And no wonder. She’d been up with him all night, dutifully waking him every hour or so to check and make sure he was still doing all right, wasn’t having any odd headaches or bouts of nausea or double vision. The last time she’d woken him up had been a little before five, and the clock on the nightstand next to her said it was just past seven-thirty. Two and a half hours of sleep wasn’t very much, and yet he had a feeling she would still berate herself for not managing to stay awake for the duration.
“Rosemary,” he said quietly.
At once, her head jerked upward and her eyes flared open, and she looked at him in alarm. “Are you okay?” she asked, fingers gripping the edges of the wooden side chair where she sat.
“I’m fine,” he said. To his relief, he realized that statement was nothing more than the truth. Yes, his head still ached, and as he shifted in bed, he realized he was bruised in places he hadn’t imagined he’d been hurt, but those were superficial concerns. His vision was clear, and he knew where he was and what had happened the day before. No nausea at all — in fact, he found himself ravenously hungry, as if his body understood that it had gotten knocked around a bit and wanted some fuel to replenish his damaged tissues. “How are you?”
“Tired,” she said, and reached up to rub the back of her neck. “But I’ll live. I’m sorry I nodded off like that.”
He made a dismissive gesture with one hand, awakening new aches in his arm. Still, they were manageable. “You made it most of the way through the night. I’d say that was more than good enough.”
She didn’t look too convinced, but she didn’t argue. Quite possibly, she’d decided it wasn’t worth the energy. For someone who’d spent the greater part of the night in a hard-backed chair, she appeared no worse for wear, except for some smudged mascara and a few shadows under her eyes.
“Do you need to get up?” she asked.
Which he realized was Rosemary’s oblique way of inquiring whether he needed to go to the bathroom. And he did — quite urgently. He hadn’t gotten out of bed at all the night before, and all that tea he’d drunk needed to go somewhere.
“Yes, I think I’d better.”
She got up from her chair and extended a hand to him. He took it, again noting the strength in her slender fingers. And thank God for that strength, because he realized he was shakier than he’d first felt. No, he didn’t think he was in any danger of stumbling and falling, but he knew it would have been a lot harder to make it out of bed and down the hall to the bathroom — the house was old and didn’t have an en suite bath — without Rosemary’s help.
At least she didn’t offer to go in the bathroom with him. He shut the door and took care of business, then bent over the sink and splashed some cold water on his face. When he was done, he clung to the edge of the tiled counter to steady himself, then warily raised his eyes to the mirror.
Bad idea. Will supposed he should be glad that he’d hit the side of his head when Caleb attacked him and didn’t do a face plant. No black eyes or bloody nose, but he still looked like crap — shadows under his eyes, dark stubble on his cheeks and chin only serving to emphasize how pale he was. He thought he looked every day of the ten years that separated him and Rosemary McGuire… and he didn’t like that notion very much.
What the hell was he thinking?
That he was attracted to her, that he could probably be in love with her pretty easily if he allowed himself. Such a realization on its own told him he was already in deep trouble; he’d spent the past fifteen years doing whatever he could to avoid any romantic connections. Then she’d walked into his life, and it was as though every resolution he’d made about avoiding attachments had flown right out the window.
But he could worry about the emotional ramifications of this whole situation later. For the moment, he needed to focus on getting functional, and fast. Rosemary had done a great job of watching over him the night before, but he couldn’t expect her to prop him up indefinitely. They needed to figure out what to do next, try to discover where Caleb had taken Colin’s footage so they could come up with a plan to get it back. So much valuable time had been lost, although Will tried to tell himself that the part-demon hadn’t triumphed absolutely.
If he had, Will would be dead, rather than simply stumbling around with a half-healed concussion.
He limped out of the bathroom and made his way back to his bedroom. Rosemary was at the window, peeking out past the curtains at the bright morning outside. She turned as he entered the room and said, “Are you sure you’re okay with walking around so soon?”
“I’m fine,” he reassured her. Well, halfway fine. Close enough. “I want to take a shower.”
“I don’t know — ” she began, but he shook his head.
“A shower is the one thing that’s guaranteed to make me feel better about life,” he said. “If you want, you can take that chair out to the hallway and sit outside the bathroom while I’m in there. That way, if I fall over, you’ll hear the thud and come in to rescue me.”
Rosemary planted her hands on her hips and shot him a dubious glance. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“Maybe,” Will said. “At least partly. I’ll be okay.”
She still didn’t look convinced, but he was relieved to see she didn’t offer any further protests, only picked up the chair and moved it out to the hall. Wisely, he decided not to comment, and instead fetched clean underwear and a pair of socks, along with some jeans and a button-down shirt. As he was stacking his clothes on top of the dresser, he realized with some dismay that it was Sunday morning…which meant he was supposed to be conducting a service in roughly an hour and a half.
That sure wasn’t going to happen.
“I need to make a call,” he told Rosemary as she peered around the corner of the doorjamb to see how he was doing. “Do you know where my phone is?”
