Mary stood back up and turned away. “How about a piece of key lime pie?” She opened the refrigerator. “I found key limes at the big grocery store in Rehoboth.” She pulled a pie from the refrigerator. “I made two. I thought you could take one home. It’s Victor’s favorite.”
“I’d be happy to take a pie home. There’s no telling who will be there. Sometimes I’ve got an extra four or even six for dinner. Of course I never know if Aedan will be home or not.”
“How is Aedan?” Mary took two small plates from the cupboard. “I know he’s got to be upset about that monster’s reappearing here.”
“He is upset,” Peigi agreed, thinking about the last couple of times she had seen Aedan. “But . . . I think he’s handling the pressure pretty well.”
Mary cut into the pie. “You don’t sound so sure.”
Peigi sat back, thoughtfully. “Something’s going on with him. Something other than the case. I just don’t know what.”
“You ask him?” Mary slid a perfect slice of lime green pie with a graham cracker crust onto a plate.
“No.”
“You . . . dig around in his head?”
Peigi glanced at Mary. “Most certainly not. It’s not my place. I think we all need to do a better job of minding our own business in this town and staying out of other people’s heads when we’re not invited.” She paused, knowing there was no need to go off on Mary. Mary was one of the smallest offenders. “I’m sorry. That annoyance wasn’t directed at you, Mary. I’m just on edge about everything lately.” She took a breath. “Aedan will tell me what’s going on when he wants to. If he wants to. When he comes home, my house is supposed to be a haven. He’s supposed to be resting. Recharging his batteries, regaining his chi . . . that sort of thing.” She accepted both plates Mary handed her and placed one on her placemat, one on Mary’s. “ ’Course, I doubt he’s getting too much rest in my house, the way Brian plays those video games all day and night.”
The teakettle whistled, and Mary poured hot water into the teapot. “Aedan mentioned that Brian was having a little difficulty . . . transitioning. Is he doing any better?”
“Yes,” Peigi said, trying to sound positive. She got up to get forks. Then, “No. Not really.” She shook her head. We had a terrible . . . misunderstanding last night. I got upset.” She took two forks from a drawer and sat down again. “I shouldn’t have gotten so upset.” She clenched her fists in her lap. “I just don’t understand him.”
“It’s like that at first. You know that.”
“Not like this.” Peigi sighed. “We’re so far apart. We don’t seem to be able to communicate at all. On any level. The age difference feels overwhelming this time.”
Mary covered the teapot with a quilted green tea cozy that said THE SUNSHINE STATE and carried it to the table.
“And he makes me so angry that I just want to—” Peigi cut herself off, angry for feeling this way about the problem, but not knowing how to change it. Feelings were always like that. No matter how you wanted to feel, you couldn’t control how you actually felt.
“Makes you feel like you want to what?” Mary asked.
Peigi dug her fork into the pie and pushed a cold, tart piece into her mouth. She knew it would be delicious; Mary’s pies were always delicious. But it tasted like stale bread in her mouth. “Do you ever think of . . .” She looked up, knowing she shouldn’t be saying it, but feeling like she had to talk to someone before she burst. “Readjustment?”
Chapter 13
“Readjustment?” Aedan repeated into his cell phone. He lowered his voice and glanced around. He was in the market in town, and he didn’t want anyone to overhear. Fortunately, none of the customers, though all sept members, seemed to be paying any attention to him. “She used the word readjustment?” He put a large jar of chunky peanut butter into his cart.
With Victor in the house, it seemed as though they were going through a grocery cart of food a day. Aedan was trying to make things easier on his aunt in any way he could. He couldn’t solve the problems between her and her husband, but he could shop for groceries.
“That’s what she said,” Mary McCathal repeated.
“I shouldn’t even have called you. You know me. I’m not a tattletale. I try to stay out of other people’s business, but I’m worried, Aedan. I didn’t know who else to call. She sounded serious.”
