Infinityglass

Chapter 1

Hallie, September, New Orleans

“The only reason you want my help is so you can see my girls in a corset,” I said.

“Hallie. Keep it real.” Poe rolled his eyes. “I know those aren’t yours.”

I launched a thigh-high boot at his head but missed, leaving a black mark on my bedroom wall.

Poe Sharpe was built like a spark plug, compact and hard, with an imperfect face that always made girls take a second look. Probably as they tried to figure out why he was attractive. I chalked it up to his smile, his swagger, and an unhealthy amount of leather.

“Why can’t you just pop in and be done with the whole thing?” I asked.

“You have to distract the front man so I can get the job done,” Poe answered, with a fair amount of tolerance for all the bitching I was doing.

“I’m just saying,” I grumbled as I laced up the other boot, “that there’s no point in being able to teleport if you still need a sidekick. I could be doing something more useful.” And more exciting.

“Don’t call it teleporting. It maxes out my geek factor.” He pushed away from the wall. “And I like to think of you as my companion.”

“Only if I get to be Amy Pond.”

“Who?”

I sighed. “How can you call yourself British and not know who—”

“Hurry up. You know how he gets when we aren’t on time.” He was referring to Paul Girard, who didn’t like to be kept waiting by anyone, especially his daughter.

“Out.” I pointed at my door. “I need to finish getting dressed, and I’m not putting on a free show here.”

“Even if I drop a couple of dollars?”

“Not even if you make it rain.”

Grinning, he tossed my boot back and headed downstairs to my father’s office, whistling, “Brown Eyed Girl.”

My eyes were hazel.

Poe and I had started circling each other the day we met two years ago. He carried his sexy in a dangerous way. Bonus, he could teleport right into my bedroom. By the time my dad caught us in a “delicate” situation, we’d discovered we were better friends than friends with benefits. The fact that my dad allowed Poe to walk out of our house alive that night confirmed his worth. A regular guy would’ve left in a body bag.

I continued lacing my boot while staring at my lips in the mirror, concentrating on making them bigger, smaller, wider, thinner. I’d learned how to go chameleon and stay that way when I was twelve. My body was considerably top-heavy for the next couple of years, but there was no one around to impress. No one appropriate, anyway. Holding a different shape for too long made me tired, and the novelty wore off, so now, at seventeen, I looked like me unless I was on a job. Barely a B cup.

I could transmutate, much like Mystique of X-Men fame, but with zero blue skin and much better hair. Of course, her boobs reigned superior. My cells didn’t follow the same rules of time everyone else’s did. They regenerated constantly. I could speed them up or slow them down, manipulate them into different shapes, sizes, even colors. Handy in a pinch. Or in a theft.

Today’s mark was Skeevy’s Pawnshop. All the intelligence I’d gathered—in a different meat suit each time—supported the fact that the shop perfectly fit its name. Dusty glass cases held jewelry, firearms, guitars—the usual pawnshop fodder. They also displayed the forsaken dreams the items represented, but those outlines weren’t quite as clear.

Through the back door of Skeevy’s existed a mysterious space that rivaled the Vatican’s secret archives. Instead of papal secrets, it housed much trashier cousins.

Tonight, Poe and I were responsible for stealing one of its most prized items and delivering it to my father.

Type Paul Girard into a search engine, and you could find anything from white lies to blatant truths. Rumors that he was a mob boss, a drug lord, or an arms dealer.

In truth, he headed up a worldwide conglomerate: Girard Industries. Privately funded, with anonymous investors and elusive headquarters. Or as legit as my father could go and still make the kind of money to which he’d become accustomed.

Girard Industries’ enormous umbrella hid one business in particular.

Chronos.

Add to this the suggestion of my dad’s gangster reputation, the rumors that swirled about how honest his business practices were, and the amount of enemies he’d created in the past twenty years, and the sum equaled bodyguards and fear and my ivory-tower life. The only time Dad let me out of the house without a bodyguard was to do jobs for Chronos, and even then he had a security detail on me 50 percent of the time. No better way to manipulate a daddy than by putting his little girl on the firing line.