“It’s in that baggie of personal items the hospital sent home with you,” she replied. “I think it’s still in the car — I was so focused on getting you out of the passenger seat that I must have overlooked it. I’ll go get it.”
She disappeared before he could protest. And really, as much as he hated to stand there and have her go fetch the little bundle for him, he had a feeling that he really didn’t have the strength to walk outside and get his belongings himself. Even if he did, the walk would have tired him out — and he knew he had a lot more he needed to get through today. As he’d reminded himself on more than one occasion, he needed to choose his battles.
Rosemary was back in just a minute, the baggie dangling from one hand. Seeing it, Will couldn’t help but feel relieved; his neighborhood was generally safe enough, but even so, a cell phone sitting in an unattended car all night could have made a tempting target. Then again, although there had been a few burglaries in the area, none of them had ever touched his house. He’d always thought it was simply because he didn’t have anything worth stealing, but maybe it was also that people knew a minister lived in this house, and any would-be thieves didn’t want to risk the bad karma of stealing from him.
“Thank you,” he said, and took the baggie from her and extracted the phone. “I need to call the church and let them know I can’t make it in today,” he added, and she gave a nod of comprehension. He supposed she hadn’t stopped to think about what day it was, since he knew she didn’t attend church.
This wasn’t a call he’d take any pleasure in making, mostly because All Saints was already short-staffed, and having him out of commission would only make that much work for everyone else. However, since there was absolutely no chance that he’d be in decent enough shape to stand at a lectern for an hour and give a halfway coherent sermon, he knew he had no choice but to bow out and have Stan Ludlum, All Saints’ senior pastor, take over that morning.
Luckily, he got Stan’s voicemail. It always seemed easier to do this sort of thing when he didn’t have to talk to an actual person. All too aware of Rosemary’s clear blue gaze focused on him, Will left a brief message fo
r his superior, saying that he’d suffered a fall and had a minor concussion, and so wouldn’t be in for the next couple of days. That voicemail would give him some breathing room, and then he could reevaluate once those two days were up. At least he didn’t have another support group meeting until Wednesday night, so he could let that slide for the time being.
He ended the call and set his phone down on the dresser. “All handled,” he told her. “I’m going to get in the shower now.”
“Okay. I’ll wait out here in the hall.”
Telling her she really didn’t need to do that would be a waste of time, and so he only picked up his pile of clothes and went into the bathroom. It felt odd to think of Rosemary sitting on her chair just outside the door as he removed the rumpled garments he’d slept in, but he did his best to pretend this was just a normal morning, to turn on the hot water as though there was nothing particularly strange about this day.
Well, except for all the protests his abused muscles and bones gave him when he stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain shut. He gritted his teeth and turned up the water a little hotter, hoping the pulsing heat might help to soothe some of the worst aches and pains. It did seem to help a little, or maybe he was just getting used to how beat up he felt. At any rate, he found he could lose himself in the rituals of bathing, of washing his hair and soaping up and rinsing away some of the weariness of the day before. He even summoned enough energy to pick up his wet/dry shaver and get rid of the itchy scruff on his face, although he didn’t worry too much about shaving as closely as he would have if he really were going in to conduct a service that morning.
Eventually, he was done, and he got out of the shower and dried off, then carefully pulled on his clothes and blotted his hair one last time. A little gel to keep it under control, and he was done. He opened the door to see Rosemary still sitting on her chair, although now she had her phone in one hand and appeared to have been checking her emails.
“You look better,” she said as she looked up from her phone.
“I feel better. How about some coffee?”
She made a face. “I think I’ve had enough coffee to last me a lifetime. Do you have any Darjeeling or English Breakfast or something like that?”
“I have both,” he replied, inwardly pleased that they seemed to have the same taste in tea. “Let’s get some going.”
He headed off toward the kitchen. While he made himself walk slowly, he found that he was beginning to feel steadier, that he didn’t notice any dizziness or other signs that the concussion had worsened overnight. His stomach wasn’t particularly happy with him, but he had a feeling that was more because he really needed to eat than because he was nauseated.
The teakettle still felt nearly full, so he only turned on the gas and got a couple of mugs out of the cupboard. Rosemary had paused near him and leaned up against the counter, although Will noticed how her gaze appeared to be focused on the back door.
“Do you see something?” he asked. It wasn’t an idle question; it seemed that new powers were awakening within her, so he thought it was entirely possible Rosemary had caught a glimpse of something that eluded his own ordinary powers of perception.
She shook her head, looking slightly rueful. “Not now. But I did see Madeline last night. She was standing right over there by the door.”
Although he knew Madeline’s ghost was entirely benign, Will still experienced a slight creepy crawly sensation on the back of his neck. It was one thing to imagine the woman’s spirit haunting the house where Rosemary had been staying, and quite another to discover that she’d decided to make a visit here in his own home.
Still, he made sure to sound unconcerned by this revelation as he asked, “Did she say anything?”
Rosemary nodded. “Yes, she said it was time for her to go. I guess she’d appeared to me to tell me where to find the footage, and once she’d done that, she didn’t have any reason to linger here.”
