Jack bored into her with those hard, beautiful eyes.
“Fine,” she said after she’d given him way too long. “I’ll handle it myself. Come on, Juma. Let’s go.” She dug into her purse. “How much is the bill, Cindy?”
Jack put up a hand. “I’ve already taken care of it. Let me call Gil before we decide anything.”
Rose offered him her phone, challenging him with her stare. Then the phone rang, and she flipped it open.
“Rose?” Urgency overlaid the soothing sound of Gil’s voice. “I waited as long as I could before calling, but it’s an emergency now. Is Jack all right?”
“He’s fine,” Rose said. “Talk to him yourself.”
“Wait,” Gil said. “I need to speak to you first.”
Rose flicked a glance at Jack, but ignored the crease between his eyebrows. “Go ahead.”
“There’s a woman, Linda Dell, who’s in constant danger from an abusive husband, on the verge of leaving him for months now, and she’s finally made up her mind. I’m afraid if Jack doesn’t go get her immediately she’ll lose her resolve, and perhaps her one and only chance of a new life.” Gil paused. “Would you mind taking a short detour in a good cause?”
Shit, thought Rose, her heart, her whole psyche sinking. “Sure. I’m happy to help.”
Intolerable tension emanated from Jack. Rose’s insides twisted into a knot.
“Thank you so much,” Gil said. “You’re obviously a caring person, and Jack won’t ask for help because he hates being beholden to anyone, especially a vampire. If anyone owes you for this, it’s me.”
“Nobody owes me,” Rose said. “And now you need to speak to Jack.”
Jack took the phone and stalked hurriedly away from the others. Gil said, “Go ahead, cuss me out, but I had to ask Rose for help. She didn’t need any convincing, so you can’t blame it on my damned voice.”
“I’m not blaming anyone.” Except myself. Jack watched Rose hug Cindy good-bye and head smiling toward the two truckers. Judging by his past experience, Rose should be a conniving bitch, and yet she seemed so consistently nice. So goddamned fine. As for his own behavior—
He wheeled for the men’s restroom and a small measure of privacy. “What’s going on?”
“Linda Dell is finally ready. You have to go there now. Rose said she’d take you, no problem. Oh, and your mother called again. She’s going to the Caribbean to spend a month with your father.”
Momentarily distracted, Jack said, “At this rate, my parents will be spending all their time together soon.”
“That’s great, after twenty-something years mostly apart.”
“I guess.” Maybe in later life, his father’s libido had subsided to a normal level. The vampire who’d had him in her clutches all through Jack’s childhood had left years ago, and he’d run through a string of both vamps and ordinary women after that, but lately he seemed happier doing without.
But, by God, if the old bastard started cheating on his mother again, he’d—
He’d do nothing. He’d never been able to do anything about it, not when he was seven years old and not when he was full grown. His mother wouldn’t thank him for butting in now any more than she had back then.
“Maybe you’ll finally learn to forgive your father. I told Rose if anyone owes her, it’s me.”
“I wish it were that simple,” Jack said, back in hell. One measly apology wasn’t enough to right the balance.
“She said nobody owes her,” Gil insisted. “If you can just be polite for a few hours—”
Jack interrupted. “What’s the plan?” He sorted through Gil’s instructions automatically with half his mind, while the other half processed the transactions between himself and Rose. Snippets of conversation dropped through the cracked-open window high in the restroom wall. The querulous voice of the old man, who sat on a bench in the winter sun and raved about seeing a vampire. The amused responses of his blissfully disbelieving audience.
No wonder Rose was so angry. With her acute vampire hearing, she must have heard every insulting word Jack had said earlier about vamps, even if the window in the women’s restroom was closed. Which meant one more huge discourtesy in the appalling tally he’d run up in only a few hours.
Rose hugged and kissed her two truckers chastely on the cheek, laughing off their protests and pleas. “My kisses are dangerous. But you guys are the greatest!”
