Angel Fire

Chapter 2-2

“So what are your intentions?” The words slipped out before I realized what I was saying, and then I felt a stupid flush spread over my cheeks. Great, now he probably thinks you’re a complete airhead!

But obviously, a good poker face was as much a part of MIB training as chasing aliens and interrogating abductees, because he didn’t even let out a betraying twitch this time. “To keep an eye on things, Kirsten. The time of year is…troubling.”

“What, you’re not into the whole holiday-spirit thing?”

“It’s not the holidays, per se. It’s the astronomical event taking place before that.”

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Oh, come on. You’re not seriously talking about the solstice, are you?”

“Why should that surprise you?”

“Well, because — ” I broke off, then made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “I mean, sorry, Agent Jones, but you don’t look like the type to be dancing around naked at the solstice with the rest of the pagans.” Although that’s something I’d pay to see….

Expression deadpan, he replied, “True, that’s not something I’m in the habit of doing.”

I had the distinct impression he was teasing me, so I just said, “But you think the solstice is important.”

“I know it’s important.” He frowned. “Unfortunately, so do the aliens.”

“And…?” I told him, annoyed by the way his words seemed to hint at something important but wouldn’t actually reveal anything. “What do you expect us to do about it? I mean, thanks for the vote of confidence, but it seems as if we’ve been doing you guys’ work for you lately, so it would be kind of nice if we got a little help, you know?”

His gaze shifted away from mine. “I can’t say for sure yet. But if anything else happens, call me.” And he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a card, then laid it on the counter next to my laptop.

I glanced at it quickly, noting the FBI logo at the top, and then saw his name with “special agent” after it, and a Phoenix-area phone number below that. Who knew it would be that easy to get his number? However, I sort of got the feeling he wouldn’t exactly be amused if I called him up later and asked him out for drinks.

“Thanks,” I said, and picked up the card and shoved it in my jeans pocket. I could transfer it to my wallet later. Looking back up at him, I added, “It’s only ten days until the solstice. Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?”

“This was the first time they’ve made any sort of move here in town,” he replied calmly. “It may be nothing.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No, I don’t.”

A thought struck me as I realized for the first time he’d come here by himself, instead of as part of a team. “Seems like kind of a big thing to take on by yourself. Where’s your partner?”

A grim smile. “He was reassigned. Take care, Kirsten.”

And he turned and went back out the door, leaving me to stare after him, wondering what the hell his visit had been about.

Ten days to the solstice. Ten days until…what?

I decided then that I’d better talk to Michael Lightfoot, stat.

Actually, “stat” was more like six hours later, after I’d finished a full shift at the UFO Depot and could close the place up and get the hell out of there. I did call Michael not too long after Martin Jones had left, telling him I needed to see him at his place when I was off work, so at least Michael was expecting me.

No cozy summertime chat on his patio this time, with the warm winds in the trees and a fire going in the fire pit. No, the temperature had fallen to thirty-five degrees outside by the time I pulled up in front of Michael’s place. I was happy to see smoke billowing out of the chimney and to smell the scent of burning mesquite on the air, so I knew Michael had a good fire going indoors.

He greeted me solemnly and led me inside, to his front room with its mishmash of Southwestern tchotchkes and mismatched furniture and assorted souvenirs. More than once, Kara had made a derisive comment about all the shops in Tlaquepaque Village throwing up in Michael’s house all at the same time, but I sort of liked the clutter. Not that I’d want to live with it myself, necessarily, but there was something comforting about it when I went to visit.

Obviously, he’d guessed from my tone of voice that this wasn’t going to be an ordinary chat; I spied two glasses of red wine sitting on the banged-up coffee table. Or maybe he’d just psychically divined that I was more than a little freaked out. Either way, I wasn’t going to argue with a glass of cabernet…or Malbec, or whatever it was.

“Thanks, Michael,” I said as I shrugged out of my coat and hung it on the hall tree by the door. “I really didn’t want to bug Kara with this….”

