One Way Fare

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Published by The Hartwood Publishing Group, LLC,

  Hartwood Publishing, Phoenix, Arizona

  www.hartwoodpublishing.com

  One Way Fare

  Copyright © 2013 by Barb Taub & Hannah Taub

  Digital Release: September 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-962916-002-3

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Dedication

  To Robert and Genevieve: parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. So that’s how it’s done…

  Author’s Note

  Charles Frye, the son of German immigrants, and his wife Emma settled in Seattle around 1888. Although Charles didn't view his first oil painting until he was thirty-five, he and Emma soon became avid collectors. After Charles’ death in 1940, their home and art collection was deeded to the people of Seattle and formed the Founding Collection of the Frye Art Museum. For more information on the Fryes, the art they collected, and their spectacular gift to Seattle, see http://fryemuseum.org/history.

  The Evil Overlord List is Copyright 1996-1997 by Peter Anspach. For the story of its creation as well as the complete (and completely hilarious) list, see http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html. You too can take over the world.

  Blurb

  Superpowers suck. If you just want to live a normal life, Null City is only a Metro ride away. After one day there, imps become baristas, and hellhounds become poodles. Demons settle down, become parents, join the PTA, and worry about their taxes.

  Null City is the only sanctuary for Gaby Parker and Leila Rice, two young women confronting cataclysmic forces waging an unseen war between Heaven and Hell. Gaby and her younger brother and sister are already targets in the war that cost their parents' lives. Should they forsake the powers that complete their souls and flee to Null City? Meanwhile, Leila has inherited a French chateau, a mysterious legacy, and a prophecy that she will end the world. Gaby and Leila become catalysts for the founding and survival of Null City. It just would have been nice if someone told them the angels were all on the other side.

  BETWEEN:

  In the room made of light, they plan the end of Hell. White floors disappear into the distance to blend seamlessly with walls and ceilings. A portable conference table with four folding chairs occupies the center. Three gold laptops blinking blue-screen error messages are ignored while their owners cluster around the fourth, with its apple-shaped icon gleaming in a brushed aluminum case.

  “I told you not to order through in-house Central Stores.” The fourth laptop’s owner sits back to allow them a better view and serenely folds her hands into the flowing sleeves of her robe. “They have a sweetheart deal with Celestron Computers, but their processors are dinosaurs, and they’ve outsourced their tech support to imps at Fallen Court.” Her face, while carved from the same perfect model, hints at an unfinished spark not visible in her three companions.

  Ignoring her words, the others focus on the message on her screen. The rustle of their robes subsides until the only sound is brisk tapping as her fingers return to the keyboard. “That’s it then.” She looks up at her three elders. “My calculations show if we control all three points in time that determine Null City’s history, we have a 96.7 percent chance of successfully isolating the City and recovering the Archangel Raziel’s Book.”

  The Eldest softly closes his gold laptop. “Null City must be destroyed before humans try to use the power in the Book to unmake Creation.”

  The laptop operator’s voice is calm, and her face remains immobile. But her youth relative to their endless eons is betrayed when she asks, “Not only will that strategy lead to massive death and destruction for humans, but it could mean war between Fallen and Angels. Is there no other way?”

  Gently, the Eldest replies, “No.”

  GABY, Chapter One

  1972, Seattle

  Gaby’s new employee handbook was clear: missing a client appointment was an excellent way to get fired. But it didn’t say a thing about breaking and entering. She’d checked. Over the past hour, she’d knocked, called, tried the house phone, paced, and automatically straightened the paintings lining the elegant hallway of Seattle’s Olympic Hotel. Despite the muted voices from within the suite, the brass-bound double doors of the Presidential Suite remained closed.

  She’d promised Dad: no more B&E. Her foot tapped. She could go back and try to explain to the agency. Tap. But this assignment was supposed to pay crazy-well for a week or more, and they’d asked for her specifically. Tap, tap. She needed that money for the normal life she’d promised her brother and sister after their parents were killed. Her foot slowed. Sorry, Dad. She pulled out her father’s torque wrench and favorite hook pick. Moments later the lock’s tumblers hit the shear line with a subtle click. I didn’t break a friggin thing, Dad. I’m just entering. Returning the little tools to her bag, she eased the door ajar a careful half-inch. “Hello?”

  No answer. No problem. If there was one thing raising her brother and sister taught her, it was how to power a bellow. “Is anyone here?”

  “Dammit, Harry, did you leave the door open again?” The man’s voice was velvet and smoke with a faint Creole accent. He called, “Be with you in a minute. What do you play?”

  “Ten-key?”

  Silence.

  Gaby juggled the now-cold coffee she’d brought from the lobby, briefcase with her beloved ten-key adding machine, purse, and dripping coat while digging in her pocket for the assignment slip from the agency to check―again. Yep, she had the right room. The door was pulled open and she stared. Nobody gets to be that beautiful was as far as her thoughts would go. Then again, maybe the hollow feeling in her stomach was hunger—she had skipped breakfast to get ready for this assignment.

