Interesting Times (Interesting Times #1) (10 page)

“Whatever,”
Sally said. “But if you call me a ‘dark fiend’ again, little cat, I’m putting
you through the window.”

Jeffrey
opened his mouth to say something, hesitated, and then shut it. 

“Good
call,” Oliver said.

“Sorcerer,”
the cat muttered.

Chapter 11

Sally
called Artemis just after they crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge. She stayed
on the line long enough to tell the girl what had happened and where they had
left Tyler. Oliver couldn’t make out what Artemis was saying in response, but
he could pick up enough of her tone of voice to tell the girl was not at all
pleased.

Sally
shook her head as she hung up the phone. “That went well.”

“Is she
mad?”

“As mad
as she ever gets.”

“I
didn’t realize she cared so much about what happens to me.”

Sally
shook her head. “It’s more that she felt responsible for your safety after we
intervened for you this morning. You were under her protection. And then she
was fooled into thinking you were safe, when you were actually being set up.
She’s taking this personally now. That’s lucky for you.”

“Lucky?”

“Artemis
is a good person to have on your side. She won’t stop now until this is over,
one way or the other.”

That
sounded a bit ominous to Oliver, but he decided to leave it alone. “So what are
we going to do now?”

“Get you
far away from here. Someplace safe.”

“And
that would be…”

“Stop
talking now,” Sally snapped. “I need to think.”

Oliver
shut his mouth. He didn’t need to antagonize her. More questions could wait for
a little while, when she seemed more receptive. But then again, she had yet to
seem receptive to much of anything.

They
drove in silence through Sausalito and then into San Rafael. Just north of the
city Sally stopped for gas at a small Tesoro station. She went inside to pay
with cash and returned with two bottles of diet soda. To Oliver’s surprise, she
offered him one. It was almost like a peace offering, he thought.

“I don’t
get anything?” Jeffrey asked.

Sally
shrugged. “He’s
your
cat,” she said to Oliver.

“No, I’m
not,” Jeffrey corrected her. “You do get that cats aren’t possessions, right?
We’re people, too.” He paused. “That didn’t sound right at all,” he said
thoughtfully. “Okay, not people,
per se
, but…”

“Enough,”
Sally said. “You’re not his. Fine.”

“Thanks,”
said Jeffrey. “Hey, can I borrow five bucks?” he asked Oliver. “I’ll just go in
there and buy myself a water, since nobody else here is going to do it. If
anyone inside thinks that’s unusual, I’ll tell them to come out here and ask
the sorcerer about it.”

“I say
we leave him here,” Sally said to Oliver.

“No,”
Oliver said. “Whatever is going on with him, I’m starting to think I’m
responsible for it.”

“Damn
right you are,” Jeffrey said.

Oliver
sighed. “Wait here.” He went inside the store and bought a bottle of water and
a set of cheap paper bowls. After a moment’s thought, he picked up a package of
ready-made tuna salad and crackers. Jeffrey probably wouldn’t eat the crackers,
but he might like the tuna.

Sally
was hanging up her phone when Oliver returned. He was about to ask who she had
been talking to when Jeffrey started dancing around his ankles.

“That’s
the stuff,” Jeffrey said. “Hey, wait, is that fish?”

“Yes,”
Oliver said, feeling pleased with himself.

“Oh,”
the cat said.

Oliver
paused. “You don’t like fish? It’s tuna.”

“Fish is
all right,” said Jeffrey. “I like other things better, though.”

Sally
laughed. “Are you sure you don’t want to leave him here?” she asked Oliver.

“What do
you want to eat?” Oliver asked the cat.

“I like
Thai food,” Jeffrey said. “Those little spicy shrimps you get sometimes, those
are nice.”

“Well, I
don’t have any Thai food,” said Oliver, beginning to feel exasperated. “Do you
want the tuna or not?”

“I
guess,” said Jeffrey.

A few
minutes later they were back on the freeway, Jeffrey sitting on Oliver’s lap.
Oliver was spreading spoonfuls of tuna salad on a cracker, which Jeffrey used
as a kind of makeshift plate. If he didn’t like tuna, the cat wasn’t
complaining now. He was eating with considerable enthusiasm.

