Chapter Four
But he had failed his assignment, Cole remembered, not paying attention to Heather who prattled on about the staplers and magic markers they needed to buy. By the time he had paid a visit to the witch, the amulet was no longer around her neck. She had known he was coming. And despite horrible torture of her husband -- it had been a source of endless fascination to discover exactly how many square inches of skin covered the human body -- she had refused to tell where the amulet was hidden. At last, frustrated and foiled, his temper had snapped. He let go of an immense bolt of fire, sending the house up in flames. Raynor had been quite disappointed, he recalled.
Yet, here it was, that much-coveted amulet. Cole wondered what happened to the other half, in whose hands it had fallen when the Brotherhood was broken, all those long months ago, when he'd been an accepted member of the Charmed Ones' inner circle.
He tried to remember the name of the witch whose family had guarded the amulet for so many generations, the woman he had so brutally murdered. It hadn't been Woodard, he knew that much. So that broached the question of how Heather had come into possession of the amulet. Should he ask her? Did she even know what it was? Could this be the reason why Rhiannon had placed Heather in his path? Or him in hers.
"That's a very nice pendant you have," he commented, trying to sound off-hand when he caught Heather fingering the silver jewel again.
"Uh? Oh, yeah." Self-consciously she let it drop back beneath her collar. "It belonged to my mother. She gave it to me before she died. She said it's been in the family for generations."
"Well, then you better take good care of it," Cole said, as if it wasn't an important issue. But inside his mind, the wheels were whirring, trying to make sense of what Heather told him and coming up one clue short. He would have to look into Heather's past, he knew, if he were going to figure out how the pieces of the puzzle fit together.
Mark left the university campus in a hurry, not wanting to deal with the indignation Jean would undoubtedly heap upon him when she came to realize The Bay Enquirer was a tabloid of the worst sort. How could he explain to her that he had the best intentions and wasn't about to drag Gillian's name through the mud? But despite the shame he felt at his job, excited butterflies kept fluttering in his stomach.
He had a clue. A first, honest-to-God clue! It wasn't much, but he sensed the business card Jean had given him was important. After all, it preceded Gillian's radical shift in life. It simply had to be significant.
Not sure how to proceed with this tentative clue, he decided to check out the address on the card. It wasn't far from the campus to West Shore Boulevard, merely a few miles. But as he approached the address, Mark unconsciously lifted his foot from the Impala's gas pedal. His heart grew cold when it coasted to a stop at the curb. The last time he had been here, it was night. And he had been watching a woman plummet to her death, from right up there.
When he found that the address on the card denoted the same building that Jenna Squire had chosen to take her desperate jump from, it didn't really come as a surprise anymore.
And as shock faded, it was replaced with more excitement. He was definitely on the right track. Somehow the Gitta Models agency was involved.
Once they had finished their coffee, Cole sent Heather shopping. He gave her a thick wad of cash and told her to buy all the office supplies she felt they needed without delay. She'd blinked at the money, but her eyes lit up at the prospect of having a genuine shopping spree and she'd quickly compiled a list of necessities.
Cole breathed out with relief when the door closed behind her. He needed some time to think and regain some equilibrium. It had been unnerving to discover that Heather wore the pendant that marked one of Belthazor's few failures, and he couldn't quite decide how to approach the subject again without raising her suspicions. Either she was a very good liar, or Heather had no idea about the value of her jewelry.
But before Cole could start a thorough introspection, the outer door opened again. He looked up, prepared to find Heather announcing she had forgotten something. Thus it took him a few seconds to realize that it wasn't his secretary, but a young man who stood in the entrance.
A client?
Clients would be good for his cover, and Cole sprang up from his seat while waving the young man to enter.
"Please, come in. What can I do for you?"
"Are you Cole Turner? The lawyer?"
"Yes, I am." Cole offered a friendly smile. "I'd offer you coffee, but I'm currently out of a coffee machine."
"That's okay." The young man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out sheaf of papers. "I'd like to you to look over this contract and tell me if it's kosher," he said, handing Cole the sheets.
"Sure," Cole said. "Please, sit down."
He waited for his guest to seat himself, then took his own chair behind his desk and unfolded the contract.
