Chapter Eight
Thane followed Reya down the narrow alleyway and through an unmarked door. Brown walls were gouged and paint peeled from every surface. The steps beneath his feet groaned. In sharp contrast, deep, smooth blues music wafted through the dark, dingy, narrow hallway and grew louder as they climbed the stairs to the third floor.
“Is that live music?” he asked her.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Old man blues played by real old men.”
“My favorite kind,” he said, meaning it. They hadn’t said much to each other since she’d confided in him about her job. Her honesty had surprised him. His reaction to it surprised him more. He hadn’t expected to feel empathy for her. She was capable and strong; it hadn’t occurred to him that she suffered just like everyone else.
And walking up the stairs behind her, he had to admit he was getting more interested in her by the moment. She lived in a different world than he did. A better world. He had no delusions he’d ever see it.
She went to the end of the third floor hallway and stopped in front of a door. Music played behind it: horns, drums, guitars, piano, and one old man singing his heart out.
“Let me do the talking,” she said. “They can be a little skittish with strangers.”
She rapped on the door a few times. The music stopped haltingly, and the hallway became very quiet. Feet shuffled on the other side. The keyhole opened and an eyeball peered through. Reya smiled at the other side.
The door opened a moment later, and a short, slight, seventyish black man held his arms open wide to embrace her. They hugged like old friends, but the old man’s dark eyes latched onto Thane with acute wariness.
“Reya, child. You come to visit?” he asked, pulling back and keeping his eyes on Thane.
She replied, “It’s been too long.”
He waved a hand. “Eh, time. It don’t mean nothing, you know that.” Then he nodded toward Thane. “I see you brought a friend.”
“Yes,” she said and pulled him forward. “Thane Driscoll, this is Chu. An old friend, and one amazing trumpet player.”
Chu shook his hand, his grip firm and strong for an old guy. “Pleasure,” he said. Then he looked at Reya. “I don’t expect this is a social visit.”
“Sorry, no,” she said. “I need your expertise.”
He grinned at Thane. “Women. Always wanting something.”
Thane smiled back. He was a wise man.
Chu closed the door behind them and locked it. Then he led them into a surprisingly large living space. It was a loft, divided into rooms with walls that didn’t quite reach the thirty-foot ceilings. Bits of music were coming from one of the rooms, and Thane could hear men laughing and talking as they jammed. A deep baritone voice reverberated through the room.
“Do you guys play in clubs?” he asked Chu.
Chu laughed. “Sometimes. Pays the bills. But mostly, the music is just for the soul.”
He led them to a door in one corner of the loft that was set back from the others. Chu pulled out a chain from around his neck and unlocked the door with a brass key. He let them into the dark room, latched the door behind him, and hit the lights.
Thane almost went for his gun.
There were animal faces and eyes staring back at him in jars on shelves that crowded the small room. A single bulb lit an old, heavy desk. Massive tombs were stacked in every corner. The rest of the place was littered with dirty apothecary jars, mortars and pestles, trays, tubes, and gadgets he’d never seen before. It smelled like formaldehyde, and it was the last place on Earth he’d expect to find a trumpet player.
“Nice place,” he said.
“Thank you.”
Thane was itching to ask him where he got all this stuff, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t get an answer.
Chu stepped behind the desk and motioned to two stools on the other side. “Whatcha got for me, girl?”
Reya handed him a paper with the symbols drawn on it. “Do you recognize these?”
Chu sat down and swung a magnifying glass on a stand over the desk. He turned on the magnifying light and peered through the glass. For long moments, he studied the drawings, all the while making humming noises.
Finally, he looked up at Reya. “I can tell you about one of them.”
“I’ll take whatever you can give me,” she said.
He nodded and put on a pair of reading glasses. Then he stood up and headed to one of the stacks of books behind him. One by one, he peered at the title on the binding and discarded each into another pile.
Thane tried to read the titles, but they appeared to be in a foreign language. He leaned over to Reya and whispered, “Exactly how old is Chu?”
“Older than me and you combined,” she said. “Why?”
Thane shrugged. “Just curious. Do all your friends have places like this?”
“Who says I have any more friends?” she deadpanned.
He eyed her, but her expression was serious. Maybe she didn’t.
“Is he dead?” Thane asked.
Reya smiled. “No. Soon though.”
He was taken aback by her casual declaration. “Does he know that?”
“No, but it wouldn’t matter. Chu is ready to go back. His work here is almost done. He’s lucky he gets to leave.”
She said it like dying was no big deal. He really liked living, as hellish as it was at times. “You’re not going to tell him?”
“No,” she said, cutting him a warning look. “What would it change?”
“Give him a chance to settle his affairs? Say goodbye?” Thane pressed.