Oliver
decided this might be a good time to try his luck talking to Sally again. “You
were going to tell me about the people who are after me,” he began.

“No, I
wasn’t,” Sally said.

“Please?”
Oliver asked.

“Oh,
come on,” Jeffrey urged. “Throw the man a bone. He bought me tuna.”

Sally
sighed.  “I don’t know that much, to be honest. The Kalatari don’t exist where
I’m from.”

“Where
are you from?” Oliver asked. The way she had said that, Oliver got the idea
that it must be quite some distance away.

Sally
ignored the question. “They’re humanoid, but reptilian. They share a common
ancestor with humans a billion years ago or something.”

“A
billion years?” Oliver asked skeptically. “Before the dinosaurs?”

“Okay,
not a billion years,” Sally snapped. “You want the science of it, you have to
ask someone else.”

“It’s
all right,” said Oliver. Nailing down the origin of the species wasn’t the most
important thing on the agenda right now.

“There
aren’t a lot of them left,” Sally continued. “They killed off most of their
breeding stock in their last civil war.”

“That’s
depressing,” Oliver said. “Isn’t there anything they can do about that?”

“They’ve
tried breeding with humans, but I don’t think it’s going well,” Sally said
casually.  “Only a few of the offspring have survived, and none of the mothers,
as far as I know.”

“Who on
earth would…” Oliver began to ask as Jeffrey retched.

“They
have human servants,” Sally explained. “You saw one of them. That dead guy on
your sidewalk.”

“They’re
servants? Like slaves?”

“No,
followers would be a better word.  They worship the Kalatari like gods, and
do…whatever they’re told, I guess.  Errands, I don’t know.”

“That
explains why you never see lizard people at Safeway,” Jeffrey noted.

“Yes,”
Sally agreed.

“Or why they
don’t need jobs,” the cat continued. “You’d think they’d have some trouble
during the interview. ‘Hi, I’m here about the job.’ ‘But aren’t you a talking
lizard?’ ‘Oh yeah, I forgot!’” The cat let out a high-pitched cackle, clearly
amused with himself.

Sally
looked over at him. “You done? That window opens, you know.”

“He’s
done,” said Oliver, giving the cat a warning glance. “So there are lizard
people. Fine. I’ve seen weirder things today. What does any of this have to do
with me?”

Sally shrugged.
“No idea. They all take orders from a matriarch, who is also some kind of high
priestess. What she wants with you I don’t know. Artemis is working on it.”

They
continued north for another twenty minutes, until Sally eased the Miata onto
Highway 37, which led due east. “Vallejo?” Oliver asked, trying to guess their
destination. There wasn’t much else in this direction.

“Sonoma,”
Sally said. 

“What’s
in Sonoma?”

“A place
that you’ll be safe for a while.”

“Which
is?”

“Enough,”
Sally said. Question time was over, apparently.

They
drove on in silence, eventually turning onto a narrow two-lane road that led
them deep into wine country. Oliver had only been up here once before, on a
company outing. They’d visited several small wineries in a minibus and Oliver
had permitted himself to drink two entire glasses of wine, stopping immediately
when he felt himself getting tipsy. He was worried he might say something
foolish, like telling his department head that he thought the man was hopelessly
incompetent and deserved to be fired ten times over. His department head,
meanwhile, had gotten so drunk that he’d told one of the secretaries how much
he looked forward to seeing her breasts every morning when he got to work. A
week later the HR department decreed that all employees were now required to
take mandatory sexual harassment training classes as part of a new policy. The
employees were also told that the timing of the new policy’s implementation was
just a coincidence, completely unrelated to the very recent and sudden firing
of Oliver’s former department head just after the company outing the week
before.

After
half an hour of driving through increasingly winding and treacherous roads,
Sally turned onto a driveway that led to a tall, imposing metal gate. In the
distance, Oliver could see a large white house that he probably would have
described as a palatial mansion, if he had been a little more sure about what
the word
palatial
meant.

A
security guard in a dark suit stepped out of a small guardhouse, holding a clipboard
at his side. He wore sunglasses in spite of the fact that it was dark out.
Oliver could see that his clipboard had no paper or anything else attached to
it. It was just for show, then? That seemed unusual.

Sally
rolled down the window. “What do you want?” the guard asked coldly.

