Her Last Whisper

by Karen Robards

  “Get real,” Charlie answered, doing her best to maintain a façade of normalcy while fighting off a fresh attack of cold panic. Besides spreading, the discoloration was darkening. “You’re not up for it.”

  The suggestive quirk deepened. “Oh, I’m up for it.”

  She settled that with a glance down at his admittedly impressively bulging crotch accompanied by two ego-depressing words: “Ectoplasm, Casper.”

  “You could pull up your shirt for me.”

  “No.”

  “You’re no fun.” Those black eyes gleamed at her. God, what she wouldn’t give to see them restored to their normal sky blue! So far, the gray hadn’t reached his face. He was a little ashen, a little haggard, but still the same way-too-handsome Michael.

  At the idea that soon he might not be, she shivered inwardly.

  Hadn’t he said that the things had no faces?

  He said, “I’d ask if you’ve ever done it in an airplane bathroom, but I’ve got a pretty good idea of the answer: no.”

  “Turn around,” Charlie instructed without replying. He was right, of course, not that she saw any reason to admit it. He grimaced but obeyed. Her throat was already tight from looking at his discolored chest. The sight of the broad, flat planes of his shoulder blades and the long, smooth muscles of his back turned the same terrifying gray made her stomach drop clear to her toes.

  Although she tried her best not to, tried her best to keep from letting him know just how frightened for him she was, she must have made some small sound because he let his shirt fall, turned around, and looked at her.

  “You just chewed off all your lipstick. You need to quit biting your lip,” he said, and she realized that she was, indeed, biting her lower lip with distress and had almost certainly, as he had said, chewed off the lipstick she had freshly applied when she had washed her face and hands and brushed her hair earlier. She instantly stopped worrying her lip.

  “It’s a bad habit,” she replied, because she didn’t want him to think she was worried out of her mind about him, which she was.

  “You do it when you’re stressed.” He was crowding her, moving in toward her so that she scooted away until her back was pressed tight up against the mirror and he loomed over her. “And this is stressing you out so much because you’re crazy in love with me. Come on, Doc, admit it.”

  Was she? Even considering the possibility was dangerous. She refused: whatever happened, she had the rest of her life to think about.

  “You’re delusional,” she said, trying to squirm farther away from him and not succeeding, because there was no more room.

  “You are beautiful.” His hands rested against the mirror on either side of her, and she had to tilt her face up to look at him. The strong jaw, the beautifully cut mouth, the chiseled features, were achingly dear to her now. Her heart was beating way too fast, and her blood was heating, and at the same time she was dying inside from fear for him. “If I was myself again, I’d be getting you naked about now. And then I’d pick you up and wrap your legs around my waist and we’d be joining that mile-high club. And you’d like it. You’d come.”

  She caught her breath. He hadn’t even touched her—he couldn’t even touch her—and yet her body burned and her back arched so that her breasts were lifting toward him invitingly and her lips were parting for the kiss he couldn’t give her. She was so turned on that if he’d been alive, if there’d been any way, she would have been letting him take off her clothes and do her right there in that cramped bathroom, with Tony and Buzz just outside the door.

  “Baby, you’ve got fuck me written all over your face right now,” he said in a low, husky murmur that made her go all melty inside and turned the air around them to steam. “Do you have any idea how hot you’re making me from just looking at you?”

  Her lips parted and her breathing quickened and she felt like her bones could dissolve at any second. So, yes, she did, because she was hopelessly, helplessly, burning in the same fire.

  At least she had enough good sense left not to answer that.

  He was still crowding her, still leaning toward her, still had his hands planted on either side of her. Her eyes locked on the sensuous curve of his mouth and her hands tightened around the smooth coolness of the metal ledge and she instinctively did just what she would have done if he were alive: she parted her legs to let him settle in between them and lifted her mouth toward his.

  The voice over the loudspeaker made her jump. “Special Agent Bartoli, we’ll be touching down at Henderson Executive Airport in just a few minutes. Everybody needs to return to their seats and buckle up at this time.”

