Cravings

by L. Hamilton, M. Davidson, E. Wilks, R York

  Into the silence from across the table, she went on. "That's just an extreme example. I knew other stuff. Not necessarily anything monumental. Like maybe whether a friend was going to call me on the phone. When I grew up, I did tarot card readings in New Orleans, before I lost my sight. People came back to me again and again. And they recommended me to their friends."

  "How did your parents react to your making a living that way?" he asked, and she sensed that the answer to the question was important.

  "The talent has been in my family for years. It was something we all knew about and accepted."

  "So you can see the future?" Again, tension infused the question.

  "You want to know your future?"

  "I want to know…" He stopped, swallowed, drumming his fingers against the tabletop.

  She never pushed people to reveal more than they were willing to tell her. She always let a querent—a person who came to her for a reading—give her information at his own pace.

  Breaking one of her own rules, she reached across the space that separated them and found his hand. It was large and warm and strong, with a hint of callus between his thumb and index finger. When she stroked her own thumb along his palm, she couldn't hold back a strangled exclamation.

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  "WHAT?" the man across the table asked sharply, pulling his hand away.

  "It wasn't your fault. The fire."

  He made a low, angry sound. "She didn't die in the fire. Whoever killed her poisoned her first."

  Antonia gasped, but Grant Marshall was already speaking again. "I should have been home with her!" The words came out as a menacing growl that would have sent her running in the other direction if she hadn't been glued to her chair.

  She and this stranger were speaking a kind of shorthand now. They'd met only minutes ago. He hadn't told her that someone had burned up his house with his wife inside. She'd pulled that terrible image from his mind. And more. The fire had left him with scars. Not physical marks but guilt and unbearable pain that ate at his soul.

  "You didn't know anything bad was going to happen."

  Antonia had uttered that phrase many times in the past. Sometimes it gave comfort. Not now. There was only one thing that would give Grant Marshall any kind of cold comfort. And he didn't want her to know about it.

  He stood up. "This is a mistake," he said, sounding angry.

  Desperation came out as a plea. "Don't leave."

  "You… see too much."

  "Maybe I can help you find him," she said quickly, then sat with the breath frozen in her lungs.

  He stood a few feet away, but she imagined she could hear his heart pounding.

  When the chair scraped back again and he sat down, she allowed herself to breathe.

  "You got that picture of the burned house from my head," he said in a voice that told her he didn't want to believe her insight.

  "Because you've been focused on it for a long time."

  "What else are you going to see?" he asked.

  His wary tone made her tread carefully. More than you want me to see, she silently admitted. She was still frightened. Not of him, although she knew violence was not far from the surface of his mind. That should worry her. Yet she was more worried that she would drive him away if she said too much.

  "Let's use the cards," she said, wondering what she was going to do now. She couldn't be dishonest with him. That would violate her personal code of ethics. Yet she'd learned to soften bad news.

  "I've never asked for a tea leaf reading. Or anything else like that. Maybe you'd better tell me something about these cards," he said, buying them both a little time.

  "Well, I don't mess with tea leaves." She laughed. "All I'd get from them is wet fingers."

  Ignoring her attempt at a joke, he pressed for more information. "Then how do you read the cards?"

  "Braille markings. After that, because I know the pictures so well, I see them in my head." She went on quickly, "The tarot deck has seventy-eight cards. They're divided into the twenty-two Major Arcana, cards which reference the archetypal passages in our lives, and the fifty-six Minor Arcana which deal more with day-to-day life."

  Sensing that he was listening intently, she pushed the deck toward him. "Take a look at them. Each one is full of symbolism. Some go all the way back to Egyptian mythology or the Hebrew Cabala. But it's all open to interpretation. And no card is either good or bad. It's all in context."

  She heard him shuffling through the deck. "What about this one? With Death riding a white horse."

  She heard the strong emotion in his voice, emotion he was struggling to hide. She knew why he had pulled out the card. He was contemplating his own demise, but she didn't need to tell him that.

  Instead, she said, "It looks scary, but it's not so bad. It can symbolize transformation or rebirth. The king is dead! Long live the king! It can come up when people are going through lifestyle changes. It can signify that it's time to move on. It can mark new beginnings rather than endings."

  It seemed he was too restless to stay seated across from her. He put the cards down, got up from the table, and paced the room.

  "You know why I came here?" he asked.

  "To my house? Or to Sea Gate?"

  "Sea Gate."

  She swallowed. Again she wondered how much to say. "You know there was a similar murder here. You think it's related, and you hope the person who did it is still in town."

  "Yeah."

  Unspoken words hung heavy in the air between them.

  Under the table, she squeezed her hands into fists, considering her next move. She knew she was taking a chance when she said, "In the summer, I run this place as a bed and breakfast. Well, I have people who do the actual work. There are plenty of rooms. You could stay here."

  "I wouldn't be very good company."

  "I'm not looking for company. And I could use the money," she added, not because money was really an issue, but because it might help him make up his mind. "I can give you a winter discount, a hundred dollars a night. For the room and breakfast."