“I’m
here to see your boss.”

The man
looked at the empty clipboard. “You aren’t on the list.”

“Even if
there was a list I wouldn’t be on it.” 

The
security guard smirked at her. “Go away, little girl.”

Sally
looked at him curiously. “Do you know who I am?”

“Do I
look like I…”

“Do you
know who I am?” Sally repeated. There was no anger or arrogance in her voice,
Oliver noted, but she spoke with a seriousness that commanded attention.

“Yes,”
the man admitted.

“Good.
Now listen. Your boss owes my boss a favor. That favor is being called in.
Right now. Open up the gate, then call ahead and tell him I’m coming up.” She
smiled sweetly. “And then go ahead and call me ‘little girl’ again. But open
the gate before you do. I don’t want to waste my time looking for the switch in
there when I’m done cleaning what’s left of you off my jacket.”

The man
scowled, trying to stare her down. She held his gaze until he turned away and
retreated into the guardhouse. A moment passed with nothing happening. Oliver
wondered if the man was calling 911. But then the gate began to slide open. The
man did not return.

“Punk
ass,” Sally muttered, starting up the driveway.

“That
was…” Oliver began.

“Kinda
scary,” Jeffrey finished the sentence.

Sally
shrugged. “He’s more afraid of making his boss angry than he is of me.”

“Who is
his boss?”

“You’re
about to meet him.”

Sally
drove directly to the front of the house, ignoring an adjacent lot where
several luxury vehicles were parked in a perfectly straight row. A man and a
woman were waiting for them at the door. The man appeared to be in his
mid-fifties, handsome, with salt and pepper hair. He was wearing a red smoking
jacket and holding a half-empty wine glass. Oliver hadn’t realized that people
still wore smoking jackets. Unless they were Hugh Hefner, maybe.

The
woman was another story. She was a Latina in her mid-twenties, with dark hair
and eyes. She wore an immaculate dark blue business suit, which seemed
bizarrely formal next to the man’s casual attire. There was another obvious
contrast; the man was smiling warmly at them, while the woman was
expressionless, her eyes cold. She reminded Oliver of a snake coiled to strike.
Or of Sally, for that matter.

The man
looked oddly familiar to Oliver. Hadn’t they met somewhere before? He was sure
he knew the man.

Sally
turned off the car and sighed. She took in the waiting pair for a moment.
“Well, here goes,” she said.

“You
sound nervous,” Oliver noted.

“I am
nervous.”

“I
thought you said we’d be safe here?” Oliver pointed out.

“Yeah.
It’s kind of a gamble,” Sally admitted. “I can’t imagine he’d ever dare to
cross Artemis, but you never know. Try not to make him angry. Or Maria.”

“Maria?” 

Sally
nodded toward the sharply dressed woman. “His bodyguard. Or his attaché, maybe.
Lover? I don’t really understand their relationship, but she’s probably more
dangerous than he is.” She reached over and scratched Jeffrey behind the ears,
surprising Oliver and the cat both. “You stay here, little cat. All right?”

Jeffrey
looked at the waiting man and woman curiously. “I think so,” he said slowly.
Oliver wondered what these people smelled like to the cat.

Sally
opened her door and stepped out of the car, followed by Oliver a moment later.
“My dear Sally,” the man called warmly. He had a deep voice that was made for
radio. “How are you?”

“Fine,”
Sally said. She turned to Oliver. “Oliver Jones, this is John…”

“You’re
John Blackwell!” Oliver interrupted, suddenly recognizing the man. They had
never met before, but Oliver knew Blackwell by name and reputation. He had been
on the cover of
Forbes
a few years ago.

“Indeed,”
he said, extending a hand for Oliver to shake. Oliver was stunned. John
Blackwell was a legendary figure in the world of high finance. He ran a hedge
fund with investments all over the world. He’d been an early investor in
Google, along with several other firms that had grown into famous names. Oliver
guessed he was worth somewhere around a billion dollars. He was also known to
be something of an eccentric, Howard Hughes-esque figure, rarely leaving his
estate.

Oliver
understood at once why Sally had brought him here. This place was a virtual
fortress, with armed security guards outside and who knew what else inside. It
would be next to impossible for anyone hostile to get close to him.