  Michael had raised his head when the announcement boomed. He looked down at her for a second with those terrifying, totally unreadable black eyes, then dropped his mouth to her lips, a brief, brushing kiss that felt like the feathery touch of electrified wings. Even as her lips fluttered under that charged contact, he lifted his head and stepped back.

  “If this doesn’t work, if I end up going poof like the voodoo priestess said, I want you to know that I don’t regret a damned thing. Except leaving you.”

  Her heart turned over. “Michael—”

  There was a knock on the door. “Charlie, is everything okay in there? We’re getting ready to land.”

  Tony.

  “Yes,” Charlie called back around the lump that had formed in her throat. “I’m coming.”

  Michael grinned wickedly. “That information really something you want to share with Dudley?”

  As Charlie got it, then gave him a ha-ha look, Michael stepped back enough to allow her access to the door.

  Once again words crowded her lips. There was so much she wanted to say to him. But then the loudspeaker came to life once more: “Please return to your seats immediately and buckle your seatbelts. We’re starting our descent into the greater Clark County area at this time.”

  “Go,” Michael said, and she went, exiting the bathroom, walking past Tony almost blindly, heading back to her seat, fastening her seatbelt without any real awareness of doing any of those things.

  She felt raw inside.

  It wasn’t until they landed, until they’d driven the few miles to the Conquistador and turned the rental car over to the valet and the luggage to the bellhop and were walking past the famous dancing fountains into the brightly lit lobby, and she dodged a laughing trio of drunks and Michael got in front of her, that she noticed that he was having trouble with locomotion. He twisted to one side as he moved, awkwardly hunching his shoulders as if, she thought with a thrill of horror, his body was starting to curl in on itself.

  She remembered how he had described the evil spirits as awful twisty things, and her insides froze.

  Then he looked around at her, and her stomach slid up into her throat.

  The gray was now creeping over his face, and his features—his perfectly carved, drop-dead handsome features—seemed to have flattened and blurred. Even his hair was streaked with that same lifeless gray.

  She sucked in air. It was the merest whisper of sound, but Michael heard, and he lifted eyebrows that had turned the color of tarnished silver at her questioningly. Not wanting him to read her terror for him in her face, she jerked her eyes from his and turned away to scan the hotel’s huge, glittering lobby for Tam.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Lena’s still not answering my damned calls. She’s not answering Tony’s now, either,” Buzz said. Clutching her phone in her hand, Charlie was desperately looking for Tam, having just texted her to let her know that they’d arrived. She had almost bumped into Buzz when he stopped abruptly as they were crossing the lobby, and at the moment had little attention to spare for him. “She’s staying in the same room she shared with Giselle. I’ve got the room number. I’m going to go on up and see if she’s there.”

  Charlie nodded, preoccupied. Her own increasingly urgent emergency was occupying her thoughts to the exclusion of almost everything else. Lena was undoubtedly feeling desperate, her
sister’s life might be on the line, and rushing to her side was something that Charlie was definitely going to do, but not now. Now what happened to Michael mattered to her more. More, she realized unwillingly, than just about anything in the world. Michael was beside her, and she glanced at him to assess his condition: verdict, not good.

  Buzz strode away, heading, presumably, for the elevators. The lobby was enormous, with eighteen-foot ceilings and marble floors and a magnificent chandelier composed of what looked like thousands of brilliantly colored blown glass flowers. It was ten p.m. Vegas time, although her body clock persisted in thinking it was one a.m., which it would have been in Virginia. She was physically exhausted but at the same time her burgeoning fear for Michael had her absolutely wired. The lobby was busy and noisy, with a pianist in one corner tinkling out show tunes and live birds twittering in a giant gilded cage in another and chattering tourists dressed in everything from jeans to tuxes and sparkling evening dresses flitting about all over the place. Tony, she saw at a glance, was at the reception desk, presumably waiting to check in.