“Would you like me to drive?” Jack sounded as if the polite offer took an effort. “This isn’t a short detour. She lives in a place called Calico, at least an hour and a half each way.”
“Maybe later,” Rose replied. Once they reached the highway, she said, “I don’t know the first thing about rescuing people, but I assume we don’t just up and knock on her front door.”
“She’s meeting us at a store,” Jack said.
Rose accepted an egg and toast sandwich from Juma. “You don’t sound so sure about that.”
“Of course I’m not sure.” Jack spoke caustically, but then his tone shifted abruptly to neutral. “She’s been shilly-shallying for a long time.”
“Gil said she finally made up her mind.”
“Let’s hope so,” Jack muttered around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Otherwise we’ll have wasted your time and gas. We’ll pay you for both, of course.”
Rose swallowed hastily. “I don’t care about the gas. Or the time. This is someone’s life we’re talking about!”
“Unfortunately,” Jack said, caustic again, “you’re absolutely right.”
“Cindy says you’ve rescued a lot of abused women.” The interstate stretched ahead, lined by stands of pine trees and farms, green even in January. “For someone who does that sort of work, you’re mighty unfeeling.”
“I have no tolerance for people who screw up over and over again,” Jack said.
“Some people don’t know how not to,” Rose said. “They have emotional problems.”
“Sure, but those are their problems, not mine,” Jack said. “I give them a chance to start over, and if they screw that up, too, I’m gone.”
Rose noticed her fingers clenching the steering wheel. “What about compassion?”
“They can get that from someone else.” Jack leaned between the seats to scrounge in one of the bags of food for another biscuit.
“That’s so cold,” Juma said.
“You’re one to talk.” Jack slathered strawberry jam on half a biscuit, all too clearly relishing the food. “You gave up on your father, remember? Told me he was useless.”
“He is useless! He fries his brain with drugs, he was in and out of jail while I was a kid—and yeah, it was a lie, he’s not in jail right now—and he never stands up for me against my grandmother. Apart from giving me cool books, he does the same stupid stuff over and over…” Her mouth hung open, toast dangling from her hand. “Oh. I see what you mean.” She took a bite of toast and chewed thoughtfully.
“Still,” Rose protested, “if people’s lives are in danger—”
“I give them a chance to start over.” Jack punctuated his statement with a burp.
“Gross.” Juma opened a bag for Jack to drop his trash inside.
“And if it doesn’t work out, you just abandon them?” Rose said.
“No,” he replied impatiently. “I don’t abandon them. Gil puts them in touch with the agencies that usually handle this sort of thing.” Jack drained his orange juice and dropped the cup into the trash as well. “I do what I can, but they’re not my responsibility. Why should I care more about them than they do about themselves?” Rose heard him slide down onto his back on the bench seat. “Wake me up when we get close to Calico, or if you want me to take the wheel.”
Juma spread peanut butter on a triangle of toast and handed it to Rose. “People have to give their relatives more chances, though, right?”
“I suppose.” Rose bit into the toast, thinking about all the chances she’d given her mother until she’d finally given up instead.
/> “My mother died of an overdose when I was a baby. Dad says she wasn’t much of a loss, but I would have given her a chance if I could’ve. She couldn’t possibly be worse than Grandma.” Juma scrunched up her face and peered at Rose. “You have a useless family, too?”
“I haven’t seen them in years. My mother didn’t want me when I was a kid, and she couldn’t stand me in my teens.” Rose paused, hearing Jack shift on the backseat. “Everything was my fault. I’d ruined her life, and I was ruining her marriage, too, and I was sure to ruin my little sisters’ lives as well.” She waited for Jack’s contemptuous snort. It didn’t come. “But she fed and clothed me, so I wouldn’t call her useless.”
“How could she not love you?” Juma was indignant. “You’re so nice.”
“Thanks, Juma. I try.”
“What about your dad?”
