Down in Whisper

by Bonnie Elizabeth

  Like a sword, the jealousy cut through Meg. She’d been jealous of Rain since she found out that Rain had once lived in Peter’s cabin towards the top of the mountain. This was before she and Peter had formed their unique relationship. When he had saved her from the other earth spirit, Peter had shielded Meg by placing her, as near as she could tell, inside his soul. Not many people could be that intimate with an earth spirit and maintain their sense of self. Meg had come out unscathed. Moreover she had left the sanctuary of his soul on her own without help from him at all.

  Meg hadn’t realized how unusual that was until her firm had been “hired” by the Goddess Pele to find her little dog. Only then did Meg find out how unique her ability was and how that fascinated Peter.

  No matter that no other living person had such an ability, Meg remained jealous of Rain and Peter’s relationship. Rain didn’t seem to care about Peter. Ironically, that bothered Meg even more. She knew, deep down that she was being ridiculous, but she couldn’t help it. So she waged her own war, internally, or so she thought, against her own feelings.

  “And so you went to Rain and didn’t bother to tell me until just now?” Meg asked, wondering what else might have happened in Rain’s penthouse.

  Meg could visualize Rain in some skimpy little nighty, her breasts practically falling out, watching Peter with her eyes half closed, perhaps running her tongue across her lips. The downside of being so connected to one’s partner was that Meg knew that if such a thing happened, Peter wouldn’t hesitate to act on the implicit invitation.

  Peter shrugged. “There was no reason to wake you. There was nothing you could do.”

  “I could have hiked up there.”

  “The pilot had already left my area and I didn’t want you risking your life to tramp around in the dark.”

  Meg could always tell when someone was lying. Peter was usually quite truthful but this time, she knew, he was leaving something out. “There’s more,” she said.

  Peter just watched her, neither denying nor agreeing with what she said. Finally he sighed, looking away. “I do not understand your obsession with who I do or do not chose to be physically intimate with, but I can assure you that is not what went on last night. I went to Rain because Zari and I had already been in communication regarding the plane.”

  There it was, another stupid and idiotic reason to be jealous. Zari was telepathic and Peter was often talking to her. Zari was the one creature Peter might talk to more than he talked to Meg. That, too, bothered her, but she couldn’t fathom being jealous of a cat. Because she couldn’t be jealous of a cat, although Zari was no more a cat than Peter was a man, Meg transferred her annoyance to Rain.

  “Of course,” Meg said, stiffly, taking her chai and leaving the apartment. She didn’t look back at him.

  Outside, it was chilly for a September morning, the air smelling of fall, although there was a crispness that belied any rain, at least for a few hours. Meg shivered, leaving the sanctuary of the doorway, wishing she’d taken her jacket. She hurried to her car. She might not have a coat but she could drive the few blocks up the mountain to the office. Normally she’d walk, but she was not going to return to her apartment. Peter had probably gone the moment she did. Still, she didn’t want to seem as if she was looking for him. Even if she didn’t look for him, she knew that if he wanted to continue the conversation, they would whether she wanted to or not. He was the most stubborn creature she’d ever encountered.

  “Does that remind you of anyone?” her sister Amy had laughed when Meg had made that complaint a couple of weeks ago.

  “Gram?” Meg asked.

  Amy laughed even harder, doubling up on her sofa while Meg glared at her.

  “And do we know anyone like Gram?” Amy pressed when the laughter died down.

  Meg had glared, not willing to admit that she too might be a little bit stubborn. But she wasn’t like Peter or like her grandmother. As always, the thoughts of her grandmother made her sad, so Meg pushed them away.

  Peter, of course, would remind Meg that this whole thing was her fault. She was the one who gave him blanket permission to pursue the relationship he wanted with her. And he wasn’t backing down from that invitation, no matter how it made her feel. In fact, sometimes Meg thought he did things just to annoy her to see what happened, ‘to the relationship.’

  At the office, Meg walked in with her chai just as RaeLynn was coming back with her own cup of coffee.

