“No,” I said again, “it isn’t and they probably haven’t. Whoever heaved this expected me to be home to receive the message. Because that’s not just any rock. It’s a special one.”
“What’s special about it, other than it came through your window?”
“It’s a curse stone.”
24.
I put out a foot and rolled the rock away from the bits of broken glass. “In some ways, I’m very pleased to see it, even at the price of a window and another near heart attack. I think someone, with all the ill will in the world, may have done me an unintentional favor. There’s just one question, did you park in my driveway?”
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t for a number of reasons. One street over.”
“Okay. So anyone would think I was alone.”
I whipped the floral arm protector from the couch and used it to pick up the stone. Cradling it carefully in both hands, I carried it over to lay it on the end table. Feeling the faintest energy pulse through the cloth, I wasn’t ready to touch it bare-handed, just yet.
“Why are you pleased?”
“Because, as I understand it, curses can be reversed.”
“I have a few questions,” Johnny said.
“I’m sure you do,” I said cordially, moving away. After I picked up the kitchen chair and set it on its legs, I curled up in the recliner again. “I have a few questions, too. Like, where are the other stones? How do they relate to the present situation, and why do you seem intent on clumsy seduction?
His black brows snapped together at my last statement, and I was pleased to see a real scowl on his usually impassive, aggravating face. I’d used clumsy deliberately and desperately—to counter his likely and completely justified impression that I found him a walking, talking pheromone. If it hurt his manly ego that was just too bad.
“You don’t believe I find you attractive, seductive? That I might want to make love to you? Strange words from a lovely woman like yourself.”
I stopped inspecting my cuticles and smiled over at him. “That I can be conned into believing you’re a man given to casual lusts? Frankly, no. Nor do I believe that I turn you on, an experienced guy like you. I’m a Freak. I had any conceit that my appearance and personality trumped Freak beaten out of me long ago, but that’s beside the point. The real point is that you’re a pro. This is a professional situation. I don’t think you’re a man who thinks with his balls all the time. And I’ve had enough experience with manipulative methods to recognize them when I see them practiced.”
A weird expression crossed his face. I couldn’t read it. Maybe he wasn’t used to hearing a woman speak dispassionately about lack of her sex appeal.
“Lillie, you’ve got a lot to learn. I’m not like your husband.”
“No, you’re not like Nathan,” I agreed, even more cordially. “You’re alive.”
When he didn’t make any protestations about how attracted he was to my fair white body or my beautiful soul, I proceeded to give him a complete rundown on my research, including the museum incident that prompted it and my discovery of the bullaun stone on Cemetery Hill.
This time he stood in the middle of my living room, directly over the spot where the Nathan-zombie fell, his hands clasped behind his back, alternately staring at the floor and over my head while he listened. I tended to detour around that space. It didn’t seem to affect him.
“How it relates and if it relates in any material way, I don’t know yet,” I finished. “It seems a separate mystery. The closest thing I can come to is harassment by the SOS. It rather suits their thinking. I certainly suspect some of them of digging up her grave on Cemetery Hill, because of the picket stake that female tried to ram into my brisket. And the minor factor of the skull on the effigy.”
“The synchronicity of the two St. Claires? Both women of power? Aibhinn?”
I picked at the blanket binding. I didn’t like the way he said that archaic word. Nor the way he looked me over when he said it. That wasn’t true. Actually, I liked it way too much. “Possibly.”
“Hunh. You might be right.”
He hesitated, shrugged, then swung about and spread his hands over the curse stone. I had a sudden flashback image of his fingers hovering over Nathan’s ring that first morning.
After a minute he glanced at me, looked down at the stone and shook his head.
“Nothing much. It’s been wrapped and insulated. Lillie, when did you eat last?”
So my first fleeting impression that Johnny might have psychometric skills was correct. He clearly did. And was reluctant to advertise it. To me anyway. Must be very useful skill for a cop to have. It was only much later I remembered he’d touched my bracelets in that characteristic searching, seeking way.
