Chapter Two

In the silence that followed her words, I heard one of the Christmas ornaments fall through the branches of the ten-foot noble fir taking up a quarter of the dining room.

“Come again?”

“I’m thinking of remarrying.” Prettily blushing.

“Anyone I know?”

“Councilman Dauten.”

My fork clanged against the brass charger plate.

“Councilman? Is that what you call him? Doesn’t he have a first name?”

“You sound rather waspish, Adrien,” my mother observed. “Do you not like the idea?”

“Of Councilman Dauten? I’m not sure. Have I met this one?”

Lisa’s eyes narrowed. She said carefully and clearly, “Do you have a problem with the idea of my remarrying?”

Did I? I wasn’t sure. Whatever I felt — and it was sort of a brakes squealing, glass smashing, horns blaring reaction — it wasn’t logical. Whereas Lisa marrying was perfectly logical. She was still young, considering the fact that she was my mum, and beautiful, considering the fact that she was my mum.

“No, of course not,” I said. We both listened to my tone of voice. I said with more energy, “No, I mean, if you’re happy. It’s…it’s kind of sudden, isn’t it?”

“It is!” she chirped, like that made it all the more wonderful.

* * * * *

I woke to a giant shadow looming over me. I started up, half asleep.

“Easy, easy. It’s me,” Jake said, sliding between the sheets. His hands and feet were like ice as he pulled me into his arms.

I subsided, heart thudding hard. “I thought you couldn’t make it tonight?”

“Yeah, well.” He was silent.

The far wall was patterned in snowflake shadows thrown by the street lamps through the lace window coverings. I heard flecks against the glass panes.

“Is it raining?” I half-lifted my head from the pillow of his chest.

“Just started.” He stroked his cold hand down my back, and as I shivered, gave my ass an absent squeeze. “They found another one.”

Not fully awake, it took a while for his words to register. “Another what one?”

“Another DB.”

Cop-speak for dead body. Since Jake worked homicide, I knew that it had to be more than just another body. I finally remembered our conversation of a few days earlier. “You mean, like a ritual killing?”

He nodded. “Maybe. This one was older. Maybe a year old. Badly decayed. But there were markings on the tree he was buried beneath.”

“Markings?”

“Symbols. We’ve got people working on them.” He stroked my back again, fingers idly tracing the links of bone and cartilage. “It’s not like I haven’t seen weird shit. Decapitated goats, disemboweled cats. Once I saw a cow’s tongue nailed to a tree.”

“Those wacky Baptists.”

Jake snorted. “You’re a funny guy.”

“Funny boy is the way I remember it.”

I felt rather than saw him smile at the memory of our recent vacation in the land that time forgot, the northern Mother Lode country.

“They estimate there’s like fifty thousand Santeria devotees in LA County. But this is…different.” He was quiet. I hated to imagine what he was remembering. “Adrien, do you honestly not know where Angus went?”

I rolled on one elbow, tried to read his face in the gloom. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Angus?”

“I’d just like to talk to him.”

“Jake, no damn way was he involved in anything like this. I know him that well.”

“I’m not saying he’s involved. But if he’s on the fringe of that scene, maybe he’s heard something.” He asked neutrally, “Did you send him up to the ranch?”

“No!” In fact, it hadn’t occurred to me to send Angus to Pine Shadow, the ranch I had inherited from my grandmother many years before. I wondered why I’d missed such a simple solution.

At last I said, “I don’t know where he is. I gave him the money and told him to leave town.”

“Could you take a guess?”

I shook my head. The rain drummed down harder now. We listened to it for a while. He tugged me back down. I rested my cheek against his chest, listening to the thump of his heart.

I said, “If he calls, what do you want me to tell him?”

“Whatever you think will get him back here to talk to me.”

We lay like that for a time. I started to relax back into drowsiness, lulled by Jake’s lazy caresses.

“How tired are you?” he asked, breaking the silence.

I chuckled.

The weight and warmth of our bodies moving in the tangled sheets. The pleasant friction of rough jaws, and hairy legs and arms, and lightly furred chests brushing against each other. The softness of mouths and eyelashes and silky hair…

He guided me onto my belly, and I spread my legs, shivering as Jake spread the warm gel in the cleft between my buttocks. He worked the tip of his finger, pressing against that first instinctive resistance, always careful, always taking his time, although it wasn’t necessary these days which I seemed to spend primed and ready for his cock’s penetration.