  “Morning,” she said. RaeLynn was their office jack of all trades and one of their computer investigators. Meg didn’t have a good title, although they called her the office manager. Rain was the administrative partner and such a title should fall to her, but RaeLynn did all the actual organization of such things herself.

  No one was at the front desk. “Where’s Kaitlyn?” Meg asked. Kaitlyn was their new receptionist and a cousin of Meg’s best friend Lacey. Kaitlyn had applied for the job when Rain finally got around to advertising. Meg insisted they hire her because of her connection to Lacey. It may not have been the best move in the world, but she was determined the office would do everything to make it work. Unfortunately, Kaitlyn was still pretty young and took her job seriously only about half the time.

  “Haven’t seen her,” RaeLynn said, looking back behind the desk.

  “She came in about ten yesterday,” Kyle said, wandering out from his office. His hair was mussed as if he’d been running his fingers through it. Kyle had changed when they’d helped the gods. Meg wasn’t quite clear whether it was because of something they told him or because of what happened. The fact that his hair didn’t look perfect while he was at the office was one of the little changes she’d seen in him. Six months ago, there wouldn’t have been a strand of hair anywhere but where he wanted it. Six months ago, Kyle would have been coming to the office at ten after a run and a shower. Now he was in the office before Meg.

  “I’ll have to have a talk with her.” Meg sighed.

  “Rain called to ask if I could help with some of Dillon’s administrative tasks. I guess she sent him up the mountain to look for a downed plane?” Kyle asked.

  Meg nodded. “Peter said something about it this morning but I didn’t get the details.” There. She was acting as if it didn’t matter to her in the least that Peter went to Rain instead of her.

  “Does it bother you Rain knows more about this than you do?” Kyle asked. There, that was the new Kyle that so annoyed Meg. He used to care about how he looked and how everything looked and now he let appearances go and was all about ‘how do you feel’.

  “Peter does what he wants and how I feel is not part of the equation, Counselor,” Meg said, hoping to let him know that she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “It should be. I’d think he’d at least want to know even if he doesn’t change what he does.” Kyle was clearly feeling persistent.

  Meg continued back to her desk, with Kyle following as far as his own office.

  “Really, Meg,” Kyle said, standing by his door.

  Meg turned, eye brow raised.

  “Let him know. I know Rain and there’s nothing going on there. Rain can’t handle the sort of intimacy you get with Peter. She can’t handle any intimacy, really.”

  “Don’t need to know,” Meg said, turning back around, trying to ignore her partner. Kyle meant well but he didn’t quite get the whole talking about feelings thing. It was like before he noticed nothing and now he wanted some deep connected intimacy with everyone.

  “It’s given his Mom hope,” Amy said the other day.

  “For what?” Meg hadn’t been paying full attention. Peter was creating a particularly vivid fantasy about taking her out hiking the next day that would include a picnic and perhaps more than just a picnic.

  “That he’ll finally meet someone and settle down. Or at least just settle down even if it’s with someone he’s already met.” Amy rolled her eyes, watching her sister. “What exactly is Peter thinking right now?"

  Meg looked up st
artled, hoping she wasn’t blushing.

  “Sex?” Amy grinned. “Any ideas I can use with Marcus?”

  Meg’s mouth fell open. That had been the last the two had talked about Kyle.

  Meg pulled herself back to the present when she saw her desk. There was a pile of notes on it. She leafed through them. She found three new background checks and a missing person’s case. Apparently a husband had run off a few years back and his wife was still searching, hoping that he was alive and willing to return. Meg’s gut reaction was that the case was legitimate, a wife worried about her husband, fearing he was dead. Meg sent the information off to Rain, largely to have her check out the information in a general way. If it checked out, they’d cut their fee for that one.

  Meg hated having to run anything about the office through Rain. Barringer and Associates had been her private investigative firm until about a year ago. At that time, the earth spirit that nearly killed her, had sent her office sliding down the hillside into nothingness. Rain was still in the process of building this place and had talked to Meg about renting. She’d agreed to cut the fee if she could join the security firm she was hoping to create to Meg’s investigative firm. It had sounded good. However, it also meant that Meg had to deal with the woman on a regular basis. It was not a situation Meg liked.