  “Cherie!”

  Charlie whirled at the familiar voice.

  “Tam!” She was immediately engulfed in a warm cloud of bright colors and expensive perfume as Tam greeted her with a hug.

  “This is the voodoo priestess?” Michael asked as the women separated. It was the first thing he’d said since they’d left the plane, and Charlie was beyond dismayed by how hoarse and croaky his voice sounded. She could tell from his tone that Tam was not what he’d been expecting. At thirty-five, Tam looked years younger. She was eye-catchingly glamorous, with long legs, slim hips, and a tiny waist topped by large, shapely breasts proudly displayed in a clingy, tangerine-colored silk tee with a scoop neckline designed to show maximum cleavage. Her snug-fitting slacks were a stretchy print in which red, yellow, and tangerine vied for dominance. In her chic, kitten-heeled gold sandals she was a little taller than Charlie, and she continued the gold accessories with hoop earrings and an armful of bangles that clinked whenever she moved. She had a slim, attractive face with prominent cheekbones, a full mouth enhanced by her signature scarlet lipstick, an aquiline nose, and artfully made up brown eyes. Her skin was milk white, and her hair hung past her shoulders in deep red waves. Michael finished the inevitable male once-over with, “Hello, Jessica Rabbit.”

  Charlie threw him a reproving look. “She can hear you. And see you.”

  “Really?” His eyes ran over Tam again. Tam was looking him over, too, critically, and it was obvious from her expression that she could see and hear him and equally obvious (Michael at this point being far from his usual handsome self) that she was not impressed. He tried for a smile which didn’t quite work. Charlie realized that the spreading discoloration was affecting even the structure of his face, and felt a fresh spurt of fear.

  “It was a compliment,” he added. The rasp made his voice sound almost sinister.

  “Tamsyn Green, meet Michael Garland.” Charlie had to work to stay outwardly calm.

  “He’s not in good shape. The abaissement is far advanced.” Tam’s words were addressed to Charlie. What Tam was seeing was a gray and twisted version of Michael. A blurred, muted, and, yes, scary version. “Soon it will start affecting his mind, and not long after that he will be gone. Like this.” She snapped her fingers. Her expression was serious as she took Charlie’s hand and, with a hard look and a quick order for Michael—“Stay there, spirit!”—pulled her a little aside. “Cherie, I’ve been thinking about this ever since we spoke, and now that I see him I’m sure of it. It would be best not to interfere, to just let him go.” Her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “He’s from the Dark Place. I don’t think you understand what that means.”

  “I don’t care what that means.” Charlie fixed her with a fierce look. “You owe me.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Tam said unhappily, then as Charlie pulled her hand free and glared she added with a sigh, “All right, then. I’ll try my best, but I can’t promise it will work.” Her gaze shifted back to Michael. “I’ve gotten a room, and I have everything prepared. If you’re sure, let’s go up. We need to get started. Cherie, are you sure you’re sure?”

  “Yes.” Charlie beckoned to Michael as they began to move toward the elevators. “I’ll reimburse you for the room, by the way. And all your other costs. Just let me know how much.”

  Tam waved a dismissive hand. “What are friends for? My problem isn’t with what this is going to cost me, it’s with doing it at all. If he’s being terminated, he did something terrible. Are you hearing me, cherie?”

  At Tam’s words, Charlie felt a shiver run down her spine. Michael had consistently denied being the serial killer he’d been sentenced to death as, but he’d also told her that he’d never said he didn’t deserve Spookville. Right there and then, Charlie resolved to get Michael to tell her exactly what he’d done to find himself on the highway to hell—just as soon as she saved him from total oblivion. Having caught up with them, Michael must have heard at least the last part of what Tam had said. It was now impossible to read anything at all in his face, but from the way he was looking at her, Charlie had little doubt that he could read her face.

  Doubt and fear and resolve had to be all mixed up in her expression.

