Water To Burn Part 31

"Unfortunately, that's true. What did Zeke say to you? Will you tell me?"

"Certainly. He thinks that the invading aliens have a spy here already. He says the spy followed him across. Brother Belial? Then Caleb might be one of those human agents he spoke of."

"He sure could. Zeke told Sarge some garbled story about the aliens soaking him with water. That could mean a rogue wave that didn't actually drown him. I'm seeing karmic gravity at work in this, pulling everything together into one big ugly mess."

"Karmic gravity? Oh, yes, you did mention that once. You were having a joke on me."

"No, I wasn't. It's actually a real principle. You can call it synchronicity if you prefer."

Ari said nothing in the first real act of tact I'd ever seen from him. His SPP radiated a firm belief that I was crazy in my own lovable way.

"Well, look," I said. "Gravity is a property of ma.s.s, right? You get enough ma.s.s together in a lump, and it'll exert a pull on other objects."

"After a manner of speaking, yes."

"Okay. So you get enough psychic ma.s.s together, and the same thing happens. You, Itzak, Reb Zeke, me, Mike, Dad's gate to another level, both of your jobs and my job-here we all are in San Francisco, and we've created a gravitational pull. On top of that, you and I busted the coven together. I ensorcelled Doyle, and you-uh, well-disposed of Johnson. That made a karmic link. All of this together pulled Belial right into our orbit."

Ari considered, then shrugged. I gathered he was unconvinced.

"I suppose we'd need to put my mother on your list, then," he said. "Ezekiel asked about her. He wants to go to London to find her, once he recovers. But he's not going to, is he?"

"Recover? No. Sorry."

"I'll have to call Tzaki and tell him that the old man's gone."

We observed a private moment of silence.

"I wonder," I said eventually, "if my mother will believe that the letter's really from Dad?"

"Judging from everything you've told me about her, I'd say no. Give the letter to Eileen, certainly, but let her decide what to do with it."

My first thought: I wasn't asking your advice. Second thought: but you're right.

"Okay," I said. "I'll do that. Michael needs to know, though. And soon."

"Of course." With a sigh, Ari stretched his legs out in front of him. "Apparently, I have a doppelganger. Reb Ezekiel called him Ari Nataniel. He thought I was him, that day in the park." He paused for another sigh. "I rather dislike all of this. Alien spies. Doppelgangers." He turned his head and gave me the reproachful stare. "Werewolves."

"Life's hard, buddy," I said.

Ari growled and crossed his arms over his chest. I let him simmer while I considered one of Dad's remarks in the letters, about the lines on Pat's palms. I'd never noticed them. Now I wondered if they had indicated the lycanthropy gene. If so, Dad would have been able to warn us before Pat's first change. Doubtless, he could have handled the problem a lot better than we all did. I began to feel personally aggrieved by the justice system of whatever world had taken him away.

Ari abruptly spoke. "At the end of our visit, I promised Reb Ezekiel that I'd stop the alien invasion. He badly wanted to hear that. I wanted to give him what peace of mind I could."

"That was really good of you." I remembered the cold premonitions I'd had in the hospital parking lot. I could think of a number of things they might mean and decide to start with the most extreme.

"What if he was right?" I said. "If there's going to be an alien invasion, stopping it would be a swell idea. I'm sure the Agency will provide you with backup-me, that is."

Ari uncrossed his arms, turned toward me on the couch, and opened his mouth. He stayed that way for another minute or two, openmouthed and reproachful. Finally he said, "Do you really think that-"

"I don't know if there will be or not. I'm just saying. It doesn't have to be flying saucers, y'know. That was his interpretation, but he was self-taught. I get the impression he never understood the ambiguity principle."

"Which means?"

"The word, invasion, could mean anything from armed aliens in flying saucers down to an uprush of psychotic images into his own consciousness from the unconscious mind. There are all kinds of possibilities in between-illegal aliens from deviant levels, terrorists, stuff like that."

Ari slumped down on the couch, rested his head on the cushions, and muttered something in Hebrew.

"I'm going to report all this to the Agency," I went on. "Huh, the higher-ups have been calling us the Apocalypse Squad. They thought it was a joke, but they're all psychics, too. Maybe they struck a target that they don't even know exists."

"My father was right. I should have been an insurance adjustor."

I always took the reference to insurance adjustors as a signal that Ari had reached overload on the subject of psychic truths. One more, and he might experience mental meltdown.

"Let's go have some dinner," I said. "I'll just call Michael first."

"Brilliant." He sat up straight. "And when the letter's been taken care of, we can go to bed early."

"Sure. After all, I owe you twenty bucks."

He glowered. I sighed.

"That's a joke," I said.

"It's not very funny."

"It really bothers you, doesn't it? When I pose as a s.e.x industry worker, I mean. Why?"

"What do you mean, why? I should think it would be obvious."

"Strange. You're a holdover from the Victorian Age, and here I never noticed."

"Besides." The glower increased. "s.e.x industry worker? What sort of stupid euphemism is that?"

"It's the preferred term around the Bay Area. The women use it themselves."

Across the room, my cell phone rang. I stood up to fetch it, but Ari caught my wrist.

"Do you have to answer that right now?" he asked.

I considered as it rang again. "Yeah," I said. "It's Michael."

Ari let go of me, but his Qi felt ready to hit "boil." I went to my desk to answer the phone.

"Hey, Nola," Michael said. "Did you want to talk to me, like maybe a minute ago?"

"I sure did. Hang on a sec." I glanced back and saw Ari straightening all the books and papers on the coffee table. Anger management had kicked in. "I can talk now. What is this, you knew I wanted to talk with you?"

