by Tanya Huff
“What question?” He smiled charmingly, but eight years on the force with him, the last four intimately involved—Now that’s a tidy label for a complicated situation, she mused—had made her pretty much immune to classical good looks used to effect.
“I’m too tired for this shit, Celluci. Cut to the chase.”
“All right, I came by to see what you remembered about Howard Balland.”
She shrugged. “Small-time hood, always looking for the big score but would probably miss said big score if it bit him on the butt. I thought he left town.”
Celluci spread his hands. “He’s back, in a manner of speaking. A couple of kids found his body earlier tonight behind a bookstore down on Queen Street West.”
“And you’ve come to me to see if I remember anything that’ll help you nail his killer?”
“You’ve got it.”
“Mike, I was in fraud for only three short months before I transferred to homicide and that was a good chunk of time ago.”
“So you don’t remember anything?”
“I didn’t say that . . .”
“Ah.” The single syllable held a disproportionate weight of sarcasm. “You’re tired and you’d rather screw around with your little undead friend than help get the bastard who slit the throat of a harmless old con man. I understand.”
Vicki blinked. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. You’ve been off playing Vlad the impaler with Henry Fucking Fitzroy!”
Her brows drew down into a deep vee, the expression making it necessary for her to jab her glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose. “I don’t believe this. You’re jealous!”
They were chest to chest and would’ve been nose to nose accept for the difference in their heights. Although Vicki was tall at five ten, Celluci was taller still at six four.
“JEALOUS!”
Over the years Vicki had learned enough Italian to get the gist of what followed. The fight had barely begun to heat up when a soft voice slid through a pause in the screaming.
“Excuse me?”
Expressions ludicrously frozen in mid-snarl, they turned to face the wizened concern of Mr. Chin. He clutched a burgundy brocade bathrobe closed with one frail hand and had the other raised as though to snare their attention. When he saw he had it, he smiled into the silence.
“Thank you,” he told them. “Now, shall we see if we can maintain this situation?” At their puzzled frowns, he sighed. “Let me make it a little simpler for you. It’s 4:22 a.m. Shut up.” He waited for a moment, nodded, and left the apartment, gently pulling the door closed behind him.
Vicki felt her ears grow hot. She jerked around as a cross between a sneeze and a small explosion sounded from Celluci’s direction. “What are you laughing at?”
He shook his head, arms waving as he searched for the words.
“Never mind.” She reached up and pushed the curl of dark brown hair back off his face, her own mouth twisting up in a rueful grin. “I guess it was pretty funny at that. Although I’m going to spend the rest of the day with this vaguely unfinished feeling.”
Celluci nodded, the thick curl dropping back down into his eyes. “Like not remembering if you’ve eaten the last bite of doughnut.”
“Or drunk the last swallow of coffee.”
They shared a smile and Vicki collapsed into the black leather recliner that dominated the small living room. “Okay, what do you need to know about the late Mr. Balland?”
Vicki moved away from the warm cliff of Celluci’s back and wondered why she couldn’t sleep. Maybe she should have told him to go home, but it’d seemed a little pointless making him drive all the way out to his house in Downsview when he was expected back downtown at headquarters in barely six hours. Or less. Maybe. She couldn’t see the clock unless she sat up, turned on the light, and found her glasses, but it had to be nearly dawn.
Dawn.
In the center of the city, eighteen short blocks away from her apartment in Chinatown, Henry Fitzroy lay in his sealed room and waited for the day; waited for the rising sun to switch off his life; trusted that the setting sun would switch it on again.
Vicki had spent the day with Henry once, held captive by the threat of sunlight outside the bedroom door. The absence of life had been so complete it had been a little like spending the day with a corpse. Only worse. Because he wasn’t. It wasn’t an experience she wanted to repeat.
She’d run from him that night, the moment the darkness had granted her safe passage. To this day she wasn’t sure if she’d run from his nature or from the trust that had allowed him to be so helpless before her.
She hadn’t stayed away for long.
In spite of late nights, or occasionally no nights at all, Henry Fitzroy had become a necessary part of her life. Although the physical attraction still tied her stomach in knots and caught the breath in her throat—even after a year of exposure—what bothered her, almost frightened her, was how much he had invaded the rest of her life.
Henry Fitzroy, vampire, bastard son of Henry VIII, was Mystery. If she spent a lifetime trying, she could never know all he was. And, God help her, she couldn’t resist a mystery.
Now Celluci—she rolled onto her side and layered herself around the curve of his body—Celluci was the yin to her yang. She frowned. Or possibly the other way around. He was a shared joke, shared interests, a shared past. He fit into her life like a puzzle piece, interlocking and completing the picture. And now she thought of it, that frightened her, too.
She was complete without him.
Wasn’t she?
Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord. When did my life start resembling country and western music?
Celluci stirred under the force of her sigh and half roused. “Almost forgot,” he murmured. “Your mother called.”
