Saldana froze. “You think we’re the reason Maris died?”
“What else could it be? They knew she had something important to say to us, so they made sure she couldn’t speak. Somebody at Twilight sold her out.”
Jesse shook his head, seeming not to want to believe it. “We’re a close-knit community. Nobody would—” He clipped the words, finishing with, “We can’t stand here talking. Every second, we contaminate the scene a little more. I have to call this in.”
“Is this going to look bad for you?” Seemed to me it would, finding an ex dismembered on her bedroom floor.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Saldana ran a hand through his hair and escorted me back to the Forester, where he got on his cell phone.
I wanted to get the hell out of there. If past precedents held true, the San Antonio PD would ask a shitload of awkward questions and then run my prints. If the scars permitted a match, well, that never worked out well. They might even charge me with something if they thought they could get away with it and never mind the truth.
Anxiety clawed at me from the inside out, and by the time he hung up, I was a bundle of nerves. “Can I go? I don’t know anything, and I really can’t be involved in this.”
It didn’t matter that we were a good two miles from a bus stop. I’d walked in worse weather and worse shoes for that matter.
“Trust me.” Jesse brushed the hair away from my face. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
Like I hadn’t heard that before.
Cop promises meant more, I guess, because he was true to his word. He let me sit in the SUV while he dealt with the PD. I didn’t hear what they said but they made notes and cut him loose.
By the time we hit the highway, I could breathe again. “Is there anything I need to know? Do we need to synchronize our watches or something?”
He looked pale and tense. I’d never lost anyone but my mom, so I could only imagine how he must be feeling. The woman we found lifeless on her bedroom floor . . . he had once held her in his arms, kissed her blue-tinged mouth, and stroked her hair. He knew the sound of her laughter and her warmth, but she would never be anything but an echo now, coming from six feet down.
“I told them you didn’t go in and that I stayed only long enough to see there was a problem, then phoned it in. It made things easier.”
“Did you mention the key?”
“The door was unlocked.” He spared a glance from the road to impress the importance of that on me.
Interesting. So he wasn’t above lying to keep his ass out of the fire. “Noted. Why did we drop by?”
“To get your palm read.” At my look he shrugged. “First thing I thought of. They didn’t care why. They just wanted to get in there and start checking things out.”
“They’re not going to find anything. You know that as well as I do.”
His brooding expression said he knew that all too well.
The Fiddler Calls the Tune
Saldana let me off in Chuch’s driveway. By this time it was late afternoon, the sun sinking beyond the horizon for one of those wild Texas sunsets, a riot of deep color. In Mexico City, the sky looks pale as blue slate even on sunny days. The sunsets don’t glow like that either; they’re hazy pink and gray. At night the stars give way to city lights.
He hesitated as if he didn’t know what to say. Finally he settled on, “I’ll keep you posted. Call me tomorrow and we’ll set something up for the purse. It has to be unofficial, though. If we get caught, it’ll mean my badge.”
I’d almost forgotten about that, but I was glad he was a man of his word. I managed a smile. “Thanks, I’ll do that. We’ll be careful. I’m not looking to hurt you, Jesse.”
When he smiled, I realized it was the first time I’d called him by his first name. I didn’t know what that meant, but it appeared to please him.
After the Forester drove away, Chuch slid out from underneath a Mustang on a roller board. He shone with grease and seemed cheerful about it. I wondered what Eva would say about the mess on her bathroom tiles.
“Thought for a minute he was gonna kiss you and then Chance would kill us both.”
I arched a brow. “Why both of us?”
“ ’Cause I was out here and didn’t stop it.” He grinned up at me. “You can say you’re not his, but I don’t think he buys it. I’m the same way when Eva takes off. Even if she stayed gone ten years instead of ten days I’d still think of her as mine. I’d still be waiting for her to come to her senses.”
Yeah, my mood colored the impression, but Chuch’s steadfastness struck me as ridiculously sweet. A little misguided, maybe, but sweet. I ignored his less than subtle hint that I should reconcile with Chance. I liked Chuch but he didn’t see the big picture. He didn’t know I’d spent two weeks in intensive care.
After our last job went so wrong, I’d almost died. I still didn’t know who had pulled me out of the building—some nameless rescue worker, no doubt.
I’d been lucky. The people in the squats hadn’t gotten off so lightly. If the guy who lit the blaze wasn’t serving consecutive life sentences—well. You could say I’d like to see him suffer something worse.
Fire. For me, it was always fire ever since I’d gone running out our back door into the woods. Someday it would catch up with me. But today was not that day. I managed a smile.
“Is Chance okay?” I offered Chuch a hand and tugged. The mechanic was a fireplug, so it took all my strength to get him on his feet, and I suspect he didn’t help much.