He turned the corner into the junk food aisle and began to load up: corn chips, potato chips, pretzels . . . and cheddar cheese popcorn. Kaleigh’s request. Apparently, there was no school the following day, and the teens in town were staging an intervention tonight. They were taking Brian’s TV over at precisely 11 P.M. and were having a Harry Potter movie marathon.
“So exactly what did Peigi say about readjustment? ”
“Nothing really. Just that she was considering it. I tried to get her to elaborate, but she changed the subject. Probably because of the look on my face. She wasn’t really asking my opinion. I’m afraid she’s already formed one of her own. You know your Aunt Peigi, she can be as stubborn as a wart on a troll when she wants to be.”
Aedan sighed. This was bad. Bad for Peigi. Bad for the sept. Readjustment just wasn’t done; the Kahills believed it was against God’s will and that there could be serious consequences to the soul. He picked up two jars of salsa. Medium or mild? He added both and one of queso dip to the cart. “I appreciate your calling me about this,” he said, pushing his cart down the aisle.
“I didn’t know what else to do.” She hesitated. “In normal circumstances, I would have talked to Victor, but . . .” She sighed. “Obviously that wouldn’t be appropriate right now.”
“Has she said anything to Brian?”
“I don’t think so.” Mary had sounded sad a moment ago, but now her voice was once again filled with concern for her friend. “I get the impression they’re not talking much right now. She’s very upset about some of Brian’s attitudes and behaviors, but you’re living there so you know that. I don’t know why she’s being so sensitive. These things take time. I tried to tell her that, but she didn’t want to hear it.” She hesitated. “What do you think we should do? She spoke in confidence when she mentioned . . . it.”
“I won’t say a word to her, or anyone else, about our conversation,” Aedan promised. “I’ll just try to feel her out when I have the opportunity. See what’s really going on in that head of hers.”
Mary chuckled. “Good luck with that.”
“Thanks for calling, Mary. I’ll keep you posted.” Aedan rocketed a bag of marshmallows into the cart and disconnected from Mary. He still needed sports drinks, chocolate bars, and graham crackers. Katy and Kaleigh had high hopes for a campfire in the backyard so they could make s’mores. It didn’t seem like a guy thing to him, but if the girls could get Brian off the couch and into the backyard, Aedan was willing to support their efforts with a whole host of high calorie, high sugar-content foods.
As Aedan stood in front of a sea of cookie options, he thought about Peigi. He wanted to tell himself that she wasn’t serious about considering readjustment. He wanted to believe that Peigi was too logical, too responsible to do such a thing. What scared him was that she was also passionate. Passionate about her centuries-long love affair with Brian.
He grabbed a box of graham crackers. Honey cinnamon? He returned those to the shelf. Chocolate graham crackers? Low fat? Where the hell were the plain old graham crackers?
His phone rang and half expecting it to be Mary again, he answered it. “Can you buy plain old graham crackers?” he asked.
“I . . . I suppose so,” Mark answered.
Aedan scowled and threw a box of honey graham crackers into the grocery cart. He didn’t know if he had everything he needed. What he did know was that he had completed his shopping experience. Next time, he’d just give one of the girls fifty bucks and send them shopping. Less frustrating, and from the look of the cart, it would have come out cheaper.
“Sorry, I thought you were so
meone else,” Aedan said into the phone. “Did you get to speak to Maria Tolliver?”
“Nope.” Mark sounded tired and frustrated.
Aedan headed for the checkout line. “I thought her doctor said she could talk with you today.”
“He did. But by the time I reached Christiana, her parents had gotten her a lawyer, and they said she wouldn’t be speaking to the police again without representation present.”
“What? Why the hell not? She didn’t do anything wrong.” Aedan grabbed a bag of mini Snickers bars and tossed them into the cart. For himself, not the teens. “She’s not being charged with anything. She doesn’t need a lawyer.”
“I explained that to her parents. For forty-five minutes.”
