, technical books, and commercial fiction, plus a few books on military history and some political biographies. Genesis Adam’s taste, apparently, had been eclectic. For the first time that Jilly could recall, she wished she was like Sera and could pick up vibes from touching. “Well, if I was his heir, I wouldn’t sell it.”

“Me neither. But Mr. Ewan has entirely different tastes.”

Jilly blinked. “Dale Ewan is his heir?”

“Oh yes. Do you know him?” Emma looked surprised. Jilly supposed her accent was wrong.

“Slightly.” Jilly walked around the comfortable leather sofa to the baby grand piano and touched one ivory key. It gave an exquisite tinkle.

“Needs tuning,” Emma observed.

Bloody doesn’t.
Jilly glanced at the huge flat-screen television, the expensive wall-mounted speaker system, and walked on to discover the rest of the house.

It was like the complete opposite of Ewan’s home. Here, Genesis Adam’s interests surrounded her. Books, music, CDs and DVDs, and a massive collection of computer games for all possible platforms. In one room there was a collection of consoles and another television. There were books and chess sets all over the house, and in one room, a war-games table with a battle set out. Around the walls of this room hung antique weapons: a few swords, including a huge claymore, a mace, and a set of curved sabres.

There was even a small gym with scary-looking equipment. Jilly moved hastily on.

The master bedroom had a particularly large bookcase running along one wall, the books as chaotically arranged here as in the drawing room. The bed was huge and sleigh-shaped, the furniture dark wood, very male and unpretentious, however expensive. She could almost see him in here, the stranger who’d accosted her in Ewan’s secret study, lying on the bed, gazing at her with that slightly quizzical smile. He was naked. And now that she’d seen his gym, he had some very nice muscles in his upper arms, his chest and stomach...

Jilly felt a blush spreading through her body and hastily left the room to examine the bathrooms and the kitchen, which was another surprise. It looked like a
used
kitchen, not a boy-kitchen at all: a large, range-style cooker dominated one wall; there were knife marks ground into the worktops, and one long shelf was lined with well-thumbed cookery books with food crusted onto them.

“Did he live here alone?” Jilly asked.

“Lacks a woman’s touch, doesn’t it?” Emma said, running one disapproving finger along the knife marks on the worktop.

“I like it.”

Emma brightened. “It is a gorgeous flat, isn’t it? And you haven’t seen the best bit yet. There’s a huge attic upstairs!”

The attic was reached by a spiral stair. It was completely floored, and windows had been installed with clear views of the sky. But it was empty. No furniture, no junk, nothing except a lot of power points.

“Such a versatile space,” Emma enthused.

This was his work area, Jilly realised. But his computer,
all
his computers, presumably, plus all the other equipment he used, had been removed. And as she walked back downstairs and took a last glance around the rest of the flat, she realised something else: he’d never meant to come home from Australia, and yet he’d left all this stuff behind.

“So what do you think?” Emma asked brightly.

“I’m definitely interested,” Jilly said. “Very interested indeed.” Unfortunately not in buying it. The price on the schedule was more than she’d earn in her whole life. For the first time ever, she regretted that.

****

On impulse, Jilly caught a bus along to the West End and walked round to the registered address of Genesis Gaming. They had another sales office in London, but the Edinburgh premises were where the serious work was done. Since it was heading for midday, Jilly strolled up and down as if waiting for someone. A smartly dressed woman came out of the Genesis doorway and walked away with swift purpose. Jilly let her go. A few moments later, a bunch of four young men emerged, deep in conversation, and meandered in the general direction of the pub across the square. Jilly followed them.

She had time to wonder, as she slid onto a bar stool and ordered an orange juice and a toastie, if she was wasting her time here. But it seemed important to know who Genesis Adam really was, if there was any way Exodus could really be his spirit. His home had given her a fascinating glimpse of who he’d been, and now she wanted more detail. Who better to learn from than always critical employees?

The employees on her radar were sitting at the table behind her, discussing a mixture of jokes, office gossip, and technical issues.

“Even if you’re right,” one of them said—a curly-haired youth in a loud shirt and no tie— “there’s still no way this will be ready by March. The demo would be crap because it wouldn’t do half the things it’s capable of.”

“And all the so-called launch would do is give competitors the heads-up to rush something out first,” another said gloomily into his pint.

“Don’t be so pessimistic!” another exclaimed. “It’s always like this before a launch—seems like chaos and the deadlines impossible, but it always comes together in time. Trust me.”

“No point in trusting you,” the curly youth said rudely. “We all know it was Adam who drove the launches, and he isn’t here anymore.”

“No, but there are people who learned from him. And Dale’s in today.”

Shite, Jilly thought, glancing toward the door. She really didn’t want to be seen skulking so close to his office as if she was checking up on him. Which she supposed she was, indirectly…

Behind her was a brief, speaking silence, and she had to prevent herself quite forcefully from turning to see their expressions. Then someone launched into another technical problem, and they all joined in.

Jilly nodded thanks to the barman for her toastie and bit into it. Eventually, the curly youth came up to the bar to order another round of drinks—all soft ones, she noticed. No lunchtime drunks on the Genesis staff. Even the gloomy man with the pint of beer had stuck at one.