“What? Oh, I had toast and coffee. Are you angling for hospitality, Sergeant? The town has some nice restaurants you can visit. You must have sleep to catch up, because of your wasted efforts last night, so don’t let me keep you… Anyway, I intended to order in.”
He massaged one shoulder and grimaced. “I can go a long time without. But not without food, I didn’t have breakfast. An excellent idea. I was about to suggest we do that. How does pizza sound?”
I made a noise.
“We’re not finished yet, Lillie. I have a sudden craving for pizza and I’m too big for you to throw out.”
He picked the phone book off the desk and flipped to the yellow pages, ran a finger down the listings.
“Hunh. I’ve seen this name before. I like the sound of it. Ever had their pizzas? Any preference?”
I made another noise and capitulated. He was going to do it, regardless. As he said, he was too big to throw out. I was hungry anyway.
“I tried them, as you probably noticed by the circle around the listing. Just no anchovies.”
Johnny picked up the phone and ordered.
“It’ll be here in forty-five minutes or so. You won’t mind if I put my head down until it does?”
With that he came around the desk, punched up the throw pillows at one end and stretched his exasperating length on my sofa.
“Wake me up when he comes.”
He closed his eyes and shortly proceeded to snore. I hoped he’d wake up with a sore neck.
To take my mind and imagination off the sight of him spread out there all big and muscular, I crept upstairs to the bathroom. Our dive to the floor had knocked the scabs off the scrapes on my legs. After I wiped off the fresh blood and smeared more antiseptic cream, I went down to the kitchen to check the time. He’d ordered two pizzas. Large. I stuffed thirty-five damp dollars in the pocket of my track pants.
The backyard looked complacent, uninhabited except by birds and a black squirrel, his plume flicking, digging in a flower bed for one of last year’s nuts. The mourning doves were back, bobbing sedately in brown unison across the grass.
I went back to the living room and swept up the broken glass and picked up my litter from the hall. His snore deepened, the sound of a truly exhausted man. One leg had slipped off the sofa and he’d flung an arm across his eyes. No matter what devious plots he suspected me of, he apparently trusted me not to smother him in his sleep.
I went to the door to watch for the pizza man.
When a white van with the name of the business scrolled on the side stopped by my gate, I eased off the chain and turned the locks. When a delivery guy came around the vehicle with a large bundle wrapped in an insulating pad, I quietly opened the door, slipped out on the porch to meet him. A vaguely familiar face under a cap with the same logo. He’d delivered here before. When he climbed the steps and began to slowly and ceremoniously unwrap the pizza boxes, I looked down to fumble the bills free of my pocket. The man seemed nervous, but I was used to people being nervous.
“Dammit, Lillie, you little sneak… Watch out!”
At Johnny’s first words from the doorway I’d jerked around in surprise. At his warning and at the peripheral gleam of metal and flurry of movement, I dropped and rolled.
Which was why I didn’t get a spew of liquid full in the face.
A lot of something cool and creepy drenched my hair and right shoulder.
The delivery man, pizza boxes and the insulated pad went flying over my rolling body. By the time I’d revolved out of the scrum to my knees, Johnny had launched himself from the doorway, dragged the delivery guy up against a porch pillar and was scientifically pounding him against it. I dropped the pad I’d grasped ready to fling into my attacker’s face.
“You sonofabitch.” Thud. “What was in that?” Thud. “What did you throw at her?”
A really good question. I swiped a hand across my face and down my arm and looked at it. Red. Viscous. A shallow steel basin, like a dog’s water dish, vibrated against the far railing. I reached down to wipe my hands on the quilted pad and felt something under it.
I rose to my feet and booted away a cardboard pizza box. Everything else I wanted to boot was far too big. I strolled over and tapped Johnny on the arm.
“You’ll bring the porch down. I think it was blood,” I said. “It smells like it.”
The man shifted his wild gaze from Johnny to me and grimaced. “Soul sucker. Blood.”
