In the Air Tonight
Page 22
“Whoops.”
“You were safe. The persecution of witches is no longer.”
“Tell it to Mrs. Noita and her niece.”
“The Venatores Mali have been reborn.”
“Like you.”
Henry tilted his head, considering. “The spell was cast to save our children. Blood and death fueled its power. But we never asked for this.” He swept his hand down his black-clad form. “It merely happened.”
“No place is safe forever,” I said. “No one can predict what people will do. How things might change. Maybe you became a safeguard, a watchdog. Without you in my life to warn me of danger, I’d be dead now. I’m still safe.”
“But for how long?”
That I didn’t know. And there were others to worry about besides myself.
“Have they found Becca?”
“Not yet.”
Relief flooded me for the safety of someone I didn’t know. If there was such a thing as twin telepathy, what did triplets have? Something stronger? If so, why hadn’t I ever felt either one of them? Unless that emptiness inside of me had been born of their lack. Would that change once I met them? I wanted, desperately, to find out.
“Where’s the third?”
A shadow passed over his face. “We don’t know.”
“How can that be?”
“You and I have an affinity for ghosts, hence my attachment to you. Becca has an affinity for animals.”
“Which brought Pru to her. What other powers do the two of you have?”
“Pru can talk to animals and heal. I can talk to ghosts, affect the weather, and—” He flicked his hand and Samhain skidded out from beneath the bed. She hissed at him and scurried back.
“If you can toss things, why didn’t you toss McHugh?” Into a tree.
“He brought minions—a lot of them. Using our powers takes energy. Your mother was still weak from your births. I needed to have enough strength to send three souls though time. We could fight, or we could save our children.”
“Why didn’t you run? Hide?”
“Even if we triumphed that day, over those hunters, there would always be more. Once we drew the attention of the Venatores Mali, we were marked for as long as we lived. It wasn’t as if we could move quickly or easily with three infants. We definitely couldn’t move silently and avoid notice for long.”
“So you stood your ground, and you died for us.”
“I didn’t mind.”
I felt the urge to thank him again, but words would never be enough. I considered his seemingly solid form and thought of how my fingers had ached with cold after swiping right through him.
Hugs weren’t going to work either.
“Protecting you and your sisters was my purpose in life. It is also my purpose in death. I loved all of you from the moment I saw you. I love you still. I will always love you. I will never let anything hurt you if I can stop it.”
I swallowed, nodded, lowered my gaze until I was able once more to speak. “I want to love you, but I don’t know you. You’re a stranger.” And an odd one at that. “I’m sorry.”
“My love isn’t based on your loving me back. True love never is.”
I didn’t know much about love, though I wanted to learn. I hoped I’d have time.
“We have other things to worry about,” Henry said.
He was right. It would take me time to come to terms with who he was, who I was. But, in the meantime, I had so many questions.
“I had bruises on my arm where Anne McKenna grabbed me. I never had bruises from a ghost before.” I stared at my fingers, wiggled them. They tingled but they weren’t black and blue. “What gives?”
“You’re sensitive,” he said. “I’ll assume she was agitated?”
“Getting an arm hacked off can do that to a person.”
“Indeed.”
“Bobby had bruises too. Why?”
“Same reasons.”
Genevieve had been understandably agitated, but—
“He can see ghosts?” That might be the reason he was so snarly about the supernatural.
“No. But he feels them. He refuses to acknowledge anything that hints at the mystical, but he has magic in his blood.”
I wasn’t sure what to do with that. Right now I had more important questions.
“Someone suggested that the Venatores Mali might be trying to raise McHugh.” From the expression on Henry’s face, he’d already gotten there before me. “Is that possible?”
“It isn’t easy, but it’s possible.”
“How?”
“Raising the dead is dark magic. I’m not familiar with the particulars.”
“You’re dead.”
“Is there a reason you keep pointing that out?”
“You’re here. You’ve been raised.”
“I’m a ghost not the risen dead. There’s a difference.”
I lifted my eyebrows and waited.
“I’m spirit not form. Here for a purpose and then I’ll be gone.”
“And the risen dead?”
“Once raised they remain until they are vanquished. They are form and not spirit. Solid without a soul.”
“McHugh will come back without a soul?” That sounded worse than his coming back at all.
“He never really had one in the first place,” Henry said.
“How do you vanquish a risen spirit?”
“I have no more idea about that than I have about how they’re raised.”
I let out a breath. “Now what?”
“You’re going to have to familiarize yourself with dark magic. Only by understanding it can you thwart it.”
A shiver traced my spine. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Very.” His gaze looked beyond me and into the past. The high collar of his coat shifted, revealing the brand of a snarling wolf that matched the one on Anne McKenna’s ghost. “But so is McHugh.”
*
Henry made me promise not to summon him again unless it was life or death.
“If you call me, I’ll come if I can. If I don’t come—”
“You can’t. Got it.”