I sighed, pushing back, and his finger slipped inside the dark heat of my body. I murmured approval. “More, Jake.”

He eased the second finger in, teased a little, and I caught my breath.

“Good?”

“You know it is.” I drew my knees under me, raising my ass in invitation. “Please, Jake…”

Instead I got a slow, tantalizing third finger working me with maddening, delicious deliberation. I groaned. “Will you just do it?”

“Do what?”

“Fuck me.”

He murmured, breath against my bare back, “Not sure I caught that.”

“Jake,” I pleaded, humping against his hand. “Fuck me. Please.”

Ah, the magic word.

We shifted around, bed springs squeaking, I got on my hands and knees, and he knelt behind me, his hand stroking the curve of my ass, lingering. The head of his cock whispered the password, and my well-massaged ring of sphincter muscle gave him entrance. Arms braced stiff, his cock buried deep in my body, I rocked back against Jake’s hips. He shoved back against me. We quickly slipped into our rhythm. The fingers of one hand bit into my hip, holding me in place as he thrust hard. His other hand wrapped around my cock, pumping up and down, occasionally losing the pace. I shifted weight onto one hand, moved my free hand to join Jake’s, working myself.

We knew each other well by now, knew what we liked — and when we liked it. It was comfortable, and it was familiar, and it still shook me to the bones when I least expected it.

Like now.

Blood throbbed in my temples, pounded through my veins, so that I could barely hear the harsh, fast sound of our breaths, the hard slap of flesh on flesh, the music of the mattress. Jake’s hot breath gusted between my shoulder blades, sending little chills of sensation down my spine. And all the while that pleasurable scrape and slide, smooth exit and stiff entry, over and over and over.

I dug my fingers into the bedding, relinquishing control, letting him take me further and faster.

“Oh, baby…” he gritted between his teeth, and I felt a grin breaking across my tense face, even while I clenched, focused as that slow wash of liquid heat flooded my groin.

My whole body seized, clenched like the fist wrapped around my cock, the electric intensity of orgasm holding me in place while relief bordering on bliss shuddered through nerves and muscles and bones. I creamed over our joined fingers, his hand slipping a little in the sticky wetness. Jake went rigid, groaned like he was mortally wounded, and I could feel that wet warmth pulsing into me, a man’s cum flooding my ass.

I collapsed in a limp sprawl, Jake’s body covering my own. Wet beneath me, wet seeping out of my hole. Held hot and wet in Jake’s powerful arms and never wanting to move again while pleasure echoed through me.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about this all day.” His voice was rough on the admission. “Feels so fucking good with you.”

I nodded, managed, “It is good.” In fact, sometimes it surprised me how good it was with Jake, given his various hang-ups and extracurricular interests.

He kissed the back of my neck, and I felt my heart turn over. The sex was great, but it was those moments of quiet tenderness…

“Lisa is thinking of remarrying,” I said later, when we had both had time to catch our breath.

He made a noncommittal noise and turned his head on the pillow to face me.

“It’s kind of weird, that’s all,” I said in answer to the question he hadn’t asked. “She’s had plenty of opportunity. Probably should have done it years ago, but she always made such a thing about never loving anyone but my father.”

“Do you know the guy?”

I shook my head. “Councilman Dauten. I’ve heard the name, but I’ve never met him.”

“You want me to run a background check?” He sounded amused.

“Forget it,” I said, smothering a yawn. “It’s Chinatown, Jake.”

“Nah, it’s only Pasadena. You’ll be fine, baby.”

* * * * *

Angus wasn’t exactly a blabby guy. Maybe that’s why I remembered the infrequent bits of information he let drop. I recalled him saying that he was a teaching assistant for a Professor Snowden.

I made a few phone calls, learned without too much trouble that on Monday morning Dr. G. Snowden was supposed to be at Bunche Hall giving a lecture on the occult in popular film and fiction.

UCLA is like a small village, with its own police department, fire marshal, radio and TV station, restaurants, shops. It even has a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Campus Resource Center. I don’t know if they were offering this back in The Day. My father graduated from Stanford University, so Lisa’s expectation was that I would grace the halls of the old alma mater. That suited me fine, as I was attracted by the university’s proximity to San Francisco and the gay community.