“Never met him,” Rose said. “I’m the product of a brief affair. Even when I was old enough to understand, Mom refused to talk about him.” Jack shifted again behind her. Rose squared her shoulders. “Except, of course, to tell me all my bad qualities came from him. One day when she was ranting and raving, I got so fed up I said, ‘Then where do my good qualities come from? Because they’re definitely not from you!’”
“Go, Rose!” Juma said. In the backseat, Jack let out a long slow breath and turned over.
“For my own sanity, I decided I was who I was, and that I didn’t care what she thought anymore. At sixteen, I left home for good.” She paused, fighting to keep her voice cool. “I still miss my sisters.” She hit the power button on the CD player and let Jason Mraz take over. Juma pulled a paperback out of her pocket and hunched down over it, and a couple of CDs later they reached the outskirts of Calico, Mississippi.
Rose shut down Dave Matthews in midgrowl. “Wake up, Jack. We’re here.”
Five minutes later they pulled into the parking lot of a squat, white, asbestos-shingled house with five uncontrolled camellia bushes blooming deeply, ecstatically pink behind a chain-link fence. The house had been converted into a store with a tired-looking sign: DICK’S BOOKS.
“We’re meeting her at a bookstore?” Delight suffused Juma’s voice. “I absolutely 1—” She cut off whatever she was about to say and cast Rose an anxious glance.
“The perfect place to wait,” smiled Rose. “I can spend hours in a bookstore.”
Juma beamed. “I could live in a bookstore.” She stuffed the paperback into her jacket pocket and hopped out of the van.
“We won’t be here long.” Jack let himself out the side door. “I hope.”
Juma scowled. “You have a problem with books?”
“No, I have a problem with waiting for someone who doesn’t show up.”
“That’s a lousy attitude,” Rose said as Juma scurried into the store.
“It’s a realistic one,” Jack replied.
Two hours and several craft books later, Rose had to admit Jack was right. He spent half an hour discussing poetry with Juma before settling down in the magazine section. Juma, alternating between Beowulf and a collection of Restoration plays, seemed entirely engrossed and even happy.
Rose couldn’t concentrate for worrying about the abused woman. After another hour, surfeited with crochet patterns and craft ideas, and aware of the increasingly annoyed glances of the sole clerk manning the almost empty store, she asked Jack, “Have you spoken to Gil again?”
He glanced up from Musician. His eyes were bleak. “No news.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was flat and cold.
“You must have some idea,” Rose insisted. “Some sort of backup plan.”
“When the time comes, I’ll decide.”
She could at least see to other matters. “Juma and I are hungry. How about you? I could pick something up for you.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” He took out his wallet and offered her a fifty. “There’s a burger joint across the road.” After a moment, Rose took the money and went. Jack’s long, slow sigh followed her all the way to the door.
“She made you leave school?”
There, thought Juma, she already doesn’t believe me. Frowning deeply, Rose took a huge bite of her burger. Juma gave her a grossed-out look in return. I want it raw, Rose had told the waiter, an older guy who’d blushed like a kid. If the cook won’t do that, make it barely seared, she’d added, with an emphasis on the barely. Juma began to wonder if Rose was into some sort of kink. Regardless, she exuded something that majorly affected guys.
Whatever. If Rose wanted to kiss random truckers and get crude with over-the-hill waiters, it was her business. Juma’s business was to make use of Rose for as long as possible. Lie to her, or tell the truth? Nobody ever believed the truth. Once they met Grandma, they really didn’t.
But Rose wouldn’t meet Grandma, because Juma was never, ever going back. That thought sent a warm glow through her, from her fingertips all the way to her heart. But she had to play her cards exactly right.
Rose tipped her head to one side, reaching out a hand to finger Juma’s two ties. “Remind me to give you another tie tonight. I’ve got one that suits the green better than the orange you’re wearing, and it’ll work well with your dark hair, too.”
“Thanks.” Juma couldn’t afford to let Rose’s kindness turn her soft. Their food came, and she squeezed a little pile of ketchup onto her plate. She opened her mouth to lie, but the truth came out instead. “On my sixteenth birthday, Grandma locked me in my room and went to the school and unen-rolled me.” It was too much info, but she couldn’t unsay it. Shakily, she smothered the ketchup with Crystal hot sauce and stirred it with a fry.
