Out of Body

Chapter 27

A steady, warm drizzle fell. Rain and a murky damp had taken turns for hours to make the night as difficult as possible.

“We’re going in circles,” Gray said.

“Uh-huh.” Marley hardly had the energy to keep walking. “We are. That’s kind of the point. Eventually I’ll see something I didn’t notice before. I need coffee.”

Without breaking his stride, Gray landed a hand on the back of her neck and pushed her through the door of a corner café with empty booths along both of its windows.

Marley slid onto a split, green plastic seat and shook her head. She was glad she couldn’t see what the humidity had done to her hair.

“Look at those curls,” Gray said. “You could audition for Orphan Annie.”

She scowled at him. “Thanks, I needed that.”

His smile made her laugh.

“You’re bad, you know that?” she told him. “Do you think they have toasted cheese sandwiches here?”

“You don’t want chocolate syrup on chocolate cake?”

“That’s dessert.”

A waitress brought coffee and nixed the toasted cheese. They could have pizza by the slice.

“Do you have anything else?” Marley asked. “Oatmeal? Grits? Corn pudding?”

“Nope. We’ll nuke the pizza for you, though.”

“Six pieces, then,” Marley said.

The woman rolled her eyes and left.

“You’re going to eat six pieces of pizza?” Gray said.

“I’ll share.”

“We’re avoiding the issue, Marley. This isn’t going anywhere, this hopeless search. You don’t want to hear this, but go back to the beginning and think it through. Second by second, move by move.”

He was right, she didn’t want to hear it. “Coffee first.”

“Nat’s still out there, too,” he said. “He’ll keep going and so will his people.”

“Nat believes me,” Marley said, surprising herself. “I’m not sure when I knew it, but it’s true. He doesn’t think I’m making any of this up.”

Gray settled his spread fingers on the table and looked at her.

She inclined her head in question.

“You’re not making it up,” Gray said.

Marley formed another comment, but stifled it. Instead, she watched Gray. Slowly, his expression became distant, as if he was moving away and withdrawing into himself.

The waitress set plates in front of them, then slid a platter of pizza slices into the middle of the table. “That’s more than six,” Marley said.

“We got extra,” the waitress said with a one-sided smile that shifted with her gum. Her eyes crinkled when she looked at them. “Nice. You make a nice couple. Even if you could use a bunch more good meals. Get plenty of bacon fat in your greens. Gumbo puts meat on your bones. Rice. Beans. A couple a muffulettas for your mornin’ snack.” She looked Marley over. “You got the best hair, though. If I don’t have a perm, I got bleached pumpwater. Yeah, you got the best hair, kid.”

She left and Marley scooped up a piece of pepperoni and olive pizza with plenty of pesto. She took a big bite and munched. “Heaven,” she said. “Eat, eat.”

Gray continued to look at his hands on the table. He turned his gaze slowly up to Marley’s face and her tummy flipped. Those whiskey eyes had darkened and his heavy lashes cast deep shadows.

“Talk,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

She breathed in deeply and started again, not touching what she’d witnessed while she’d been joined with Liza because it couldn’t have any bearing on what had happened in that empty building.

Gray leaned across the table, watching her mouth with every word she spoke.

“Stop,” he said. “Go back and tell me that last bit again.”

She followed his instructions.

“Where was the bicycle helmet?” he said.

Marley picked olives from a piece of pizza and kept her eyes on Gray’s face. “What helmet?”

He looked in her direction, but she didn’t think he was seeing her.

“A pink helmet with writing on the back, near the bottom. A shiny helmet. You saw it.”

She hadn’t seen any such thing. Where had he got the idea? Marley was afraid to interrupt him.

“You picked something up,” he said.

Marley said, “No.” Her head began to ache and a pain centered behind her right eye. She rubbed her forehead.

“You did,” Gray said. “Did you get rid of it?”

She swallowed. Had she really made herself believe all the signs that Gray had paranormal powers would go away? They were crowding in on him in front of her eyes and one of them, she was almost sure, was remote vision. Incredibly potent stuff. Marley understood the discomfort in her head. Gray was actively confronting her mind. She knew he didn’t fully understand what that was or meant, but from the speed of his development, it wouldn’t be long. Then he would have to learn a few basic covenants of using paranormal power if he was to survive in a world with unique expectations and responsibilities.

What she couldn’t prove was that she had set all this in motion for Gray, yet why else would this be the time of his awakening?

“Marley,” Gray said. “Where is it?”

She felt irritated. “I don’t know what helmet you’re talking about. Drop it, please.”

He drew back and his expression showed confusion.

“Tell me about the sign again,” he said quietly.

“Long,” Marley said. “Not very wide. A picture of something in neon. Turquoise and yellow.”

“And some green?”