Henry began to fade. “Get rid of the sage and the candles, brush away the pentagram. Those are always so difficult to explain.”
Not exactly fatherly advice, but good advice just the same, because not long after I dumped the sage, hid the candles, and wiped the table, the door opened. Bobby sniffed a few times, but I gave him a hug before he could ask any questions. He seemed like he needed one.
He kept his arms around me, and I didn’t mind. I laid my head on his chest and listened to the steady beat of his heart.
“Did I wake you when I left?” he asked.
“No. I just … woke.”
He kissed the top of my head and released me, which was good because if I’d still been pressed against him he would have felt the jolt his next words caused. “The officer said you’d been talking to yourself.”
“That’s only a problem if I answer.”
“Ba-dump-bump,” he said, making a motion like a drummer in a vaudeville act. Then he tilted his head and waited for me to go on.
This was the problem with cops. They couldn’t be distracted by hokey humor like any garden-variety kindergartner.
“Maybe I was on the phone.”
“Were you?”
I discovered I could only lie so much. Especially when all he had to do was glance at my cell phone, or use his powers of cop-hood to check my landline, and discover the truth. Though why he would, why he’d care …
“No.”
He lifted his eyebrows, still waiting.
“I was practicing my lesson for tomorrow.”
And the lies returned with ease. Though I should have been practicing, or at least preparing, rather than messing with magic. Maybe I could use what I’d learned so far as a Halloween lesson for my class.
How was that for a horrible, no-good, very bad idea?
“There is no tomorrow.”
“We’ve had this argument. I am.”
“We didn’t finish it. You’re not.”
He seemed more upset about that than he should have been.
“Did you hear something at the police station?”
He glanced toward the door. “Not really.”
“Liar.” I ignored the voice in my head that taunted: Takes one to know one!
I did spend most of my time with five-year-olds.
He let out a long breath. “There’ve been other deaths, in other places. All of the victims were associated with witchcraft in some way.”
“We suspected that.”
He inclined his head. “The maniac was obsessed with witches. Had altercations with several. There was a restraining order against him from one.”
“Probably the reason he came here. No one knew him well enough to hide.”
“How did he know you?”
“I … what?”
“He killed a witch, then he tried to kill you. Twice.”
“I was there. I remember.”
“Why you?” I spread my hands and he continued. “Witches are dying. Why you?”
“Not dead.”
“Not for their lack of trying.”
“I’m not sure what to tell you.”
Actually, I just didn’t want to tell him. I hadn’t gotten my own mind around my heritage, how was I going to get his around it? Especially since he’d made his opinion on the subject quite clear. Those who said they had supernatural abilities were liars, cheats, and charlatans.
“They could have made a mistake,” I continued.
“Or they know something about your parents that you don’t.”
He was right. Again, I couldn’t tell him. Unless I figured out how to explain that my real parents were a four-hundred-year-old witch and his wolf-wife.
“Unfortunately, no one’s owned up to dumping me on the side of the road in the last twenty-seven years; I doubt they’re going to come forward now. Especially if they’re a witch and witches are dying.”
He made a sound of aggravation. “This is so nuts.”
“I know.”
“Thank you.” He collapsed on the couch. “I’m glad someone can see reason.”
“Meaning?”
“Witches. Psychics. Auras. Supernatural powers. Magic. Ghosts. It’s all bullshit.”
If I’d had any question about his views—and I didn’t—they’d have been thoroughly answered now.
I joined him on the couch and took his hand. “You seem pretty adamant.”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“Usually there’s a reason behind such strong opinions.”
“Sanity?”
“Sanity’s more of an excuse than a reason.”
He gave a short sharp laugh. “I’ve never heard sanity used as an excuse. Crazy is another story. Not guilty by reason of nutso.”
“That’s the legal term?”
“Should be.”
I tightened my fingers. “In my experience those who have the deepest feelings against something are the ones who have the greatest fear of it. And that comes from some experience with it.”
He pulled away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
My eyes met those of Genevieve as she materialized in the corner. A tear slid down her cheek.
“Don’t you?” I asked.
Chapter 21
Bobby’s stomach churned. He was so cold, he wanted to take Raye into his arms and hold her until the ache went away.
Except the ache never went away. Not since Genevieve had.
He couldn’t talk about her. He just couldn’t. So why did he want to?
“You can tell me.”
Sometimes he felt as if Raye could read his mind. Which was as crazy as all the rest of it.
“Tell you what?”
“Why the idea of psychics and ghosts makes you so angry.”
“When people die, Raye, they don’t come back.”
No matter how much we might want them to.
“They don’t come back, no, but some of them might hang around.”
“And go bump in the night?”
“Has anything gone bump in your night?”
“Just you.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What do you mean?”
Her eyes flicked to his, then to the far corner of the room. Though her lips curved a little, she seemed sad. “You’re haunted, Bobby.”
