Chapter 1

Ella Walsh cast one last look at the naked man sleeping in her bed, then frowned down at the note she was trying to write him. What the hell was the guy’s name? She’d hooked up with him in one of the tourist traps down by the beach last night and brought him back to her apartment for some hot and dirty sex. The sex had been mediocre, and his name still escaped her.

She settled for writing Hey, what’s up?—the universal Californian dude greeting—and went on to tell him that breakfast was in the refrigerator, coffee already brewed and to lock up when he left. He’d do what she told him. She’d already implanted the instructions in his mind and he wouldn’t be able to deviate from them. During sex, she avoided using her empath abilities to access her hook ups’ minds, but making sure they left and forgot what she looked like was essential.

She checked for her weapons and keys and headed for the door. While she fumbled in her pocket for her sunglasses, she screwed up her eyes against the blinding sunlight, barely glancing at her million-dollar view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the city of San Francisco looming in the mist across the bay.

As she headed down the driveway from her basement apartment a screen door rattled above her head and she immediately went for her weapon. She spun around to see her neighbor’s eight-year-old grandson waving at her from the balcony of his house. She waved back and he beckoned her urgently. After another quick look around, she turned back.

“What’s up, Tom?”

He didn’t smile. “That thing? It came back last night.”

“The thing under your bed?”

“Yeah. I saw more of it this time. You know in those alien movies when those creatures with the long bony fingers hug your face? It looked like that except more like long fingernails than claws.”

“Your gran lets you watch those movies?”

He shrugged off the question. “What should I do?”

“Don’t go under the bed.”

“Ella, that’s stupid. I—”

She put a finger to her lips as his voice rose. “I’m serious. The first night I get a chance, I’ll come over and check it out with you.”

Tom studied her for a long moment. “You really believe me, don’t you?” His face reddened. “No one else does. They all think I’m a wuss.”

“I believe you.” She hesitated for a second. “Just keep it to yourself from now on, and we’ll deal with it together.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “As long as you let me help you catch it.”

She nodded. “I’ll definitely need your help. Work permitting, I’ll try and come over tonight.”

“Thanks, Ella.”

She smiled, and then started to walk down the hill toward the oceanfront path that would take her to the Tiburon Ferry terminal. It was only a twenty-five-minute ride into San Francisco. It also gave her the necessary separation between her job and the rest of her life. Not that she had much of a life, but the older she got, the more she needed to distance herself from the craziness of dealing with Otherworld.

The thing under Tom’s bed didn’t worry her too much. It was unlikely to harm him, but it still needed investigating. If it was bold enough to allow itself to be seen, it might be stupid enough to try and take a bite out of the kid. And, whatever the species, bites were never good. Tom’s ability to see the creature so clearly was more disturbing. He obviously had some emerging psychic talent and, as a registered empath, she was required to report in with both governments if she saw the gift in anyone else. Like she’d ever do that.

Some gift.

She inhaled the salty tang of the water and checked ahead to see that the Blue and Gold Line ferry was moored at the end of the dock. The usual line of passengers was already straggling up the gangplank, coffee, laptops and mp3 players in hand. She always preferred to stare out at the water and watch the fog crawl in under the Golden Gate Bridge.

If she reported Tom to the authorities, his life would never be the same again. He’d be taken away to a special school for the “gifted,” registered as an empath, and then sent to Otherworld Academy to gain his degree. Having been taken from her parents at the age of five she knew how that went, and she’d hated every minute of it.

She wrapped her long woolen scarf more securely around her neck. It also meant that both governments knew all about you and she hated that even more.

* * *

She nodded to a couple of regulars on the boat and took up her usual spot on the top deck. Despite it being July, it was still freezing and the wind buffeted her face. Maybe Tom’s family knew he was different and they were just trying to ignore it. Not many families wanted to acknowledge that one of their own could see monsters. She remembered trying to explain to her mother about the creature that lived in her closet and being laughed at. It wasn’t until she’d drawn the thing at school that the authorities had gotten involved and her childhood had ended. She didn’t want to do that to Tom. At some point he’d be picked up, that much was certain, but she didn’t want it on her conscience.

Decision made, she took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Eventually the restored Clock Tower and the piers like splayed fingers coming off the waterfront of the old San Francisco docks came into view. It was a pleasant way to commute to the city. Traffic now was mainly commuters and tourists as the main working docks were across the bay in the Port of Oakland.

She joined the line disembarking from the ferry at Pier 41, and walked out onto the Embarcadero, along to the main ferry building and then up Market. The offices of the Supernatural Branch of Law Enforcement, the SBLE for short, were housed in an innocuous beige and glass office block that fronted onto Market. Ella slid her passkey through the double entrance door and went into the white marble lobby. The receptionist smiled and she smiled back.