“It’s no problem. We are all here for each other, after all.”

Some of us more than others, I thought, but I just smiled and went over to the couch, then sat down and picked up a glass of wine. After taking a sip, I was doubly glad that I’d gotten over my beer and tequila phase pretty quickly. There was a reason why its nickname was “ta-kill-ya,” and beer just made me feel bloated, but a glass of wine tended to make everything seem better. My palate wasn’t developed enough yet for me to say for sure what I was drinking, although I knew it wasn’t heavy enough for a cab. Pinot noir, maybe? Not that it really mattered, I supposed.

I waited to say anything until Michael sat down opposite me, but once he was there, it seemed harder than I’d thought it would be to tell him what was going on. We’d all had such a quiet autumn — even with Kara going away to New Mexico to have Grace — and I supposed we all had been hoping that maybe that was the end of it, that this time the aliens had decided to go elsewhere.

No such luck.

Well, a little more wine couldn’t hurt. Maybe it would help unfreeze my tongue. I drank again, then blurted out, “I think they’re back.”

He didn’t bother to ask who. “So you felt it, too.”

“You did? I mean — last night? That…whatever it was?”

“‘Whatever it was’ is a good way of putting it.” Michael finally lifted his own glass and took a slow, measured sip. “It’s interesting that you felt it, though. You might want to talk to Persephone about that.”

“I am not psychic,” I said flatly. I knew I wasn’t. I’d never shown any signs of any kind of telepathic powers, and believe me, growing up in Sedona, you tended to be surrounded by psychic people and people who would be ecstatic if you turned out to be psychic, too. That wasn’t me at all. Otherwise, I would’ve started playing the lottery a long time ago.

Michael’s dark eyes were amused. “Did I say you were?”

“No, but Persephone — ”

“Persephone is open to many forms of communication. She might surprise you.”

“Maybe,” I said, unconvinced. Persephone was Kara’s friend much more than she was mine. Those two had hit it off like a house on fire. I mean, I liked Persephone, but it would feel strange to go spilling secrets to her when I couldn’t be sure that Kara wouldn’t end up finding out about it sooner or later. Whereas I trusted Michael implicitly. Of course, I’d known him since I was a kid. He’d been a good friend of Grandpa’s, had helped Kara and me get through the rough transition after he passed and we knew we were really alone in the world.

But thinking about my grandfather just made me feel sad. I knew I didn’t have time for that now, so I said, “Okay, I’ll think about it. But what do you think it was?”

He didn’t blink. “You already know the answer to that, don’t you?”

Typical Michael, always answering my questions with questions of his own. He was one of the few people I never bothered to argue with, mostly because doing so would be a wasted effort. He never tried to persuade you that you were wrong. He mostly didn’t do anything except watch you with those dark eyes of his, a tactic that worked about ninety percent of the time. I sighed and set my glass down on the table, using one of the kitschy sandstone coasters painted with a cactus that Michael had set out.

“Okay…it was them. But why now?”

For the first time, I saw the hint of a frown touch the lines around his eyes. “Things are moving. Time is getting short.”

I bit back a remark about him saving it for a fortune cookie. Besides, Martin Jones’ comments about the solstice weighed heavily on my mind. Ten days….

“Well, if they were aiming for 2012, they kind of missed the cutoff a long time ago.”

Michael actually smiled at that. “It’s not the year itself, but the time of year. The winter solstice has always contained a power the summer one does not. For many of us, it is a time of introspection, of inner healing. But there’s a darkness to that power as well, one that our visitors may be trying to tap into for their own purposes.”

Great. Well, on the first go-round, Persephone had managed to blast the minds of every alien or alien-infected human in the Secret Canyon base, and the second time, we’d had a little help from an alien hybrid soldier who had luckily decided to throw in his lot with the humans — and paid the ultimate price for it. Right then, though, I didn’t see a lot of options. Maybe the next time I saw Agent Jones, I’d have to ask him when he planned to send in the cavalry.