"Gitta Models, blah blah," he began to read, lips moving. "Gillian James..." Cole raised an amused eyebrow in the direction of the young man. "You don't strike me as someone named Gillian."
The other man flustered. "Oh, no... no, I'm sorry. I'm Mark DeWitt. I'm here for a friend of mine. I'm a little worried about her, so I want to make sure she isn't signing her firstborn away or something. You know how you hear always strange stories about modeling agencies."
"I see. Well, Mr. DeWitt, I'll look into it for you. Where can I reach you?"
He wrote down the number Mark gave him, and saw his first client out before he went back to brooding over Heather's heirloom.
"Dammit," Cole swore beneath his breath when the computer screen in front of him turned blue and announced yet another fatal error. It was the sixth time that evening. Or was it the seventh? He couldn't even recall how many times he had to restart the infernal machine and reconnect to the Internet. Phoebe had always made it seem so easy, with her cute little laptop. But Cole found himself longing for the days of yore, when he could have send out minions to do the legwork and return to him with all the paper trails he could want.
While he waited for the machine to run through its startup cycle, he picked up the printouts he had managed to procure and leafed through them. Obituaries, mostly; people had no idea how much information could be gleaned from those sad advertisements announcing the demise of the near and dear.
He'd found obituaries for both a Tom and a Jennifer Woodard. Both came from the online archives of the Blackstone Daily News. Heather hadn't told him, but he now knew that she came from the tiny town of Blackstone, Virginia, where her parents had died shortly after another. It was sad, really. In late 2002, her mother had died, much to the sorrow of 'devoted husband Tom and loving daughter Heather'. Then, a few months later and not that long ago, Tom had followed his wife into an early grave, leaving behind a 'bereaved daughter'. Both parents had been in their early fifties.
Cole could not help but feel sympathy for the orphan in his employ. His human heart had warmed up enough for such empathic feelings, and although he couldn't clearly remember his father, he did recall the vague longings of his youth for someone who would care for him. And it took one look at Heather to know she had grown up in a safe and happy environment.
Unfortunately, the obits did not answer his most pressing question: how did the amulet come to be in Heather's possession? If she spoke the truth, and Jennifer Woodard had given it to her, how had she come to it? He was damn sure that she wasn't the woman he murdered. Neither name nor timing nor cause of death fit with his recollection. Maybe an aunt? Witch family trees could be complicated and extensive, the Halliwells had taught him.
He realized the computer was ready for him, and he dropped the pages onto the desk before leaning back over the keyboard, intent to find out if Heather had any aunts that died in a house fire some fifteen years ago.
"She was adopted." The soft voice behind him startled Cole so badly that he jumped up from his seat, banging his knees painfully against the edge of the desk while he swung around, hand raised with a threatening fireball before he could stop himself.
"Heavens, woman, do you have a death wish?" he cried, letting the ball wink out when he recognized his visitor.
Rhiannon smiled enigmatically and seated herself onto the leather sofa. "I don't have much time," she said, indicating the easy chair to her right. "But I will tell you what I know, so you can concentrate on the important matters at hand."
"Gee, thanks," Cole muttered, vexed that his slaving at the computer apparently was not considered important.
"Heather was adopted," Rhiannon repeated when she was sure she had Cole's full attention. "Her birth name is Heather McDaniel."
Cole's eyes widened at the name and suddenly the memory clicked into place. The face of the woman he murdered appeared before his mind's eye, and he could clearly see a family resemblance to Heather. The same dark, slightly slanted eyes, a tiny nose and full lips framed by honey-colored hair. Unfortunately, with the memory of the face came also the memory of the expressions he'd seen on that face. Pain, horror, resigned sadness.
Rhiannon nodded seriously when she recognized the expression on his face. "That's right," she said softly. "The witch you murdered was Heather's mother. Megan had seen you were coming -- she was a precog -- and had placed the amulet around her daughter's neck for safekeeping. Heather was barely four years old. Her mother had sent her to the neighbors, knowing the McDaniel residence would not be a place for a young child that night."
Cole shuddered and rubbed his arms at his recollections. "I'm sorry," he croaked, his voice unsteady. "I've done so much..."
