Hollywood Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective
Page 28
“I’d be your out, huh?” His smile told me he didn’t mind that at all.
“Oh, you’ll be lots of things.” I pulled him toward the shower with me.
31
We stopped by my office to grab the photos and still made it to my parents’ house in a matter of minutes. I loudly announced that I’d found Ted outside and he told my mother he was looking for Gina. It was after eleven, so she was technically late for work. Mom worried, but Gina said Crystal would cover for her. Leaving the two of them, I slipped into the kitchen for some coffee.
Dad was already inside, dressed for work and sipping his own coffee. Across from him, in silence, was Jeremy. I stopped, trying to decide when Jeremy had become part of the family meeting. Something had changed, and my moral high ground went shaky.
Dad looked grim—not upset, not angry, but not pleased. I hesitated to say anything and, in that time, Jeremy caught my eye and gave me a bright smile. His face was serious but happy, a decided contrast to Dad. Mom and Gina came into the kitchen, Ted a step behind them. We were all gathered in place now; might as well start the show.
Jeremy beat me to it. “Gina and I wanted to talk to everybody as a family. It’s important.”
“Before we start though,” I tossed the envelope with the photos on the counter, “I want to give you one last chance to be honest with everyone, and tell us what’s going on with you.”
His eyes stayed open, honest, but his jaw clenched. He looked the same way he had when he promised to keep her safe. “What’s going on with me is that I love you sister.”
“How many other young women have you loved? What happened to them?” My father raised an eyebrow as I pulled the photos out. “You’ve been around a long time. Gina can’t be the first one.”
His eyes locked on the photos. “She’s special, it’s not like the others.”
“What others?” Gina’s voice went high as she stepped next to him. “Excuse me?”
Jeremy didn’t answer her, so I did. “He’s not a vampire. I’m really good at finding those. Even an incubus would have to regenerate by now, so what else is there?”
Jeremy’s eyes drilled into mine. “Lots of things you don’t know about, but I’m human. Completely normal and human. There’s nothing special about me anymore.”
“Anymore?” Gina’s eyebrows went up, her forehead a mess of lines with one vein popping out in anger. “Since when?”
“Yesterday,” he spoke quietly, but the word was strong enough that she shook her head and started to angry cry. He moved over to her, but Gina wouldn’t let him touch her.
“Tell me. Tell me all of it,” she insisted. She pulled away from him and stared at me. “What do you know, Lizzie?”
Her face looked young again, my baby sister expecting me to have all the answers. I wished I did.
“Here’s everything I can find out. He’s been alive since the 1940s. Edgar Carlye seems to be the first name he used but my film buff couldn’t find much.” I slipped the oldest image to the front and Gina picked it up by the edges, studying the face. The pictures were headshots, eight by tens, the first in black and white. “Maybe there was someone else, someone from before then.”
“Edgar was first,” Jeremy gritted his teeth, cheerful smile gone. “It’s the name my parents gave me. Gina-”
She shook her head at him. “Stop. My sister is speaking.”
I took a beat, waiting to see if he’s shut up like she asked. He did, so I went on. “Right. So we go from Edgar just after W-W-II to Johnny in the late 70s. It’s Johnny Chandler from then through the eighties.” I handed Gina that picture, but this time she put it back on the counter without much of a look. That was when I noticed it - a shiny gold band on her left hand.
“I wasn’t born then.” Gina turned the picture over. “You’ve been alive for decades before I was even born and you didn’t think you needed to tell me?”
“Does it matter?” He pleaded with her. “My name is Jeremy now. I love you and you love me, or at least you did yesterday.”
He stopped to stack the photos up, shuffling the Edgar picture to the top. He stared at it before he spoke. “My dad fought in World War I. My mom fell in love with him when she saw his uniform. They talked about it all the time. When I turned seventeen I snuck down to the recruiting office and lied about my age so I could go stop Hitler. I was so excited to do my duty like Dad did, then come home to have the life my parents did.”
