Polterheist: An Esther Diamond Novel

by Laura Resnick

  Maybe he was thinking about the hijacking case. Or maybe he was thinking of asking Rick if I thought Karaoke Bear had grown claws and fangs because I was still traumatized by yesterday’s enchanted tree attack. Would I think I saw something supernaturally spooky every time an electronic device malfunctioned at Fenster’s? And so on.

  Whatever it was, I decided to let him think about it while I finished eating, since I had to go back to Fenster’s soon. So we sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. I ate while Lopez stared blankly at his dinner, his thoughts turned inward.

  “Don’t you like your supper?” I asked at last, picking at the French fries now that I’d finished my cheese dog.

  “Huh? Oh. No, it’s fine.” He took another bite and relaxed again.

  We talked some more about my fellow Solsticeland employees, Fenster’s, and my various experiences there.

  After we both had finished eating and drinking, he threw away our garbage, then sat back down on the bench with me as he commented, “That many people have just stopped coming to work? It seems like a high attrition rate even for a seasonal job with bad pay and obnoxious policies. I mean, I can tell you’re not happy working there, and I can understand why—”

  “I am so glad Stella will have steady shifts for me after the holidays,” I said with feeling.

  “—but is it really that bad?”

  “Well, I much prefer being a singing waitress for a nice boss in a restaurant where the clients tip well, and where I rarely get mistaken for a hooker or a figure skater.”

  “A what?”

  “But I’ve had worse jobs than Solsticeland.” I shrugged. “Maybe the employees who quit without even giving notice or returning their costumes—which means no final paycheck—just don’t need the money as much as I do. Or as much as Jeff does—boy, does he hate this job! Actually, he’s been so down lately, I’m a little worried about him. But he keeps coming to work, just like I do. Because no one pays our bills for us.”

  It wasn’t really an explanation, though, since I had chatted with at least of few of the AWOL employees and knew they actually did need the money as much as I did. Had they all gotten better job offers on the spur of the moment? It didn’t seem that likely, only days before Christmas. Certainly there was no new acting work being offered between now and January, let alone enough to account for the exodus from Solsticeland.

  I checked Lopez’s wristwatch and said, “I should go back. Miles will be looking for me.”

  “Wait. Stay a little longer.” He slipped his hand into mine and stroked my knuckles with his thumb. “I’ll tell him I detained you on police business.”

  Feeling his touch, sensing the shift in his thoughts, my heart picked up the pace.

  “I’ll be late.” My voice was faint.

  “Don’t go yet.” So was his.

  I saw the look in his eyes. And a moment later, I knew he saw the look in mine.

  My voice shook a little as I said, “No, I should go . . .”

  “Stay,” he urged softly. The streetlights shone on his black hair and shadows shifted across his face as he leaned closer to me. “This is nice. You. Here . . . with me.”

  I was breathing faster, aware that his gaze had shifted to my mouth. Aware of what he wanted. What I wanted, too.

  Lopez’s hand tightened on mine as he leaned very close, so that his breath was tickling my lips as he whispered, “I miss you.”

  His lips were warm, full, and soft. I fell into his kiss like I was tumbling into a dream, losing all sense of reality and my surroundings as soon as his mouth touched mine. I could have been floating in outer space or sinking underwater, rather than sitting on a hard park bench in a public place, surround by people and traffic. I wouldn’t have known the difference.

  I hadn’t forgotten that he really knew how to kiss, but it had been a long enough drought that I had forgotten the effect his kisses had on me. Now I clung to him and whimpered a little, my mouth opening to invite him in, my head spinning, and my hands reaching for his coat to pull him closer.

  He was all silky heat on the inside, his mouth seductively hot compared to the cold air on my skin, his stroking tongue making my pelvis quiver reflexively. And on the outside, he was all cuddly warmth, my shelter in the cold night, his arms cradling me as he nipped and nuzzled me affectionately.

  When we came up for air, I murmured, “You taste like chili dogs.”