"Shh," Rhiannon shushed him. "Now's not the time to fall apart with guilt. You have a chance to redeem yourself a little for what you did. Heather needs your help. Soon. You're not the only one that has seen and recognized the amulet she wears."
"Is that why you sent her to me?"
"Yes. So you figured that was me." Rhiannon offered him a smile. "Can't put much past you, can I?"
Cole took a deep breath, banishing the horrid memories to a deeply hidden part of his brain where they would hold for later examination, and he squared his shoulders.
"Does she know?"
"About the amulet? No." Rhiannon shook her head. "Neither is she aware she is a witch. Her mother bound her powers at the same time she gave her the amulet. I think the binding is tied in to it. I don't know what, if anything, will break that bond. Heather was safe while nobody knew where the amulet was. Now, though, they will come after her."
She stood up, and blue lights announced the arrival of her whitelighter-assistant come to take the Elder away. Cole wanted to ask so many questions but failed to come up with a single one, as the memories of the murder of Heather's mother threatened to make themselves known again.
"Oh, and Cole?" Rhiannon accepted the hand Ania offered her. "You better get rid of your subscription to The Bay Mirror. You don't need it..." The last word faded out amidst a swirl of sparks. Cole was left alone to contemplate the things she told him while he stared out across the shimmering bright lights of downtown Tampa.
"I knew it!" Mark dropped the phone back on its cradle and let out a yell fit for a rodeo cowboy. Everywhere in the editorial room people looked up from their work, fingers stilling on keyboards. Some smiled at the young reporter's enthusiasm while others seemed annoyed at the interruption of their concentration.
"Found something?" Kit Watson, the photographer asked.
"Oh yeah!" Mark rolled his chair back, grabbed his print-outs and rushed past the photographer to Santano's sanctum.
The editor-in-chief looked up from an article he was reading when Mark knocked on his door. At the look on his young employee's face, he dropped the red pencil and motioned for Mark to come in. "I take it you have something I'll like?"
"Yes... yes, I do." Mark was out of breath from excitement more than from running across the large room. "Remember that woman who was killed in Ybor City, a while back?"
"Uh huh." Santano nodded. "You kept digging at that?"
"Yes sir. And I found something! There have been others. Young women missing, old ladies showing up dead with their IDs in their purses. There's Gillian James, the girl in Ybor City, and the suicide, Jenna Squire."
"That's only two," the editor noted. "Could be a weird coincidence."
"I know," Mark admitted. "That's why I dug a little deeper. I found another case, in Miami, a year ago. And another two in New York in the past five years."
Santano sat forward, resting his hands atop his desk, his eyes twinkling. "It's beginning to sound like a pattern. Did you find any connection, anything they had in common?"
"Yes, I did." Mark grinned with pride and anticipation of revealing his winning card. "Every one of those women had signed with Gitta Models. They have an office right here in Tampa, on West Shore Boulevard. Same building Jenna jumped from. And they have offices in New York and Miami too." He waited with baited breath for his editor's response.
"And that's a story," Santano said with a satisfied nod.
"There's more." Mark couldn't keep the excitement out of his voice. "I've had one of the agency's standard contracts checked out. The lawyer said, and I quote: 'If someone signs this, they will have sold their soul.'"
Santano stapled his fingers and thought for a moment. Then he looked up and met Mark's eyes with a grin. "Let's print it."
"Wha-- What?" Mark stammered, shocked at the prospect. "But-- but all I have is suspicions and circumstantial evidence! I mean, it's not an article yet!"
"Sure it is," Santano explained patiently. "It's got everything a good, juicy story needs: beautiful women, mysterious deaths, the glamorous and dangerous world of modeling. Listen," he continued as he caught the flabbergasted look on Mark's face, "we are not the New York Times, all right? We are The Bay Enquirer. You know the best thing about running a tabloid? We can do things the big respectable boys can't. We'll print what we have, and then we wait and see. Maybe we'll jar them enough to give us the rest of the story. Wouldn't be the first time that happened."
Mark left Santano's office with mixed emotions and set down to write up his final draft of the story. Part of him was thoroughly excited at seeing the story in print, his story, the story he broke. But the other part of him dreaded the paper hitting the streets. He didn't have enough. The evidence wasn't enough. And a company like Gitta Models would employ a slew of lawyers eager to rip his throat out and kill his journalistic career before it fully started.
