Unbroken Vows

by Christine Pope

  “Good,” Celeste had said. “Because I’m just buried trying to get this costume done on time.”

  “What is it?” Rosemary asked. “I’m dying to know.”

  “State secret,” her sister replied. “You’ll see on Wednesday when we come by for the trunk-or-treat.”

  Because obviously, Celeste wouldn’t be working that night, since she and Kevin had to take Tyler around to all the shops. That was fine, since Rosemary loved working during the Village’s Halloween festivities. Isabel would be there, too, since it got so busy that they really needed to have two people around to man the store and hand out candy.

  “All right,” Rosemary replied with an exaggerated sigh. “It had better be spectacular.”

  “It will.”

  They’d ended the call before Rosemary could ask whether Celeste had heard anything about Isabel’s supposed date with Fred Peñasco, but that was probably fine. She didn’t want to turn into a complete gossip…although on the other hand, she was kind of dying to know how Michael’s hacker friend had convinced her sworn-off-men big sister to go out on an actual date.

  And now it was just Rosemary in the store, since Mondays tended to be slow and there was no reason for them to have two people working. She could admit to herself that she felt a little nervous being there alone, although that was silly. No one was going to come in here and do anything, not with the busy nail salon next door and people coming and going from the law office on the other side of the shop. Despite these reassurances, she found herself looking over her shoulder more than once, as if she somehow expected Caleb Lockwood to come through the front door just as he had a few weeks ago, intent on turning her world upside down.

  There was no Caleb, however. Just a steadier stream of customers than she’d thought there would be, although she supposed she should have remembered that Halloween week was often a little busier than other off-season shopping periods, mostly because people tended to be more interested in anything that seemed occult or supernatural in the days leading up to the holiday. At any rate, she had enough people shopping for books and Tarot cards and incense and smudge sticks that the day passed more quickly than she’d thought it would. In fact, she was so busy that she didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about calling the deli down the street to have someone deliver her lunch, the way she’d promised Will she would. Back before she’d had the specter of the Greencastle demons hanging over her, she’d wait for a big enough break in the steady stream of customers for her to hang up the “back at one” sign on the front door and slip out, but that wasn’t happening this week.

  Six o’clock came quickly, and she locked up and headed out, grateful that Will would be home already and waiting for her. In fact, he’d promised to make dinner because she had to work later than he did, for which she was grateful. She didn’t mind cooking, but as someone who’d lived on her own for the past five years, it was kind of nice to know that she’d get home and not have to worry about figuring what to eat.

  As she headed out of the parking lot, she realized she was already thinking of Will’s house as “home.” Maybe that was a little premature, but she couldn’t deny the feeling. Which meant…what, exactly? Her own house was sitting empty, but she hadn’t lived there for several months anyway, thanks to having to escape the construction next door. It was way too early to be thinking about getting rid of the place and making her arrangement with Will more formal, but the situation would have to be addressed at some point.

  Don’t think about selling it, then, she told herself. Instead, you could get a management company and rent the place out.

  That would be a good interim solution, assuming she could find renters who would overlook the noise and dust from the massive remodel going on next door. However, house rentals in Glendora were in short supply, so she had a feeling that wasn’t as big a problem as she first thought.

  She filed the idea away for future reference. It was something she and Will could discuss after Halloween. Maybe it was silly, but she’d started looking at the day as the dividing line between “now” and “then,” as though anything that was going to happen would have happened by then, and afterward she could get on with the rest of her life.

  Or maybe not so silly. Audrey Barrett might have come to her psychic powers later in life than most, but they were strong. Rosemary had been around enough clairvoyants to be able to tell when someone was faking, and Audrey hadn’t been faking that strange spell she’d experienced the day before last. For just a few seconds, the veil had parted and allowed her to see into the future. Not with any detail, but just enough to let her know something was going to happen on Halloween.

  In a way, it made sense. In the United States, Halloween was a fun holiday, a chance to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating — or, if you were too old for that sort of thing, to put on a costume and go to a party or out to club or whatever. But Rosemary and all those who followed the older religions knew it was far more than that. It was Samhain, the night when the veil between this world and the next was at its thinnest, when strange powers awakened and many possibilities presented themselves…not all of them benign. If something was going to happen, that would be the night for it.

  All right, they would just stay on their guard and keep an eye out for any possible demonic manifestations — or part-demon meddling. She’d already told Audrey and Michael about the trunk-or-treat in downtown Glendora the night before Halloween, but Rosemary thought it would probably be a good idea to get together on the holiday itself. They could go to the festivities in Finkbiner Park and then out for a late dinner afterward. Maybe she could convince Michael to do the whole Exorcist thing for his costume, since Will didn’t seem terribly down with that idea.

  When she got to the house, a warm, savory aroma met her nose as soon as she opened the front door. Whatever Will had been up to in the kitchen, it smelled amazing.

  “I’m home,” she called out as she came inside and locked the door behind her, then made a detour to drop her purse off in the bedroom.

  “In the kitchen,” he called back.