“Define okay. He’s stir-crazy and obsessed with whether you’re doing the cop. Worried about his mom. Otherwise, yeah, he’s great. Booke came up with some more info on the ritual and e-mailed me what he had. Chance is going over the stuff inside.”
A fine wire of tension uncoiled. If anything had happened to him while I was with Jesse, I don’t think I’d have forgiven myself. I didn’t know what I could do to protect him, but some instinct insisted I could safeguard him somehow. Even if I couldn’t be with him, the world would be cold and dark without him in it.
“Good.”
Maris’s pale face haunted me. A life cut short over what? What did she know? All I had to show for my night’s work was a dead witch and a cop I didn’t know what to do with.
Chuch favored me with a long, narrow-eyed stare. “You look like shit, but I don’t think you got any. That’ll cheer him up some.”
“You keep sweet-talking me like this and Eva will get jealous.” That reminded me, though. As we headed inside, I shared part of what I’d learned from Jesse, including Lenny Marlowe, Delta Security, and IBC, who owned the warehouse where we’d been hit. “So it wasn’t a total loss, and he’s getting me in tomorrow to look at the bag.”
I didn’t mention the murder scene. Just couldn’t, because to speak it aloud would bring back all the mental images. I’d never seen anyone mauled like that. So much blood. So much pain. I also didn’t mention that the gifted segment of humanity had organized. If he didn’t know, I probably shouldn’t be sharing the info.
Chuch nodded. “Good work, hermanita. You must give a mean hand job.”
Naturally Chance emerged from the office on that note. I fought the impulse to reassure him, but apparently it didn’t matter. Wordless, he came over and wrapped his arms about me. This was what I’d always wanted from him: some sign he knew what I needed, even if I didn’t come out and beg for it.
Damn him anyway.
I put my arms around his waist, noticing the difference between him and Saldana. Where the cop carried his muscle lean, Chance crossed the border to thin. I felt his ribs as he held me.
Oh, he still wore clothing well, still looked impossibly elegant, but he’d lost weight in the year since I’d been gone. I wondered whether I had anything to do with it.
I stepped back and let Chuch do the talking. Right now I needed another shower, wanted to try to wash away the memory of the dead witch’s face. It shook me since I’d spent more time in the last few days thinking about my mother than I had in all the years since I’d lost her. Maybe I was making too much of it because it hit so close to home, but gentle women who practiced the art didn’t seem to fare well.
Not enough chitin in their armor in a world of tooth and claw.
Perhaps illogically, I felt as though everything connected somehow. If I could just get enough distance, I’d see all the missing links. But that was Twila’s gift, not mine, and I couldn’t pay her to get involved in this.
The hot water ran over me, and it felt like tears rising in the steam. I sank down in the shower stall and tried to cry. I ached for my simple life: Dutch miniatures and a rooftop garden. Caught between demons and promises, I didn’t see how I could survive. Señor Alvarez might get my shop after all.
Though I meant to join them right away, I only managed to put on clean panties and a blue T-shirt before sinking down on the bed. Everything hit me at once and I shook, wrapped my arms around a pillow.
Chance found me like that a few minutes later. His eyes gleamed in the half-light; he raised a hand to the damp fire of my hair, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. I remembered he’d never made love to me in this incarnation.
“What didn’t you tell Chuch?”
It was pointless to protest. He knew me better than anyone alive, and he’d sensed I had something weighing on me from the moment I walked in the door. That was why he held me instead of yelling at me, even though I’d driven him quietly out of his mind by staying out all night and half the next day.
I closed my eyes and yielded, telling him about Maris in a whisper. Before I finished, he drew me to him, but I took care not to touch his back. He would bear scars because of me, as I carried them for him.
What bond did that bespeak? I wasn’t sure it was safe or healthy, but I didn’t know whether I could resist its pull either. Chance held such dark sorcery in the amber of his eyes, and his scent always made me think of white sheets and writhing bodies.
I wished he’d loved me more.
I wish I understood what drives him.
Then I took the leap and shared the rest.
“So there are others like you,” he said. “An organized network, much different than the odd talent we’ve run across. When did you plan to tell me?”
Sometimes he had a way of making me feel like there were miles between us, as if his mind was ultimately inhuman and unknowable. I sat away from him, frowning.
“I just did. What does that matter, Chance? Or do you want the address of the club so you can look for someone to take my place?”
Pain gathered, pooled between us. I sensed it in the turning of his mood. “Nobody can take your place, Corine. Even if I found a hundred people with your gift.”
“You won’t.” My tone sounded nasty, even to me. I wanted to fight, hoped he’d give me a reason. “It’s rare.”
He searched my face for some sign. “I already knew that about you.”