More than one hit had been put out on Paul Girard. Only one had been put out on me. My transmutation gene had allowed my body to heal before I bled out.

Others hadn’t been so lucky.

My phone chirped, and without looking, I knew it was Poe texting from my dad’s office, telling me to hurry. I pulled on a T-shirt over my corset and taffeta tutu and headed downstairs.

Once Dad learned about things like time travel, teleportation, remote viewing, and psychometry, it wasn’t a huge leap for him to figure out the best way to use them. He was the leading dealer in the “special” artifacts black market. I could’ve called him a magical mafia boss, but I wouldn’t. Not to his face, anyway.

Poe and I were partners. He could teleport. I could change my appearance, change it again, and change it some more. He could get in and out of places quickly. I could gather intel, ask questions, and cause distractions, all in a hundred different disguises.

There were veils in the fabric of time. Poe once compared them to waiting rooms for wormholes, and they were his conduits to teleporting in and out of places. I could see them, like solid walls of water in the atmosphere, but only Poe could get into them, which meant I had to take a lot of cabs.

I found my ability infinitely more valuable than Poe’s, but my father didn’t seem to agree.

“The guy behind the counter will be alone,” Dad said. “Hallie will distract him. You’ll handle everything else.”

Even though he’d made a point of waiting for me to walk through his office door to go over the rundown of tonight’s activities, Dad spoke directly to Poe, like I wasn’t even in the room.

“Why does Poe always take care of the big stuff?” I asked.

A lesser woman might be too intimidated to speak up, but when you went through puberty with Paul Girard for a father and no mother as a buffer, tough was a by-product. He would accept nothing less.

He ignored me and kept talking to Poe. “You’re the only one I want in the back of the shop.”

“Yes, sir,” Poe said. I’d never seen him be subservient to anyone except for my father, and it was because my dad was a scary mother trucker.

Even so, subservience wasn’t in my repertoire. I resented playing the part of the sidekick again, and Dad knew it. I wanted to make sure he knew it.

Dad continued, “All the scouting work we did—”

I interrupted. “You mean, all the scouting work I did.”

Dad’s dark-eyed stare was created to intimidate, and his mere presence was effective enough to sway most people into going along with anything he said, but I wasn’t backing down.

“Taking the watch shouldn’t be a problem,” he said to Poe, “as long as you port in.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Well, he isn’t going to walk in.”

“Then you port to the agreed-upon location,” he finished.

“Which is where?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter.” Dad landed his eagle eyes on me. “You’ll take a cab home.”

“Tell me, Dad. Do you dismiss everything I say because you’re sexist or because you think I’m stupid?”

Wisely, Poe backed into a corner to stay out of the line of fire.

“Your level of respect is inappropriate.” Dad’s jaw was clenching.

“When do I ever do anything that is appropriate?” I asked.

“If you want to do this job, I would suggest you start immediately.”

I knew from Dad’s jaw and the tightness around his eyes that I’d pushed him too far. Now wasn’t the time to challenge him unless I wanted to get rolled over, and I wasn’t about to lose the chance to leave the house.

“Yes, sir.” I dropped my head.

And today’s round goes to Alpha Daddy.

Poe didn’t say a word as we walked out of Dad’s office, but his look clearly indicated I should’ve shut up way before I did.

My look back indicated he should screw off.

“He only acts that way because he loves you,” Poe said.

“So ignoring me equals loving me?”

“It does when it means he’s scared.”

I grabbed my bag and headed for the front door. Even though I preferred it, taking Dad’s town car wasn’t the best way to stay undercover. A cab waited at the corner, and I climbed in and gave the address. The driver didn’t balk when I pulled off my oversized T-shirt and adjusted the laces on my corset. New Orleans cab drivers were tough to rattle.