  “I’d think you’d be pleased at how good Rain is at networking,” Amy said a few days before. This was a phone call between the sisters. Meg sat on her thread bare sofa, thinking that she could afford a new one now. She just didn’t have time to go shopping for one.

  “But it’s Rain,” Meg protested.

  “Oh come on.” Amy sounded annoyed. Meg hated it when her sister was annoyed with her. She hated the idea that Amy thought she was being ridiculous. “You can’t hate Rain for something that may or may not have happened before you and Peter were even together.”

  “Oh it happened,” Meg growled. She had seen at least one incident when she’d shared Peter’s consciousness. Since then, since feeling her rage, she knew he did his best to keep such images from her. He was very good at redirecting her curiosity to events and people that didn’t make her angry.

  “So what? Are you just going to stop doing anything that involves work she might have brought in?” Amy asked. “You can’t do that. It goes beyond silly. I mean this is Gram-style obsessiveness.”

  Meg could picture her sister gesturing with her hand, possibly both if she was talking on the headset. It was a weekend, the rain falling lightly against the roof. Peter wasn’t around, although in the back of her mind, Meg could feel him agreeing with her sister.

  The smell of chai drew her back to the present. Meg picked up her cup, taking a long drink, grounding herself back in the present, running her hand across her desk, in a gesture that unconsciously mimicked Peter’s. She didn’t want to think about Rain. She didn’t want to think about the fact that everyone seemed to think she should get along with her.

  Looking through the cases, Meg spotted one from Evans, Priory, and DeCaire, the local law firm. Meg had done business with them for years, long before Rain came on the scene. This was business that she brought in. The case appeared to be a background check on a man accused of theft at a local warehouse. These types of checks were usually time sensitive, so Meg handed that off to Kyle. She’d have him focus on that for the next day or two. Not only would it get him out of the office so he wouldn’t keep asking her how she felt, it would make it hard for him to do the tasks Rain had assigned him. Kyle was Meg’s employee, not Rain’s. He had no business working on the security side of things. She’d have to talk to Rain about that soon. But not today. Today she could just make sure Kyle was too busy to do what Rain wanted.

  Rain

  “Rain?” I recognized Kyle’s voice on my phone.

  “What’s up?” I asked. I was standing outside my apartment waiting on the elevator that would take me down to floors to the office. I wondered what was so urgent. I hadn’t talked to Kyle all that much recently. Earlier last summer he’d had to kill a guy. Since then, he had started copying my conversations gambits, using them against me. This might be all well and good but I didn’t like being on the other side of probing questions, especially not when the person asking them actually seemed interested. Have I said I have issues with intimacy?

  “Can’t take on Dillon’s work today. I have an investigation to do for Evans, Priory and DeCaire and their stuff is always first in line.”

  Kyle didn’t sound upset. Certainly, he was an investigator, not an administrator. Still, it was frustrating. Ian, normally Dillon’s second in command, was already out of the office on another project. That meant I got to pick up scheduling, which I normally delegated to Dillon. Well, I would work late if that’s what it took.

  “Totally get it,” I said. “I’ll see you when I get downstairs.” I closed the phone and put it in my bag. Zari waited by the elevator door, watching me.

  While Kyle may have needed to be on that case, I couldn’t help but feel that it was more about Meg purposely trying to make my life difficult. It’s not like Kyle was my employee really. He worked for Meg. I should have known I’d be paid back for Peter’s midnight visit, even if she should know that nothing happened. Her telepathic link to him meant she could probably have relived every moment of it, right down to the feel of the window ledge. And did I need to point out that was the only thing he was feeling in my apartment?

  Getting into the office, I wandered down to RaeLynn’s office. She was back there working at her desk on the computer Zari had created.

  “Morning,” she said without looking up. Clearly, it was a busy time at our office. Zari leaped onto the desk to have RaeLynn scratch her ears.

