by Saint,Nic
“Just make yourself comfortable, and don’t worry about my son,” her hostess added before Harry could pose the question. “I’ll deal with Darian.”
Harry had no doubt that she would.
“Oh, before I forget, your uncle told me he’s sending someone over to handle your protection. No idea who he is, as he refused to give me a name. He simply said he wouldn’t take up any space at all. Any idea what he meant?”
“Not a clue,” she said with a frown.
“Well, then let’s simply forget about it for the nonce,” Emmanuella said airily, and breezed out of the room after a cheerful, “Dinner is at six, and I fully expect you to be there and bring your best appetite, Harry!”
She yelled back, “I will, Mrs. Sheetenhelm.”
“Em, please! Just call me Em!”
Harry shook her head. Things were definitely moving at rather a fast clip these last couple of days. She still worried whether Darian would approve of this sudden change of plans, but felt she wasn’t in a position to refuse. And even if she was, Emmanuella Sheetenhelm had more or less steamrollered her into this, in the nicest possible way. And if Uncle Curtis thought this was a good idea, it probably was.
She dumped her suitcase on the bed and opened it. She hadn’t even bothered unpacking back in Darian’s apartment, as if she’d known she wouldn’t be staying there. His mother was right, though. The place needed livening up. Now it was as if nobody lived there, which was probably the case. And if there was one thing that was good about this new arrangement it was that Jingoist might not even find her here. Then again, if he was immortal, and possessed who knew what other powers, he might have other ways of finding people, no matter how much they tried to hide from him.
She wondered briefly who this person could be that Uncle Curtis was sending in to help protect her, but then decided not to dwell on it. If and when he arrived, she’d deal with him. Now she had other things to worry about, like that ghost hunting thing Alice had talked about. Yesterday she hadn’t even believed in ghosts, and now she’d just applied to become part of a wraith wrangling unit, whatever that might be.
Oh, well. Since she was out of a job anyway, she might just as well put in her application. It couldn’t hurt, and would probably be loads more interesting than flipping burgers at Byron Burgers or working as a cashier at Sainsbury’s.
It was then that she heard the commotion at the door, and she hurried over, grabbing whatever object she could find, which turned out to be a small black figurine of a man and woman locked in some convoluted Kama Sutra position. She fully expected Jingoist to have arrived, and she was prepared to battle him fiercely.
Chapter 28
When Darian had arrived home, he’d discovered to his extreme distress that Tilda was on the verge of tears, telling an incoherent story about Harry having fled the nest, unable to stop her. And when finally those fateful two words, “Your mother!” had escaped her lips, she’d fearfully looked into Darian’s eyes, fully expecting his wrath. So Chief Whitehouse had done the impossible: he’d reached out across the Atlantic and had involved… Mother.
“She came and took Harry away, Darian,” Tilda said. “There was nothing I could do to stop her. You know how she is.”
Yes, indeed he knew how Mother was. After all, he’d lived with her for the first twenty of his thirty-five years on this planet, and had experienced her iron will firsthand throughout all of those. For the last fifteen years, he’d been relatively free of her, each going about their own lives. So when she’d decided to take the apartment next door, he’d protested vehemently, but at the end of the day there was nothing he could do about it. This was, as she was happy to point out, a free country, after all, and she could take any apartment she damn well pleased, whether he liked it or not.
After calming down Tilda and assuring her that her job wasn’t in jeopardy, he stormed over to the apartment next door and jabbed his finger on the bell, banging the door simultaneously. When Mother finally opened, a smile playing about her lips, she sweetly inquired, “Something I can do for you, Darian, darling?”
“Where is she?” he demanded as he stormed past his mother and into the apartment. He turned on his mother. “You had no right to—”
“Free Harry from that prison you call an apartment? I had every right. In fact it was the humane thing to do. Amnesty International should give me a commendation. The poor girl was simply expiring in there, dying a slow and gruesome death from exposure to your bad taste and drabness. She’s much better off over here!” she called after him when he went in search of Harry.
“Harry!” he called out. “Show yourself!”
And show herself she did, armed with a small statuette of two lovers entwined in a tight embrace. She was heaving the work of dubious artistry high above her head, ready to crash it down on his skull, before he could jump clear of the attack and cry, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Oops!” she yelped, but the momentum carried her on and she was about to be hurled face forward into one of Mother’s hideous antique cabinets. In the last possible second he stepped in and deftly caught her in his arms.
For a moment, she rested there snugly, staring up at him like a rabbit caught in the headlights, and he was just thinking how well she fit in his arms when he realized the situation was awkward to say the least. Here she was, one of his charges, and he was taking advantage of her in the worst possible way. He quickly released her from his grasp, therefore, restoring her to perpendicularity. “I, erm, I was surprised to find that you’d left my apartment, so naturally—”
“Naturally you assumed the poor girl had found more suitable lodgings.” He looked up and found, to his annoyance, that Mother had joined them.
“Did you ever stop to think there might be a perfectly compelling reason I had Harry put up at my apartment, guarded by a trained police officer?”
“You can’t really call Tilda Fret a police officer, darling,” said his mother quite infuriatingly. “More like a glorified traffic cop, don’t you think?”