But because I’d had friends at UCLA, and because I’d attended various cultural events there, I was reasonably familiar with the campus. I knew that Bunche Hall was located close to the Sculpture Garden, which was about five acres of grass and trees and studded by the works of Matisse and Rodin, among others. It was especially beautiful in the spring when the jacaranda trees were in bloom.

They were not in bloom that gray autumn day. Bare trees and stark sculptures provided a suitable backdrop for Bunche Hall, which had to be one of the ugliest buildings on campus. It looked like a concrete slab of Wasa bread.

I found #1209B without a problem. Slipping inside the dark classroom, I took a seat in the back row. It was one of the few empty seats in a room that looked like it seated about two hundred, indicating Professor Snowden was either popular or an easy pass. At the moment, he was showing a videotaped Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon on a pull-down screen at the front of the class.

Every so often Professor Snowden’s tall silhouette loomed menacingly on the screen in front of Yugi and the gang, as he skewered the notion that occult elements in the popular kid’s cartoon were dangerous. He had an attractive speaking voice with a hint of a British accent.

“The Religious Reich takes the view that despite overt themes of friendship, loyalty, and courage, Satan is using Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, and Harry Potter to prime innocent minds for occult suggestion and demonic influence. The idea being that if your brats are going to be brainwashed, it should be by Pat Robertson.”

The class rumbled into laughter.

On the video, a girl cartoon figure said, “It’s a symbol of our friendship. So when Yugi’s dueling, no matter how tough it gets, he’ll know that he’s not alone!”

Snowden drawled, “Not that Yugi is ever alone, as he’s possessed by the spirit of Yami Yugi, the ancient Egyptian pharaoh.”

More laughter. Nothing like a captive audience.

There was a smattering of discussion before Snowden turned off the video. Someone in the back row hit the lights.

The lecture concluded, students rose, talking, gathering books and papers, shuffling off to the next dog and pony show.

Snowden stood at the front surrounded by a flock of the faithful, mostly female, vying for the final crumbs of his attention. I made my way down the aisle watching him dispatch them with smooth ease.

He was medium height, lean, with long, loose silvery hair and a haughty world-weary face. He reminded me vaguely of Alan Rickman’s Professor Snape, except that he wore Levi’s and Birkenstocks and a T-shirt that read, I’m not Satan, I’m merely one of his highly placed minions.

When he smiled, which seemed to be rarely, it transformed his face, and I had a hint of what the attraction was. I stayed on the outside of the circle until the last little bird, a chickadee with a black mohawk, pink heart-shaped glasses, and an upside-down crucifix necklace departed with a final curious look at me.

The professor was ejecting the video tape from the VCR as I approached. He looked up, his eyes brilliantly green in the artificial light. Contacts, I thought. Nobody’s eyes were that color.

“I enjoyed your lecture,” I said. “Is it your opinion, then, that the media don’t have any particular influence over the young and suggestible?”

“That would be an indefensible position,” Snowden replied in that lazy public-school accent. He tilted his head. “You arrived toward the end of my lecture. I prefer observers to ask permission before they sit in.”

“Do you take a lot of heat over your curriculum?”

“This is UCLA,” he said. “I’m expected to be controversial. And you are —?”

“Curious.”

He arched a querying eyebrow.

I introduced myself, explained my relationship to Angus. I said all the usual stuff about hoping I wasn’t catching him at a bad time and could I have a moment.

He was very brown and very muscular, like polished teak — but he exuded energy, a virility that was anything but wooden. “So you’re Adrien English,” he murmured. “Well, well.” He looked me up and down with a certain appraising glint that you generally don’t get from straight guys. “Angus has spoken of you.”

I didn’t doubt it, since I’d had to read Angus the riot act on more than one occasion when he’d blamed Snowden and the demands of academia for not getting his job done. No stretch to think he’d used me and the bookstore in reverse circumstances.

“Have you seen Angus lately?”

He looked…guarded. Or maybe I was reading into a natural reservation about what concern of mine it was. He said finally, “He missed class Friday and again today. No word of explanation.”

“There may be extenuating circumstances,” I said. “Were you aware that he was being harassed by former classmates?”

Once again Snowden raised the most supercilious eyebrow this side of the royal family. “I was not,” he said finally.

“Apparently Angus and some other kids took a course with you called ‘Practical Magic.’ Witchcraft in modern society. Anyway, the enterprising little tykes went off and started their very own coven — but I imagine you already know that.”

“Ridiculous,” he said sharply.