Perhaps, he thought as he started up the word processor, he should get a lawyer of his own. Just in case.
A crackling bolt of white-hot lightning streaked through Rena's office and destroyed the coffeepot on the conference table. Shards of glass and plastic mixed with splatters of hot liquid that scattered about the room. Rena ducked her head just in time to not be sliced by a particular ugly looking shard that she vaguely recognized as the pot's bottom.
"All the hounds of Hell..." A stream of colorful invectives tumbled from the mouth of the other person in the room. Birgit Freda, her demonic boss, was having a temper tantrum. And Rena was catching the brunt of it.
"Are you totally incompetent? Remind me again why I keep you on? If you can't find one particular girl in this sun-scorched city--"
With regret, Rena watched the next blast hit the Monet painting on the wall, bursting it into a thousand splinters that would only be fit to turn into matches. It had taken a lot of money to obtain that picture. But she kept silent; she knew better than to utter a word in her defense. Previous experience had taught her to simply weather the tantrum until it blew over. Or the next lightning strike might hit her instead of the furniture. And she figured she really had herself to blame for the storm currently raging in the room. After all, if she had not been so quick to dismiss the girl, she might have had her working in the next room right this moment. At the very least, she should have offered the girl a modeling career to hold her attention. She'd been pretty enough to make the lie credible.
And who was the person who called Birgit with the news of having found the amulet in the first place? Exactly. She did. Rena sighed. She should have waited until she had the girl securely in her hands.
She ducked beneath the desk as the computer screen burst apart. That was three. Birgit would be done by now. The one good thing she could say about her boss's powers was that they were limited. Three strikes, and it's safe to come out, was the standard joke amongst Birgit's inner circle of minions.
"Find her!" Birgit growled, now looking pale and worn beneath the close-cropped platinum of her hair. "Find her, or the next discharge will have your name on it." She turned on her heels and stormed out of the office, leaving Rena standing amid the rubble like a survivor in a disaster movie.
She blew out a breath, relieved at having survived another fit of Birgit's temper. Those outbursts got old fast but it was always best to simply weather them and pick up the pieces afterwards. She wasn't too worried about Birgit's threats. They did have the girl's address, after all. It would only be a matter of time before the staff could pick her up.
Maria, her assistant, stuck her head in the door. "Are you--" she began, but the words died on her lips as she goggled saucer-eyed at the destruction within the office.
Rena suppressed a chuckle. The girl was new, only been employed for a few weeks. She had gained the job the girl with the amulet had come asking about.
"I'm fine," she said. "You might want to call an interior decorator for me, though. Seems like I have some remodeling to do."
"Oh... yes... right," Maria stammered, breathless with shock.
When she didn't move, Rena raised an eyebrow. "Something else you wanted, Maria?"
"Huh? Oh, yes. Miss Mason, I think you should see the paper." With those words she pushed a folded newspaper at Rena. The bright colors that seemed to jump from the page and the thick black headlines told her it was a tabloid. With a little grimace of distaste at the black ink that would rub off onto her fingers, Rena opened the paper.
"Mr. Turner? Cole, I mean. Can I offer you the first cup of cof-- oh my!"
"Cofomy?" Cole raised an amused eyebrow, but the grin quickly faded when he followed Heather's gaze. She was staring at the copy of the newspaper that was spread out on his desk.
He had not taken Rhiannon's advice to stop his subscription to San Francisco's Bay Mirror. He wasn't quite ready to sever the ties so completely yet. But the words in Phoebe's advice column told him she had moved on. No longer was her writing laden with bitterness and cynicism, like it had been six months ago when they were going through a painful divorce. He even suspected she had found a new love. Strangely, the thought didn't hurt half as much as he had imagined it would do. Matter of fact, he found himself wishing her well.
In any case, it wasn't the west coast's Bay Mirror that had got Heather's attention so wholly. She was staring at the headlines of The Bay Enquirer, the local rag, instead. Cole had learned a long time ago that tabloids were indispensable sources of information regarding magical workings in any city. The incidents that the reputed newspapers deemed too incredible or outlandish to cover often made headlines in the less reputed papers. Most of those incidents were made-up stories, the fantasies of would-be journalists or citizens eager for their fifteen minutes of fame. But sometimes they were real, and magical.
