“Do you always fall in love so quickly?”
He stiffened. “I never said love.” He leaned toward me, the momentary tension gone. “Lust, though. Lots of lust. Respect. Trust. Caring. Didn’t you hear what Maurice said? The more you deny you’re as interested as I am in seeing where this goes, the more the klim laps up your conflicted feelings. Do you really want to give it that fuel?”
His words struck me hard. The last thing I wanted to do was feed the klim. But he was right that my feelings toward, and about, him were conflicted. But then, I was conflicted about most things. Did I love being psychic or wish it would go away so I wouldn’t have to hear people’s thoughts and feel their emotions? I loved my self-exiled solitary life and yet longed to be out in the world with a gaggle of companions. I liked having only a few close friends, and wished my phone rang more often.
At some point I was going to have to make up my mind about a boatload of things and commit to the choices.
But not right now. The skin between my shoulder blades was prickling.
I grabbed Dee’s hand. “The klim is around here somewhere. I’ve caught its signature.”
My gaze darted to the Strand. The klim could be any of the people there. Good Stuff was on a busy corner. People coming to or leaving the beach walked by almost constantly. People who’d parked in the structure or on the street paraded down to the sand. The klim could be among them. Was among them—somewhere.
A group of women with young children passed by us, followed closely by a woman who seemed to be both with, and not with, them. The straggler woman stopped in front of our table, bent, and picked up something from the street.
“You dropped this,” she said, and handed me a small rectangle of paper. I dropped it on the table and looked down at it. A business card. When I glanced back up, the woman was no longer with the group of mothers and children.
Dee, his eyes narrowed, watched the small group walk away from the beach toward Hermosa Avenue. He moved his gaze to me.
“What did the klim bring us?”
“You caught that, too,” I said.
“I watched it change from the woman who handed you the paper to some sort of weird lizard-crab thing. Something small that I couldn’t keep my eye on as it scuttled away.” He rolled his shoulders. “I’ve seen shifting before, but not into something I’m pretty sure is not of our world. And the clothes went with it. Except for fairies, I’ve never known a shifter who didn’t have to get naked to change.”
A shiver ran down my spine. “The klim’s signature is confused—coming from somewhere nearby, and from this.” I glanced down at the business card. “I can’t get a fix on location.” I picked up the card and looked at it. Jeremy Collins, it read in a bold font. Below that: Stockbroker. And below that, an address in Redondo Beach and a 310 phone number. I handed the card to Dee.
“We have to go to this place,” I said, standing so quickly I almost knocked over my chair. “This man’s in danger.”
Dee laid his hand on my arm. “Feel it out, Oona. Does it feel like a trap?”
I let out a long breath. He had a point. I’d caught the klim’s signature and followed it to the man it had killed in Redondo Beach. The klim straight out giving us an address and pretty much leading us by the nose was new. I closed my eyes and felt for intent, but of course I couldn’t read the klim’s mind any better today than on any past day. I closed my hand around the business card and felt for the man whose name it bore.
“I feel danger around this Jeremy Collins but to him, not to us. We have to hurry.”
He nodded and stood. The waitress had already brought two waters but hadn’t taken our order yet. Dee tucked a ten under the small ceramic container that held sugars and other sweeteners, and we left.
I put the address into the map app on my phone.
“North Redondo,” I said. “Almost into Torrance. Off Artesia Boulevard.”
I turned up the phone’s volume for the turn-by-turn directions. My stomach cramped harder the closer we came to our destination. There was a chance the klim was sending us off on a wild goose chase for reasons of its own, and a slim chance there wouldn’t be a dead body at the end, but I doubted it. Dee’s tension rolled off him in waves, multiplying my own anxiety. By the time we pulled up to a three story, blue stucco office building, my heart was beating hard and my throat was dry.
“Suite 201,” I said, glancing down at the business card.
“What do you feel?” Dee said.
My nerves were tight as bowstrings. A tension headache beat against the inside of my skull.
“Nothing good,” I said.
We ran up the stairs to the second floor and found Suite 201. A small brass plaque read Collins and Steinman. No designation of what sort of business it was, but stockbroker written on Jeremy Collins’ business card gave a pretty good hint.
The door to the suite was locked.
I glanced at my phone to see the time. “Out on lunch break?”
Dee ran his hand over his hair. “If something has happened to this Jeremy Collins, we’ll have to be out of here before anyone gets back.”
“Is it still breaking and entering if you use magic to open the door?” I said.
Dee glanced at me. “Yeah. It is.”
I hiked up a tensed shoulder in a tense shrug.
He drew in a short breath and muttered a spell. I heard a click. Dee took hold of the knob and opened the door.
The empty reception area wasn’t large, but the receptionist’s desk and the visitors’ chairs were tasteful and looked expensive. Off the reception area were two closed doors. My throat was so dry, I half-looked around, hoping for a fridge with bottled water or something.
Dee nudged me with his elbow and looked toward one of the closed doors A thin, rectangular brass plaque on it read Jeremy Collins.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to see behind that door. Violence had been done here. The residue floated in the air like ash.