“What kind of blood, you sonofabitch! Human? Animal?”
The fellow shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, his jowls quivered. “Let me go!”
Johnny smashed him against the pillar again. “What kind of blood? Answer me!”
“There may be some left in his little bucket,” I said. “Maybe we should make him drink it.” I was rather anxious to know the blood’s origin, for obvious reasons.
“Animal,” the guy said as he got out, his pudgy hands clawing at Johnny’s arms. “Pig.”
Johnny backhanded him.
“No! No! Pig’s blood,” the guy gibbered.
Johnny spun the guy around, slammed his face into the pillar, pulled a plastic restraint from a pocket and secured him. Patted him down. Then he kicked the fellow’s legs out from under him and rolled him into the spattered, spreading puddle on the porch floor.
“That had better be the truth. You like blood, you piece of shit, wallow in it!” Johnny squatted beside him to search for identification.
I eased down on the porch steps, shaking from adrenaline overload. I left a bloody handprint on the railing. Behind me Johnny shot questions at the guy and got back halting mumbles. This was the second time I’d glimpsed something high and wide in Johnny Thresher. A kind of fury he usually kept controlled and hidden. He obviously wasn’t by nature a deskman.
I swiped at my face with my sleeve. My eye socket stung. Probing with three fingers, I felt a diagonal cut over the bone above my right eyebrow. The sharp edge of the bowl must have wanged off my head. I didn’t remember a blow, only the liquid cascade.
“Lillie, you all right?” Johnny spoke above my head, the violence gone from his voice. “I recognize that numb nuts from the crowd at the protest. He claims he intended to splash the stuff around to scare you. Said he got the idea from the news about the attack on Vanderveen.”
Blood continued to trickle in my eye and down my cheek. I ducked my head and pulled up a corner of my top to wipe at it.
“Yeah, right. Like I believe that. That he was going to play a dullahan copycat and splash it around, I mean. That bowl was on top of the pizza box, for one thing.”
“Lillie, you shouldn’t have shown yourself. That wasn’t very bright. I have to call this in.”
“I never agreed to hiding. I opened my door because you were asleep, exhausted and snoring your head off. I didn’t want to wake you up. Because in a softhearted moment I figured you needed it after all those wasted efforts on my behalf. If you’d presented a decent case for me remaining incommunicado, maybe I’d have listened, and maybe I’d have kicked you awake.”
I pulled the bills out of my pocket and tossed them over my shoulder. “Here’s the money for the pizza. It’s probably still edible. My treat. Enjoy it down at the shop.”
I tugged my sleeve to the dry side, pressed it to my forehead, got up and turned, glaring up at him with my one good eye. “Stop standing there like an Easter Island look-alike and move your big feet. I have to do something about all this blood and sweeten my little hands.”
On my way past I flipped the pizza pad aside with a toe to reveal the hunting knife. “Maybe you can get him to explain this too. Was I supposed to have my eye carved out as well? Either your phone call was enough or that nutcase knew I was in the house all along. You can always try to convince him I’m a ghost of my former self.”
I kicked the door behind me. It shut with a satisfying slam. More glass tinkled from my broken window. While running water, I heard the siren die down below. Some yelling ensued later, but they seemed to come and go with very little disturbance.
After having stripped, showered and shampooed, I was leaning over the vanity sink in fresh bra and panties, my hair in a towel turban and holding a cold facecloth to my brow, when Johnny Thresher sauntered into my bathroom.
25.
I’d hoped he was gone with the suspect.
“Get out,” I said to his reflection in the mirror. Which was very polite of me, considering the words I wanted to say.
“Don’t be silly, Lillie. Let me see your eye.”
“It’s fine. Go away.”
“Lillie.”
I measured the expression in his blue eyes, turned and took away the pad.
He took my chin in one hand and pressed all around my eye socket with the other. He peered into my eyes, measuring pupils, I assumed. “Hunh. On the frontal bone. You’re lucky. Nearly an inch long. You need stitches or you’ll scar. Headache? Dizzy? Nausea?”