"What's wrong, Heather?" he asked, his voice betraying none of his desire for a break in their daily routine. Instead, he sounded sincerely concerned.
"No-- nothing," she said, giving a brief shake of her head and looking away from the paper. "It's just that... I applied for a job with them, before I found your classified." She pointed at the headline blazing up at them.
"Gitta Models models' mysterious deaths," he read the capitalized headline aloud. A small furrow appeared in his brow. The name sounded familiar. Wasn't Gitta Models the same agency whose contract he'd just been asked to judge?
"You wanted to be a model?" he asked Heather.
"No... no," Heather shook her head. "The temp agency said they needed a secretary, so I went for an interview. I didn't get the job, obviously. They said the position had already been filled. But... it was weird."
"Weird?" Cole's inner excitement raised another few notches.
"Yeah." Calmer now, Heather continued. "The woman I talked to? She's the one that's mentioned in the article. She was very cold and distant at first, but when I was about to leave, she turned like a leaf on a tree. Suddenly she was all smiles and regrets that she couldn't hire me. She gave me the willies."
Rhiannon's voice echoed in Cole's mind, a memory of their last conversation. "... you're not the only one that has seen and recognized the amulet..." Could that be what happened? Heather had a tendency to finger the pendant when she was feeling uncomfortable. It was how she had drawn his attention to the trinket around her neck. This Mason woman would need looking into. If she was a demon, Heather was in serious danger.
"... had me fill out a form, just in case they had another job opening," Heather was continuing. It took Cole a moment to tear his concentration away from his thoughts and back to the woman who he was protecting.
His eyes narrowed when her words sank in. "Wait, did you give them an address?"
"Yes. The motel where I'm staying."
"You'll have to leave there right away," Cole decided. He thought quickly. "You can stay at my place. I have a spare guest room."
"What?" The easy camaraderie of days of shared dust and cobwebs dissipated and renewed wariness appeared in Heather's eyes.
"Listen," Cole said. "If that story speaks even half the truth, you could be in danger. You said yourself that this woman gave you 'the willies'. She would know where to find you, if she wanted to."
Heather nodded reluctantly, some of the suspicion again fading at his logic. "Why would she want to?"
"I'm not trying to come on to you," Cole continued urgently, ignoring the question and desperate to make her agree. "I just want to make sure you're safe." He gave her his most disarming smile, knowing he was pushing too hard. "You've already proven yourself indispensable to this business." He gave a vague wave in the direction of the shiny new file cabinet. "And you can't stay at that motel forever, can you? I'm just offering you a safe place, until you can find an apartment of your own. Know what? I'll even ask my own real estate agent to help you look. Okay?"
Heather gave him an intent stare for a long moment. Then her shoulders relaxed and Cole breathed a sigh of relief. She nodded. "Okay. I'll pack tonight."
"No," he said, grabbing the keys to his BMW from the table. "Right now. Come on. I'll drive you."
The first thing Darryl did when he entered the squad room and reached his desk was take off his jacket and loosen his tie. The heat wave was too much for the ancient air conditioning unit in the police department. And leave it to the pencil pushers over at city hall to refuse to make the funds available for a new unit.
With a sigh, silently cursing the weather gods, Darryl dropped in his chair. At least inside the station, out of the sun, it was slightly better than out. Who would have thought it could get so hot in San Francisco this early in the season? Maybe, a horrible thought struck him unexpectedly, it wasn't a natural phenomenon? Darryl shivered despite the heat and made a mental note to ask the Halliwell sisters about the matter -- although he was not certain he wanted to know the answer.
He reached for a file, determined to get some reading done, when his phone rang. He glanced at the clock. A few minutes after eight. Would the mayhem that always accompanied hot weather start this early in the morning?
"Morris," he grunted into the mouthpiece.
"Same here," said a voice on the other end, a hint of humor along its edges.
Darryl frowned, for a moment unsure whether it was a prank call or not. Then it dawned on him. "Uncle Dan! What a surprise. How's life in Tampa?"
"Hot," Daniel Morris replied a continent away.