“Constable Fret is a member in good standing of the Metropolitan Police Service,” he said through gritted teeth, “and as such trained to protect members of the public from any manner of danger.” He gestured wildly. “What are you going to do when some mad maniac comes barging in here and pulls a gun on you or worse?”
“I’ll just have to dissuade him from doing a silly thing like that,” Mother riposted.
“Erm, can I say something?” Harry intervened. A blush was mantling her cheeks and she’d never looked prettier, Darian thought. Not that this observation had any bearing on the situation, of course, but she was nevertheless a sight for sore eyes. And since he was dealing with his mother, his eyes were very sore indeed, as was the rest of him.
“This was actually not your mother’s idea,” she said, “but my uncle’s.”
“That’s right!” Mother chimed in. “Curtis Whitehouse called me out of the blue—you remember Curtis, darling, he and Demitria simply loved my dinner parties—and said his niece was in trouble and could I help her out. Of course I said yes even before he stopped talking. Anything for a dear old friend.”
Darian pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to get his temper under control. “No, I do not remember Curtis and Demitria, Mother.”
“You don’t? But they were always the life and soul of my parties, darling!”
Harry frowned at this. Like Darian, she seemed to have her doubts that Curtis Whitehouse could ever be the life and soul of any party he attended.
“I don’t particularly like to keep track of all of your friends, Mother.”
“Well, you should,” she snapped. “Your father always used to say my dinner parties were what put the heart in Scotland Yard.” She turned to Harry. “Darian’s father was commissioner of the Met for years, and my parties were where it all happened. Where like met like and unlike alike.” She paused, the memories of those halcyon days momentarily staging a comeback. Then she snapped
out of it. “Anyway, Curtis asked me to put Harry up for a couple of nights, and of course I said yes.”
“She was perfectly safe in my apartment, Mother,” Darian pointed out.
“Yes, but not safe from esthetic distress, darling. You have to admit your apartment is an interior designer’s worst nightmare. Just looking at your wallpaper is enough to plunge anyone into a deep depression.”
He experienced a sudden twitch in his fingers and discovered it was the urge to strangle his mother right then and there. “My wallpaper is not what matters, Mother. What matters is that Harry is protected from harm.”
“And you don’t think I can protect her as well as you can? I can shoot a gun. In fact I still have the cute little one with the pearl handle your father got me.”
“That’s just a replica, Mother. It doesn’t even have real bullets.”
“And whose fault is that? Just give me a box of bullets and I’m set!”
Seeing as the discussion was going nowhere, Darian simply took Harry by the elbow and started steering her to the door.
“Where are you taking her?” Mother cried, dismayed.
“Back to where she came from,” he grunted.
“Erm, if it’s all the same to you, Darian, I’d much rather stay here,” Harry suddenly piped up.
Gobsmacked, he stared at her. He’d never experienced the ground falling out from beneath his feet but now he did. It was an odd sensation. Quite novel and disconcerting. “You—you would?” he asked.
She nodded, chewing her bottom lip and staring at him with those big golden eyes of hers.
He was going to ask her why, but pride kept him mum. It wasn’t as if Tilda Fret couldn’t keep an eye on her if she was in Mother’s apartment. And it wasn’t as if he could protect her if she was holed up in there since he was rarely home, reason told him. Still. Something fierce and possessive wanted to sling her over his shoulder and bodily carry her into his apartment, lock her up and throw away the key. He’d never had this particular instinct before, and confronted with the triple threat of his mother’s scowl, Harry’s pained expression and his own odd response to her, he finally relented.
“Oh, very well,” he grumbled. “If you really want to stay here…”
“Yes, I would,” Harry confirmed again.
Shaking his head in dismay, he turned to the door and stormed out, for the first time in a long time feeling very confused. And after issuing strict instructions to Tilda that she was to guard the door to his mother’s apartment with her life, he retreated into his own apartment to lick his wounds.
What had just happened? he wondered as he plunked down on his black leather sofa and stared at his black wallpaper, sipping from a bourbon placed on his glass and chrome side table. He’d never had this peculiar response to a woman before. It was almost as if… But that couldn’t be, of course. No, out of the question. When Isabelle died almost fifteen years ago, he’d sworn never to go through the terrible ordeal of caring deeply for a person only to have her snatched from his life again. It was not something he wanted to relive.
And then there was the memory of his wife, of course. On her grave he’d sworn a solemn oath he’d never love another and he never had. He’d never even looked at a woman since her tragic death. And now this. He shook his head. Nothing was going on between him and Harry. Nothing at all. He simply felt protective of her, that was all. She was a potential victim and it was his responsibility to make sure she was safe and came to no harm.
But as he gazed around himself, seeing his apartment as if for the first time, he realized that his mother was right. It truly was a very depressing place. He’d never noticed before since all he did was come here to sleep, work occupying his life from the moment he got up in the morning until the minute he placed his weary head on his pillow at night.
Was it perhaps time to add to the quality of his life by giving in to his mother’s demands that he gut the place and have it redone completely, turning it into something that resembled a home? He sighed. The fact that he was starting to consider his mother’s wishes showed how far gone he really was.