I’d figured out the art of decadent camouflage. Thanks to the number of flamboyant visitors to the clubs on Bourbon, I found it easy to blend in the Quarter. I had one rule when it came to my disguises: Go hard or go home. Dressing up gave me a chance to step into someone else’s fictitious life. Sometimes my characters had elaborate backstories. Other times, the simplicity of the costume sufficed.

I gave my makeup one last check in my compact mirror. Tonight, it involved glitter, false eyelashes with feathers on the ends, and lots of glittery powder in my fake cleavage. My blue wig topped it all off, perfectly and literally. I slicked my mouth with bright pink lip gloss for the finishing touch, and tapped the back of the cabbie’s seat once we hit the edge of the French Quarter. I gave him the fare plus twenty bucks.

“You never saw me, right?”

From the way he looked at my chest, he’d seen way more of me than I’d wanted.

My platform boots gave me a definite swagger, and my taffeta tutu accentuated the swing of my hips. I focused on the ground and concentrated on lengthening the shape of my eyelids, along with puffing up my lips and making my cheekbones more prominent. I searched for my reflection and found it in a plate-glass window. I could see my own face underneath, but only because I was looking.

It had rained most of the day and a fine mist hung in the air, but the endless party still went strong. I melted into the crowd, noting details for my escape route, since I’d be on foot.

I couldn’t always tell the bums from the tourists, and even though Mardi Gras was only one week a year, some glassy-eyed coed was always ready to lift her shirt for a string of cheap plastic beads. Stories were ripe for the picking in the Quarter, and most were written all over their authors’ faces. The same creepy-ass clown stood outside Oz, juggling shot glasses tonight. I skirted my way past him without making eye contact.

I hated clowns.

I hooked a right down a side street. More warning than beacon, Skeevy’s neon sign shone red off the wet payment. I straightened my shoulders and headed for the front door. Heavy metal bars covered the bulletproof windows. An electronic ding sounded my entry as I pushed open the door. Easy to get in, harder to leave, especially if you held something in your hands.

Good thing Poe would be taking a shortcut.

The register was the old-fashioned kind with ticker tape and a little bell that rang when the drawer opened. Cash only at Skeevy’s. Checks bounced and credit cards left records, and no one on either side of the counter wanted that.

Danny Launoux was my target.

Thanks to my rock star surveillance skills, I knew he liked comics, vodka, and girls. That last part was crucial to my role in this little drama.

He wore 1970s, tinted glasses that didn’t hide his eyes but did make him look like a pimp. The heels of his boots hung on the rungs of the stool where he sat hunched over, reading a Batman comic. A set of keys dangled from a chain on his belt. His hair was out of control, frizzy, curly, and more tall than wide. I forced fifty product suggestions to stay on the tip of my tongue and crossed the dirty, tan carpet. Danny didn’t look up until I reached him. I waited for a reaction. I didn’t get one.

“I’m looking for a ring,” I said. It had been one of my mother’s. I’d sold it earlier in the week as a blonde with thin lips, all Broke College Student Who Needed Tuition. I’d even managed tears. He hadn’t been impressed then, either.

“Prices are on the tags. No bargaining. What you see is what you pay.”

I browsed. Poe was already supposed to be in the back, but I couldn’t be sure until I got confirmation. I checked my phone as I slinked toward the jewelry cases. No texts.

I made a big show of bending over, and then arched my back and stretched. I’d at least expected curiosity from Danny, but he’d gone back to reading. I dropped my arms to my sides with a sigh and tried the direct approach.

“Is that the latest Batman issue from the New 52 series?” My Internet research had told me all I needed to know about the 2011 relaunch of DC Comics. It had also lured me into placing an order of my own.

He blinked, lowered the comic, looked at me, looked at the cover, and then at me again. “That’s what it says.”

“I feel sorry for Batman. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have to hide your identity. Never to be truly close to a woman. I like to get close. Don’t you?”

