Athena Force 8: Contact by Evelyn Vaughn Read Free Book Online Page B

protectors. But Absinthe took no prisoners. And if she’d known something…
    It certainly would help explain some of the extra grief and guilt their usually implacable roommate was feeling.
    “I’ll go see what she knows. And then I’ll try to find someone who can help me find that rope. Are you sure you don’t have any suggestions there?”
    “Look, I’ve heard of some things my circle and I could try. Not psychic, but magic. Like maybe using a pendulum over a map to locate an item or a person, that sort of thing. But if it was my killer you were looking for, I’d put my faith in you. So to speak.” Evan turned his sketchbook. “Do you mind if I display this?”
    He’d done a charcoal sketch of Faith, every line of her face a graceful curve, a stylish edge. Her reaction—surprise, pride, uncertainty—all of it mixed in her chest, and she took an uncertain step backward. “I—”
    “I know it’s not that good,” Evan insisted.
    “No! It’s—” Beautiful. But how could she say that? “My mom would have a cow,” she said instead, changing the subject. “Once I got my picture in the paper, when my sixth-grade class sang Christmas carols at a nursing home, and she called the paper to complain about not getting permission. She never liked…”
    Never liked the idea of strangers seeing Faith. Never wanted the publicity.
    “That’s okay,” said Evan, with a shrug. “If you want, I could—”
    “No. Go ahead and hang it. It shows what a great artist you are. Mom won’t know about it, and if she finds out, she can lump it.” Or finally do me the favor of explaining what the hell she’s hiding. “I’ve got to go talk to Absinthe.”
    “Between the lot of us, I bet we can find Krystal’s killer,” said Evan hopefully.
    Faith said, “We can at least help.”
    In more ways than one.
    By that evening, she had enough with which to make a call. It was awfully soon after her interview with the detectives the other night. But for Krystal, Faith had to risk it.
    The information she’d gotten from Absinthe was too weird—and too pressing—to ignore.
    And forty-two hours had passed since Krystal’s murder.
    It was time to revive Madame Cassandra.

Chapter 4
     
    “T he dead woman,” Faith said, with the fake Virginia accent she’d adopted for these anonymous public-telephone contacts, “was having nightmares about vampires.”
    “Vampires?” repeated Detective Sergeant Butch Jefferson, from his mobile.
    In his background, Faith heard someone else—his partner, Roy Chopin. “She’s gotta be kidding you.”
    “Y’all clearly don’t understand dream interpretation.” As soon as she’d decided to pass information from her psychic companions to the New Orleans Police Department months ago, Faith had known she must remain anonymous. For one thing, she’d been raised to keep a low profile, a habit difficult to shed. For another, explaining that she was merely speaking for the psychics, instead of as a psychic, would lessen her already shaky credibility.
    Instead, when she made contact, she pretended to be a reader herself. She’d pulled the name Cassandra out of the blue, probably because she believed herself to be conveying the truth, as surely as the ancient Greek heroine had, and because, like that mythic Cassandra, Faith honestly doubted anyone in authority would believe her.
    “Well then, Miss Cassie,” said Butch, his drawl far more real than hers. “Won’t you please enlighten us?”
    “I would be delighted.” She readjusted the black receiver of the pay phone in the Aquarium of the Americas. She never used private numbers to call Butch. “Dreams can’t generally be taken at face value. They tend to be symbols.”
    “Yes ma’am.”
    “If Miss Tanner feared vampires, that could mean she was afraid of being drained of power, of energy.”
    She heard Butch say, away from the mouthpiece, “She thinks maybe the dead psychic was worried about being drained of power.”
    “Could