He took a deep breath and looked only at my sister. “It wasn’t like Dad’s stories. It was hell, and I never want you to know how bad it got. When I finally made it home, I was scared all the time. Every noise was another round. Every rain storm was the chance to drown in a trench. Constant fear every moment I was awake, even worse in my nightmares. The studio offered me a chance to escape.
“I could work for them and never get hurt, never age, not unless I married someone who truly loved me – the real me not the movie star. I didn’t bother with the details, I never wanted to be vulnerable again. With the contract in place, the studio could beat me or blow me up, but I’d be untouchable, never feel pain. I wanted that more than I wanted anything, I didn’t think I’d ever want it to change. I was young and stupid so I signed over my soul.” His eyes closed as if the look on Gina’s face physically hurt him.
She shook with fury, yanking off the ring like it burned. “You son of a bitch!” Tears poured down her face. “You used me to get out of some contract? You took my…my…You married me? You lied and did all of this so you could what, get another job? Fuck you.”
She thew the ring at him with all her strength, and the arm that had pitched softballs for years hadn’t gone soft. The ring hit him under the eye, breaking the skin.
“No, no, please that’s not what this is about. I really do love you. I meant the vows I took. I didn’t even know if you…”
He let his voice trail off, and my mother turned on him with hate in her eyes.
“If she what?” Mom hissed.
“Loved me enough to break the contract.” He sounded terrible and suddenly I felt like an asshole. A minute ago, Gina had been ready to announce her secret marriage to a Hollywood movie star, a dream come true. Now, even if he did love her, she’d never look at him the same way again. Maybe Gina hadn’t needed to know. “I didn’t want the contract to end for decades. I didn’t care that I was alone or in some meaningless affair. But my fears started to fade. It took decades but I’m better. I want more, I have for years. I want the love we have and the life we can live. Gina, honey, please can we talk about this? Alone, somewhere? I have honeymoon tickets in my pocket. Please?”
She shook her head, crying with her arms crossed..
“I don’t think that’s such a bad idea.” My father was the voice of reason and law in our family. If Dad said something, it must be true, but Mom looked like him like he’d gone off his rocker. “You kids want the living room or the kitchen?”
They picked the living room and left. Alone with my parents and Ted, I fumed. “She’s barely nineteen!”
“So was your mother when we got married.” Dad sat at the counter and took a sip of coffee.
“He lied to her.” I shook my head, incredulous that Dad would take Jeremy’s side.
“Exactly how did he lie to her, Elisabeth? Did she ask him if he was trapped in some supernatural contract and he said no?”
My mouth hung open as I struggled to form words. Dad couldn’t be serious. Mom didn’t have my issues, her words came out strong, and kept getting louder. “He took our daughter’s virginity to save his soul. He ripped her heart to shreds with lies of omission. He stole her wedding day from me.”
Dad winced. “Not yet. We can still have Gina’s wedding.”
Mom set her lips set in a grim line and shook her head. I turned my palms up at Dad in a gesture of utter confusion.
“Marriages start out for lots of different reasons—how they end up has to do with the people in them. If Gina loves him and he lov
es her, this’ll turn into a romantic story to tell their kids. If not, she gets it annulled. None of that’s for us to decide”
Dad was willing to support Gina in this. I didn’t believe it. Worse, he had a point. The way things started might not matter in the long run. “What do you think, Mom? Could you be okay with this, someday down the road?”
“Oh no, not at all, not by a long shot. Not until my baby is married, in a church, by our priest, with a dress and flowers and photos. I’ve been planning for her wedding day since the day she was born. There’s no way she’s getting married alone in some dingy courthouse to a guy using a fake name. No. If they want to wipe the slate clean and start over, they’ll start from the beginning.”
Leave it to mom to be worried about the wedding part. I turned to Ted, my lover, but his grin told me everything. “You, too?”
“I’m a romantic.” He shrugged. “I’ve been rooting for him along.”
