A shape moving alongside them made Sally scream, high, shrill - nearly silently, as if instinct told her that making a racket might make things worse. It was one of the enormous ugly hound dogs that lived around here, slinking through the night to investigate. Sally stiffened as it hesitated beside her (the thing was big enough to take a lethal bite out of her) but apparently Judge’s work held. The beast considered her to be rightfully present, woofed at her softly and then tromped away. Her BFF had ignored the dog entirely. BFF opened the decrepit door of the hubcap house and went inside without a single glance back, and taking Sally’s phone with her.
Okay. Okay. Decisions. Go back and get help. Would that be stupid, to wake everybody up because a sleepwalker had stolen her phone? Go on inside the house. To face God only knew what. But then again: an adventure, something for Sally alone to experience, to take back to the team. These Slope people were about as threatening as the slow-moving mummies of old black-and-white films. She again pushed aside her mother’s voice and mounted the steps to enter the hubcap house.
The smell almost knocked her back outside. The air was thick with the odor of rotten food, with plenty of other unpleasant smells lingering beneath. Sally clapped a hand over her nose, breathing through her mouth, which helped marginally. Nonetheless the offensiveness of the place made her almost aura-blind, her senses rebelling at the notion of “drinking in” anything of this atmosphere. Psychic vampirism had its sensible limits.
Thank goodness her BFF had lingered near the doorway, because the house was all but pitch black inside. The light from Sally’s phone displayed only her BFF, mournfully tapping, and a small table beside the front door. On the wall above it was a light switch. Sally reached for it, caring little for manners at this point, but it flicked uselessly up and down. No power, apparently. Her action, however, finally caused her BFF to take notice of her. Her BFF reached for something on the table’s top that Sally initially thought was a romance novel because it seemed the right size and was pink. When it was handed to her, however, she saw that it was also a cell phone with a gaudy cover. There were stickers on it, hard to make out. Cats? When Sally tried to power it up, nothing happened. Dead battery.
“I see,” said Sally. “Hard to charge a phone when the power’s out. Go ahead, use mine.”
Her BFF spoke for the first time, the sound of it nearly scaring Sally into another scream.
“It’s bedtime,” the woman said.
Then it hit Sally, that this house was not protected by a spell. Stupid! She chided herself. The others wouldn’t have been standing here wasting time. They would have been gathering psychic information, getting answers. And here she stood, it only just now occurring to her that nothing was stopping her from investigating this woman’s aura. Then again, maybe she should not be so hard on herself. Perhaps she’d failed to realize that auras were hers to savor again because her BFF really didn’t have one. It was incredibly scary, like Sally was looking at the shell of a human being. It was hard to taste anything, even metaphorically, over the stench in the air - her BFF, however, had no flavor.
But Sally got some smells, all right, worse than the rot in the air. She smelled a witch’s spell at work.
“It’s bedtime,” her BFF insisted.
“Well, go to bed, then,” Sally told her. Anger at the idea that once more, Cloda Baker was meddling with dangerous magic, made her brave. “I need my phone back,” she insisted, and firmly took it from her BFF’s weak hands, making a quick sweep of the house’s interior with the camera before she put it in her pocket. She held up her BFF’s pink phone, trying very hard to keep the woman’s attention. “I’m going to charge this for you, okay? I’ll give it back to you tomorrow.”
They must have struck a deal, or her new BFF did not care, because this was how they parted ways. As Sally made her way back to Ardelia’s house, she barely noticed the mud for the loudness in her determined tangle of thoughts.
Chapter Five
Othernaturals Season 6, Episode 5
Slope, Missouri; June 2015
Just past dawn on Monday morning, Rosemary half-woke in confusing darkness, disturbed by Ardelia shifting restlessly around and snoring. For a few minutes she lay in that haze of half-dreaming, in which even the most uncomfortable bed still seemed like a better option than getting up. Her thoughts went where they almost always went: to Andrew Fletcher in some way or another. His voice or his face, his body or his hair, some way that he’d spoken or moved, how he’d put himself protectively between her and the gigantic Elton Baker, some way that he’d made her feel.
There’s something I have to tell you.
When had that happened? Yesterday? No, it had been Saturday night, when she and Andrew were alone at the Creve Coeur Animal Hospital, looking after Vladimir. It already seemed like months had gone by - yet she and Andrew had shared not a single moment alone since they’d embarked on their trip to Eyeteeth Mountain. Their eyes kept touching, the delicious game of a shared secret. She was almost afraid to be alone with him again. She did not trust herself.
Those words had worried her, though. Rosemary was well aware that the phrase “There’s something I have to tell you,” seldom begins a delightful conversation.
A young woman madly in love might wish for more on a Saturday night, but of course she and Andrew were keeping watch in the Creve Coeur Animal Hospital lobby. Rosemary had promised to stay here because otherwise Judge would not consent to his own treatment.
She was seated in a plastic waiting-room chair. Andrew knelt in front of her looking serious indeed – no one could look quite as serious as her Andrew when he was about to say one of his serious things. He had the fine, sharp features of a hawk, naturally inclined to sternness in gaze, so that even his smiles had a serious slant. Ordinarily she found him irresistible when he was oh-so-stern. She could laugh at him, gently, then coax him out of his grumpy mood.
There had been far fewer grumpy moods lately, he’d been so sweet. He’d been actually flirting with her, and how she’d loved it.
In the last few days things had been frightening and dangerous for her team. In the past twelve hours alone there had been a swarm, there had been a death, there had been a resurrection for crying out loud, oh yes, and an Old One from another dimension had apparently cursed her. During all this Rosemary’s thoughts were never far from Andrew Fletcher, and the way he’d been looking at her.