"Same here." Darryl laughed. "But that's how you like it, Uncle Dan. It's why you and Aunt Phyllis moved to Florida in the first place, remember? How is my favorite aunt, by the way?"
The two men chatted about the weather and family for a few minutes. Then Daniel Morris, Tampa PD, came to the point.
"Darryl, I'd like your opinion on something." He was silent for a beat. "Something weird."
Instantly Darryl's good cheer melted away, like a Hershey's Kiss before the unrelenting sun that beat down on the squad room's roof. Uncle Dan was the most down-to-Earth person he knew; he did not do weird.
"I know you have a reputation for having an interest in strange cases," Dan Morris continued. "Well, I have something that might be right up your alley."
"Shoot." He really didn't need to confirm his reputation, especially with his uncle, but how could he refuse?
"Several unexplainable deaths," Dan continued. "Or rather, the deaths are quite simple to explain. It's the victims that have me stumped. Both are older women, in their seventies. One suicide, one car accident. But that's not what worries me. What does worry me..." Here Dan fell silent again for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. "What worries me, is that DNA testing has them identified as two women of a much younger age. Who both have gone missing. And nobody has reported losing two grandmothers." Another pause. Then, "It's almost as if--"
"As if the missing young women aged before their time," Darryl finished for his uncle. He rubbed his brow, rescheduling his visit to Prescott Street to the top of his priorities list.
"Yes." Dan sounded relieved that he didn't have to spell it out for his nephew. "And then today there's an article in the paper. Well, it's a tabloid, so normally I wouldn't pay much attention to it, except that the journalist seems to have uncovered the link between the two victims. And to several others."
"What's the link?" Darryl was furiously making notes on the pad he kept for just such purpose beside his phone.
"A modeling agency. Gitta Models. They have branches in several other cities."
"San Francisco too?"
"Not that I know of," Dan replied. "But I haven't really had much of a chance to look into it." He sounded vexed that the tabloid reporter knew something the police had so far failed to uncover in their victimology. "I wanted you to take a look at the case notes, if you've got the time."
"For my favorite uncle? Always."
"Thanks. I'll fax you my notes. And I'll fax you a copy of the article too."
"I'll be waiting."
"This has top priority." Rena tapped the photocopied file in the demon's hand with a manicured, blood-red fingernail. She handed out a similar copy to his partner.
No matter how hard they worked on keeping up their human appearance, she thought while watching them, demons never quite managed to blend in. Look at this pair. Both of them were tall, barrel-chested, with black eyes and dressed in dark suits that they didn't seem very comfortable in. In her view, they resembled demon biker bar bouncers who had dressed up for a formal wedding.
The newspaper article in The Bay Enquirer had caused quite some turmoil at the Gitta Models' offices on West Shore. Still picking splinters of the Monet's frame out of her bun while she read the article, Rena had thanked whatever deities she could think of that Birgit had just depleted herself, and that Maria had had the good sense not to bring in the paper during her boss's visit.
She decided that the best course of action to avoid further disaster and possibly painful death was to find the journalist responsible for the story. She would find out what he knew, how he had obtained his information, and then she'd hand him over to Birgit.
"What about the girl?" Demon Number Two asked.
"She can wait," Rena said. "We know where she stays, she's not going anywhere. We need to find that journalist, need to know what else he had uncovered. Before Miss Birgit reads the paper. And then she'll want his head on a platter for causing such trouble."
The two demons exchanged a look and a smirk.
"Piece of cake. One measly journalist." Demon Number One gave a dismissive snort. "One of us could do the job, while the other goes after--"
"No!" Rena interrupted. "You'll do as I say."
Although he had been wary of danger, senses extended and fireballs within easy reach, nothing untoward had happened while Heather packed her belongings into a suitcase and some boxes, and loaded them into the trunk of Cole's BMW. The trip from the motel to his seventh floor apartment on Harbor Island had passed as uneventfully. And as Heather cleared away the dinner dishes -- having insisted she cook as a thank-you for his hospitality -- Cole began to wonder if perhaps his eagerness to do some good had led him to jumping to wild conclusions.
But Rhiannon had confirmed that Heather was his charge now. And what better place to keep an eye on her than in his own apartment?