  Again she held her breath, waiting. When he said, "All right," she felt almost dizzy with relief.

  "You can bring your luggage in," she said quickly.

  When he walked toward the door, she wasn't sure whether he was walking out of her life. And she'd never been more frustrated in her blindness. She wanted to follow him to the car and see that he was getting his suitcase. But that would surely send him away.

  Her own anxiety shocked her. She was desperate to keep this man from killing himself. More than that, she ached to make him realize that life was worth living. But she couldn't force him to see things her way, so she pushed back her chair with deliberate slowness and walked into the hall.

  When the door opened again, she wiped her damp palms on her slacks. "Grant?"

  "Yes."

  "The room at the end of the hall is one of my best, and it has a good view of the ocean," she said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could call them back.

  He had thought too often of the ocean, of the cold, black waves swallowing him up.

  She longed to go to him then, to wrap her arms around him and give him the blessing of simple human contact. The warmth of her body could help take away the chill that had sunk into his bones.

  But she wasn't going to fool herself. There was more she had glimpsed in their brief encounter. Things she didn't dare name because admitting her desires and seeing them crushed was worse than never acknowledging their existence. Once her life had been full of possibilities. After she'd lost her sight, she'd learned not to ask for too much.

  Did she dare to open herself up to the pain of rejection? She didn't know whether she had a choice.

  GRANT set his duffel bag on a luggage rack near the bedroom door and looked around. The room was charming, with refinished mahogany cabinet pieces, a four-poster bed, and blue and white curtains at the double-hung windows.

&nbs
p; Had Antonia given directions for the decorating? Had she bought the furniture at country auctions? He could picture her wanting to know every detail.

  Striving to put her out of his mind, he crossed to the bedroom window and stood staring out at the ocean. It was a block away, but from the second floor of the house, he could see the swells rising and falling. The view soothed him because he knew the sea would set him free.

  He told himself he should leave this dwelling. He was used to being alone with his mangled heart and his quest for justice. He had mated for life, and Marcy's death had ripped away a part of himself that could never be returned.

  But over the past two years, the sharp edge of grief had dulled. He saw that as a betrayal of his wife. And he saw his response to Antonia in those terms, too.

  Not a physical response, he told himself. It was nothing sexual. He had shared dark secrets with her. And none of it had sent her running from him.

  But she saw him only as a man. She knew only the human part—the part about the stranger who had lost his wife and was searching for her killer.

  She didn't know about the wolf who had indulged his raw grief by roaming the woods of western Pennsylvania hunting animals and ripping out their throats. She didn't know that wolf was upstairs in her house.

  He had come here for a tarot card reading. But he hadn't let her go ahead with it. Was he afraid she would see through his carefully cultivated veneer of humanity?

  What if he took off his clothes, walked back downstairs, and said the ancient chant that changed him from man to animal? She wouldn't see the wolf. But she would sense his presence. And that would be the end of whatever relationship she was thinking about.

  He could end this anytime he wanted. Very dramatically. And that made him feel safer.

  So he left his duffel bag in the room while he went back to the business district to have a look around. After driving slowly up and down Atlantic Avenue, he pulled into a space near Bridges Dry Goods Store, Ernest Bridges, Proprietor, and got out.

  As he walked inside, he saw that several people were standing around talking to the man behind the counter, presumably Ernest Bridges himself, who looked like he'd been planted there for the past seventy years.

  The conversation stopped, and Grant watched the crowd eyeing him speculatively, although not with the earlier hostility of the cop. Apparently this was one of the town gathering places—regardless of class or profession. One man was wearing a business suit. Another had on overalls. A woman was in jeans and a pullover. Even in human form, Grant could pick up their distinctive scents. All of them had something in common. They'd all been to the murder house.

  "Help you?" Bridges asked.

  Grant pulled his focus away from the olfactory analysis and scrambled for an answer. "Toothpaste."

  "Second aisle on the right. Halfway down."

  He ambled past shelves crammed with lipsticks and boxes of graham crackers, dishwasher detergent and beach towels on deep discount.

  "You passing through?" the old man behind the counter asked as Grant came back with his purchase.

  "I might be interested in vacation property," he said for the second time that afternoon.

  The guy in the suit perked right up. "Well, I can surely help you out. Charlie Hastings. I own the real estate office a few doors down." He held out his hand, and Grant shook it.

  When he'd started his quest, he'd thought about whether to use his own name and decided that it might be an advantage—if his goal was to flush out the killer.

  "Grant Marshall. I'll stop by in the next day or two," he said, thinking that the man probably knew how long all the residents had owned their homes.

  Stepping outside, he lingered under the shade of the porch, pretending he was just enjoying the sea air. Although the door closed behind him, his hearing was excellent, and he could still pick up the conversation from inside the store.

  "You think he knows property values have gone down?" Bridges asked.

  "Maybe. Maybe not," the real estate guy answered.

  "Sell him a fixer-upper and I'll get some business out of it, too," another voice said, and Grant figured the guy in overalls must be the town handyman.