  We both laughed breathlessly, our hands grasping each other like swimmers trying to survive a riptide together.

  “Esther . . . now that you know the worst . . .” he whispered.

  “The worst?” I rubbed my forehead against his.

  “My parents.”

  We laughed again.

  “Couldn’t we . . .” he breathed. “I mean . . . Us not seeing each other . . . It’s not really working out, is it?”

  I started to pull away, coming to my senses now that he had mercifully paused in kissing me.

  Lopez didn’t stop me. “Am I wrong?”

  “You’re not exactly . . . wrong.” I scooted a little away from him, unable to think or talk sensibly when he was that close.

  “But . . . ?” he prodded.

  “I don’t think I’m very good for you,” I said in a rush.

  He looked around, as if searching in our vicinity for an intelligent response to this. Finding none, he said, “Does that matter so much?”

  “Are you listening to yourself?”

  “Not really,” he admitted and tried to kiss me again.

  “Wait! No, wait.” He could probably tell from the excited breathlessness in my voice, as well as my innate inability to move away from him again, that I was trying to think rather than rejecting his touch.

  Lopez let out his breath in a gush, held up his hands, and nodded. He scooted back, putting a little safe distance between us on the bench.

  After a moment, he said, “I know I’m the one who broke up with you, and—”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s not that,” I said firmly.

  A swift, sharp intake of breath. “Are you seeing someone else?”

  “No. It’s not that, either.”

  “Oh.” He sagged with relief. “Okay.” A pause. “Then, what?”

  “I nearly got you killed,” I blurted. “More than once. It was because of me. I can’t go through that again! I can’t. I won’t be the reason you get–get—” Now that I had said it aloud, I was surprised to hear my voice break.

  Yes, this was a fraught subject for me; but I hadn’t realized I would cry if we talked about it. I felt tears spill down my face, and I couldn’t go on. My throat was too choked with emotion. I put my hand over my mouth and started whimpering with distress now, rather than passion.

  He was clearly taken aback. Whatever he had imagined I might say, it had obviously been nothing remotely like this.

  “Oh, Esther. Hey. Come on. Shh, shh.” He slid across the bench to put his arms around me, comforting now rather than seductive. “What’s all this, huh? Shh. Everything’s okay.” He kissed my hair, murmuring soothing things while he used one hand to fish around in his pockets. After a moment, he produced a crumpled handkerchief that had seen better days.

  That snapped me out of my bout of sniffles. I shied away from it when he tried to press it into my hand. “Where has this been?”

  “Sometimes I use it to pick up evidence. When I don’t want to get fingerprints on—”

  “Ugh! I can’t touch that. Put it away!’

  “You’re already sounding better,” he noted, pocketing the sad piece of cotton.

  I scrubbed my hands over my face and took a deep breath. “I just get very emotional thinking about you lying in the basement of the Livingston Foundation, dying of an ordeal poison.”

  “Yeah, I get pretty emotional when I think about it, too. That was grim.” He added, “Mostly, though, I remember seeing Dr. Livingston go off to kill you, and I couldn’t
move a muscle to stop her. That was the really grim part.”

  “See? You wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for me. You never would have gone to Harlem that night and confronted that evil, demented, deadly—”

  “Well, sure, I would,” he said, sounding puzzled.

  I paused. “Huh?”

  “She was a killer, Esther. And she was about to kill again. Yeah, it made me crazy-violent that it was you she going to kill. And since she’s dead and I hope I can trust you not to repeat this, I will candidly admit that I violated some of her civil rights when questioning her and tearing apart her place in search of you. But Esther . . .” He brushed my hair off my face. “I would have gone to the Livingston Foundation that night no matter who she was trying to kill. That’s my job. It’s what I do. You know—that whole ‘protect and serve’ thing. I don’t get to say, ‘Well, I don’t really feel attached to the person that demented bitch is going to murder tonight, so I guess I won’t try to stop her.’ I have to go even if the victim is a total stranger—which is usually the case, and frankly a lot easier for me to deal with.” Apparently hoping to lighten the mood, he added, “Esther, listen to me. I’d have to go to the Livingston Foundation in those circumstances even if the victim was Max.”