Homely sounds drifted from the kitchen. The noise of plates being stacked, running water, and tinkling cutlery. It made Cole long for those days past, when he lived with Phoebe and her sisters in the mansion in San Francisco. He had not realized how lonely he had become until he had someone to keep him company in his own home again. He should have been used to the loneliness; as a demon it had been all he knew, despite the apparent bonhomie among the elite in the Brotherhood of the Thorn. They had never truly accepted him, the half-breed, either.
Sighing, Cole wondered if that was his curse: never to be fully accepted, always watching from the sidelines, even as he played in the field.
"Cole?" Heather's voice drifted from the kitchen. "Where do you keep the dishwasher detergent?"
Cole's brow furrowed, for a moment confused by the mundaneness of the question after his more philosophical musings. "Uhm... I don't think I have any. I usually eat out," he called back. "We can get some tomorrow."
His gaze fell on the tabloid, which stories had caused Heather to come stay with him. He realized he had not even read the full article about the model agency yet, too concerned as he had been with Heather's safety. Silently admonishing himself for his negligence, Cole reached for the paper and scanned the article.
As he read the words printed on the thin paper, the temperature seemed to drop a few degrees when the cold realization sank in. This is it, he told himself. This was evil at its greatest. Every instinct, honed in more than a hundred years of doing evil's work, told him so. Although the journalist skimmed over several details, such as the exact causes of death, or the fact that the aspiring models had merely disappeared, while old women died with the girls' IDs in their purses, Cole knew. The deaths were probably accidental, he thought, fall-out in the process of garnering innocents for foul purposes in the guise of a modeling contract.
"He's got no clue what sort of people he's dealing with," Cole muttered beneath his breath while reading the byline.
"What? Who?" Heather's voice interrupted. He had completely forgotten her presence, and he blinked up at her.
"Him," he indicated the byline. "Mark DeWitt. He's in grave danger."
"Cole..." Heather hesitated. "You're all worked up about that article. You keep talking about people being in danger. I guess that modeling agency won't like this sort of publicity, but aren't you a little overreacting? It's not exactly a trustworthy newspaper."
"You have no idea what's out there. You've been sheltered from it most of your life. Your mother was a wise woman to give you that amulet and hide you. If I'd found you then..." His voice trailed off when he realized he had already said too much. He gave a shudder that made Heather frown upon him.
"What are you talking about? What amulet?" She was fingering the pendant again and he couldn't help but stare at it. She followed his gaze. "The pendant my mother gave me? Oh my God!" She gasped and her eyes widened. "I think that's what the Mason woman caused to change her behavior. When she saw my necklace!"
She'd just confirmed Cole's worst suspicions, and he made a decision. He pushed back his chair from the dinner table and got to his feet. "I've to go out for a while," he announced.
"What? Now? No! I want you to tell me what is going on! What's so special about this heirloom? What's 'out there'? Why do you keep saying we're all in danger?"
"Later," Cole said. He searched the drawers for a phonebook and started browsing the pages, looking for Mark DeWitt's address. "I have to get to this journalist first. Before they kill him."
"Kill him?" Heather gasped. "You have lost your mind! And I'm not staying a moment longer!" She ran to the guestroom, where she began throwing her newly unpacked clothes back into her suitcase.
Cole followed her. "Heather, please. I will tell you everything. I will tell you what happened, the night your parents died." She stilled at that, as he had known she would.
Turning around, eyes flashing hotly in sharp contrast to the emotionless quality of her voice, she asked, "What did you say? What do you know about that? Who are you?"
"I don't have time, right now," Cole said. He knew he was only postponing the inevitable. Heather would have to learn the truth about him. "I won't be long. I promise, I'll tell you everything I know. Just promise me you'll stay here until I get back."
Heather blew out a breath that made the strands of hair on her forehead flutter. "All right," she said after a long pause. "I'll stay that long. But only because I think I deserve an explanation."
"Okay," he agreed. If she left, it would make it so much harder to protect her. And he was quite sure she would leave, after he had finished his tale. Who wouldn't? But perhaps the journalist had some information he could use. Nip this thing in the bud, get Heather out of town and away from whoever was after her and the amulet. He'd be sad to see her go; a tentative friendship had started forming between them, two strangers in a new town. But had he not just realized that his curse was to remain alone and lonely?
To Be Continued...