The late morning sun had nearly cleared Vicki’s bay window when she sat down at the kitchen table and reached for the phone. Returning her mother’s call while Celluci was dressing would make it easier to deal with the questions she knew she was going to have to answer. Questions that would no doubt start with, Why was Michael Celluci in your apartment when you weren’t? and escalate from there to the perpetual favorite, When will you be coming to visit?
She sighed, fortified herself with a mouthful of coffee, and wrapped her fingers around the receiver. Before she could lift it out of the cradle, the phone rang. She managed, just barely, to keep the coffee from going out her nose but it took a half a dozen rings to get the choking under control.
“Nelson Investigations.”
“Ms. Nelson? It’s Mrs. Simmons. I was beginning to think you weren’t there.”
“Sorry.” She hooked a dish towel off the refrigerator door and swiped at the mess. “What can I do for you?”
“The photographs came. Of my husband.”
Vicki checked her watch. Nearly noon in Toronto meant nearly eleven in Winnipeg. Hot damn. Truth in advertising; I’ve found a courier who can tell time.
“It is my husband, Ms. Nelson. It’s him.” She sounded close to tears.
“Then I’ll take the information to the police this afternoon. They’ll pick him up and then they’ll get in contact with you.”
“But it’s the weekend.” Her protest was more a whimper than a wail.
“The police work weekends, Mrs. Simmons. Don’t worry.” Vicki turned up the reassurance in her voice. “And even if they can’t actually bring him in until Monday, well, I personally guarantee he’s not going anywhere.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I need to ask him why, Ms. Nelson; why he did such a horrible thing to us?”
The pain in the other woman’s voice tightened Vicki’s fingers on the receiver until her knuckles went white. She only just managed to mask her anger with sympathy during the final few moments of the call.
“God-damned, fucking, son of a BITCH!”
Her notepad hit the far wall of the ap
artment with enough force to shatter the spine and send loose paper fluttering to the floor like a flock of wounded birds.
“Anyone I know?” Celluci asked. As he’d come into the living room barely a meter from the impact point, he supposed he should be thankful she hadn’t thrown the coffee mug.
“No.” She surged up out of her chair, slamming it back so hard it fell and bounced twice.
“Something to do with your found missing person?” It wasn’t that difficult a guess; he knew the bare bones of the case and he’d heard her use the name Simmons during the phone conversation. Also, he knew Vicki and, while she was anything but uncomplicated, her reactions tended to be direct and to the point.
“Lousy bastard!” Her glasses slid to the end of her nose and she jabbed them back up the slope. “Doesn’t give a shit about what he put his family through. You should have heard her, Mike. He’s destroyed everything she ever believed in. At least when she thought he was dead, she had memories, but now he’s fucked those, too. He’s hurt her so badly she hasn’t even hit anger yet.”
“So you’re getting angry for her.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Why not, indeed.” Intimately familiar with Vicki’s temper he thought he saw something more than just rage at a woman wronged. Lord knew she’d seen enough of that during her years on the force and had never—all right, seldom—reacted with such intensity. “Your mother, did she ever get angry when your father left?”
Vicki came to a dead stop and stared at him. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Your father walked out on your mother. And you.”
“My father, at least, had the minimal decency not to hide what he was doing.”
“And your mother had to support the two of you. Probably never had time to get angry.”
Her eyes narrowed as she glared across the apartment at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
He recognized the danger signs but couldn’t let the opportunity pass. Things had been working toward this for a long time and with her anger for Mrs. Simmons leaving her so emotionally open he knew he might never get a better chance. What the hell, if it comes to it, I’m armed. “I’m talking, whether you like it or not, about you and me.”
“You’re talking bullshit.”
“I’m talking about how you’re so afraid of commitment that you’ll barely admit we’re anything more than friends. I understand where it’s coming from. I understand that because of the way your father left and because of what happened afterward with your mother that you think you need to put tight little parameters on a relationship . . .”
She snorted. “Did the force just send you to another sensitivity seminar?”
He tightened his grip on his own temper and ignored her. “. . . but all that happened over twenty years ago and, Vicki, it has to stop.”
Her lip curled. “Or else?”
“Or else nothing, God damn it. I’m not making threats here.”
“This is about Henry, isn’t it? You are jealous.”
No point in forcing her to face the truth if he didn’t. “You’re god-damned right I’m jealous of Henry! I don’t want to share that much of you with anyone else. Especially not with someone who . . . who . . .” Mike Celluci didn’t have the words to explain how he felt about Henry Fitzroy and even if he had, it was none of Vicki’s business. The edge of his hand chopped off the thought. “We’re not talking about Henry, we’re talking about us.”
“There’s nothing wrong with us.” She looked everywhere but at the man standing across the room. “Why can’t we just go on the way we have been?”
“Because we’re not going anywhere!”
She jerked at each staccato word.
“Vicki, I’m tired of being nothing more than your buddy. You’ve got to realize that I . . .”
“Shut up!” Her hands had curled into fists.
“Oh, no.” He shook his head. “You’re going to hear it this time.”
“This is my apartment. I don’t have to hear anything.”
