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Paul drew in a ragged breath and gazed up at Mzatal in utter awe.
The side door creaked as Ryan entered. He swept his gaze around the warehouse, taking it all in. His eyes briefly met mine before moving on to rest on the corpse, and I watched the emotions crawl over his face as the implications hit home. Mzatal had killed a man, and now Ryan, a federal agent, was expected to help cover it up. Ryan had dealt with a lot of grey areas in the past year, including faking a story about the death of Tracy Gordon. But this crossed another line.
Yet when his eyes returned to mine, they offered reassurance. It reminded me of the old saw, “A friend will help you move. A best friend will help you move bodies.” This was a horrible scenario fraught with all sorts of issues, but at the end of the day I knew he’d help me clean up the mess we were in.
I stood, legs a little shaky from managing the support for so long. “We need to get these two back to the house,” I told Ryan with a nod toward Paul and Thatcher. “And take care of . . .” I gestured toward Tito.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Right. Zack gave me a summary in his text. I’m thinking.”
“Wait. House?” Paul scrambled to his feet to stare at me in horror. “What house? I can’t go!” Terror suddenly flooded his face for no reason I could pinpoint. “We can’t go,” he gasped, then fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “We can’t go! Oh, god. I need . . . I need to make a call!”
“No!” I lunged to grab his arm. “No. Paul, please, you have to trust me. Your friend needs more care.” I searched his face. Sweat dotted his upper lip, and his breath came in short panicked gasps. “And you’re somewhere you don’t want to be,” I said. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said to Thatcher when he thought the man was dying: I can’t take it there without you! I can’t stay there without you. I can’t do it. I’ll die.
“Let us help you,” I urged.
All color drained from his face. “No. You don’t understand.” He shook his head and struggled to twist free of my grip. “Please,” he said, voice breaking. “I need to call.”
My skin prickled at the odd fervency in his voice. I glanced over at Mzatal to see him regarding the young man with narrow-eyed intensity. “Why?” I asked Paul. “Why do you need to call?”
“I j-just do,” he said. I felt a tremble go through him. “It’s where we need to be.”
I stared at him in confusion. “What will happen if you don’t call?”
He gulped and cast a panicked gaze around him. “They’ll be looking for us soon if we don’t call in. I can’t just go with you. I have to get back. To work.” Emotions warred on his face, and I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know there was some serious turmoil going on in there.
“Who will be looking for you?” I asked.
He made an unintelligible response and pulled against my grasp. His eyes darted this way and that like a cornered animal seeking any possible escape, even if it meant off a cliff.
What the hell was his deal? “Paul, it’s all right,” I said as calmly as possible. Whoever “they” were, he had some heavy duty fear associated with them, and Mzatal would get farther by reading him than I would by pushing the question. “You don’t have to answer me right now, but you do need to listen.” I kept a firm grip on his arm and turned him to face me more. “Thatcher is still in bad shape. If he doesn’t get more healing, he’ll die. He needs to stay with us to get that healing.” I let that sink in for a few seconds before continuing. “I won’t keep you against your will, but do you really want to leave your friend? Or allow him to die?” Yeah, I was playing horribly dirty, but I only felt a little guilty about it. Okay, shit, I felt a lot guilty about it since it was like telling a kid that the bogeyman would take him away forever if he didn’t eat his vegetables.
His mouth dropped open as a look of undisguised horror temporarily replaced the fear. “No. No! He can’t die!”
“Then come with us,” I said. “I promise you’ll be able to leave whenever you want.” Or rather, I’d let him leave after I found out why he wanted to go so badly.
He drew a breath and relaxed a bit, and for a shining moment I thought he’d accepted the pure genius of my argument. Yet in the next instant he yanked in wide-eyed desperation against my grip as the fear returned.
I bit back a curse. “Boss, I need some help here.”
Mzatal moved to us and, without any preliminaries, gripped Paul’s head between his hands. Paul’s face abruptly went slack, eyes glassy as he succumbed to Mzatal’s influence. I released Paul’s arm and rested my hand on Mzatal’s back as he worked, offering what support I could. The healing of Thatcher and the potency strike on Tito had drained him, and it showed in his pallor and the lines of tension on his face.
Mzatal’s eyes narrowed. “He carries a pervasive influence that is not a direct manipulation,” he said. “It is insidious, as though he has been steeped in an energy that has contaminated all parts. Very different from conscious manipulation and challenging to clear.”
“Who did it? A lord?”
Mzatal shifted his grip on Paul. “No. His fear is of Big Mack.”
“He’s afraid of a burger?” I asked, baffled.
Mzatal’s brows drew together as he deciphered the meaning from me. “No. Big Mack is a man.” He returned his attention to Paul, and I held back further questions. Fortunately, Mzatal provided an explanation before I went too far into my vision of a scary hamburger clown wreaking havoc. “It is one named Farouche.”
“He must mean James Macklin Farouche,” I said. “These guys work for StarFire Security, which is owned by him.” I frowned. J.M. Farouche was a prominent Louisiana businessman and philanthropist. The security company was only one of his many holdings. “That’s who he’s so afraid of?” I asked, unable to fully hide the note of disbelief in my voice. “Everything I’ve ever heard about him is that he’s a great guy—gives tons to charity, treats his employees well. His family has lived around here for a couple hundred years. In fact he still lives on the Farouche plantation.”
“It is truth. This Farouche held heavy influence over this one,” Mzatal said. “A compulsion component wound tightly with primal fear. I have removed much of the influence and dispersed the residuals such that they will not obligate him to take action.”
I had a tough time believing a respected—and seemingly ordinary—businessman like Farouche could do such a thing, but I also knew better than to doubt Mzatal. “All right. That’s pretty, um, interesting.” I took a few more seconds to process it all. “If it’s not manipulation, then how does it work? And how is a human doing it?”
/> Mzatal frowned. “I have seen talent for such in three humans before,” he said. “For two of them, it was an innate ability to influence the actions of others simply by being in their presence, though without lasting effect.” His frown deepened. “The third, long ago, demonstrated not only the passive influence, but also a conscious and invasive ability to impose her will in more permanent fashion, much as Farouche has to Paul Ortiz.”