  The group laughed.

  "So, do you think I should put in another cabin in the back?" the woman asked.

  "The tourist business will pick up in the warm weather. Leastways if we can do something about the hole in the ground that used to be the Jefferson house," Hastings answered.

  When the talk metamorphosed into a deep discussion of Sea Gate property values, Grant left the porch for a walk through the business district, following the scent trails of people who had been at the murder house and also in the shopping area. Many of the paths led to a bar and grill several blocks down Atlantic called the Seagull's Roost. But he didn't go inside, because he knew the alcohol fumes would make him sick.

  Instead he drove back to Antonia's bed and breakfast. She wasn't around when he stepped inside. Relieved that she was making herself scarce, he went back up to his room.

  Sleep had become something he grabbed in snatches. But the bed was comfortable, so he lay down on top of the covers for a short nap. When he woke, it was dark outside.

  His watch said six thirty. Later he would go visit the burned house. But he needed fuel, and his stomach told him he hadn't eaten much that day.

  After a quick shower, he changed into a fresh shirt and went downstairs. He was thinking he'd go out and get some fast-food hamburgers. But the aromas coming from the back of the house stopped him.

  He smelled homemade beef stew, and a wave of nostalgia swamped him. His mother had made thick stews, filled with chunks of meat the way his father liked it. Marcy had gotten the recipe, on one of their brief trips home.

  There hadn't been many visits because all the werewolves he knew—his father and his brothers—were alpha males, and they fought for dominance when left in a room together.

  His father had a couple of brothers he hadn't seen in years. Just the way Grant had stayed away from his own adult male relatives. But he'd looked up his cousins on the Internet to find out if they were still alive. One was a private detective. A guy named Ross Marshall. They'd exchanged a few e-mails. And he'd thought for a split second about asking him to help track Marcy's killer. Then he'd figured they'd only end up at each other's throats. So he'd kept to his private quest.

  He hesitated in the front hall. He should stay away from Antonia, but he found his feet taking him to the kitchen.

  When he stopped in the doorway, he saw her stirring a large pot on the front of the stove. The light was low, giving the kitchen a cozy feel. The simple domestic scene made his chest tighten.

  "That smells good," he said, hearing the thickness of his own words.

  She turned to face him. "Cold weather makes me want to fix a big pot of something hearty. Are you hungry?"

  "Yes."

  "The stew is about ready. We can have a salad, too."

  He watched as she opened the refrigerator and took out tomato, lettuce, celery, carrots. She washed the produce in the sink, then brought it to a small cutting board resting in what looked like a large cookie sheet with low sides.

  "Can I help you?"

  "You could set the table." She gestured toward a side-board. "The cutlery is in the drawers. And the salad bowls are on the shelves just above."

  "And I see the napkins in the basket."

  As he worked, he watched her preparations, admiring her efficiency. The cookie sheet kept any vegetables from skittering away as she carefully cut them up, then tossed them into a bowl with the lettuce.

  It was a strange experience, not having to pretend that his attention was elsewhere. And he found he wasn't just watching her cook. He was taking in interesting details, like the way her lower lip pursed as she concentrated on her task, and the way she'd tied back her mass of brown hair with a green ribbon, exposing the tender curl of her ear.

  His gaze traveled lower, to her nicely feminine curves.
He hadn't noticed a woman's breasts in a long time, and his jaw tightened. He didn't want to focus his attention on boobs. But hers were high and rounded, and he could make out the small buds of her nipples beneath the tee shirt she was wearing now. When he found his body responding, he bit back a curse.

  "So—you weren't always blind?" he said in a gruff voice.

  She kept busy with the salad. "I got something called uveitis when I was twenty-four. By the time they made the diagnosis, it was too late to save my vision."

  "That must have been… devastating," he said, thinking about how he would have reacted.

  "I did a lot of crying and screaming. Then I made peace with it. But I wanted to live as independently as I could, so I went to a school where they taught blind people basic skills."

  "You didn't want a guide dog?"

  "The school encouraged independence. I've got a white cane that I use when I go out. But I know my way around in here. If you put things back where they belong," she added with a note of firmness in her voice.

  "I will." He cleared his throat. "A dog would be good protection."

  "I didn't think I needed protection, until… Elizabeth."

  "You felt safe in Sea Gate?"

  She turned to face him, then carried the salad bowl to the table.

  "Yes. That's why I came back to this house where my aunt lived. I used to spend the summers here with my parents. Sea Gate is about the right-sized town for me. I can walk to just about anything I need—the grocery or the dry goods store or the pharmacy."

  He'd given himself the perfect opening to talk about the murder. Instead, he asked, "And you ended up with the property?"

  "Yes. My mom and dad separated when I was in my teens. My aunt never had any kids. So she left me the house."

  "And your mother?"

  "Mom was bent out of shape about my getting Aunt Minnie's inheritance. She's in Colorado—working as a fortune-teller in Manitou Springs. It's an old hippy community, so she fits right in."