“No. No stitches. I’ll tape it. Go away.”
He stepped back and looked my body over, leisurely. I tried not to breathe and not to quiver and not to blush.
From his next words, I failed.
“Deidre of the Sorrows,” he said in a contemplative tone. “Quite the battered houri, aren’t you? Where’d you get those scratches and scrapes and that big welt on your ribs? Those aren’t from the tumble just now.” He reached out to press and probe.
I jerked away and hooked my toweling robe from the vanity chair. He lifted it from me and held it open so I could slide into it.
“Here and there. Parking lot. The creek.”
His gaze caught and held mine in the mirror. Ignoring the message of his hands on my shoulders, I snatched the lapels tight and tied the sash.
“Where’s your first aid kit? I’ll tape that cut for you.”
“In the kitchen. The junk drawer by the stove. I’ll come down as soon as I’m dressed.” I turned my back and applied the pad again. There was another kit under the vanity sink but I wanted him and his eyes and hands out of here.
My wardrobe was diminishing at a great rate. I tossed my bloody tracksuit in the tub to soak. Blood clouded and swirled in patterns like entrails in the flush of cold water from the tap. The only message I read was that most of the blood wasn’t mine. Not this time.
I dressed quickly in tan cargoes and a coral-peach pullover and searched for a comb for my hair. When I crept out to the top of the stairs, Johnny waited at the bottom, looking up, with a foot on the last step ready to come after me.
“Lillie, they’ve taken him away,” he said as if to reassure me. He took my arm when I reached the hall.
“Sit here, under the light.”
A dab of antiseptic. He had trouble with the tape. Warm fingers and breathing. His hands smelled of lemon dish detergent. He must have cleaned up at the kitchen sink. A gauze pad that felt too big. More tape. The towel slipped away and my hair tangled down my back.
“I’ve done a butterfly suture. The slash is narrow so it might do the trick. Tried not to stick your hair. Doesn’t look as if you’ll get a black eye out of it.”
I opened my eyes. “Thank you. It’ll be fine.”
He picked up a limp hand from my lap and pressed fingers on my wr
ist. “Your pulse is strong and steady, a little fast is all. That’s remarkable. You’ve quite amazing reflexes too. Where’d you learn that trick of taking out an opponent’s feet? The natural reaction for most people is to backpedal like crazy, to move away.”
I flexed a shoulder and flipped a flaccid paw palm up.
“I don’t have brawn. I don’t have skill, so I have to be sneaky.”
He plucked the silver and ivory comb from my fingers and examined it.
“This also looks very fine and old. Another family relic?” Before I could object he moved behind me and begun to smooth the tangles out of my hair. Gently. Carefully. His hands at my nape, at my cheek and temples, smoothing and lifting my hair gave me the weirdest, half-fearful feeling. The legends spoke of long-haired women, of the combs they used to allure men. I never liked those legends. They removed human choice. They made men the pawns of power, at the mercy of whim and desire.
When he finished, Johnny hunkered down in front of my chair. The lamp cast interesting shadows on his jaw, the hard planes of his face. I wanted to explore them.
“Lillie, you’ve puzzled me from the beginning. You’re too calm about these incidents. You show too little emotion.”
“I’m not the hysterical type.”
“Your reactions aren’t normal.”
“Normal? So unless I sob down the first convenient shirtfront, shriek and squeal ohmygodohmygod, I’m abnormal rather than professional? Are we back to me being a calculating, conniving, coldhearted bitch? Well, I’m a Freak, after all. You shouldn’t forget that fact.”
“I did not mean that. I did not mean you do not have normal emotions in general. I’ve seen the same emotional accommodation and denial before, naturally. It’s fairly common in frontline people, but seldom in a Sensitive.”
“It takes considerable self-control to be an effective exorcist, Sergeant, just as it does to be a cop. You should know that.”
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