“I don’t care how hot you are. I’m not going to lower my prices because you’re coming on to me,” Danny said in a monotone. Definitely not distracted. More like bored.

Damn. I’d hoped my fierce comics knowledge would work in my favor in case my flirting didn’t. “I’m not coming—”

“I know how women are,” he said in a Cajun drawl. “And I could smell you angling for a deal when you walked in the door.”

He could smell me? Jackass. I hated to use my sexuality for evil, and here he was, trivializing my effort.

“I happen to like Batman, and I told you, I want a ring. Show me the blue one.”

He dropped his reading material with a sigh and slammed the side of his fist into the register drawer. It popped open, and he fished a set of keys from underneath a stack of twenties. If he could open the register with nothing less than a punch and wasn’t afraid to let a customer know it, he wasn’t worried about what was in the cash drawer. This confirmed his main concern was for whatever lurked behind the vaulted door on the far wall.

It was certainly mine.

“Is that a blue topaz?” I asked.

He squinted at the ring in question. “Aquamarine.”

I checked my phone again as Danny leaned over to open the case. Nothing from Poe. An uneasy feeling stirred in the pit of my stomach.

Danny cleared his throat, and I realized he was holding out the ring for me. I dropped my phone into my bag. “How much?”

“Three hundred and fifty.”

Broke College Me had let it go for a hundred.

I took the ring and held it up to the light. “Do you have an appraisal?”

He snorted. “Hello. You’re in a pawnshop.”

“Who sold it to you?” I asked.

“We have a privacy policy.”

I didn’t budge.

He looked from me to the ring and back again. “Two hundred.”

“Is that how much you paid for it?”

“Two. That’s the price.”

“Fine.” I dug around in my bag under the pretense of looking for my wallet so I could check my phone again. My heart did a flip when I saw Poe’s name on my screen.

I opened the message.

Help.

You knew you were in deep when someone who could teleport needed an escape plan.

“Uh-oh.”

Danny raised his eyebrows.

“My … my date cancelled.” I fought to keep my voice from shaking.

I flipped through my mental catalog, and recalled the details of the building schematic I’d stolen, trying to think of all the places Poe could be.

Danny took the ring out of my hand. “You were meeting your date at a pawnshop?”

“I have a busy schedule.”

I watched a red light flash in the reflection from Danny’s glasses. I knew it was from a surveillance camera that hung suspended from the ceiling, observing the happenings in the front of the shop. The blinking light was a sign that there was trouble in the back. What had Poe gotten himself into?

“I need to close up. Now.”

“But the ring.” I gestured toward it when he began to put it back in the case. “Your sign says, ‘Open twenty-four hours,’ and the ring—”

“We’ll be open again at ten A.M.” His voice was firm. “Come back then.”

I huffed. “Your customer service is terrible.”

“Complain to the management. There’s a suggestion box. Outside.”

My cell screen lit up the inside of my purse:

911 GET ME OUT 911

Poe was not an all-caps kind of guy.

Desperate now, I held up one finger and tossed my blue hair over my shoulders. “Does the NOLA PD know what you keep behind that big door?”

Danny looked at the flashing light on the camera once more before he shoved the ring back into the case. “You don’t need to worry about what’s behind that door. You just need to leave. Now.” He came out from behind the counter and cupped my elbow in his hand, trying to steer me out of the store.

Nothing pissed me off more than being manhandled. Unless I’d asked to be.

“Let go of me.” I jerked away and clutched my arm. “That hurt.”

“Does a hundred-dollar ring really mean so much that you can’t come back to get it tomorrow?”

“You said two hundred!”

“You’re familiar, somehow. You haven’t been in here before, have you?” He squinted and lifted up his glasses like an old man. “I know your voice.… ”

The one thing I hadn’t figured out how to do was manipulate my vocal cords.

Shock and surprise broke through my concentration, and I could feel my disguise slip a little. Danny blinked in recognition. “Wait a second. You sold me the ring! What the hell is going on?”