“Good morning, Peach.”

“Morning, Ella. Mr. Feehan was looking for you.”

“Already? I’m sure he’ll find me soon enough.” She bypassed the bank of elevators and descended to the lower levels regular office workers were unaware existed. As she stepped out the familiar smell of burned coffee and old carpet hit her and she drew it deep into her lungs. The main office was crowded with cubicles, and had a central area for copying stuff and an alcove where the vending machines pumped out their unpalatable, highly caloric and sometimes unrecognizable wares.

Ella threaded her way through the cubicles to the back of the building where her tiny corner office lay. The door was already open and she could see the unmistakable shape of her new boss sitting at her desk. Mr. Kenneth Feehan was about twenty years her senior but acted more like her grandfather.

“Mr. Feehan.” She came through the door and stared pointedly at her chair, which her boss hurriedly vacated. “What’s up?”

“I’ve got an emergency for you. A man was freaked out by something he saw in Golden Gate Park this morning.”

“And you’re sure he wasn’t just smoking weed?”

He didn’t crack a smile. “Absolutely sure. He says that one of the giant sunflowers started talking to him and then tried to wrap him up in his leaves and drag him underground.”

“Definitely Otherworld then. Where is the guy?”

“He’s at San Francisco General in a private room.”

“I suppose you want me to go see him?”

“That would be helpful.” His gaze swept over her faded jeans, flip flops, purple T-shirt and orange and black baseball jacket. “You do realize the department has a dress policy, don’t you?”

“I’m supposed to wear a dress?” She widened her eyes at him. “I’ll be happy to wear what the hell you like if you’re willing to pay for my clothing. Have you any idea how much stuff I ruin chasing Otherworld species?”

“The department can’t afford to subsidize clothing.” He averted his gaze and studied the fraying beige carpet instead. That was typical of him. Too unsure of himself yet to really piss her off, but compelled to point out every perceived deviation from government code. But he wasn’t her problem. He’d work out that this particular branch of the SBLE was different and settle in, or he’d apply for a transfer. It happened all the time.

“If you want me to go home and change, it’ll be another couple of hours before I get to the guy in the hospital.”

Feehan sighed. “Just do your job.”

She met his gaze. “Sure, boss.”

* * *

The hospital was huge and always crowded, but Ella had learned to negotiate the hallways and banks of elevators to avoid as much notice as possible. She was well known by the staff because she was usually the first member of the SBLE team called to deal with emergencies like this before they brought in the psychiatrists. The medical profession was one of the few to acknowledge that weird shit did happen and willing to let the SBLE help out as long as they didn’t have to know all the details. She nodded at the charge nurse and slipped into the white coat she kept on the back of the door in the staff locker room. For some reason it seemed to convince people she had authority.

“Hey, Jose. Where’s Mr. Knight?”

“Room ten, Ella. He should be awake by now.”

“Cool. I’ll call if I need anyone.”

Jose grinned, displaying his dimples. “Knock yourself out. He’s babbling like a baby.”

She walked down the hall checking the numbers and knocked on the fifth door on the right. There was no answer, so she let herself in.

A man she guessed was in his mid-twenties lay in the bed, the covers pulled up to his chin, his fingers gripping them so tightly that his knuckles blended into the white sheets. He wore the look of complete terror she was accustomed to seeing after an encounter with an Otherworld species.

“Mr. Knight? I’m Ella Walsh from the SBLE. I understand you saw something unusual in Golden Gate Park today.”

“Unusual?” His voice rose on each syllable. “A fucking sunflower tried to fucking eat me!”

“So I heard.” She grabbed a stool and sat beside his bed, gently wrapping her fingers around his exposed wrist. She immediately both felt his raised pulse and the distinctive buzz of Otherworld energy. “That must have freaked you out.”

“Yeah, it did.” He focused his gaze on her. “Are you a shrink?”

“Nope.” She took a deep breath and concentrated on the stream of energy pulsing through poor Mr. Knight’s body. “Think of me as more of a natural healer.”

“So you’re not going to tell me I’m crazy?”

She looked him right in the eye. “You’re not crazy. What you saw was real. I’m going to make sure that the thing you saw is captured and sent back where it belongs.”

“You’re crazy too, then. Right?”

She smiled at him. “In this job, it sure helps.”

His pulse steadied and for the first time he stopped shaking. “I’m not sure if you telling me what I saw was real makes it better or worse. I’m going to be scared to pull up a fucking weed in my yard or buy my girlfriend a bunch of flowers now.”