“Does she . . . do they realize this guy is going to attack another woman? That what she says might—”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” Mark interrupted. “And her parents are having her transferred to their local hospital, so if I do want to interview her, with her lawyer—”
“You’ll be driving on the Garden State Parkway,” Aedan finished for him. He began to load his items onto the conveyer belt at a register. “So you’ve got nothing.”
“Nothing but what she told the uniform in the ambulance on the way to the hospital the night it happened. She was walking on the street, stopped to look at the heel on her shoe, next thing she knows, he’s dragging her off behind a Dumpster. Oh! The one new thing I did get was that, according to her mother, he put something smelly over her face that made her woozy temporarily.”
“He, meaning Jay.”
“Yes.”
“You think she was confused? She might have been given oxygen in the ambulance.”
“The mother seemed sure it was her attacker.”
“So she was unconscious when the assailant raped and cut her?” Aedan asked, putting the marshmallows on top of the crackers, instead of the other way around, to send them down the belt. “That doesn’t sound like our guy.”
“She wasn’t unconscious per se when he did what he did,” Mark explained.
Aedan sighed. “Just more easily controlled.”
“And quieter. Our door-to-door got a report after Teesha’s attack that someone in an apartment off the parking lot thought she heard a scream about the time of the attack. She actually considered calling the police, but her boyfriend insisted it was the neighbors’ TV. Apparently over the winter she had called in a report of a woman screaming—”
“And it was a neighbor’s TV?”
“Better,” Mark intoned. “It was the neighbors making whoopee.”
Aedan grinned. He was dry, his cousin; he still liked him. “Mark. People don’t say ‘making whoopee’ anymore.”
“Just repeating what was told to me.”
Aedan watched the last of his groceries ease down the conveyor belt, and he pulled his wallet from his jacket. “So you’ll keep me up to date?”
“Will do,” Mark said. “Anything on your end? Got both of your bozos for crystal meth possession, by the way.”
“They weren’t my bozos. And I can pretty much guarantee you, Jay isn’t on meth. Or any other mind-altering drug.”
“Yeah. He’s a creep all on his own.” Mark hesitated. “You know it’s not like me to stick my nose into other people’s personal business, but that woman at the bar. The one I interviewed. Tell me you’re not—”
“That whole not sticking your nose in other people’s business,” Aedan interrupted him. “One of your finest qualities, Mark. Talk to you soon.”
They disconnected. Aedan paid for the groceries and then headed home. The evening was quiet, until the teens started arriving around nine-thirty. Aedan stuck around to say hello and then wandered around the house, looking for Peigi. He found her outside in the backyard. She was already in her flannel bathrobe and slippers, but wore a down vest over the ensemble, to ward off the evening chill. A storm was brewing; Aedan could smell the rain coming.
“Don’t know if they’re going to get a chance to sit around a fire tonight,” he said. Peigi was carrying sticks from a pile behind the shed to a place in the middle of the yard. “Looks like it might rain.” He gazed off into the dark western sky.
Peigi didn’t say anything; she just started dumping sticks into his arms.
“I was going to head out for a while. If you don’t need me here.” He chuckled. “I think Katy and Kaleigh have got things pretty much under control in the house. They’ve got some kind of countdown going, giving Brian ample time to prepare to have to turn off his game.”
Peggy pointed at the pile of sticks she’d already made in the middle of the yard, and Aedan carried his bundle over. He dropped the armful and was just stepping back when searing flames shot up from the pile, into the sky, a good twenty-five-feet high.
“Damn, Peigi. A little warning, maybe?” He rubbed his forehead, taking another step back, the temperature was so intense. “I think you singed my eyebrows.”
“They want to make s’mores. You need good coals. The fire needs to burn up, then down.” She walked back to the shed and came up with a decent-sized log. She offered it to him.
“You’re not going to light this while I’m carrying it, are you?” he joked.
She didn’t even crack a smile.
Peigi had pyrokinetic abilities. She could light a bonfire in her yard or throw flaming fireballs across a battlefield with just a thought. The gift wasn’t as helpful on the domestic front as it had been in war, but it was nice to never need a lighter to light a birthday candle.