Rose’s appalled gaze went from the ketchup to Juma’s face. “Why? It makes no sense!”
“It does when you’re warped like Grandma.” She ate the fry. “To go to cosmetology school, I have to have done tenth grade and be at least sixteen. I’m a year ahead, so I already had tenth grade.” More info! Ack! After she’d done so well not telling Jack anything that mattered, this totally sucked. She took a bite of hamburger. Maybe if her mouth were stuffed with food, she wouldn’t blab anymore.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t chew forever. After she swallowed, Rose asked, “Why didn’t you just reenroll yourself?”
“I tried, but they wouldn’t listen. I wish my mother was alive. She would have made them reenroll me.” She made the next bite last, but Rose’s inquiring look didn’t go away, and eventually, Juma had to say something.
“They went on and on about rules and regulations, and how I had to go to a different school on the other side of the parish once I’d left the regular system.” She swirled a fry through the doctored ketchup. “I don’t know if that was true or just bullshit because they’re scared of Grandma.”
“Why would the school system be scared of an old lady?”
“She knows everybody’s dirty secrets. People step carefully around Grandma.” Juma shrugged. “I had no transportation to the other school, so it didn’t matter.”
Except that since she’d left school in the middle of the semester, she’d failed all her classes, majorly skewing her average. This meant she wouldn’t get a scholarship to Hellebore University. She’d been counting on that her entire life.
“Of course it matters,” Rose said. “If you were a year ahead, you must be on the college track.”
Juma nodded glumly. She would get to college if it killed her, even if she had to take the GED and wait a zillion years until they considered her mature. The whole world was in league against anyone who didn’t follow their ridiculous rules, but she wouldn’t knuckle under. If she was ancient before she got her doctorate, so be it. She wouldn’t let Grandma defeat her. She’d do whatever she had to do—no matter what—to win, including keeping her mouth shut about anything that would help identify her.
She polished off her burger, smothered the rest of the fries in ketchup, and finished those, too. Unfortunately, Rose ate slowly, contemplati
vely, as if she savored every bite of that disgustingly bloody meat. Instead of fries, she’d ordered a second burger.
Juma sucked down the rest of her Coke. She got a toothpick and meticulously picked her teeth. She went to the restroom, but she could only spend so long there. When she got back to the table, Rose was still munching away.
“Don’t worry,” Rose said. “We’ll get you enrolled in an alternative school, no problem.”
Oh, crap. Rose actually meant what she was saying. If only—
It all came pouring out. “That’s really sweet of you, but if I try to finish school someplace else, they’ll send for my records, and Grandma will find me and drag me home and lock me up until I agree to be a hairdresser. And what with no sheets to climb down anymore, and the window boarded up and the hole in the wall fixed, and nothing sharp left in my room, I don’t know how I’ll get away again.”
“She can’t lock you up! It’s illegal!” Rose said stupidly.
“That won’t stop her,” Juma said. “It sucks to be in the dark for days.”
That familiar look of disbelief blanketed Rose’s features. Every adult got it sooner or later. Too much truth for them to bear.
Juma stood, putting on her best cocky grin. “Just for future reference, when did you start not believing me?”
Chapter Six
Getting Rose to accept that fifty should have felt like a victory. Instead, her scrutiny and acceptance meant she was considering Jack’s feelings. Bottom line: he owed her even more.
This was getting ridiculous. Unfortunately, that didn’t make it any less painful. Perhaps the smothering necessity of gratitude was similar to the oppression Gil suffered when women succumbed to his voice. His talent helped evaluate rescues on the phone, but he couldn’t carry on a normal relationship with a woman. Bloody gifts. Constantine Du-fray’s telepathic abilities seemed to have backfired on him, too, and as for Rose, she’d lost her entire family because she was a vamp.
A Taste of Love and Evil Page 7