Dee tried the door. Locked. He muttered something, and the lock clicked. He grabbed the knob and pushed the door open.
Blood was everywhere. Red splatter clung to the walls. Red—and gray. Bits of brain matter. Red pools soaked the carpeting. A bloody baseball bat lay next to the destroyed body. The blood on it was dry. The klim had killed him and then sought us out. I turned and ran from the room.
I was bent over, my hands braced on my knees, breathing hard when Dee followed me out into the reception area.
“You okay?” he said.
I shook my head no. “I need to get out of here.”
“Come on.” He took hold of my upper arm, gently got me standing up straight again, and helped me out the door.
“We have to call the police,” I said once we were in the hallway.
“In the car,” he said.
He held onto me as we descended the stairs. My knees were wobbly. I wasn’t sure I would have made it without stumbling.
I’d seen more dead bodies in the last nine days than in my whole life.
In the car, Dee opened the glove box and pulled out a cheap pay-as-you-go cell phone. He called 911 and reported a dead person at the address, gave a fake name and other information. When he was done, he put the cell phone under the front tire and ran over it as we drove away.
“What was the thing with the phone about?” I said as we headed west on Artesia Boulevard, back toward the beach. My head was throbbing. I wanted to be back in my own house, but we were safer at Dee’s.
“The cops will find the phone. They won’t waste time looking for it or trying to trace the call,” he said. “Hopefully they won’t look for the caller, either.”
“So we don’t have to explain how we got into an inner office to find the body. Or why we were there at all.”
Dee nodded. “The magic police—that’s a different matter.”
“Magic police?”
“They can take a dim view of using magic to break into an office.”
“Back up,” I sa
id. “Magic police?”
He turned right on Sepulveda, heading back toward his house. “You don’t know about them? Your parents really did keep you in the ordinary world, didn’t they? The MPs are like the regular cops except that they deal with anyone and anything magical.”
“Do they know about the klim?”
He nodded. “I have a friend on the force, Jack. I’ve kept him updated with everything we’ve learned.”
“So, they’re looking for the klim too?”
He shrugged. “Jack is.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means that the MPs are sometimes more interested in enforcing rules than actually catching bad guys.”
“Like using magic to break into a locked office.”
“Mmm,” Dee said. “It drives Jack nuts. Even if the MPs caught the klim and banished it back to the Brume, healing the rift isn’t in their purview. That’s going to be up to us, as far as I can see.”
I was okay with that. It was me the klim wanted to kill. And even though going into the Brume for real and trying to close the rift made my heart pound with fear, it was the only way to be personally sure the klim couldn’t come after me again.
18
I sat at Dee’s kitchen table looking into his manicured backyard but seeing Jeremy Collins broken body in my mind’s eye.
Dee handed me a mug of tea. I sniffed the brew and wondered if he’d made it from ingredients in his kitchen or in his lair. Either was okay. I just liked to know what I was drinking.
“What is this?” I said.
“Soothing herbs. Chamomile. Lavender. Verbena. Lemon balm. You’ve been trembling ever since we found the stockbroker’s body.”
“Jeremy Collins,” I said, wanting him to have a name, not just an occupation.
“Jeremy. Yeah.”
I took a sip from the mug. The tea felt good going down. Warm. I looked at him sitting across the table from me, both hands wrapped around his own mug.
“It’s too much death, Dee.”
“I know.”
He did know. I saw it in his face, felt it in him. If we weren’t careful, we would go down the rabbit hole of shock and sorrow, fall into that place where everything seemed pointless and nothing seemed worth the effort any more.
“It hurts, Dee, it hurts my soul.”
“Their pain is your pain,” he said. “Of course it’s hard.”
I turned the mug in my hands and stared into its depths. I craved that psychic filter Dee had told me about, but it seemed as out of reach as a star. I’d needed refuge from the world when the worst assault on my psyche was everyday people and their everyday lives. Brad’s death. Eric’s. The man in Redondo. Jeremy. Every death senseless. Useless. Every death as painful as a shot to the heart for me.
“How do you stand it?” I said. “I want to go home, barricade myself behind the door and never come out.”
“It’s not always like this,” he said. “It’s never been like this. But my job, the work I do, the work we are doing now, it’s about trying to set things right. It’s worth going for the win.”
“Goalie,” I said more to myself than him. “Last chance for the save.”
“You don’t seem the kind to give up on the play,” he said.
“I can be,” I said, “when I’m exhausted, like now. When I feel I’m trying to play way over my level and there’s no way I can even compete, much less contribute to the win.”
“You’re not over your level. You’re completely in the mix, right where you belong.”
I set down the mug and wrapped my arms across my body. If I was where I belonged, why did I desperately want to pack up and go home, my head hung in defeat?
“I can’t bring Brad or Eric or Jeremy back to life,” I said. “Back to their families.”
“You can help stop the klim from hurting anyone else,” Dee said. “That’s important. That’d be a huge win.”
I sniffed and nodded.
He stood. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Upstairs,” he said. “It’s been a hellacious day. A nap, a rest, whatever, would do us both good.”