  Sure enough, he was standing in front of the stove, wearing a crazy apron printed to look like Boba Fett’s Mandalorian armor, stirring a pot.

  Despite the troubled thoughts that had passed through her mind on the drive home, she couldn’t help but grin at the getup. “Nice apron,” she remarked as she went over and planted a kiss on his cheek. He’d gotten a little stubbly during the day, so she could feel the roughness of his beard beneath her lips, but she didn’t mind too much.

  “You have a problem with Boba Fett?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “None at all,” Rosemary replied. “He’s pretty badass. I guess I just didn’t expect to see you channeling your inner Mandalorian while stirring a pot of….” She had to let the comment trail off there, since although whatever Will was cooking definitely smelled great, she couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

  “Bouillabaisse,” he supplied. “I suppose I should have asked you if you had any shellfish allergies before I started throwing this together.”

  “No food allergies at all,” she told him. “I hardly ever eat red meat, and I try not to do much dairy, but those are just diet choices, not because I have an allergy.”

  “Good to know. This is almost ready — I’m just waiting for the rice to finish.” He lifted his chin in the direction of a small rice cooker that sat on the counter opposite where he stood.

  “Perfect. Should we have a salad with this?”

  “If you want. Do you mind throwing one together?”

  “No, or I wouldn’t have asked.”

  She went over to the fridge and got out the bag of mixed salad greens they’d bought at TJ’s the day before, dumped some in a bowl, and then threw in a bunch of grape tomatoes and sprinkled vinaigrette over everything. Since they didn’t have any croutons, there wasn’t much else to do except take the bowl out to the dining room table, which had already been set.

  When she c
ame back into the kitchen, Will was scooping the rice out of the cooker and into a bright blue bowl. “Want me to get that?” she inquired.

  “Thanks. I just have to transfer the bouillabaisse to a bowl, and then we’re set.”

  She took the bowl of rice into the dining room and set it down by the salad, then took a seat in the chair to Will’s right. He’d already opened a bottle of wine — some kind of red blend they’d also gotten at TJ’s — so after he came in with the main course, there really wasn’t much left to do except pour the wine into their waiting glasses and then dish up a little bit of everything.

  One mouthful told Rosemary the bouillabaisse tasted as good as it smelled. “This is incredible,” she said. “I had no idea you could cook like this.”

  He gave a modest shrug. “It’s not Cordon Bleu or anything. But I’ve taught myself to cook a few things over the years, and I wanted to have something nice for your first day back to work.”

  “I wasn’t away from work for that long,” she pointed out.

  “I know. Still….” The word lingered on the air for a moment, and he reached for his glass of wine. “It was kind of a big step after everything you’ve been through.”

  Now it was her turn to lift her shoulders. “Maybe. I guess I really hadn’t thought about it that way. But I have to admit that it’s nice to come home to something like this.”

  Will’s eyes met hers, intent, piercing. Clearly, he hadn’t missed the way she’d said “home.” However, he seemed to decide it was better not to comment on the remark, because he said, “How was work?”

  “Fine,” she replied, letting the moment slip past. “Busy. Which was good, because I didn’t have much time to stop and worry about anything. But also quiet — nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “That’s good to hear.” He sipped some wine, then added, “It seems as if they really have backed off.”

  “I hope so,” Rosemary said, although she knew she wasn’t quite so sanguine about the situation. “Maybe they’re trying to figure out what to do next.”

  “Or deciding that it’s just not worth the effort.”

  Once again, she guessed that was more wishful thinking than anything else. On the other hand, maybe she was being too much of a pessimist about all this. The demons had already proven that their decisions and thought processes could be downright whimsical at times, certainly not anything that followed normal human logic. It could be that they’d decided to cut their losses and focus on something else. If that turned out to be the case, she’d certainly be grateful.

  “Since everything’s quiet,” she said, “we need to figure out your Halloween costume. It can do double duty both on the night of the trunk-or-treat and on Halloween itself. And we need to get Audrey and Michael working on something for themselves.”

  His left eyebrow assumed an amused tilt. “I don’t think they came all the way to California to spend time working on Halloween costumes.”

  “No, but we just agreed that the demons seem to be lying low, so Audrey and Michael have the time to come up with something. I mean, some people do dress in civvies for these things, but you’ll see way more costumes than not.”

  “All right,” Will replied, throwing up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll give Michael a call after dinner.”

  “And figure out what you’re going to wear,” Rosemary said, since she didn’t want him to think that just because he’d promised to call Michael, Will was off the hook.

  “Something simple, please. I’m not much of a costume kind of guy.”

  What about that getup you were wearing in church? That’s not a costume? she thought, although she didn’t think asking those questions out loud would score her any points. Will didn’t consider his vestments a costume, but rather an outward symbol of his holy office in the church. “What, you don’t want me to order you a full set of Mandalorian armor off Amazon?” she teased instead, and was rewarded with a flash of a smile.

  “Too hard to go to the bathroom.”

  “True.” A complication she hadn’t really stopped to think about, but which seemed obvious after Will had pointed it out. “Cowboy?”