They stayed in the living room for a while, and we all did our best to ignore the shouting. Gina had a bad temper. It came from too many years of being the baby, getting what she wanted. After a good twenty minutes, I offered to take Edger-Johnny-Jeremy outside for a break but Dad stopped me. Instead, Ted took me to his place, promising everyone he’d distract me for a while.
His distraction, which involved his bed and more than a little heart-pounding passion, worked. The afternoon was slipping into evening and I still hadn’t gotten out of bed. Ted had, sneaking out into the kitchen to get me an apple. He brought it to me neatly sliced in a clean bowl. I smiled at his tidiness and how it touched everything.
“There are no more bad guys to worry about and you don’t have any cases on your mind. Should we go out somewhere?”
“The only place I want to be is here.” I grabbed him by his jeans to pull him back to bed. He deftly balanced the bowl on one hand while I struggled with the button.
“William is going to wake up any minute now.”
“Then you’ll have to be quick, won’t you?” I kissed his stomach, nibbled gently, then nipped when he didn’t tumble into bed with me.
“Hey!” He moved back but before I could show him how sorry I was, the doorbell rang. “Don’t move, I’ll deal with you when I get back.”
I watched him walk out, his tight jeans unbuttoned at the waist and cupping his ass just the right way. I was almost sorry I couldn’t see his wide chest and the curling brown hair there. Almost…his ass was worth watching.
Eating the apple took a minute, and another one passed before I started to wonder what was keeping my lover. After three minutes I took my jeans from where he’d folded them and threw on one of his undershirts. The thin white cotton stretched across my chest, showing off too much in the bedroom mirror but I wasn’t thinking about beauty contests. I was thinking about my gun and how many bullets were in it. I checked—a full clip. Should I take the gun Edward left under the pillow? No, things probably weren’t bad enough to need two guns. Not yet.
Moving down the hallway in bare feet, my steps were silent in the thick carpet. The gun at my side seemed heavy, or maybe it was my own dark thoughts. I took deep breaths to steady myself, trying not to think about the inside of that black bag. Maybe she hadn’t been working alone. Maybe another OPS member had Ted right now, maybe…maybe…
Maybe he was sitting on the couch talking to my brother-in-law.
“What the hell?”
“Grab a beer on your way over.” Ted told me with a wave. The gun felt awkward in my hand so I left it on the kitchen counter before I opened the fridge. My head was inside when Ted answered my question. “Jeremy stopped by on his way out of town. I was just about to come get you.”
I tried my best to keep my vision clear. As far as Jeremy knew, Ted was my gay best friend. He didn’t have any clue about the Edward side of things or how I’d spent my afternoon. At least he hadn’t until about ten minutes ago. There was no way you could mistake how the two of us looked.
I cracked the beer open and sat down in the arm chair, across from Jeremy, trying not to look like anything.
“Uh, I interrupted something, didn’t I?”
So much for that.
Ted shook his head. “You couldn’t have known. It’s not a big deal.”
“As long as you keep your mouth shut.” I stopped myself, that was no way to talk to him. “Forget I ever said that, okay? I’ve spent days wishing you would open your mouth, so it was stupid to say. Just don’t tell anyone, things would get complicated.”
“We’re not interested in being the focus of gossip, or answering a lot of prying questions.” Ted shrugged. “We’d appreciate your discretion.”
“Not a problem,” Jeremy replied with a wave of his hand. “After a few life times avoiding gossip rags, I get it.” I started to say something but he stopped me. “Hear me out for minute, all right? I came to say thank you. I was sick of living with secrets. Thanks to you, I have a wife and a family that knows all about me. I’m glad for that.”
“Really?” I couldn’t decide if I was more surprised that Gina had forgiven him or that he was happy about the way I’d called him out.
“Really. We worked things out. Gina’s going to stay at your parents’ place while she and Mom plan the world’s best wedding.”
“Mom?”