While he found himself relieved that Madeline had decided to move on from this plane, Will didn’t quite know if he understood her rationale. “Well, she told us where to find it, but since it’s still missing….” He let the words trail off, but Rosemary seemed to understand.
“I know. It feels like unfinished business to me, too. But I wasn’t going to argue with her.” She played with the slender silver bracelet on her wrist, then added, “She also said I would get some other kind of help, but she didn’t say from whom. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Should he be comforted by this promise of amorphous assistance? He supposed so, but since they had no idea where this help would be coming from, it was probably better not to count on it.
The Lord helps those who help themselves, he thought with an inner smile.
The kettle started to burble away, indicating that the water within was about to boil, so Will turned off the gas and poured some water into their waiting mugs, then got the box of English Breakfast out of the cupboard and dropped a tea bag into each cup. “We can go sit in the dining room,” he said.
Rosemary gave him a worried glance. “How do you feel?”
While he understood her concern, he hoped she wouldn’t keep asking about the status of his health every five minutes. Honestly, as the aches and pains began to recede, he found he was more angry with himself than anything else. Maybe there wasn’t anything he could have done to prevail against Caleb Lockwood in that particular confrontation, but he couldn’t help thinking that if he’d only come up with the right strategy, the right maneuver, then maybe he wouldn’t have gotten knocked out in the first place.
“I’m fine,” he said. “But I usually sit at the dining room table while I have my morning tea or coffee, since this kitchen isn’t big enough for a table and chairs.”
Since that was only the truth — Rosemary could probably see for herself that the kitchen wasn’t exactly the most spacious one ever designed — she didn’t comment, only headed out to the dining room and sat down at the table there. It was in dire need of refinishing, and so he always kept it covered with a tablecloth, which meant they didn’t need to bother with coasters.
After he’d sat down…and made sure not to let out a sigh of relief as he did so, even though he could tell that he needed to avoid being on his feet for extended periods…he cradled his mug in his hands and looked over at her. “Have you heard from the detective?”
“No,” she replied. “But it’s early. He’s probably waiting for it to be a more decent hour.” She picked up her mug and swirled the tea bag around in the water, then set the mug back down without taking a sip. “I need to get cleaned up before I meet with him, though. It might not make me feel any less tired, but I’ll at least feel better about myself.”
“We can head over to your place after we have our tea,” Will said. “And probably we should pick up some breakfast along the way. I’ve got a couple of hardboiled eggs in the fridge, but I don’t think that’s going to cut it.”
A tired smile touched her lips. “No, I think I need something a little more substantial than that. There’s a place down on Villa that does good breakfast takeout — ”
“Louie’s,” he supplied, and she nodded.
“Right, that place. We can stop there and grab some stuff on our way to Michael’s house.”
Will noticed how she was careful to always refer to her temporary abode as “Michael’s house” or “Michael’s place,” as though she wanted to make sure he knew she was well aware that it wasn’t hers, that she was only caretaking the house for a finite amount of time. Did it feel odd to her, or was she simply glad that she’d found a convenient way to avoid the construction noise next door to her own house in Glendora?
Of course, she was now probably doubly glad to have an excuse to stay away from her Glendora home, considering the sigils of summoning they’d found carved into her hallway ceiling. Will had scratched them away, and he knew Rosemary had had her family come over and help her cleanse the place, but he knew if their situ
ations had been reversed, he’d still be wary of staying there alone.
She could always stay here, he thought then, but immediately did his best to push that crazy notion aside. They barely knew each other, had only begun to tiptoe toward intimacy. It was a long ways from where they were now to the possibility of her spending the night at his house — or at least, spending the night in a way that didn’t involve sitting in an uncomfortable chair and watching him while he slept.
The matter of breakfast settled, they drank their tea in a silence that felt strangely relaxed, given the situation. Once they were done, Rosemary took the mugs into the kitchen, overriding Will’s protests that he could clean up. Instead, he sat and listened as she rinsed them out and placed them in the dishwasher. That task managed, she fetched her purse, and they went out to the car. Force of habit made him head toward the driver’s side, and she shook her head.
“Not yet, hotshot,” she said. “You’re doing much better, but I don’t think you should be driving.”
He had to admit that she was probably right. While he felt halfway human at the moment, all it would take was a moment of dizziness or blurred vision behind the wheel to instigate an accident.
“Okay,” he told her. “Although at some point, we’re going to have to get your car from the parking structure over by the church.”
“Oh, I know,” she responded as she opened the passenger door for him. “But I’ll see if my mother can drive me over there later today. Or if she’s busy, maybe Isabel could do it.”
Feeling resigned, he nodded. If he wasn’t up to driving now, he doubted he would be later in the day, either. Tomorrow might be an entirely different story, but obviously, Rosemary’s car shouldn’t sit there and rack up fees any longer than was absolutely necessary.
They headed down to the little diner on Villa, which was a relic of the 1960s and still had a drive-through. That made ordering their breakfasts easy, and soon enough, they were headed east. A few minutes later, Rosemary pulled into the driveway and parked.
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