“Oh, yes you do.” He crossed to stand directly in front of her, balancing on the balls of his feet, his hands a careful distance away. As much as he wanted to grab her and shake her, he didn’t want to deal with the return violence he knew would follow. A quick game of Who’s more macho? would add nothing to the situation. “This isn’t going to be the last time I say this, Vicki, so you’d better get used to it. I love you. I want a future with you. Why is it so hard for you to accept that?”
“Why can’t you just accept me, us, the way I am. We are.” The words were forced out through clenched teeth.
He shoved the lock of hair back off his forehead and unsuccessfully tried to calm his breathing. “I’ve spent five fucking years accepting you and us. It’s time you met me halfway.”
“Get out.”
“What?”
“Get out of my apartment! NOW!”
Trembling with the need to hold himself in check, he pushed past her and grabbed his coat off the hook by the door. Jabbing his arms into the sleeves, he turned. His own anger made it impossible for him to read her expression. “Just one more thing, Vicki. I am not your fucking father.”
The door closed behind him with enough force to shake the building.
A heartbeat later it opened again.
“And don’t forget to call your mother!”
The coffee mug exploded into a thousand pieces against the wood.
“And did you?”
“Did I what?” Vicki snapped. Giving Henry the gist of the fight had put her in nearly as bad a mood as the fight had. It didn’t help that she knew she should’ve kept her mouth shut but when Henry had asked what was bothering her, she couldn’t seem to stop a repeat of the whole infuriating conversation from pouring out.
“Did you call your mother?”
“No. I didn’t.” She turned to face the window, jabbed at her glasses, and glared out at the darkness. “I wasn’t exactly in the mood to talk to my mother. I went down to Missing Persons and nailed Mr. Simmons/O’Conner to the wall instead.”
“Did that make you feel better?”
“No. Although it might have if they’d let me use real nails.”
A facetious comment spoken with complete and utter sincerity. Even from across the room Henry could feel pulsing waves of anger radiating off of her. He wished now that he hadn’t asked, that he’d ignored her mood and never been subjected to Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci’s all-too-accurate analysis of Vicki’s inability to commit. But now that he’d heard it, he couldn’t let it rest. Vicki would continue to think about what Celluci had said, had obviously been thinking of little else since Celluci had slammed out of her apartment, and, now that her nose had been rubbed in it, would in time see it for the truth. At which point she would have to choose.
He wouldn’t lose her. If that meant taking the day as well as the night, his love gave him a right equal to Celluci’s to assert a claim.
You raised the stakes, mortal, he told the other man silently. Remember that.
He stood and crossed the carpet to stand at her side, glorying for a moment in her heartbeat, savoring her heat, her scent, her life.
“He was right,” he said at last.
“About what?” The words were forced out through clenched teeth. No need to ask which he was meant.
“We can’t, any of us, go on the way we have.”
“Why not?” The final consonant carried the weight of a potential explosion.
“Because, like Mike Celluci, I want to be the most important person in your life.”
She snorted. “And what about what I want?”
He could see the muscles working beneath the velvet surface of her skin, tensing around her eyes and the comers of her mouth and so he chose his next words with care. “I think that’s what we’re trying to discover.”
“And what if I decide I want him?”
Her tone held a bitter, mocking edge. Henry
couldn’t help but respond.
“Could you give me up?”
The power in his voice pulled her around to face him. He heard her swallow hard as she met his gaze, heard her heartbeat quicken, saw her pupils dilate, tasted the change in her scent on the air. Then he released her.
Vicki jerked back, furious at Henry, furious at herself. “Don’t ever do that again!” she panted, fighting to get enough air into her lungs. “I give nobody power over my life. Not you. Not him. Nobody!” Barely in control of her movements, she whirled and stomped across the living room. “I am out of here.” She snatched her coat and bag up off the end of the couch, “And you can just play Prince of fucking Darkness with somebody else.”
He hadn’t moved from the window. He knew he could call her back, so he had no need to make the attempt. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going for a long walk in the sleaziest neighborhood I can find in the hope that some dickweed will try something stupid and I can break his fucking arms! Don’t follow me!”
Even a security door can be slammed if enough force is applied.
“Vicki? It’s your mother. Didn’t Mike Celluci give you my message? Well, never mind, dear, I’m sure he has a lot on his mind. While I’m thinking of it though, I did wonder why he was in your apartment while you were out. Have you two been getting more serious? Call me when you get a chance. There’s something I have to tell you.”
Vicki sighed and rubbed at her temples as the answering machine rewound. It was ten after twelve and she was just not up to a heart-to-heart with her mother, not after the day she’d had. “Have you two been getting more serious?” Jesus H. Christ.
First Celluci.
Then Henry.
The powers-that-be had really decided to mess up her life.
“Whatever happened to men who just want to get laid on a regular basis?” she muttered, flicking off the light and making her way to the bedroom.
The pitcher of draft she’d downed in the gay bar on Church Street—the one place in the city safe from testosterone cases—churned uneasily in her stomach. All she wanted to do was go to sleep. Alone.