Zombies. Psychic signals. The astral plane. All had something to do with Morada. Even trying to guess made my thoughts loopy, as if my beer had been spiked.
“What’s so important about this particular signal?”
Phyllis answered, “The signal is unusually strong.”
“What’s the source? Supernatural? Human? Alien?”
“We don’t know. That’s your job to find out.”
Mel massaged his temples. “All this mental gymnastics has made me hungry. Anybody up for a snack?”
He set his lunch box on the table. “I’ve eaten here before. The menu would make a goat puke.” He opened the lunch box and doled out three bags of warm blood. “A-negative.” He offered straws that we punched into the bags. With plastic bendy straws sticking out the tops, the silvery bags looked like kids’ juice containers.
The bartender returned. “No outside food or drink.”
Mel waved his bag. “We’re on a special diet.”
One end of the bartender’s unibrow levered upward. Her forehead wrinkled and the makeup cracked like plaster.
I tossed a ten on the table. “Let’s pretend we ordered something to eat.”
The bartender curled the ten around her long purple fingernails, tucked the money down the front of her blouse between the tattoos of two devils, and walked off.
The blood tasted good but did nothing to improve my understanding of psychic energy or my attitude toward this investigation.
Phyllis pushed the diviner across the table toward me. “You’re going to need this to locate the signal.”
Given the ambiguities in this assignment, the diviner seemed less like a tool and more like Pandora’s box. “So this particular signal comes from Morada. Why is that such a big deal?”
Phyllis hesitated as if parsing in her mind what she could and couldn’t tell me. “Usually the use of psychic energy is a passive activity, similar to hearing or observing. But there are some who can focus and direct their psychic energy outward-a psychic energy attack, if you will.”
I pulled my chair closer. “For what reason?”
“To enter someone’s psyche through their subconscious. Imagine if you could reach someone through their dreams.”
Dreams. Were my nightmares and hallucinations the result of psychic manipulation?
I had thought of the Iraqi girl’s resurrection as a symptom of my guilt. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe someone had opened up my head and was monkeying around in my subconscious.
I felt as if I was shrinking deep into myself and the world pulled away from me with a wet, sucking sound. I became queasy from the sense of violation. Everything seemed an illusion-who or what could I trust? I retreated behind my doubts.
I wasn’t sure what was going on and I didn’t like it.
Mel busied himself draining his bag of blood. He searched with the straw to slurp from the corners of his bag. His eyes turned to me and wrinkled with concern. “Felix, you look like there’s a spider crawling in your shorts. What’s up?”
All of us wore contacts and we couldn’t read one another’s aura. I must’ve really telegraphed my emotions to have them read so easily.
“What about hallucinations?” I asked.
Phyllis had been drinking blood while she studied me with her keen eyes. She put down her bag. “What about them?” Her gaze pulled at me like hooks.
Talking about the hallucinations would stir up my feelings of violation and guilt, but Phyllis might know something that could help.
“The last few nights I’ve had bad dreams about my turning.” I fought to displace my emotions and kept my voice calm as if I were talking about someone else. “I’ve been getting hallucinations that bring back memories I worked hard to forget. A voice comes to me, repeating my name.”
“Whose voice is it? A fanging victim?”
“No.”
“Was that it? Just a voice?” Phyllis fired the questions like an interrogator.
“I saw a face.”
“Whose?”
“Someone from long ago. Someone dead.”
Phyllis played with the straw in her bag of blood. “How do the hallucinations come to you?”
“At first in nightmares. Lately I’ve been getting them even during the day.”
“What triggers them?”
“They just happen.”
I remembered the girl. My kundalini noir wilted and I felt my shoulders sag with grief.
Buck up, Felix. Don’t show weakness. I erased the girl’s image from my mind. I straightened up and put a stoic gaze into my eyes.
For the first time since I’ve known Phyllis, a flicker of regret played across her face.
“What is it?” I asked.
Phyllis hardened her stare. The corners of her eyes twitched. “Are you up for this assignment?”
“You mean finding the zombie creator?”
“And the source of the psychic signals.”
I didn’t appreciate these jabs she was throwing at me. “Are you doubting my abilities?”
“I have my concerns.” Another jab.
“What are you getting at?”
Phyllis shifted uncomfortably as if she were about to say something that would hurt us both. “I’m sending you help.”
The comment stung like one of those jabs had connected to my chin.
Mel winced and whispered sympathetically, “Ouch.”
Phyllis’s meaning lingered in the air, stinking. She’d lost confidence in me as an enforcer.
I asked, “Why?”
“No reason other than my own paranoia.”
“I don’t like someone from the Araneum describing herself as paranoid,” I said. “The rest of us should be paranoid about you.”
Phyllis’s expression seemed to petrify.
I wanted to break through her calm veneer, so I added, “Unless this business of being paranoid is bullshit.”
Phyllis let her face relax. A manipulative gleam sparkled in her eyes. “I wouldn’t worry.”
“It’s my ass. I am worrying.”
Her eyes went dim and her mouth flattened, like her mind had clicked off the “show emotions” button. She said, “I’m bringing in Jolie.”
The name was a stab where my heart used to be. Jolie was another vampire enforcer from the Araneum. She and I had met through our friendship with Carmen Arellano. We both had been Carmen’s lovers. In the days since we lost Carmen, Jolie and I had kept in touch. Our conversations were strained by the mutual understanding that we had unknowingly betrayed Carmen. Because of our mistake, she was now a prisoner of extraterrestrial gangsters.
Jolie and I once commiserated our way to sex. I’m sure both of us were thinking of Carmen as we screwed each other. I know I was. Afterward, we both pretended that the other no longer existed.
“Send for her then,” I said. “You don’t need my permission.”
Phyllis replied, “Jolie’s finishing another assignment. You should wait for her.”
“I’ll get started now. The Araneum said ‘immediately.’”
“You should wait. A repeat of what happened to Carmen would be a disaster.”
This wasn’t another jab, it was an uppercut to my jaw.
I looked away from Phyllis and let my ego absorb the blow.
I slipped a few bills under my glass and collected my backpack. “Phyllis, you don’t think I can handle this, bring in anyone you want.”
She dropped her empty bag of blood into Mel’s lunch box. “Felix, you’re the best we have. Unfortunately, even the best can’t afford to make mistakes.”