The chill that had been pressing on his chest jolted through his blood. “What?”
Her gaze returned to his. “You’ve lost someone.”
“Everyone’s lost someone.”
“Not like you have. It hurts.” She set her hand on his cold, cold heart. “Here.”
He couldn’t help it. He tangled their fingers together. Hers were so warm and alive. “You’re psychic now?” He put all the scorn he felt for the “profession” into the word.
“I’m not.” Silence fell between them. She drew their joined hands to rest on his knee. “Tell me,” she said, and though he’d sworn never to speak of it again, he did.
“Everything started with Audrey.”
A crease appeared between Raye’s eyebrows.
“We weren’t married,” he said quickly, and the crease deepened. “You asked if I was married, if I’d ever been married. I wasn’t. We weren’t.”
“Okay.”
“I arrested her.”
“For?”
“What I arrested her for in the first place isn’t the issue. The issue is what I should have arrested her for later and didn’t. Then she died. End of story.”
“That isn’t the end of her story.”
“It was for me.”
Raye’s lips tightened, released. “How did she die?”
“Overdose.”
“Accidental?”
He shook his head, swallowed.
“All right,” Raye said slowly. “You feel guilty that you didn’t know what she was doing? You didn’t stop her? You weren’t there? What is it?”
“I wasn’t there because I knew. I couldn’t stop her from using. I did try.”
Raye peered into his face. “There’s more.”
Bobby tried to pull away, but this time she wouldn’t let him. “I…” he began, meaning to tell her that he hadn’t just left Audrey, but also— “I can’t. I—” To his horror, his voice broke. He had to swallow or choke, and then he had to keep swallowing or sob.
“It’s all right,” she said.
“It isn’t,” he managed, his voice both dry and damp—hoarse and brimming with tears.
“I know.”
She pressed a kiss to his temple, lifted her palms, and cupped his face. He stared into her eyes, and that cold weight on his chest shifted. It didn’t go away, but it lightened. He didn’t understand why. He hadn’t shared his burden, but still she seemed to understand.
He couldn’t help himself. He kissed her.
And then he couldn’t stop.
*
I should have pulled away, backed away, run away. I’d been so close to getting Bobby to tell me everything. If he stopped now, would he ever share? And if he didn’t admit everything, everyone, that haunted him, how could I admit everything and everyone that haunted me? How could we have a future if we didn’t?
We couldn’t and we wouldn’t, which meant I should stop this. But at the first brush of his mouth I was lost. I wrapped my fingers in his shirt and held on.
I tasted tears, though he’d shed none. Perhaps if he had, he wouldn’t taste of desperation too. He needed me, needed this, needed us. Whether to forget or to avoid, I didn’t know. Right now that distinction didn’t matter.
Later, I promised myself. Later.
He licked my lips, lifted his own. I opened my eyes to his frown. My fingers tightened. “Don
’t.”
I wasn’t sure what I was protesting, then he lifted a hand, traced my cheek, turned his finger upward and I understood the taste of tears had been my own.
“Why?” he asked.
I shook my head. How could I tell him his daughter followed his footsteps every day, sat next to him in the night, worshipped him, ached for him, and would not leave until he let her go?
“Raye,” he whispered, and the sound of my name in his broken voice only caused more tears to flow. He kissed them away as if I were a child, making me think he’d done the same before.
Though it wasn’t the same; it couldn’t be.
“He’s always so sad.”
I jerked at Genevieve’s voice, closer than she’d been before.
“Hush.” Bobby pressed his lips to my hair.
I rested my cheek on his chest and met Genevieve’s gaze. She was still crying. Poor kid.
“Tell him it wasn’t his fault. Mommy fell asleep and I ate her candy.”
I shuddered in sudden understanding, and his arms tightened. “Are you cold?”
I was so cold I’d probably never get warm, but I shook my head.
“He likes you,” Genevieve continued. “He’s never liked anyone before the way he likes you. Can’t you make him happy?”
I could, but not while she was watching.
As if in answer to the thought, maybe it was, Henry appeared. He held out his hand. “Come along, child.”
She went with him as if she knew him; she definitely trusted him. Her tiny, pale fingers tangled with his much larger ones. For an instant I mourned the thousand and one times I’d never been able to hold his hand like that, as well as the thousand and one times I never would. I’d never be able to hold my mother’s hand either. She no longer had one.
Together they walked through the eastern wall of my home. I remained where I was, enjoying the steady beat of Bobby’s heart beneath my ear. He ran his palm over my hair. My eyelids grew heavy, and I straightened.
“What’s wrong?” He tried to tug me back.
“I’m supposed to be soothing you.”
His head tilted. “Who said?”
I nearly blurted, Genevieve. I was more tired than I’d thought.
“You’re upset,” I began.
“I wasn’t crying.”
“Sure you were.”
In places no one could see, which was the very worst kind.