A cell phone on the counter began to vibrate, and the accompanying ringtone was a repeating air horn. Danny turned around, and I did the only logical thing I could. I picked up the stool from behind the register and hit him over the head with it.

I didn’t put all my strength into the move, because unlike my father, I didn’t make murder a hobby. Danny still went down hard. Once I knew he was out, I took his key ring off his belt. I navigated my fingers through his hair to get to his skull. Big knot, no blood, nothing concave.

He was probably fine.

I took the ring from the case, left a hundred-dollar bill in its place, and then dropped it into my bag. Once I found the right key, I opened the vault door and pulled it closed behind me. A corridor stretched thirty feet before taking a sharp right turn. Strobe lights near the ceiling signaled a silent alarm.

If any cameras existed, they were well hidden. I let my face and body go back to their natural state. When I reached the turn, I took a quick listen before peeking around the corner. I’d expected some sort of chaos, or at least a guard. All I saw was more tunnel.

I went farther and farther as the strobe lights continued to pulse. The lack of windows made the walls close in and tripped off a rare bout of claustrophobia. By the time I reached the next open space, my chest was tight. Even though I was freezing, sweat trickled down my back. Once again, I listened before turning the corner. Good thing.

Voices echoed against the slick surfaces of the walls and floors. One was Poe’s; I could tell by the lilt of his English accent. The other was male and cocky.

“I won’t tell anyone what you have here,” Poe said. “You can just let me go.”

“Someone already knows what I have or you wouldn’t be here.” A lighter flicked, and a shadow appeared on the wall across from me. “Paul Girard sent you.”

Cigarette smoke wafted toward me, and my body shook with the effort to stay still.

“We’ve discussed joining forces, but couldn’t reach agreeable terms. He leans too far toward greed for my comfort.”

Join forces, my ass. My dad didn’t play well with others.

The man’s shadow grew smaller, his voice louder. He had to be inches away. I reached into the side pocket of my bag. The timing needed to be perfect.

Heels clicked on the concrete floor. “If you came to work for me instead of him, I could make it worth your while.”

“I’m not interested in working for anyone,” Poe said. “I’m telling you—”

“Tell me this,” the man said. “Are you interested in being alive?”

I raised my stun gun and stepped around the corner. “Are you?”

The man’s eyes went wide when I tagged him in the chest. He hit the ground like a full sack of groceries, his limbs akimbo, still twitching. A wet spot spread across the front of his pants.

I looked up at Poe, who exhaled in relief. He had a fat lip and a trickle of blood coming from the corner of his mouth, and his left wrist was handcuffed to a doorknob.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I ported into the worst possible place. The guy was on me in seconds. He’s the only one I saw, but I’m pretty sure he was waiting for backup.”

“I hit the backup in the head with a stool. He shouldn’t be a problem.”

“That’s my girl.” Poe used his bloody right hand to gesture to his left. “I’m going to need a little help. Our friend with the bladder control problem made damn sure I wasn’t going to get close enough to a veil to port out of here.”

I checked the guy for the key to the cuffs, found it, and set Poe free.

“Do I want to know how you know what a handcuff key looks like?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Let’s move.” Poe slipped his knife out of his boot and I followed him into a long, wide room with a chill factor worthy of iceberg storage. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling.

Poe scanned the room, muttering under his breath. “NT27. NT27. NT27—here.”

The labeled shelf held a clock made of solid glass, with no internal hardware, but wildly spinning hands. An astrological chart beside it displayed lit, moving stars. A flat jewelry box held rings in different sizes. Some of them glowed.

“There.” Poe pointed with the knife. “To the far left.”

A small wooden chest stood open, revealing a pocket watch nestled in black velvet. It was the size of a half-dollar, the metal shiny, but not reflective. I picked it up. It was warm rather than cold. The gears on the back were exposed, but that was the only remarkable feature.

“I am not impressed. At all.”