  That made me snort with laughter, even though I was actually, at that moment, thinking about how much alike he and Max were. These two men, centuries apart in age and living in such different realities; yet both so unwavering in their purpose and selfless in their mission. And both so dear to me.

  “By the way,” Lopez added, continuing to shift the mood away from my brief bout of tears. “What the hell did Max do to me that night? Or for me? If anything?”

  “If anything?” I repeated indignantly. “He saved your life!”

  “I thought so, too. But when I got to the hospital later . . . Uh, you do remember that’s where I decided to go once I found out what some of the revolting ingredients were in that potion he poured down my throat?”

  “Yes.”

  “They couldn’t find anything wrong with me. They couldn’t find evidence that anything had been wrong with me, either. There was no trace or evidence at all of whatever Dr. Livingston had done to me, or of whatever Max gave me. Nothing, nada, zip.”

  I hadn’t realized this, but I wasn’t surprised by it. Medical practitioners weren’t trained to look for mystical means of killing and curing, after all. And for all I knew, when Max’s cure restored balance to Lopez’s body, perhaps it even eliminated all mystical traces of what had happened to him that night.

  I tried again to explain my fears. “But if you hadn’t been so upset about knowing she was holding me captive somewhere, she wouldn’t have been able to catch you off your guard and—”

  “That’s flattering,” he said. “And maybe it’s a view of my prowess that I should encourage in a woman I want see naked.”

  “Oh!” Well, that had caught me off guard.

  “But I’m not Superman, Esther. Dr. Livingston was a very clever and devious woman, with extensive knowledge of exotic ritual poisons—about which I know exactly nothing. I had no idea she could kill me just by touching me with a topical poison. And I don’t understand why, in that case, it didn’t kill her, too.” Lopez blew out his breath hard enough to make the hair on his forehead flutter. “If that’s what happened. I’m skeptical by now. I wonder if that ‘poison’ was just some weird short-term hallucinogenic that she’d developed a resistance to, since I was completely fine later, as if nothing had ever happened.”

  I didn’t bother trying to explain that Dr. Livingston had been a bokor, a dark sorceress indebted to very powerful and dangerous spirits. It was the sort of explanation that never got us anywhere. I wondered if I should even try to broach my concerns about nearly getting Lopez killed on other occasions . . . but when I thought about it, those were cases he was already involved in, and—based on what he had said tonight—those were risks he would have taken as part of his duty, regardless of whether or not I was involved or in danger.

  He put his hand on my cheek and met my eyes. “So . . . are we okay? You know I care about you. But you get that I do my job even when I don’t care, right? Well, don’t care in a personal way, I mean. So this stuff you were crying about a minute ago . . . which, God, that’s painful! I really, really can’t stand making you cry, so let’s agree—”

  “Shh,” I said, and I kissed him.

  He was still cooperating enthusiastically when his phone rang a few minutes later. Breathing fast, he rested his forehead against mine and murmured, “That’s work calling . . . I have to take it . . . I’m sorry. They must have found something in the search.”

  I stiffened, thinking of Max and Lucky. “You’d better take it, then,” I said breathlessly, wanting to know right now if either of my friends was in trouble, rather than wondering what Lopez would learn when he checked his messages later.

  He nodded, kissed me quickly again, and answered the call. “Lopez.”

  As he did so, I probed and prodded in vulnerable places inside myself, waiting to hear Dr. Livingston’s nasty voice scaring me yet again. But she remained silent. I had a feeling that Lopez had finally shut her up for good.

  Snuggled next to me on the cold park bench, he sat up so alertly I was startled.

  “What?” He listened to his caller. “Say that again . . . Jesus. This will be a three-ring circus. Yeah, you bet I do. Where is he? Okay, I’m on my way.”