She laughed and he reluctantly smiled back at her. Without fear consuming him he was quite an attractive guy. “Look, can you bear to go through what happened one more time for me?”

His faint color fled. “Do I have to?”

“It would help me pinpoint exactly where I have to go to find this…anomaly.”

“Sunflower, you mean.”

“Well, it uses the flower as camouflage. It’s skilled at hiding in anything.”

He held her gaze. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I sure am. Now would you mind closing your eyes while you tell me what happened? It will help you visualize the scene.”

It would also help her identify exactly what had attacked him and then erase it from his memory. One of her class tutors had likened using empath power on the human mind to erasing a song from a cassette tape or an image from a VCR and, even though it was old-school, she kind of liked that idea. It was also why she always told the victim the truth about what they’d seen before she erased the memories. It seemed to help them recover more quickly without leaving a lingering suspicion that they were going nuts.

Mr. Knight sighed and closed his eyes. She closed hers too and concentrated on extracting the images from his head.

“Okay, I was taking a shortcut through the park near the Japanese Tea Gardens when I thought I heard someone call my name. I had my ear buds in, so I took them out and looked around.” He swallowed convulsively. “I walked toward one of the flowerbeds and something tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and there was this weird face staring out at me from the center of this huge fucking sunflower.”

“Did you try to run away?”

“No, I just stood there like an idiot staring at this thing and then it smiled and it had hundreds of tiny pointed teeth like a shark.”

She saw the image in his head and drew it into her mind. “Then what happened?”

“I tried to back off, but the thing wrapped its leaves around me and they were getting tighter and the more I struggled, the tighter they got. Then the ground started moving like there was going to be an earthquake and the soil boiled up like lava.” He struggled to breathe. “And I just knew that fucking thing was going to try and drag me down there and that if it did, I’d never come up again.”

“That’s possible.”

“So I started to struggle and bite at the leaves and the sunflower just…laughed and dropped me on the ground. It bent over me and hissed something in my face, and that’s all I remember.”

Ella extracted the last of the images from Mr. Knight’s head and stored them carefully in her own mind. She was pretty sure she knew what had happened, but she needed to go over the impressions and make certain that she was correct. She cleared her mind and concentrated on the blank spaces in Mr. Knight’s memory until he was relaxed and breathing nicely.

“Mr. Knight, when you wake up you won’t remember the sunflower. What you will remember is that you fell over a misplaced stone in Golden Gate Park, banged your head, and now you have a concussion.” She fed those images into his head like frames of film. “You’re still going to be pissed off, and you’ll gladly take the large sum of money the city is offering you as compensation for your injury before you sue their asses. Do you understand?”

He nodded, a beatific smile on his face. “Sue their asses. I like that. And you’ll take care of that…thing?”

“Yes, I will. I promise.”

He sighed. “Okay, then.”

She pushed power into his mind, sealing in the new memories and eradicating all traces of the old, and he fell into a more natural sleep. Ella watched him for a while and then rose to her feet and walked quietly toward the door.

Jose looked up as she approached the nurse’s station. “How’s Mr. Knight doing?”

She took off her white coat. “Much better. He’s going to be mad with our great city parks when he wakes up, but no longer babbling about things that aren’t there. Concussion does weird things to folks doesn’t it?”

“Sure does.” Jose handed her a cup of hot chocolate from the vending machine. “Here you go. I know you need your sugar.”

“Thanks.” He was far more observant than most of his team, and that was something she needed to keep an eye on for her own security. Taking and replacing people’s memories was actually quite draining and she really did need energy.

He watched her until she finished the scalding hot drink and threw the cup in the trash. “You free for dinner one night this week?”

She considered his familiar face. He was far too nice to hook up with for just a night and far too dangerous to contemplate having a relationship with. She wouldn’t want to lie to him about exactly what she was, and what kind of work she really did. It just wouldn’t be fair. Some part of her yearned to say yes and to act like any normal, unattached woman, but it would be both pointless and cruel.

“Sorry, Jose. I wish I could.”

He gave an exaggerated sigh. “You’ve already got a boyfriend, right?”

She laughed. “Well I wouldn’t actually say that. But I’m definitely spoken for.”

“Shame.”

She patted his shoulder. “Much better if we stay friends. We’ll always be able to look each other in the eye. I watch the soaps. You know how these workplace romances always end.”

“I suppose you’re right, but I’m going to keep asking.”

“Sure.” She winked at him and headed for the exit. “Have a good one.”