“You don’t have to be.” Poe tilted his head toward the open door. “Let’s go.”

“What about the other stuff?” I pointed to the rings and moving star chart. “We can’t leave it here.”

“What you’re holding was handmade by Nikola Tesla. Thanks to his skills, it’s more than a pocket watch—”

“Obviously.”

“And,” Poe continued, “worth more than everything in this room combined. Take it, and hurry, or you’re going to end up fighting your way out of here.”

I tucked the watch into my purse, and then I froze. Footsteps. More than one set.

“Too late.” I looked at Poe and then handed him my bag. “Leave. Go while you can. I’ll find a way to get out.”

“Shut up.” He grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the door to the storage room. He stopped and seemed to weigh his options. Before I could ask him what he was considering, he wrapped his arms around my waist and took a step back.

Time stopped.

Aching pressure closed around my heart and tightened like a fist. My lungs couldn’t take in oxygen; blood didn’t circulate through my veins. I was colder than I’d ever been, and then hotter. Pressure built up in my ears, like I was traveling over a high mountain or descending too fast while scuba diving.

Poe jerked me to one side and my feet were on solid ground again. All the pressure disappeared, but my head was still spinning.

I leaned over and retched.

“Hallie?” The timbre and tone of Poe’s voice resonated as if he were speaking inside my head. I opened my eyes and saw distinct variations of color in his irises. “Are you okay?”

“What … the hell … was that?”

If he answered, I didn’t hear him, because I was throwing up again.

Poe’s hand was on my back. “Tell me you’re okay.”

“If barfing in bushes equals okay, then I am super.”

He gathered my fake blue hair to hold it away from my face. I ripped the wig off and threw it down on the ground. I cupped my hands over my ears to stop the ringing before moving them to my eyes. They wouldn’t stop tearing. I sat and put my head between my knees. A few minutes later, my hearing and vision returned to normal, and my stomach ceased the Tilt-a-Whirl. I was down to dry heaves now.

“What just happened?” I stood up slowly and faced Poe.

“I teleported you.”

“But you can’t teleport anyone. That’s why I take cabs. You could’ve broken the whole of science. Or, you know, me.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” he said, smoothing back my real hair. “Besides, we only moved a few miles, so I knew it would be fast.”

I jerked away from him. “Don’t ever, ever do that again.”

“So next time, you want me to leave you to the mercy of men with guns?”

“Please do.” I answered, and then promptly vomited again. Good thing our sexual attraction had played out, or I’d be embarrassed and pissed off. Once my stomach had calmed down, I straightened up. “Where are we? Is this Lafayette Cemetery?”

“Yes, but don’t worry. No one else is here.”

“Except for the dead people. And what if a cop shows up?” After-hours entry was punishable by law, and I didn’t think Dad would be too happy if I got busted puking in a graveyard after hours. Oh, no, Officer, I haven’t been drinking. It was teleportation.

The effects were wearing off, but I still felt weak enough to wonder if there had been some kind of permanent damage. I followed Poe down the broken sidewalk in the dark. As we approached the front gate of the cemetery, the late shift of waiters from Commander’s Palace crowded onto the sidewalk across the street, laughing and teasing, not worried at all about keeping quiet or staying hidden.

“Get us out of here before someone sees us,” I said. Poe held out his hand and I took a step back. “I will only accept a cab or piggyback ride. No more whirlwinds through the space time continuum.”

“It’s a couple of blocks to your house. If you want to walk the rest of the way, will you at least let me help you?”

“Help, please.” I took the proffered arm, and we turned around.

And stopped dead.

A long trail of black-clad mourners snaked around the edge of the cemetery path. A solid mix of brass and percussion filled the air with the “Dead Man Blues,” and church bells pealed. The casket passed by, followed by a second line of mourners with parasols and handkerchiefs, stepping in time to the music.

A jazz funeral, in the middle of the night, yet somehow in the middle of the day.

Completely out of place.

Completely out of time.