  “Morning. Are you swamped?” I asked.

  “Always,” RaeLynn said. “Kaitlyn’s still not here?”

  I shook my head. “Dillon needed to do some scheduling but he’s doing some work for Peter on the mountain.”

  Raelynn rolled her eyes and nodded. “This was not Meg’s idea?”

  “Where is Meg?” I asked, looking around, certain she would come up behind me if I so much as had a nasty thought about her. Of course, I had tried talking to her about the Peter issue. Meg had done an Emmy Nominee performance of not having a clue what I was talking about. Had she not blushed and fidgeted more than usual, it might have been an award winner. Pushing her, as I’d been told time and again by both Amy and RaeLynn, wouldn’t make it any better.

  “Oh, she’s around,” RaeLynn said. “But I have a feeling she wouldn’t have chosen Dillon as the person to go do an investigation.”

  “She didn’t. Peter and I did.” I slumped into the chair. “Which means I still need someone to work on the schedule for next week. I’m swamped too. It’s too bad Peter couldn’t have insisted upon talking to Meg last night rather than me.”

  RaeLynn nodded. “I’ll get what I can get done this morning and leave you the rest. Check it before you leave okay? How far I get depends upon how much Dillon has filled in for regular rotations and how many new things have come up.”

  I nodded. That would work. RaeLynn was good at juggling things like that. So was I, but I hated it.

  “I’ll leave you to it then,” I said standing. No use giving Meg any ideas about keeping RaeLynn even busier.

  “You’re lucky RaeLynn doesn’t want to get in the middle of your misunderstandings with Meg,” Zari said. She led me along the hallway to my office, her tail waving at full mast. Her toes bounced up as she walked down the hall.

  “I wish Peter had gone to her first.” It would have made my life easier if he had talked to Meg and let her decide. He could have told her he didn’t want her off the mountain. He’d been very protective since the vampire thing. Meg could see the vampire because Peter could. Her ability gave the vampire certain power over her. Peter was understandably concerned. I had no idea why he didn’t use that excuse. It wouldn’t exactly have been a lie, after all.

  “Well, he came to me. I wanted hi
m to talk to you because I know about the metal. Meg does not. It’s much harder to talk through him that far away.” Zari leaped on her cat tree to look out the window in the midst of her response. It wasn’t as if this view was all that different from my apartment two floors up. We had the same south facing view, although the bedroom overlooked a large balcony.

  “But you can talk to him,” I pointed out. “Distance is nothing to Peter.”

  “It is easier to have him at my home.”

  “For you maybe. Not for me,” I reminded her.

  I heard Kaitlyn come in through the front door. I could tell by the sound of dropping bags. She acted as if we sent her home with a ton of homework, when in actuality it was all the stuff she insisted upon bringing with her.

  Zari gave me a cat smile. “She has a gym bag with her today, along with her purse, her tablet computer and cell phone. She has also brought a lunch.”

  “Nosey.” I settled in at my desk, trying to think of anything I needed to tell the receptionist. It would be nice if she were prompt. Normally she was quite good when she actually showed up to work, but now and then things fell apart. It typically happened when she was in a good phase of her on-again off-again relationship with her boyfriend. She didn’t bother to show up and her focus wasn’t on work when she was here. I’d have overruled Meg’s hiring no matter what kind of payback was involved if the girl wasn’t as good as she was when she was in an off boyfriend phase.

  Zari started washing a paw.

  “Have you talked to RaeLynn about looking into why the metal was here? Could someone have taken some of it without you or Peter or even Pele knowing?” I asked.

  “I can’t see how,” Zari said, sitting back up. “I mean between all of us, we pretty much had the bases covered. This could be unrelated.”

  I heard a pause between the two sentences that suggested Zari wasn’t as certain as she’d like to be.

  “But?” I asked.

  “But it’s possible I’m wrong.” Zari sighed. “Still I filled RaeLynn in on things and that’s what she was working on when you interrupted her. She hasn’t found anything, or if she has, she hasn’t bothered to tell me.”