  He ended the call and stood up, helping me rise from the bench as he put his phone way. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. Right now.”

  “Okay.” Thinking of Max and Lucky, I asked warily, “What’s happened?”

  “There’s been another hijacking. About an hour ago.”

  “Oh!” No wonder he had to go.

  “And this time, someone shot the driver.”

  “What?” I exclaimed. “Is he alive?”

  “He is.” Lopez added with relish, “And he’s identified the shooter.”

  16

  Back at Fenster’s, I wanted to find Lucky and Max to tell them the news right away. Lopez wouldn’t say anything to me about the identity of the shooter, who was still at large, though he told me it would probably be all over the news once the gunman was apprehended. So this was the break in the case that Lucky had been hoping for.

  Depending on who the shooter was and what could be learned once the news broke, this might also assist with our mystical problem at Fenster’s, if our poltergeist was indeed connected to a nefarious scheme to commit polterheists. (Well, I thought it was clever.)

  The cops were done searching the locker room and all gone by the time I got back there—which was to be expected, I thought, when I saw the time. I’d been gone longer than I’d realized. Time really flies when you’re lip-locked with a man about whom you’ve fantasized far too much.

  I took off my coat, donned the elf ears-and-cap which I had shoved into my pocket earlier this evening, and checked my reflection in the mirror. I looked disheveled and excited . . . and my ears were a little smooshed and bent. Oops. Oh, well. They only needed to last for two more days.

  With less than an hour left before closing, I decided not even to bother touching up my makeup, and I left the locker room as I was. I realized that after I got out onto the floor, I probably wouldn’t be able to leave it again until closing time. So, just in case Max and Lucky had gotten tired of searching for me (or had gotten hungry and thirsty), I popped quickly into the break room to see if they were there.

  “Oh, hi!” I said, startled. “Um, sorry,” I added, realizing I had interrupted something. Followed by, “Uh, is everything all right?”

  I was looking at Rick and Elspeth. This late into the shift, no one else was in the break room—everyone who wasn’t on the floor now had clocked out—and they were alone together in here.

  And this wasn’t just happenstance, I realized; they were clearly together. But not in a good way, it seemed.

  Rick was
holding Elspeth by the shoulders, and he looked furious with her. I saw the way his fingers were digging into her flesh when I walked in on them, and I thought she’d have bruises tomorrow. Elspeth looked . . . oh, pretty much the same as always. Sulky, sullen, angry, snide, slouching. And . . . triumphant, I realized with surprise.

  Maybe she was glad she had made Rick angry—which, for someone like Elspeth, probably counted as an achievement. Or maybe she had the upper hand in their argument, whatever it was.

  “Hi, Esther.” Rick took a breath and released Elspeth.

  “Hi.” I noticed that Elspeth didn’t move away from him. He must have been hurting her a moment ago, or perhaps trying to intimidate her, but she didn’t seem to be upset with him. Mostly, I thought, she just seemed annoyed that I had intruded on their scene. After an awkward pause, I asked, “What’s up?”

  Rallying, Rick said casually, “Miles couldn’t find you before he left for the night, so we all thought you went home and forgot to clock out or something.”

  “Oh, I had sort of an unexpected detour this evening after Karaoke Bear malfunctioned,” I said vaguely. “I’ll talk to Miles tomorrow and explain.” Actually, Miles would do most of the talking, and since I didn’t really expect to get paid for kissing Lopez, I’d go along with having my pay docked for the time I’d been missing.

  “The singing bear malfunctioned?” Rick said alertly. “What happened?”

  He and Elspeth exchanged a glance. She looked smug. Rick’s face—unusually, for him—was unreadable.

  “Yes, what happened?” Elspeth asked me.

  I hadn’t realized these two were more than scant acquaintances; but it was obvious from their body language and eye contact now that there was a relationship between them. The extent or the nature of the relationship wasn’t at all clear to me, though.