Startled, she cast back and isolated the sign. “Yes. Some green.”

“Leaves, d’you think?”

“Yes.” She started to get excited. “A border of leaves on the inside. All the neon is pale. Washed out, sort of.”

He turned his face to the window.

Minutes slipped by.

“The sign is on the other side of a high wall,” he said. “A stucco wall, but the plaster’s peeling off.”

Marley stopped breathing.

“I can hear the gravel under someone’s shoes. They’re scared.”

She got to her feet. This was coming from her. Gray had started to read her mind with ease, only he took what he read farther and his senses filled in details she hadn’t experienced, or perhaps remembered.

“Let’s go,” he said, getting up and pulling her from the booth. He started for the door then paused to fish some bills from a pocket. “Thank you,” he called to the waitress, putting the money on the table.

“It’s a snake,” he said as they hit the sidewalk. “A yellow snake and there’s a turquoise border with green leaves inside.”

“A quiet area. Away from the center of things,” Marley said while they ran. “We don’t know where we’re going.”

“I think we do. That’s the Gold Snake—a hole in the wall. It’s near a club called Alexander’s.”

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed. “Nat. Meet us at the back of Alexander’s. I’m sure you know where it is. Let’s get there.”

Gray grabbed a cab that showed it was off duty and the driver agreed to take them where they needed to go because it was on his way home.

They got out in front of a small club called Alexander’s and Nat walked to meet them. Marley couldn’t see any other cops, but presumed there were some around.

“There’s a warehouse out back. It opens onto an alley, but goes all the way to the street behind. The warehouse is locked.”

“Unlock it,” Gray said, holding Marley’s hand and striding past the side of the club.

“You know I can’t do that without a warrant,” Nat said, keeping up. “We can wake up a judge for that if you’re sure this is the place, Marley.”

She caught sight of the illuminated sign on the other side of the wall to her right. “That’s it,” she said breathlessly. She broke into a run and they reached the entrance to the warehouse. “Can’t we just get in there? We could say we found it open.”

“That would be nice and convenient,” Nat said, but with laughter in his voice. “Cops are pretty stupid. They fall for stuff like that all the time.”

Marley felt mortified and said, “Sorry,” in a small voice.

Gray let go of Marley and used his sleeve to try the handles on the double doors. He turned his back on Nat, produced a credit card and in seconds the doors swung open.

“Well, would you look at that?” Nat said. “Some people watch too much television.”

Several uniformed cops materialized from the darkness. They hesitated as if waiting for instructions.

“I want to go in there,” Marley said and walked through the open doors.

Someone pushed a powerful flashlight into her right hand and she shone it around. She broke out in a sweat, but walked forward, moving the beam from side to side, pierced the darkness all the way to the walls.

“Empty,” one of the cops said.

“We already knew that.” Nat sounded tetchy.

“Where’s the bike rack?” Marley said. She started to move rapidly around the space. “And the bike? They’re gone. But they were here. I swear they were.”

Nat used his own flashlight to look more closely at the concrete floor. “Do you remember where it was—the rack?”

“No. It was dark and I only found it because I felt it.”

“Could you have been by the wall, ma’am?” one of the officers said. “There’re pipes in places. And brackets. They could feel like a rack of some kind if you were nervous.”

“I was nervous,” Marley snapped. “Who wouldn’t be? But I felt a bike rack. And the wheel of a bike. Its seat. It was pushed into the rack.”

“There’s no sign of any of it now,” Gray said quietly.

“They were here,” Marley said stubbornly. “They’ve been taken away.”

“They’ll have to look for evidence of that,” Gray said.

“It’s late,” Nat said, joining them. “I vote I have my people come back in the morning and look at things in the daylight. I’ll have someone run each of you home.”

“If you still believed I was telling the truth you wouldn’t leave this place without taking it apart,” Marley said.

“I…I want to believe you,” Nat said. “In a way I do, but you can’t deny that the things you said were here aren’t.”

“I don’t understand it,” she told Gray. “Honestly, I saw someone on the ground. I didn’t have a chance to get close.”

Gray held her arm and Marley sucked in a sharp breath. If this went on with him, she’d have to discuss what it would mean if they…well, if they made love.

Still holding on to her, Gray went toward the door, but rather than walking outside, he pulled the right-hand door away from the wall.

“We could wait in here until morning if that’s what Nat wants,” she said.

“Nat’s going to want a bunch of things,” Gray said. “Look at this.”

He stooped to pick something up and when he straightened, Marley trained the flashlight on what he held.

One shiny pink bicycle helmet.

“This should help,” Gray said. “Must be the brand. We’ll need to follow up on dealers who carry them. Come and see this, Nat.”

On the back at the very bottom in black script were the words Pearl Brite in the symbol of a lightning flash.