  “Luic leMuir.” Leaning against the jamb with one arm blocking the doorway, he ignored her outstretched hand.

  Don’t say it, she sternly admonished her squealing inner-Gaby. He doesn’t need to know you have every record he’s ever made. Or that you take your showers to the sound of that voice…

  “Gabrielle Parker, CPA.” Her own voice was a breathless octave higher than normal. “Accountants-on-Demand sent me?”

  Under her spellbound gaze, one of his eyebrows lifted. “Well, Gabrielle CPA, I didn’t expect you to be so…” His voice trailed off.

  Inner-Gaby cut off mid-squeal. So…what? “Young? I have a college degree, and I’m the youngest member of my graduating class to pass the CPA exams.” Up went the eyebrow again, sending her stumbling over the edge of the conversational cliff. “I’m a Mensa member; I can solve Rubik’s Cube in less than thirty secon
ds, and…”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Early. I wasn’t expecting you until ten.” Lifting the arm blocking the door, he waved in the direction of the next room, from which wafted both the sound of arguing voices and a cloud of something that was definitely not tobacco. “We were still working.”

  “It’s after eleven. I’ve been outside your door for over an hour.” She took a deep breath and sternly ordered inner-Gabby to shut up. “Is there a mistake? Did you have an accounting project?”

  He deliberately eyed her from the pale hair pulled back into what she hoped was a sophisticated chignon but suspected was a lot closer to a granny-bun, down her mother’s suit, which Carey insisted made her look much older, finishing up at her sensible, low-heeled pumps. Her brown gaze narrowed, starry-eyed adulation shriveling before the coolly amused glint in his blue eyes.

  “You look…” Like someone dressed up in her dead mother’s five-year-old conservative librarian suit, she silently finished for him.

  “…damp. Are you any good?” He paused. “At accounting?”

  I know a twelve-year-old who out-glints you any day of the week, Mr. Sexy Rock Star. You think an angel’s face and gold records gives you a be-mean pass? “Are you any good?” She tilted her head, taking in the long, dark hair, mustache and beard, tie-dyed vest over a broad, shirtless chest, and leather pants. “At singing? I couldn’t carry a tune in a paper bag, but I’m the best accountant you’ll ever find.” Shut up, Gaby! She mentally groaned at the vision of the $52.79 balance in her checking account. At this rate, breakfast and lunch weren’t the only meals she’d be missing.

  Again with the eyebrow. “Do you want to hear me sing?”

  “Not really,” she lied. Been to the concert, got the T-shirt. “I don’t have time for…” narcissistic rock musicians “…entertainment. Do you want to see me do some accounting?”

  “I don’t have much time for … accountants … myself.” That eyebrow arched wickedly again.

  “But my business manager heard you were good, so I asked for you specifically. Since you’re here, why don’t you have a look at these records?” He waved her into the suite’s dining room, now piled with banker’s boxes. “I’d really like to know why they don’t add up to what’s in our bank account.” For some people, Gaby heard, it was sex. For others, chocolate, alcohol, drugs, or even rock and roll. But one look at the pile of overflowing banker’s boxes and she knew her breathing sped up, her cheeks flushed, and her fingers itched for their comforting dance over her adding machine’s keys. Her vision narrowed in anticipation of the story she would put together from the clues the boxes would yield. Sure, he was pretty—but this was accounting.

  As she headed into the room full of boxes, Gaby glanced back over her shoulder. “I’m going to need a pot of coffee. And please get rid of the weed smoke. It makes it hard for me to concentrate.” Flicking vague fingers in his direction, she’d already forgotten him as she reached for the first box.

  “We’re leaving now.” Luic’s voice penetrated her concentration. Gaby waved one hand in acknowledgement, fingers of the other never missing a beat on the adding machine. She looked up to see Luic pointing to the man next to him. “This is Harry Daniels, part of the band and our business manager.” With his long, sun-streaked hair, patterned shirt, and faded jeans, Gaby thought Harry couldn’t have been further from any business manager she’d ever seen.

  “Should we send up dinner for you?” Harry asked.

  Dinner? What happened to lunch? Eight forty-two read the cheap watch the twins had given her for her birthday.

  “Going! I can’t miss the last ferry.” Gaby made wild grabs at the equipment she had precisely arranged in parallel rows across the suite’s dining table.

  “Go on without me,” Luic told Harry. “I need to talk to her.” Looking over at the mirror panel next to the elevator, she thought Harry looked amused as he pushed the elevator call button.

  When Luic turned back, Gaby dove under the table to unplug her ten-key adding machine. “I can get you a preliminary report first thing tomorrow.” A glance back as she crawled out showed him leaning against the wall, one eyebrow raised as she defensively reached back to twitch her skirt into place. She stood and reverently packed the adding machine into its padded case. “There is a lot more to do, but basically, your books have seen more action than hookers at an auto convention.”