“Do you think they’re looking for Grace?” I asked suddenly.

The smile disappeared. “They would be looking for her…if they knew she existed.”

“Do you know for a fact that they don’t?”

Michael’s eyes took on a blurry expression, as if he was looking past me, past the cluttered walls of his house, out to the shadowed gullies and caves of Secret Canyon. “Facts are slippery things. But I felt it last night, felt the darkness moving over the city. The lights went out here, but I’m guessing not many people paid it much mind. The power lines in this part of town aren’t that reliable, especially in the winter. Whatever they were doing, it didn’t feel focused to me. And if they knew about Grace, I have to believe they would be very focused.”

I didn’t quite breathe a sigh of relief, but I did feel a little of the tension go out of my shoulders. “Well, that’s something, I guess. I didn’t want to go to Kara with this — she’s got enough on her plate right now.”

Which was nothing more than the truth. Yes, Grace was an awfully good baby, but even angelic babies cried in the middle of the night and needed their diapers changed and had to be fed regularly.

“Sometimes trying to shield people from things just makes it that much worse when they do find out.”

Oh, Michael and his pronouncements. I sort of wished I could just wave off what he’d said, but the truth was that he tended to be right more often than not.

As if in response to my thoughts, my cell phone rang from the depths of my backpack. Usually, I would ignore it, but I hadn’t heard a peep out of Jeff all day and was sort of expecting him to call at some point.

I mumbled, “Sorry, Michael,” and bent down to retrieve the phone. When I pulled it out of the backpack, though, the number on the display wasn’t Jeff’s, but Kara’s.

Uh-oh.

It could be something totally innocuous, like her asking me to stop at Walgreens on the way home and pick up some diapers. But she had Lance for errands like that — grumble though he might about it — so I kind of doubted that was why she was calling.

For a second, I considered letting the call roll over into voicemail, but I knew that ploy would only work for so long. Cell reception could be kind of spotty around Sedona, especially if the weather was bad. Kara, though, would see right through that excuse, since I’d already used it more times than was probably realistic.

So I touched the little icon on the screen and lifted the phone to my ear. “Hi, Kara.”

“‘Hi’ yourself. So, when exactly were you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?” Actually, I could figure out from her tone exactly what she was talking about, but I figured I might as well hedge a little, just in case.

“About what happened last night. Jeff said something to Lance…”

Figures.

“…and Lance told me, but you didn’t say one word. What were you thinking?”

I was thinking that you were going to get your panties in a bunch…and here you are, proving me right. But of course I knew better than to say that out loud. “Sorry, Kara, but I didn’t know for sure that it was actually anything.”

“Well, Jeff seems to be of a different opinion.”

Jeff, who’d made himself scarce all day. I’d wondered what the heck he’d been up to. I just figured he’d gotten on his computer once he crawled out of bed and found it way more interesting to hash out the latest news in a conspiracy theory chatroom or something rather than hang around at the UFO Depot with me. But obviously, he’d gone blabbing to Lance.

I shrugged, then realized my sister couldn’t see me. “That’s his opinion. Nothing happened, though. Things just felt sort of strange. But everything seems to be fine now.” Well, for the next ten days, anyway….

“I think you should come over.”

Getting grilled by my big sister was not high on my list of fun things to do. At the moment, though, neither was going back to my empty apartment and wondering whether they were going to come knocking on my sliding glass door next.

“What about Michael?” I asked, even as he gave me an et tu, Brute? look.

“If he’s available.”

“Okay. See you in a few.” I pulled the phone away from my ear and ended the call before she could add anything else. “Looks like I’m getting called on the carpet, Michael. But I’m sure Kara and Lance will be very interested in your solstice theories.”

Being Michael, he just shook his head a little. Then he smiled, one of those smiles that seemed enigmatic and rueful at the same time. “Better finish your wine, Kirsten. You may need it.”