“What is ridiculous?”

“Why, the idea that a student — my students — would attempt to put into practice —” He stopped.

I shrugged. He smelled a bit like pipe tobacco, which I like, and Masculine, which I wear myself on occasion. I found it just the least bit distracting.

“You think these…classmates are harassing Angus? Exactly what do you mean by harassing?”

“Curses — I don’t mean cussing, I mean threats — I’ve heard a few of the phone calls. Alexander Graham Bell would not be happy.”

The green eyes narrowed. I had to admit that expression was not quite as enjoyable as the way he’d originally looked at me.

When I failed to be razed to cinders, he asked, “What is it you think you can do about this?”

“Well, I can start by talking to you. If you have any influence over the little shits, perhaps you can warn them off. Maybe they don’t get that making threatening phone calls violates both state and federal law.”

“And if I don’t…if I am unable to influence them?”

“Then I’ll talk to them.”

He spluttered. “Talk to whom? What makes you think I know who these…these juvenile delinquents are?”

I’d figured this was likely a waste of time. If Angus trusted Snowden, or believed Snowden could help him, he would have gone to him himself. But I was working at a disadvantage. Snowden was the single lead I had. I said, “If you didn’t know, I think you probably would have said so up front.”

His eyes flickered, acknowledging the truth of this. He either knew or strongly suspected who these assholes were. “How are you qualified to deal with this sort of thing? What makes you imagine you won’t make it worse by butting in?”

“It’s my experience this kind of thing thrives on secrecy. When you drag it into the light, when you make it public, it tends to shrivel up and blow away.”

“Had a lot of experience with cults, have you?” he asked sardonically.

I said evenly, “We’ve all had experience with bullies. You can dress this in black and teach it to quote bad poetry, but it’s still the same animal.”

His turned off the television set. Back to me, he said quietly, “I have no proof, but I have my suspicions. Will you allow me to deal with this in my own way?”

“If you truly will deal with it.”

He glanced over his shoulder, his smile askew. “Word of honor.”

He offered a well-shaped, strong hand.

We shook on it. His grip was warm, just the right amount of pressure. I wondered how far I should trust to the honor of one of Satan’s highly placed minions.

* * * * *

Bob Friedlander was waiting for me at Cloak and Dagger.

“We wanted to stop by and thank you for Friday night.”

We, White Man? Maybe he meant the publishing house; there was sure no sign of Gabriel Savant.

“The pleasure was ours,” I said. “We had a great turnout. One of the best ever.” Angus was the fan. He had pushed for that signing — and he had been right. It had been a success. The shame was that Angus hadn’t been around to enjoy it.

“I hope you sold a lot of books?”

“We did very well.”

Friedlander appeared to be perusing the bookshelves behind the desk where Gabriel had signed books.

Curiously, I inquired, “Was that announcement at the end for real? Is there a cult exposé in the works?”

He spared me a harassed look. “No. I can’t imagine what Gabe was thinking.” He stood on tiptoe to examine the shelf above his head.

“So there is no book planned?”

“Absolutely not. It was a publicity stunt. A dumb stunt.” He removed a couple of books from the shelf.

“What did you lose?” I asked.

His heard jerked my way. “Huh? Nothing. Well, actually…yes. You didn’t happen to find a…a disk, did you?”

“What kind of a disk?” I was thinking favorite CD.

Friedlander looked flustered. “A floppy. It has research notes on it.”

“You think you lost it here?”

“I didn’t lose it,” he said irritably. “Gabe thinks he lost it. He’d had a lot to drink Friday night, in case you didn’t notice.”

And he was walking around with a floppy disk stuck in his skin-tight leather jeans? “I’m pretty sure I would have noticed a loose disk by now,” I said. “I can keep an eye out for it.”

This must be some valuable disk if Savant was afraid to go anywhere without it — in which case, how had he managed to lose track of it?

Reluctantly Friedlander turned back to me. “That would be great,” he said without enthusiasm.

“This research,” I said, “would it have anything to do with the book Savant isn’t writing?”

The glasses glinted blindly. “There is no book.”

“But maybe there should be?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“And Savant apparently had no idea what he was talking about, so that makes it unanimous. All the same, this isn’t idle curiosity. I’ve heard rumors of a group here in LA.”

Friedlander stared at me. “My advice to you,” he said. “The next time you hear rumors? Cover your ears.”