Reya looked at him with those big, silvery eyes. “He does that every day. He lives with the people he loves. He pays his debts. He gives to the needy. He serves others. There is no unfinished business.”
Sometimes when she talked, she sounded ancient and wise.
“So if you say a word to him, I’ll kill you myself,” she added.
And then other times, she didn’t.
Chu dumped a heavy book on the desk, which prompted a cloud of dust. With a sigh, he said, “One of these days, I’m gonna put these books on my computer.”
“You have a computer?” Thane said.
Chu frowned at him. “Of course. How do you think we get gigs? We got a website and everything.”
Then he unlatched the clasp on the book and opened it up. It nearly eclipsed the desk and was filled with hand-drawn Gothic-style writings and pictures. Oversize, gold letters started the first word of each page.
Thane and Reya leaned over the book as Chu dragged one page at a time over. Then he stopped on one page, scanned it, and said, “This is it.”
The top symbol was centered at the top of the page. There was a map of the Earth below it. Electric blue lines crisscrossed the globe, just above the surface. The rest of the page was composed of the mystery text.
“This is the one I remember.” Chu pointed to the symbol on the paper that looked like a circle with starbursts inside it. “Mmm,” Chu said, reading the page. “It’s the grid.”
“Which grid?” Reya asked.
Chu glanced at Thane. “Depends.”
She looked over at Thane. “It’s okay. He’s a legacy.”
That surprised Chu as much as it surprised Thane. What was a legacy? Whatever it was, Chu was looking at him like he was something special, so he decided to play along.
Chu said, “It’s been a while since we had a legacy. This means something. Especially with the grid.”
“The new grid?” Reya said.
“Yes,” Chu replied.
That was about the time Thane decided he was in way over his head. “What grid?”
Chu peered over his glasses at Thane. “The Earth grid. Energy grid. Grid of consciousness. The energy that binds us all. The energy that holds the Universe together.”
That really wasn’t helping him. “The blue lines in the picture are a grid of energy?”
“They are more than just lines drawn on a map,” Reya said. “They exist here, all around us. Energized by light, and in turn, energizing light.”
Right. “So there’s an old one and a new one?”
She nodded. “The old grid was powered by and therefore powered Atlantis. It was destroyed by the earthquake and Atlantis sank. Creation of a new grid began after that. It’s nearly complete.”
He decided to just skim past the whole Atlantis thing and concentrate on the bits that made sense. “And what will happen when it’s complete?”
Chu blinked at him. “The beginning of Enlightenment.” Then he squinted at Reya. “Doesn’t he know any of this?”
“He’s new. I’m working on it,” she said, not sounding particularly happy. “What does the symbol have to do with the grid?”
Chu hunkered over the page again. “It says the symbol is part of the activation key. It exists in reality and will be used to fire the new grid, bringing light to the heavens. That’s a direct translation.”
Thane had no idea what he was talking about.
“Do you think the other two symbols are part of the activation key as well?” Reya asked.
Chu took off his glasses. “I don’t know. If they are, they were never recorded anywhere.”
Thane narrowed his eyes. “You know that for sure?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
And that settled that.
“Thank you,” Reya told him.
Chu closed the book, latched it, and ushered them out to the front door. The tunes were cranking in the other room, and Thane half wished he could stay for a while.
They were out in the hallway heading down the stairs when Reya asked him, “Did your father or mother ever mention a grid?”
“No.” He would have remembered. “What does it mean? And why does Surt want it?”
She stopped at the landing on the first floor. “I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”
* * *
Reya was shaking by the time they got back to Thane’s place. She walked through the rooms before calling Orson. She didn’t even care that Thane was there. She needed some goddamned answers.
“Orson, get down here this minute.”
Thane raised an eyebrow, and she ignored him. She didn’t care what he thought of her or her invisible friend. This was way more than she’d signed up for. She was not going to be responsible for the energy grid of the entire f*cking planet.
Orson appeared seconds later and seemed quietly surprised that Thane was there, too. “Yes?”
Thane’s head turned toward Orson’s voice, but he couldn’t see him. No normal human could.
“Anything on the symbols?” she asked.
He sighed. “It’s not that easy—”
“Yes, it is. I got answers. If I can get them, you can,” she replied hotly. She was getting sick of excuses.
“I’m working on it,” he said. “You know time has no meaning to the council.”
“Well, time sure has something to do with the new grid,” she told him.
Orson looked over at Thane in question.
“He knows,” she said.
“You weren’t supposed to share—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted. “You want to know what’s going on? I can’t tell you unless he knows. That’s final.”
Thane’s eyebrows rose. “Thanks?”
“Shut up,” she told him, and turned her ire on Orson. “So you tell your bosses that if they want my help, if they want to know what Surt is up to, give me the information I need.”