She called Feehan on her cell, related her conversation with Mr. Knight and got the okay to travel on to Golden Gate Park and confront the miscreant. At the bottom of Mission she spotted one of the tourist buses heading out that way and hopped on board. She sat on the open top deck and let the stream of chatter and excitement of the other passengers wash over her as she focused on what she needed to do next.

It was easy enough to find the spot where Mr. Knight had met his unpleasant sunflower. The grass was trampled and bits of leaves floated around on the breeze. The biggest giveaway for Ella was the hint of Otherworld power she sensed still hanging in the air. She turned around in a slow circle before setting her gaze on a group of sunflowers huddled against a brick wall.

“SBLE. Show yourselves.”

Nothing so much as rustled a leaf so she held up her badge. “SBLE. I know you’re there. Come out and we’ll settle this right now.”

She waited, one hand on her weapon, as the four young Garden Fae disentangled themselves from the plants and slowly revealed their true form. With their yellow eyes and greenish skin and hair they blended far too well with the foliage.

“Which one of you interacted with the human?”

They all just stared blankly at her. Sometimes it was uncanny how much they resembled their human counterparts during adolescence.

She snapped her fingers, letting a little of the Otherworld energy signature she’d taken from Mr. Knight bounce off the sullen Fae. “All I have to do is get close and I’ll know exactly which one of you did it. Do you want me to get close?” She focused on the one with the guiltiest face. “Are you really going to let all your buddies take the blame?”

The Fae she’d targeted stepped forward. “It was me. So makking what?”

“You have violated the conditions of your visit to the human world. You’re only allowed to visit if you don’t interfere with anyone.”

He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I was just having a laugh.”

“By scaring the shit out of a human?”

He grinned, showing rows of sharp teeth. “I let him live, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but the treaty between our two worlds states that you shouldn’t have made yourself known to him in the first place.”

“It was just a joke. Humans come to Otherworld all the time and makk about with us.”

“Bullshit. Most humans who end up in Otherworld have been trapped there by your kind.”

“The empath college is full of stupid humans.”

“Exactly. Do you think any of us liked being stuck there?”

He glanced back at his companions as if looking for support. “You don’t need to do anything about this, right?”

She studied them until they began to fidget. “The human ended up in the hospital so there is already a record of this incident in the system. Officially I should bust all your asses, but I’m in a good mood, so I’ll let you off if you instantly return to Otherworld.” She locked eyes with the tallest Fae. “Deal?”

One of the other Fae nudged him, then muttered something inaudible.

Ella raised her eyebrows. “You have ten seconds to make up your minds before I call in backup.”

“All right, we’re leaving.” The Fae growled. “Humans are pathetic anyway.”

“Sure, remember that. It will stand you in good stead in the future.”

He stared her down as they started to dissolve into the air, his last words a hiss. “Good riddance, soul sucker.”

She gave him the finger and kept smiling. His foul name for her kind didn’t bother her, especially when he hadn’t even had the balls to say it to her face. And there was some element of truth in the tag. She did steal part of a person’s essence when she took their memories, which was why most of Otherworld feared her as much as humans feared them.

With a sigh, she surveyed the now tranquil scene, making sure the young Fae had really gone. They were even more arrogant than human teenagers and far more dangerous because they had magic to add to the usual craziness. She tried to give the young ones a break. With a lifespan of centuries, they had a lot more time to grow up and learn from their mistakes.

The kinder word for what she did was gatekeeper. When the human government realized they couldn’t stop Otherworld creatures from entering their space, they’d signed a treaty to regulate those visits, using the abilities of their empaths to seek out and police the Otherworld ‘guests.’

She contemplated the trek back to her office and the paperwork that awaited her. Human computers didn’t work in Otherworld, so she had to type everything up on her laptop, and then print it out to send to the authorities on the other side. Even though she hadn’t taken names or officially identified the Fae, she still had to explain what had happened to Mr. Knight, and arrange for his compensation payment from the ‘parks’ department. The wind picked up and Ella shivered. She wasn’t waiting for the bus. The department would just have to pick up the tab for a taxi.

She’d hardly cleared the park before her cell went off and Feehan’s name flashed up. Why couldn’t the man just let her return to the office before he bothered her again? Despite her reluctance, she took the call.

“Ella? You need to get back here asap.”

“I’m already on my way, boss. What’s up?” She braced herself for another so-called emergency. Feehan still hadn’t worked out that in the SBLE there were emergencies and then there were catastrophes that could alter the course of history. She was far more interested in the latter.

“There’s been a murder.”

She felt her derisive smile fade. “What kind of murder?”

“Possibly an empath.”

Shit. She immediately thought about her colleagues. “In San Francisco?”

“Yeah. I’ll meet you in the lobby at Market and we’ll take it from there.”

***

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