“Do you have music up there?” I asked, following him up the stairs. “I could do with some music.”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “No.” He grinned. “But I could sing to you.”
I managed a thin smile. “Dear Lord. Anything but that.”
His bed was still unmade from this morning. He straightened the covers and we lay down on top them. He slipped an arm under my shoulders and pulled me close to him.
His scent filled my nose. His heartbeat was slow. Steady. Comforting. We lay quietly long enough that I wondered if he’d fallen asleep.
Sleep would have been welcome, but I knew it was impossible for me. Too much circled in my head. The dead. The klim. The Brume. It left me feeling helpless. Sad. Alone.
I didn’t want to feel alone. I needed that fine medicine of total, deep human contact. I shifted position and kissed Dee’s chest.
It wasn’t right to ask for the comfort of his body to ease the despair that threatened to drown me. Wasn’t fair to want from him what I didn’t want him asking of me.
But I wanted—needed—more than the sound of his heartbeat to drive back the creeping dark. I needed his passion. Our life forces raging, merged. The ultimate affirmation.
He opened his eyes slowly.
“Dee,” I said, and felt his needs, as desperate as my own.
He rolled over to face me and kissed the side of my neck. And then the hollow of my throat. He undid the first button of my shirt. And the second.
The day was sunny, bright. Outside, birds chattered in the trees. Inside, my heart banged in my chest. It’s been a long time since I’d been with anyone. I’d never been with anyone whose touch felt as good to me as his did. He wanted things from me—every man I’d ever been with wanted something—but Dee’s wants were different. Trust. Partnership. Sex to seal the bond.
Death had brought me this sudden desire. Death and the desperate need of life to oppose it. I knew it but knowing didn’t counter needing him now like a drowning woman needed air. I guessed I wasn’t conflicted anymore.
He helped me out of my clothes, took off his own, and lay next to me again.
I traced the symbols that ran from his shoulder to his wrist. He’d taught me their meanings: Strength. Protection. Heart. Mind. Spirit. A small candle with a tall flame to honor his mother’s magic. A triquetra woven around a circle in honor of his father’s. Magic inked into his skin. Other symbols circled each of his ankles—the four elements, light and dark, life and death in an endless circle.
“We should get you some,” he said. “To keep you safe.”
I nodded. I would have agreed to anything he said at that moment if he’d just—please—just—
We clung to each other then. Me pressing into him. Him pressing into me. Our skins learning the other.
Until something switched, and we were everywhere with hands, mouths, lips, teeth—our breaths coming in gasps. I felt him wanting, needing, wondering, waiting for the right moment.
Now, I wanted to scream. But it seemed he knew better than I did, stroking, teasing, pleasing until I did scream. And he tensed, his eyes squeezed shut, and surrendered everything he was to me, as I had to him.
After, we lay together, spent.
He pushed a strand of hair away from my face and kissed the side of my mouth. “Damn, woman,” he whispered. “It’s never been like that. Never.”
“Heady stuff,” I said.
“Yeah.” He laughed then, low and throaty. Filled with joy.
Laughter burbled out of me like bubbles from a child’s pipe. We wrapped our arms around each other and rolled around the bed, our laughter growing until I felt tears in my eyes.
I pulled one arm free and waved my hand in front of my face, fanning away the tears.
“I need to pee,” I said, half-apologizing for my biological needs.<
br />
He grinned, fell back hard against a pillow, and waved me off toward the bathroom.
When I came back, he’d pulled on a pair of jeans.
“Done with me already?” I said lightly.
“Just getting started,” he said. “But I was serious before, about getting some protection on your skin. We’re contemplating going into the Brume together, not a vision but actually going. We’re both going to need to take with us all the magic and power we can.”
Now that the madness of passion had died down, the reality of the klim and all the rest flooded back. Brad’s, Eric’s, and Jeremy’s families would never have the satisfaction of knowing what had killed their loved ones, but maybe we could stop the klim from hurting anyone else. Maybe that had to be enough.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said about the tattoo. “Not so much that you’d pass out, at least.”
“That’s very comforting,” I said, pulling on my shirt and doing up the buttons.
Dee put his arms around me, bent me back in an old-fashioned swoon and gave me a long, deep kiss. He brought me back upright and said, “Come on. Gill locks up at six pm sharp on Tuesdays and The Gate usually leaves earlier.”
“The Gate?”
Dee pulled on a navy T-shirt and dropped to one knee to tie his white running shoes. “I suppose the old man has an actual name, but he’s The Gate to everyone. You have to be approved by him before Gill does the ink.”
“What if he doesn’t approve me?”
“It’s happened.” He patted his pockets, checking he had everything he needed. “We’ll go and see what he says.”
I expected Gill’s place to be like Sudie’s, hidden from the ordinary world. Instead, Dee parked in front of a large, well-lit tattoo parlor on Hermosa Avenue and said, “Here we are. Still nervous?”
I nodded. “I have this thing about needles. And pain. Not a fan of either.”
We got out of the car and he took my hand. “It’s not that bad. I promise.”
I drew in a deep breath and we walked into the shop.
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