  “Maybe,” he allowed, expression guarded.

  A thought popped into her head. “Ooh, even better — a cowboy like Wyatt Earp in Tombstone. You know, one of those long black frock coats and a black hat. That would be sexy.”

  “That sounds kind of complicated,” he replied. “Also, Halloween is only three days away. How are you going to put something like that together on such short notice?”

  “Don’t you know you can get pretty much anything online with rush shipping?” she returned, and he smiled in a sort of deprecating way, as if admitting defeat.

  “I’m not much of a shopper.”

  “Well, I’ll figure it out,” Rosemary said. “I usually dress as a gypsy, but if I really can get a costume like that together for you, then maybe I’ll be a saloon girl this year.”

  An interested light danced in his eyes. “That sounds interesting.”

  “Ah’ll see what I can rustle up, Will Gordon,” she told him, adopting a fake drawl, and the twitch she’d spotted at the corner of his mouth turned into a full-blown grin.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  They chatted some more about the festivities in Glendora — including Will giving her the rundown on the sizes she’d need if she wanted to order any costume pieces for him — and came up with a few options for dinner on Halloween, depending on what Michael and Audrey were in the mood for. After their meal, Rosemary helped Will clear the table, but he told her he’d do the rest of the cleanup so she could get on with her shopping. Just as she’d thought, there were several websites that offered the kind of Wild West outfits she was thinking of, sites that catered to re-enactors and people who did cowboy shooting.

  It was a good thing her expenses tended to be low, because she went a little crazy and did some serious damage to her credit card between all the items she was ordering and the rush shipping she had to pay for on top of everything else. Rosemary wasn’t quite sure why she’d decided to go all out this year. Maybe it was relief over escaping the Greencastle demons — coupled with a desire to focus on anything other than the horrible secret about her parentage they’d revealed — or maybe it was simply that this would be the first time she’d really been part of a couple at Halloween, the first chance she’d had to choose matching costumes so she and Will would truly look like they belonged together.

  Whatever the reason, she was sort of glad he didn’t come to check on her while she shopped. In fact, he was just drying his hands on a dishtowel when she came into the kitchen, all signs of meal prep cleared from the counters.

  “Done shopping?” he asked.

  “Yes, and it’ll all be here on Wednesday morning. I had everything delivered to the store, since we’ll both be at work and there wouldn’t be anyone here to sign for the packages.”

  “‘Packages’?” he repeated, looking slightly alarmed.

  She shrugged. “Well, I had to shop around a little and get stuff from a few different places. Luckily, they’re all located either here in California or in Arizona, so it’s not like anything had to be sent from the other side of the country.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Relieved that he hadn’t asked any probing questions about the amount of money she’d spent on their costumes, she asked, “Any chance you can get away early on Wednesday? That way, you can meet me at the shop and get changed there. The trunk-or-treat doesn’t start until five-thirty.”

  “I can arrange that.” He bent and kissed her, a gentle brush of his lips against her cheek. Even so, that light touch was enough to get her blood racing. She remembered how they’d had sex on the couch the night before like a couple of horny teenagers, and how amazing it had been, even though the sex had been hard and fast, with no real foreplay. Yes, Will was unbelievably tender with her — but he also knew how to rock her world.

  “Good,” she said, then went on he
r tiptoes and kissed him for real, a deep kiss, their tongues touching, her breasts rubbing against his chest as she wrapped her arms around him. “Now, let me thank you properly for that amazing dinner.”

  Tuesday morning, Will had a meeting with All Saints’ senior priest and several of the deacons so they could start planning for the busy upcoming holiday season. Because he knew he’d be occupied for most of the hours leading up until noon, he’d put his phone in airplane mode so he wouldn’t be interrupted. Once the meeting was over and he’d returned to his office, he got the phone out of his pocket and winced a little when he unlocked it. Two missed calls and five missed texts…all of them from Michael. But being Michael, he never said why he was trying to get in touch with Will. All the texts and messages simply said, “Call me when you get this.”

  Will glanced at the clock. A little past noon. There really wasn’t time for him to drive out to Glendora to have lunch with Rosemary — or for her to come here to Pasadena to be with him — but he’d planned to at least call her and check in. However, whatever was going on with Michael seemed more urgent, so he uttered an inner apology to Rosemary before he touched the screen to return Michael’s last call.

  The phone picked up on the first ring. No greeting, only Michael saying, “Have you seen it?”

  “Seen what?” Will returned, somewhat mystified.

  Michael made an exasperated sound. “Jesus, Will, it’s all over the internet!”

  “Sorry — I’ve been in a meeting all morning. What’s all over the internet?”

  “The goddamn footage! They released it!”

  For a second, Will could only sit there at his desk, phone pressed to his ear, as he tried to process Michael’s reply. “But…you still have the hard drive, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but obviously, they must have made a copy of everything on it. No wonder they didn’t seem all that concerned about trying to get it back after you and Rosemary took it from Daniel Lockwood’s house. He’d already copied the files, so what difference did it make if you had the original drive?”