Hex Appeal (P.N. Elrod) (Kitty Norville 4.60)

* * *

When lunchtime came, I woke up to Andy’s kissing me awake, and the delicious warmth of that gave way to a rumble of real hunger as he stepped back and put a bed tray over my lap. “There,” he said. “Grilled ham and cheese sandwich, just like we used to make it back in Amarillo, when the streets were paved with cow chips. Only difference is I used presliced bread instead of having to hack it off the loaf.”

He plunked himself down on the other side of the bed as I dug into the meal; when Andy cooked, it was always with a down-home enthusiasm that denied the existence of cholesterol, and damn, it was great. I tried not to think about the calories, which was actually a lot easier than normal since I’d skipped two meals in a row.

“Did you eat?” I asked after I’d swallowed the last delicious, buttery piece of the sandwich. He picked up the remote control and flipped on the television mounted on the wall across from the bed.

“Yep,” he said. “Ate, cleaned up the kitchen, waited until I was sure you’d had at least six full hours. How you feeling?”

“Great,” I said. “You’re not seriously going to watch TV now.”

He’d tuned it to

a show that featured drunk people wandering around screaming at each other. Reality television. “Can’t help it,” he said. “Don’t really want to watch it, but I still do. Don’t seem right, people putting their personal business out like this, for everybody to gawk over. In—” He caught himself, and grinned. “I was about to say in my day, but that’d make me feel about two hundred years older than I actually am in body. But in my day, folks kept their private lives private.”

“I guess it’s a different way of looking at things,” I said. “Maybe as connected as everybody is now, there’s no way to keep your business all that private anymore. And not as much need.”

He put the remote aside, moved the remains of the lunch tray, and kissed the side of my neck. It felt warm, comfortable, and seductive at the same time. “I have no mind to share any of you with an audience, Holly Anne. I want to keep you all to myself.”

I knew that we ought to be talking about the case, or about what we were going to do to find the killer, but as his arm went around my shoulders, as I curled into his warm body, I felt no real desire to spoil this. We need this, I thought. We need this time.

Because there would never be enough time. I knew that. All lovers faced a ticking clock, but ours was loud, and close, and inevitable, and we both knew it. Andy was strong, but his strength couldn’t hold, it couldn’t.

“Hey,” he said, and tilted my chin up to meet my eyes. He had deep, richly brown eyes, full of secrets. Full of warmth, too. “You’re thinking too dark, you know that? Leave it out there.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I keep thinking about those girls. We failed last night. We didn’t get him. You really didn’t find anything, either?”

“We really going to talk about this now?”

I nodded silently, and he sighed and settled back against the pillows, staring at the flickering TV screen again. “I had some knowledge of someone who’d hired an avatar witch. Not through the network.”

I sat up and stared at him, but he didn’t meet my eyes. “What?”

“It’s a dead end,” he said. “I mean that exactly, ’cause when I tracked the son of a bitch down who handed over the money, he was dead and buried in a ditch out behind his house.” There was something unnatural in the focus he was giving the stupid reality show, and I knew he wasn’t really seeing it. What he was seeing was far worse. “Didn’t have time to do a real resurrection, so I took some shortcuts.”

“What do you mean, shortcuts?”

“There are things I know you don’t, Holly Anne. Things it’s better you don’t, and this is one of ’em.”

“What are you talking about, Andy?”

“There’s a way to pull a soul back over into his own ruined body and hold it there, long as you’re not too particular about what it takes to get it done.” He paused a moment, then said, “I got a couple of questions answered, once he stopped screaming. Couldn’t hold him long. Your killer wasn’t too kind to that body.”

I swallowed hard. From the stony look on Andy’s face, it was worse than he was willing to tell me, which made it way worse than I could imagine. “Oh God,” I said faintly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Just did. No reason to give you nightmares, wasn’t your doing. Anyway, I found out who gave him the money to hire the witch. Name was a dead end.”

“You should still tell Prieto,” I said. “Maybe the witch he hired has more information…”

Andy was already shaking his head. “Nothing more to be learned. Believe me, your police friend ain’t gonna get any more out of this than I did.”

“It’s not just about the information. It’s about justice.”

He looked at me, suddenly. His eyes were unreadable. “Justice.”

“That witch is guilty. Maybe guilty after the fact, but she ought to be charged and her license to practice taken away, at the very least. If you don’t want to go to the police, we need to report her to the network.”

“I will,” he said. He settled back against the pillows, still watching me. “Holly…”