Orson blinked a few times. “You really shouldn’t talk to them like that.”
“Believe me,” she said, holding her tone. “That’s the nicest way I can put it.”
Orson nodded and disappeared.
“He’s gone,” Thane said.
Reya rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to calm herself. “Yes.”
It was quiet for about thirty seconds. Then Thane asked, “What is a legacy?”
Reya headed into the kitchen, grabbed two beers, and handed one to Thane. She took a big swig before talking. “You’re special. You agreed to have certain abilities.”
“Like hearing the voices,” he said, and leaned back against the countertop.
“Right. And other abilities that haven’t manifested yet. They will.”
“What abilities?”
She gave up any semblance of discretion. At this rate, she was going to be a Redeemer forever. “You can alter light and dark. You will have the ability to focus both or diffuse both.”
“How?”
She sipped her beer. “It’s different for everyone, but trust me, if you get your abilities, you’ll need them.”
He watched her intently. “For what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and she didn’t. “Legacies only appear when something big is going to happen to the planet.”
He took a long drink of beer and nodded as if trying to absorb it. “The grid.”
She was glad he wasn’t fighting it anymore. She wasn’t in the mood to argue about something that was real, whether he wanted it to be or not. “Yes.”
“How fragile is this grid?” he asked.
It was an insight she hadn’t expected him to grasp. “It’s strong as long as the light is strong.”
“And if it’s not?”
“Then this entire planet could go back to the Dark Ages and start all over again.”
He thought about that for a moment. “That sounds pretty ominous. If it’s true.”
She gave a short laugh. There it was, the narrow-minded cynicism she knew and loved. “I don’t really don’t care if you believe it. It’ll happen, just like it’s happened before. There is history.”
“There is not one shred of evidence that Atlantis ever existed,” he pointed out.
They were all idiots. They deserved to be vanquished to the Stone Age. But really, what did she care? Because she sure wasn’t going to wait around for the human race to grow the f*ck up again.
She smirked at him. “Because that’s what happens when the grid fails.”
* * *
“I want you to come into work today,” his boss said through Thane’s cell phone. “I don’t care if your entire family died. I need you here.”
Thane had been able to avoid his boss for the past few days, but the body count on the evening news was rising and so was the pressure to find answers.
“I am working on the situation,” he said quietly. Reya was in the shower, and he didn’t want to explain this to her. “Believe me, I’m more use to you this way than if I came in and twiddled my thumbs.”
“I need your butt in your chair here,” his boss said. “I’ve got the mayor calling me. Do you know what that means?”
Thane winced. He did.
“That means that I told him I had my two best paranormal investigators working the case, and we’d have answers soon. And that means you.”
He’d never heard O’Brien so fired up. They must be riding him hard. Unfortunately, Thane was telling him the truth. O’Brien had no idea what was going on. If he did, he’d probably quit on the spot.
“I’ll be in today,” he said.
“When?”
“This afternoon,” he said. “I need to finish something up.”
“Fine, I’ll be waiting.” And the call disconnected.
“Damn,” Thane muttered.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Reya said from behind him.
He turned to find her standing in the doorway of his bedroom. His bathrobe was cinched tightly around her waist, and she was barefoot. It was far sexier than it should have been, and he was turned on more than he should be for a woman who was only mostly human.
“My boss wants me in the office,” he told her.
Reya smiled knowingly. “Shit hit the fan, huh?”
That was an understatement. “What are the odds we’ll tie this up by this afternoon?”
She laughed and crossed her arms. “Zero.”
He gripped his cell phone and tried to come up with a solution. There wasn’t any. He needed to follow the lead he was on. No one else would be able to. And no one was going to stop Surt from torching people—at least not the traditional way.
Unfortunately, he was on probation and this would probably cost him his job. Plus he was a legacy and he would be getting powers, whatever that meant, but he was pretty sure they weren’t going to be “office friendly” powers. He might turn green and get supersized.
On the other hand, a little face time would give him a chance to use the department resources. Not that he didn’t trust Chu, but Thane doubted he’d memorized every symbol in the history of the world.
Reya walked up to him, looking curious. “What did you decide?”
He marveled at her uncanny insight. On the other hand, she could probably read his mind and he just didn’t know it. “I need to go in for a few hours. Then I’m all yours.”
She blinked. “Good, I’ll go with you.”
He sighed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“They won’t even know I’m there,” she said.
Oh, great. Just what he needed. An invisible woman wandering around the precinct. “Let’s just concentrate on getting through the morning. What’s next?”
She crossed her arms. “I thought we might pay a visit to a hypnotist.”
“Why would you want to get hypnotized?” he asked.
“Not me,” she said with a smile.