No, his mother was mistaken, of course. There was nothing wrong with his apartment, nothing wrong with his life, and he didn’t care about Harry any more than he’d ever cared about anyone who’d briefly stayed at his apartment, safe under his protection. Soon this case would be solved, this Jingoist locked up in prison, and Henrietta McCabre would be a distant memory, like all his other charges.
Oddly enough, when he finally closed his eyes and sleep found him that night, all he could dream about was Harry’s smile and Harry’s pancakes filling his stomach even as her lively banter cheered up his lonely existence…
Chapter 29
Harry glanced at her phone. Just before Darian had barged into his mother’s apartment, she’d received a text from Uncle Curtis, which read, ‘Stay at Em’s tonight—DON’T GO OUT!’ These last words were apparently very important, for he’d repeated them twice, to make sure she got the gist.
She felt sorry about leaving Darian’s place. Even though it wasn’t the coziest place in the world, he was still the policeman assigned to her protection. And if she was absolutely honest with herself, she’d envisioned their time together as potentially leading to a deeper friendship and… perhaps even something more.
She could have cooked them a nice meal or they could have ordered takeout and then they could have chatted about the case over a glass of wine. Get to know each other a little better. Find out what made Inspector Darian Watley tick. And then there was the murder investigation, of course. She was quite certain that given the right circumstances he’d have been ready to spill the beans on the progress he’d made. What had he discovered at Lakesha Fenton’s place? What were his thoughts on the state of the investigation?
Emmanuella Sheetenhelm, on the other hand, wouldn’t know the first thing about the Clavicule Necroire case. As a matter of fact she was a little afraid of the woman. She was nothing short of formidable. If you’re the kind of person who can make Darian Watley back off, you’ve got what it takes to be a Roman gladiator, ready to enter the Colosseum and slay a dozen without batting an eye.
But then there was Uncle Curtis’s message to take into consideration, and she’d always trusted him as having her best interests at heart, no matter what. So if he told her to stay at Em’s place that was exactly what she would do, even if it meant disappointing Darian.
And she was just about to respond to her uncle’s mysterious message when her phone rang and she saw that an unknown party was trying to reach her. Curious, she picked up.
“Henrietta McCabre? Miss Henrietta McCabre?”
“Yes, this is she,” she replied a little warily.
“Ah, I’m so glad I caught you, Harry—can I call you Harry? My name is Brian. Brian Rutherford. And I just got off the phone with your cousin Alice Whitehouse. She told me you’re interested in my Wraith Wranglers project.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I am,” she said, her apprehension instantly falling away.
He chuckled. “That’s great. Well, as Alice must have told you I’m running a smallish project where people like yourself—blessed with the unique gift of communicating with the dead—are sent in to help those who’ve recently joined their league. Help them come to terms with the fate that’s befallen them.”
“You mean, people who have been murdered… recruit you?” she asked, wondering how that worked practically. Ghosts probably didn’t have access to their cell phones or email accounts, nor did they use the classifieds.
“Yeah, that’s what it comes down to, more or less. You see, ghosts experience the world differently from the way you and I do, Harry. For instance, there are no space boundaries for them. They can be in Buffalo one minute and in Tokyo the next. And believe you me, since I launched this Wraith Wranglers project they’ve been hounding me pretty consistently.”
“I can imagine,” she said, envisioning a scene where Brian was being stalked by hundreds of gh
osts, eager to make him the champion of their cause.
“Yeah, it’s been a trip. Fortunately I don’t have to do this all by myself.”
“No, Alice told me she and Fee Bell and their friends have joined you.”
“Yes, they have, and a good thing, too, for they’ve done an amazing job so far. Thing is, they’re not the ones who handle the requests. For that purpose I have a person who’s in the same unique situation as the ghosts themselves.”
“You mean you have a ghost assistant?”
He chuckled again. “I wouldn’t exactly call him my assistant. He’d be deeply offended if I did. But yes, he’s a ghost, and he does play interference between myself and the ghost world. He’s actually my boss,” he said, his voice sobering. “Peverell Wardop. You might have heard of him?”
“I haven’t, actually.” Then some of Alice’s words came back to her. “You mean the man whose company you run?” She remembered Alice telling her Brian was president of the Wardop Group, some big international company.
“Yeah, he’s the founder and still very much the company president. I just do as I’m told. And as part of the bargain he helps me to help ghosts. Which is something that has grown on him, for at first he wasn’t all that eager.”
She waited for him to continue his story, but there was a long pregnant pause before he spoke again. “Harry, I understand you’re in a bit of a situation right now, am I right?”
“Yes, I most certainly am. I’m being hounded by a person who apparently is… immortal.” She found it weird to speak the words, even though Alice had assured her Brian would understand. And the fact that he was working with ghosts proved he must have an open mind about the strange and unnatural.
“I see. At least one thing works to your advantage: he’s not dead yet.”
“And apparently he never will be,” she added.
“Exactly. Which means he’s still bound by the laws that govern the world of the living: he can’t get at you if he doesn’t know where you are.”