Aedan carried the log to the fire and dropped it in. Peigi added another and stood beside him watching the flames lick at the dry wood, then pop and snap. The smell was heavenly.
“What’s the fascination?” Aedan mused. “With fire? Not just for vampires, humans, too.”
“Werewolves don’t like fire,” she observed.
He thought for a moment. “Good point.”
She glanced at him. “I don’t know what you’re doing every night or who you’re doing it with, but I do know you shouldn’t be.”
He glanced at her. “I’m working the Jay case.”
“You didn’t smell like serial killer last night when you came home. You smelled like human female. It’s wrong, and you know it’s wrong. Human/vampire relationships never work out. They don’t understand us. They can’t understand us.”
He stared into the fire, trying not to let the guilt take hold in his chest. He wanted to go to Dallas tonight. He wanted to see her. Hold her. Make love to her.
“If it’s sex and blood you’re looking for, there’s plenty of willing women in town,” Peigi observed.
“It’s not like that with her.”
“It always ends up being like that. We’re vampires. We drink blood. We crave human blood most of all. The cravings never go away, Aedan. You know it. I know it. Sometimes those feelings sleep.” She crossed her arms stubbornly over her bosom. “But they never go away. We all fight the burning desire for human blood. Even old ladies like me.”
Aedan grasped a stick protruding from the fire and used it to push one of the logs. “This woman, Aunt Peigi . . . she’s special.”
“She’s human.”
He exhaled. “Yes, she is . . . I think.”
“You think?” Peigi stared at him.
“You ever know any witches?”
“A couple. An ugly cuss in Cork. A couple in London. And there’s that coven in Dover.”
He smiled. “I mean, have you ever known one? Like been friends with one?”
“Witch is a broad term. Humans like to throw it around.”
“I don’t think she’s really a witch. She doesn’t cast spells.”
“Sounds like she’s cast one over you.”
He smirked. “She has . . . a kind of sight.”
“I don’t care if she flies on a solar-powered broomstick.” Peigi walked back to the woodpile, grabbed another log, carried it to the fire pit, and tossed it in. “She’ll on
ly leave you and break your heart, just like the last one.”
“Peigi, that’s hardly fair.” He looked at her. “Madeleine was murdered. She didn’t leave me.”
“A broken heart is a broken heart.” She turned and started for the back porch. “Throw a few more logs on before you go. Don’t worry about waking me when you come home, whatever time the cat drags you in . . . or kicks you out.” She opened the back door. “I have a feeling this bunch will keep me up all night, anyway.”
The door slammed shut behind her, and Aedan did as he was told.
“Tat doesn’t think I should let you upstairs again,” Dallas said, tossing Aedan her bar rag.
It was midnight, and the crowd was light. A couple sat at one table, engrossed in an argument. Three young guys were laughing and carrying on and playing pool. Four women sat around a table commiserating on someone’s breakup with her significant other. Them, and a guy and two girls at the bar, and that was it.
Aedan eyed Tat, who was rinsing glasses at the sink under the bar and racking them to carry them back to the dishwasher. Aedan wasn’t sure if he was supposed to comment or not. After all, Tat was standing right there. He’d obviously heard Dallas.
Aedan played it safe, kept quiet, and began to wipe down the bar. He assumed that was why Dallas had passed the rag to him. She was putting him to work, which he kind of liked. He wasn’t just a customer anymore. Or the guy she’d had sex with on her couch the night before. He was something more to her. What, he didn’t know.
“Tat doesn’t think good-looking guys like you can be trusted. He thinks you’re a love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy.” She was lining up liquor bottles along the back of the bar, putting them in order for the next day’s business: whiskeys together, vodkas together, and so on.
“I tried to tell him that was exactly what I was looking for,” Dallas continued. “Someone to love me and then leave me the hell alone.” She glanced over her shoulder at Aedan.
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