  She frowned at the small pile of papers she’d just finished reviewing and added them to three of the piles arranged with military precision across the large dining table. “Stuff dances through accounts and then eventually disappears.”

  “Disappears?”

  “Yes.” What was it about the eyebrow that stopped her thoughts? Breathe, Gaby. “Um, I don’t know all the steps yet, but at the end of the dance you are definitely hemorrhaging money. Don’t you know where it goes?” Her tone dripped disdain for anyone who didn’t know the intimate details of his own finances.

  “I don’t do numbers.” He mirrored her dislike. “But I suppose you better tell me about it. Over food.”

  “Can’t miss my ferry.” Like her life didn’t already suck enough. Now she was turning down a chance for dinner with Luic leMuir. He might be an arrogant jerk, but dinner invitations were few and far between for a junior accountant raising adolescent siblings. And there was that eyebrow. She didn’t slow the practiced ballet that saw an astonishing amount of material and equipment vanish into her battered case. Making a grab for her coat, she raced for the door. “I’ll be here at seven tomorrow morning and we can talk. Do not let anyone touch anything before then.” She waved a hand over the precisely arranged piles along the table.

  His hand caught the closing elevator doors, and he stepped inside. “The only people who talk to me at that hour are the ones I’ve been with all night.”

  “Neither of us thinks that will ever include me.” Gaby jabbed the lobby button. “Look, I’m not good with people. That’s why I’m with a temp agency instead of one of the regular accounting firms. But I’m damn good at accounting. Numbers talk to me in ways you would never understand. So you have your choice of me putting all this into a memo or you finding a time to talk to me.”

  “Dinner. Tomorrow. And if you want this job to continue, you’ll be ready for dinner at eight tomorrow night.”

  Despite her physical pain at the thought of the untapped banker’s boxes, Gaby shook her head.

  “I can’t miss my ferry. I have … responsibilities. I’m sure the agency can find you someone else.”

  Icy blue-eyed fury met her stony brown-eyed gaze.

  “And the glare isn’t going to change my mind,” she said. “I face down the world’s scariest twelve-year-old girl several times a day.”

  “Fine. Tomorrow morning.”

  Bemused Seattle commuters and tourists streamed around the chauffeur holding the sign with big block letters proclaiming GABRIELLE CPA. That’s just wrong, thought Gaby as she headed down the ferry Kaleetan’s foot-passenger ramp the next morning. As she passed the uniformed sign holder, she called out, “She’s not coming.” Just beyond, the dark window of the limo rolled down. “I haven’t had any sleep,” warned the voice she already knew too well. “I’m not happy. Get in. Now.” Gaby looked in the window and saw Luic gesturing over the decanters in front of him. She sighed, marched over to the truck parked on the corner, and came back with two cups of coffee, two bagels, and a couple of oranges. Getting into the limo, she handed him one of each.

  “Good morning, Gaby,” she hinted. “How was the ferry ride? Looks like a beautiful day. How are you doing?”

  He glared.

  “When you’re done with breakfast and ready to behave like a normal person, we can talk.” She positioned the sugar, optimistically labeled creamer packets, and a giant pile of napkins on the seat between them, unrolled the window on her side, and proceeded to work her way through bagel and coffee.

  She was, she admitted, tired herself. After getting home so late, s
he’d looked over her sister and brother’s homework, listened to Carey’s chatter about their day, evaded Connor’s questions about her assignment, and sent the twins off to bed. Then she spent the next two hours thoroughly cleaning their little house. Not until she could verify everything was in its precise place did she finally climb into bed herself, only to stare at the ceiling for hours. She told herself it was her harmonia gift for making sense of hidden patterns that kept her awake. It was struggling to decode the story starting to emerge from Luic’s financial records, her fingers itching for the numbers waiting in the untapped banker’s boxes, that denied sleep. It couldn’t have been the memory of one blue eye and an arrogantly-lifted eyebrow.

  Closing her eyes as she finished her coffee, she leaned against the cushioned seats of Luic’s limo and waited. When she finally looked back, he still scowled, but coffee and bagel had disappeared. “Do you need help peeling your orange?”

  “Good morning, Gaby,” he ground out as his long musician’s fingers stripped peel from the orange. “I’ve never been a normal person. Now can we talk about my money?”

  “Here’s what I know so far.” With a cautious glance at the front seat, Gaby closed the partition behind the driver. Her voice was low and serious. “Somebody took the time to set up your finances professionally. It looks like there are charities you support, plus the usual tax and other accounts. All about what you’d expect. But the part I haven’t been able to track yet is the way stuff moves around. And you’ve got weird investments—do you know how many of your oil wells don’t produce oil? Investment money goes lots of directions, and some of them pay off. But a lot of them just suck in cash. Why do you keep buying the wells?”

  “I’d say it’s what you’re going to find out for me. Harry and I have had the same management team in place since our first gold record, but all of a sudden things are just not adding up. I want you on a plane to New York tomorrow morning.”