“She is my mother-in-law now.” He flashed me a smile Hollywood had never seen before—a real one. “Even if no one is going to know about it for the next few months, especially not the tabloids or the media.”
“Won’t they check the records at the courthouse?” I was only an amateur PI and I knew how to do that.
“We got married under my real name. I didn’t want to lie to her. I really do love her.” He put one hand in the other, anxiously kneading his fingers. “But that’s not all I wanted to talk to you about.”
My eyes flicked back to my gun. What came next? “Go on.”
“The studio…I’m not the only deal they made. You can’t understand what it’s like to be bullied by someone with that much power, that much authority. They don’t give a damn about the pain you’re in or what you want. You keep trying to fight it, but you’re just driving yourself insane.”
My mouth dried up. Hadn’t Ruby said the same thing, about OPS keeping her brother away? Maybe not those exact words, but she’d written letter after letter, she’d searched for him, desperate. And they hadn’t cared. Sure, she was the reason several people died, but OPS had driven her to it. Just thinking of the hood brought back memories that made my hands shake, and I took a long swallow of beer as I fought for control.
“You’re fine.” Ted moved closer to me on the couch. “You’re tougher than you think, and it’s over.”
There was no way Jeremy could follow our conversation, but he didn’t miss a beat. “You’re the toughest woman I know. I did everything I could to get you to stop investigating but you were fearless.”
A small, bitter laugh slipped out of me. “I don’t know if that’s still true.” I finished my beer, and gripped the bottle tight for a second. “There are lots of scary things out there.”
“And they’ll drive you insane if you focus on them too much.” Ted’s voice was gentle, but I got the point.
The beer bottle belonged on the coffee table, and it was going to be the only one. Ruby had gone insane, killing people who survived spellwork put in place to punish them. She’d let fear and pain turn her into a monster. I wasn’t going to do the same. My lips struggled to move into a smile, hopefully an honest and inviting one for my new brother-in-law. “I was investigating something and it went sideways. It ended badly.”
“Are you all right? How can I help?”
“I think I’m all right. And it’s over. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just say I know what it’s like to powerless and have someone not care about your pain.”
“Then maybe you’ll understand why someone needs to take the studio down.”
I nodded, not surprised. “LaRue might do it, if we
let him know they were the ones that tried to hit Jo with a car.” I paused, considering. “There might also be some payback for Samuel. I’m not sure how that works. Samuel’s kind of a servant.”
Jeremy’s eyes darted to the left then came back to both of us. “My grandma was in service from before the turn of the century. It was a rough life. Usually you don’t get payback for servants, you get another servant.” He grinned mischievously. “You don’t know how good that feels, to talk about something from my life, my real life, not the bullshit I’ve lived for the last seven decades. Feels amazing, actually. Other people deserve to feel that way, to be free.”
He was right. It was like saving Samuel. It didn’t matter if I was scared or struggled, it was the right thing to do. “How can I help?”
“What if I sent some friends to you? People who need a detective that understands spellwork and can keep supernatural goons in shape?”
“I might be able to find them someone.”
Ted squeezed my hand. “He means you.”
“Oh, oh right.” Maybe I did know more than most. I wasn’t the best with clues or interrogating, but sparing with LaRue gave me more than enough experience to talk down a vampire. Jo would jump at the chance to help me with spellwork. Hell, even Douglas and Calvin could join in. I’d probably screw up a lot, but I’d be more determined than anyone just trying to earn a paycheck. “If people need help, send them my way.”
32
I’d gotten the call from Jeremy in the afternoon. Our first chance to stick it to the studio. He needed an expert in spellwork, hopefully one with an extra kick of strength. That described Jo fairly well, but she didn’t travel alone.
LaRue sat next to me in the long town car. Samuel drove. It wasn’t quite a limo and Jo and I weren’t exactly pressed up next to each other, but between the outfit she wore and LaRue’s plans to take us out on the town afterward, it felt like I was going to a party.