  “I don’t care,” she told Tam again, and got the impression that Michael relaxed infinitesimally. “Just save him.”

  With Tam looking perturbed and Michael invisible to anyone except the two of them, they reached the elevator bank. As they waited for one to arrive Charlie remembered to text Tony—I’m going to look around, I’ll pick my key up at the desk when I get back—and then they were in an elevator shooting skyward toward Tam’s room on the twenty-ninth floor. Other people were in the elevator with them, laughing and chatting away, and an obviously amorous couple got out when they did, so nothing more was said until they were inside Tam’s room.

  The light was off, and Tam made no attempt to turn it on. Once the door to the hall was closed, the room was shadowy but not completely dark. The whisper of the air-conditioning was the only sound.

  As they walked farther inside the room, Charlie set her purse down on the coffee table and glanced around. She’d never been inside the Conquistador, never been to Las Vegas before, in fact, and she was impressed with how large and nice the rooms were. This one had a king-sized bed, a seating area with an armchair, couch and the coffee table, and the requisite armoire with a TV. The room was decorated in beige and blue, and the large window—the curtains were open—offered a glittering view of the city at night. The only odd note about the room was that the bed had been stripped. Blankets and pillows lay in a heap in the middle of the bare mattress.

  Oh, and the smell. Charlie couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but it was faintly putrid in a way that did not say “expensive hotel room.”

  “I need your full name,” Tam said to Michael—who, of course, being Michael, asked why.

  “Names have power,” Tam replied impatiently. “This is going to take all the power I can muster.”

  “Michael Allen Garland,” Michael replied.

  “That’s your true full name? No junior? Not an alias?”

  “That’s the only name I know.” His answer was short.

  “He may have had another birth name. He was adopted,” Charlie put in, and Tam grimaced in a way that said as plainly as words could have that this was a complication. Michael turned his face toward Charlie, but it was now impossible to read his expression. Still, she got the impression that he was not pleased to have such personal information revealed.

  Her silent response to that? Too bad.

  “Go into the bathroom,” Tam told Michael, nodding toward an open door through which Charlie could just see the edge of what looked like a large tub. The bathroom light, which was on, beckoned warmly. Coupled with the glow of the city through the window, it was the reason the room wasn’t pitch black.

  “Charlie,” Michael growled
. Stopping just outside the rectangle of light that spilled across the bedroom carpet from the open bathroom door, Michael turned to look at her again. The guttural quality of his voice was almost as terrifying as the change in his face and form. But what really moved her was the note in his voice of—was it fear? Quite possibly: he would be a fool if he weren’t afraid. “If I don’t come out of this, lay off the serial killers. Hear?”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Charlie replied. She was jittery with fear herself, and trying her best not to let it show.

  “I may not have a later. Promise me.”

  “Fine. I promise.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you about it right now.”

  “Goddamn it.”

  “Look, can we just concentrate on this?”

  Tam was looking from one to the other of them with a gathering frown. Charlie realized that the nature of the exchange revealed an intimacy between them that Tam was bound to have noticed, and disapprove of.

  Michael said, “I want to make sure you’re going to be all right if I wind up not being around to save your ass.”

  “I don’t need you to save my ass.” An instant’s reflection amended that to, “Usually. Would you let me worry about me and just go into the bathroom?”

  Tam said in a warning tone, “Time is short.”

  Michael turned and went into the bathroom. Charlie followed, with Tam bringing up the rear and closing the door behind them.

  The first thing Charlie noticed was that there were a number of tall, fat black candles waiting unlit beside an open gym bag in the middle of the floor. Looking past them, she saw that the bathroom was large, at least ten by twelve feet, all tiled in earth-toned marble, with the big soaking tub Charlie had glimpsed through the open doorway, a roomy glass-walled shower, a toilet, and a long marble counter with twin sinks. It was the type of setup that came complete with a huge mirror covering the entire wall above the sinks. Charlie knew the mirror was there even though she couldn’t see it.