As he waited for his order, Jilly waited to be noticed. She knew from experience she would be. The youth was too shy to do more than look, although he gazed for too long, allowing Jilly to turn her head and catch his gaze. She nodded in a friendly way, and he gave a hesitant answering smile.

Allowing a hint of apology into her voice, Jilly said, “Don’t suppose you work at Genesis, do you?”

The young man’s eyebrows flew up. “Actually, yes. Why?”

“Trying to pluck up the courage to go in and leave my CV,” Jilly confided. “I thought the personal approach might help.”

“I’m sure it would,” the youth said a little too fervently, with a quick, admiring glance over her person before his gaze returned a little guiltily to her face.

“Do you know if they’re taking on new people?” Jilly asked.

“Probably will be in the spring, if everything goes according to plan.”

“Yes?” Jilly allowed her expression to perk into hope. “Then I’ll definitely give it a go. Is it a good place to work? Do you enjoy it?”

“Sure,” Curly said, his shoulders straightening. Clearly he was flattered to be spoken to for so long, not least because his colleagues were now blatantly watching and listening as he got the opportunity to impart his wisdom. “Good money, cutting-edge technology, decent management.”

“Still?” Jilly said eagerly. “A friend of mine said things had gone downhill since one of the partners died.”

“No, no,” Curly assured her, although she had the impression his enthusiasm had less to do with truth than his desire to make sure she still applied for a job. “Adam was brilliant, but everything still ticks along pretty well.”

“He was a genius,” Jilly observed.

Curly grinned. “Bloody was,” he agreed. “But never so almighty that he couldn’t muck in and get the work done. Pleasure to work for Adam—wasn’t it, boys?”

Jilly turned on her stool to take in the “boys,” who were all nodding with enthusiasm. The gloomy man even raised his nearly empty pint in a silent toast.

“Sounds too good to be true,” Jilly observed, with just a hint of scepticism.

“Oh no,” said the optimistic one. “You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. Laziness pissed him off. And stupidity.”

“I expect that happened more toward the end,” Jilly said sympathetically.

“Why would it?” the gloomy one pounced with a hint of aggression.

Jilly met his gaze with boldness, wondering how far he’d go in Adam’s defence. “I heard he went downhill. It was in the papers.”

“The papers talk shite,” Curly said.

“You mean he still came into the office every day?”

“Well, no, but then he never did that. Sometimes he worked for days on end at home, especially when he had a new idea.”

“So he was always fine with you guys, right up until he sold out?”

“‘Course he was. Didn’t see him much from around May, but he kept in touch by e-mail.”

Jilly frowned. “So why
did
he sell out, then? I always thought it was because of the—er—downhill thing.”

“No,” the gloomy man said. Curly paid the barman and began to ferry the drinks from the bar to the table. And Jilly realised she’d get no more out of them on that score. There was loyalty to the company, but she sensed there was a deeper loyalty to their dead boss that seemed to have more to do with affection. Their very silence said they missed him.

For some reason, she was glad of that. And yet it didn’t help her.

She drained her orange juice and slid off the stool. “Well, thanks for that, guys. I’m going to give them my CV and see what happens. See you around, I hope.”

****

So how, Jilly wondered as she walked back to Serafina’s, did Genesis Adam degenerate so quickly from the man who owned that flat, the brilliant developer of the wild and wacky imagination who inspired affection and loyalty in his employees, and man of many enthusiastic interests, to the drink-and-drugs soaked wreck who’d sold out to his partner and left the country to die? Unspeakably sad.

It was time to do that side of the research, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.

Sera was in the inner office with a client when she returned. Jilly merely grunted in response to Elspeth’s and Jack’s greetings and went to put the kettle on. Deep in thought, she made three cups of instant coffee, plonked one on Elspeth’s desk, said, “Oi!” to Jack by way of announcing its availability and took her own to her own desk, where the laptop awaited her.

Sighing, she sat down and became aware that both Elspeth and Jack were staring at her.

“Thank you, Jilly,” Elspeth said faintly.

Fuck, is that really the first time I’ve made her coffee? How grumpy an old bat am I?
Shite, she was twenty-nine years old; maybe she could afford to start being at least pleasant to a few people, people she didn’t actively dislike.

If I died tomorrow, or even in six months’ time, how would I be remembered? If at all...

Aware that these dark, uneasy thoughts were encouraged by her inexplicable sadness over Adam’s decline and death, she shook them off and set to work.

Adam’s end was documented in the newspapers and a couple of the big gaming magazines. In true British-tabloid style, his fall was given far more coverage than his success. Only now was there a clear picture of him, and Jilly’s heart gave a funny little lurch as she zoomed in on it.

Here was the man who’d accosted her in Ewan’s house. That much was clear, even though the photo was shot in a dark Edinburgh street, and Adam looked thin, gaunt, and unwell. There were swollen dark shadows under his eyes, several days’ stubble around his jaw, and even in the poor light, his clothes—jeans and a sloppy sweatshirt—looked none too fresh. She couldn’t make out his expression. The photographer’s flash was reflected in his eyes, so he just looked permanently surprised. It had been taken in May last year, shortly after rumours of his rapid decline had begun.