"I heard it loud and clear."

"It sounds like you've got another talent coming online, the family mental overlap."

"Epic cool! Better than a cell phone, huh?"

"Kind of. It'll be erratic at first, though. They all are. Look, I've got something here in my flat that you need to see. I'm trying to figure out when we can get together."

Ari stopped stacking the books by descending size and scowled at me.

"It's about five o'clock," I said to Michael. "Would you be up for a late dinner out? Say at seven?"

"I can't. It's a school night, and Aunt Eileen would raise serious h.e.l.l. I could come over right now for a little while. I can borrow Uncle Jim's truck."

"Okay. How about you get here in an hour? I'll see you then."

We signed off. Ari appeared calmer, but I felt his Qi gather and begin to flow toward me. I registered an oddly neutral quality that could have flipped into either rage or desire. I stayed standing in case the Qi swung the wrong way.

"Where were we?" I said.

"I was merely pointing out that I dislike seeing you strut around in public in tight clothing." His British accent was getting thicker by the word. "You're not a prost.i.tute, and I don't like you pretending to be one."

"I really don't understand that. I can understand how you'd be uptight if I actually turned tricks, but I never would. I mean, yuck!"

"The men seeing you don't know that."

I heard the ghostly voice of my old religion teacher from high school, Sister Peter Mary, whispering in my mental ear about the perils of s.l.u.tty clothing.

"Aha!" I said to Ari. "Some other guy might think I'm a hooker and look upon me with l.u.s.t in his heart. Is that what bothers you?"

"What man wouldn't be bothered by that about the woman he-" Ari paused for a fraction of a second, "he was involved with."

The pause and reboot bothered me. He'd really wanted to say that he loved me. I saw another stake drop into place in the picket fence of domesticity.

"Well?" Ari snapped.

"Well what? I did it because I needed street cred if we were going to find Reb Zeke. It worked, didn't it?"

"I have to admit it brought results." He scowled again. "But-"

He hesitated. I waited, hands on hips. I kept my own Qi neutral, but if I was going to lead this team, I couldn't let him steamroll me.

"What other kind of cover story would you suggest?" I said.

"If the need arises again," Ari said, "perhaps you could just pose as a drug dealer or some such thing." He paused again. "If you agreed."

"It would depend on the situation, but that's a possibility, yeah. We can work out the details when we need to. And speaking of details, I need to get started on my reports."

Ari looked as if he were thinking of saying more, then shrugged. "Very well. So do I."

I picked up e-mail from TranceWeb, most of it from NumbersGrrl. I printed those out, sans routing details, for Michael. When the doorbell rang, Ari let Michael in.

Ari ordered pizza and salad on his expense account credit card. We all sat down in the living room to wait for the pizza delivery. I'd been thinking over how to break the news about Dad, but I'd decided that once again, there was no easy way. I took the letter out of the envelope.

"Someone who can walk the worlds gave me this," I told Michael. "Unfortunately, he's too ill to teach you anything. He can't even provide more details, really, he's so sick." I held up the letter. "You won't recognize the handwriting, but it's from Dad."

Michael reached for it like a striking snake. I gave it to him, then sat down next to Ari on the couch to watch him read it, which he did methodically, slowly, and twice. When he finished, he nodded as if he'd made a decision and looked at me.

"Okay," Michael said. "How are we going to get him out of there?"

I realized that Aunt Eileen had spoken the simple truth. I had raised him right, after all.

"Well, we can't organize a jailbreak or anything," I said, "but he mentions being paroled. It comes down to getting the collar off, I guess."

"We've got to find him first."

The doorbell rang.

"There's the pizza," I said to Ari. "You need to go sign for it."

"Right." Ari got up from the couch. "And I don't need to hear you two discussing illegal activities."

I realized that I might have a future problem on my hands. I waited to point this out to Michael until I heard Ari clomping down the stairs to the front door.

"Listen, not one word more," I said. "What we're going to have to do is help Dad violate the terms of his parole."

"Oh." Michael looked stricken. "I guess that would seriously p.i.s.s Ari off."

"Possibly. Leave all this to me."

"Sure." Michael waved the letter in my direction. "Can I keep this?"

"No, but I'll make you a photocopy. I want Aunt Eileen to have the original. It's up to her to decide what to tell Mom."

"Oh, right." Michael shuddered. "Mom."

Ari came back upstairs with the pizza boxes. I gave him a vague smile and went into the kitchen for napkins and plates.

We'd just finished eating when Aunt Eileen called Michael. She wanted him to come home and tend to his English homework. With my multifunction printer, I made two copies of Dad's letter, one for him, one for me, and gave him the original, which I put into the manila envelope of e-mails.

"Be careful with the letter," I said.

"You bet," Michael said. "Aunt Eileen's going to want to keep the real one."

Since Sophie had never seen a pizza, I bagged up a couple of slices for her, then walked Michael down to the front door and sent him on his way home. When I came upstairs, Ari was channel-surfing in the living room. We'd set up the TV opposite the couch. I was expecting that he'd be simmering, but he looked mostly bored as he clicked through the dismal offerings with the remote. I remained wary. Any minute, I figured, he'd start lecturing me on the need to follow the laws of whatever alien world had trapped my father.

"Come sit down." He clicked off the television. "Please."

I sat close to him but turned so I could see his face, not that his carefully arranged expression told me anything. His Qi read as neutral.

"Wherever your father is," Ari said, "is out of my jurisdiction. Completely and utterly beyond any sphere in which I'm authorized to operate as a police officer or in any capacity except one."