Now, just when everything seemed to be almost all right again, or at least well on the mend, Andrew said those worrisome words. “There’s something I need to tell you.” His brow creased into that stormy frown he wore when he was beating himself up for something. Good Gods, my cast, Rosemary thought in frustration. If it wasn’t Stefan riding the guilt train, it was Andrew. Serves me right for hiring these broody men with their tragic backstories.
“Is this going to make me sad?” Rosemary asked. She was almost certain that it would, from the wince of doubt that crossed his face. He was going to say, “I shouldn’t have” something, something. Then he’d back away from her, one step up and two steps back, an almost-kiss, an almost-embrace, and then back to being “just friends,” with him slightly annoyed with her all the time.
It could be worse than that. Maybe he’d fallen in love with someone else.
He was not permitted to break her heart in an emergency veterinary clinic, and that was that. Andrew was not permitted to break her heart while she sat on a plastic waiting room chair, here in the fur-scattered, pet-shampoo-scented animal hospital, with its gritty linoleum floor and the snapping fluorescent lights around them. She wouldn’t let him do it; she’d knock him unconscious before he spoke the words.
She got a grip on herself: calm down, calm down.
“I lied to you,” Andrew said without further preface.
Rosemary turned the words over in her mind. Lies didn’t have to be fatal. “What about?”
“When we met, I told myself that you were everything I detested. Rich and spoiled and reckless, i
rresponsible, always doing exactly what you wanted without listening to anyone else, running over people to get your way.”
Rosemary drew back further with each description, one eyebrow raised. She felt a little pissed off. “Well I think that’s a bit harsh.”
“It’s how I saw you,” Andrew said. Then, something playful and daring glinted in his expression. “As time passed, I realized that at least half those things weren’t true.”
She snorted, entirely without grace, and clapped her hands over her face to keep from doing it again. His sense of humor always snuck up and surprised her, because one wouldn’t expect such a dark grouchy brow to have a joke waiting in the wings. “All right, so you hated me.”
“I didn’t say that I hated you. But I was biased against you, let’s say, and so I lied to you.” Deep breath. “The day we met, you gave me a book. It was The Haunting of Hill House, the first edition, that was so heavily annotated by your grandmother Crystal. More valuable to Crystal Ebbetts fans than Shirley Jackson’s, though probably most valuable to you. But you handed it over, I think to prove that you understood something about me. I love books because I can feel their past readers. And of course you were one of the readers, so it gave me a chance to know a little about you, too. It’s the best present anyone ever gave me.”
Rosemary knew what he was going to say next, and was tempted to stop him. But how could she deny him the pleasure of all that brooding? She would swear he craved it. He should have a cat-o’-nine tails to flog himself with. Andrew shook his head, chastising himself with a sigh. “A couple weeks later, I told you that I’d sold it. We’d been to Waynesborough already. By then, I’d learned enough to guess I’d misjudged you but frankly, that just made me madder than before. I didn’t like making myself vulnerable. I certainly didn’t want you to know how much that book meant to me. It was a cowardly lie and I’m sorry for it. I didn’t sell that book. I never would have. I should have told you sooner that I’d kept it, but I’m ashamed of myself for lying in the first place. It was childish.”
Rosemary nodded, lips pressed together. She did what she could do look pensive. “Well, thank you for telling me now. Things were tense between us back then. So I understand. Thank you for not selling my book after all. That means a lot to me.”
He peered at her. Her answer hadn’t been right. He’d expected something more?
“That is to say,” she added, “I should be angry with you. That book really meant a lot to me, and—”
“You already knew!” He was indignant, like she was the one who had done something wrong here. Gods, it was hard to keep the truth from a psychic, even with her own telepathic protection. Her telepathic protection, by the way, was no good at hiding her facial expressions. Andrew grunted in self-deprecation. “You’ve probably always known it. No, wait - you were genuinely upset, back when I told you I’d sold the book. It hurt you. So when did you figure it out?”
Rosemary waved her hands, like it was no big deal. “I searched online in the bookdealers circles, to see if the book was available for sale. Put myself out there as a huge Crystal Ebbetts fan and offered to pay a lot if anyone had it, but I got no takers. So, I couldn’t be certain; it was just a hunch. Anyway it’s not important anymore. So you told a little lie, so what?”
“This isn’t really what I imagined,” Andrew admitted. “I thought there would be more drama. This is kind of a big deal, you know, I mean this as a sort of declaration.”
“Really? What are you declaring?” She cocked her head, and when he hesitated, she reached out and took his hands, which felt cold. They were both under the blast of the ventilation system and she rubbed his fingers with her own, which were warmer. She leaned in to put her lips against the top of his head, taking in the faint sweet scent of his hair, blond as wheat, disheveled because they’d hardly had a chance to groom themselves for this bizarre and impromptu date night in the veterinary hospital. “Tell me, sweetheart.”
“Wait a minute.” His eyes, which she’d thought were bashfully downcast, were actually looking at her fingers. Then he raised his eyes, and she saw no Mr. Bashful there. He accused, “You looked under my pillow!”
Rosemary froze with a half-smile on her face. “Oh. Picked up on that, did you? It’s the skin contact, right? I let that little booger slip right out of the gate. Heh.”
Affronted, he demanded, ‘“You looked under my pillow? When?”
“Okay, just hang on. Just calm down.”
He was properly shocked. “You never did any online searching, you little liar. You went through my things.”
“Not on purpose. Honest.”
“Oh, now you’re going to be honest?”
“You’re the one who lied to me first! Just listen for a second.” It was a good sign that he hadn’t let go of her hands yet. It might mean he was still groping around trying to read her mind, but it might also mean that he wasn’t irreparably angry. “It was just back in November or thereabouts. We came to Omaha to visit Dr. Vickers for some footage. We stopped by Share the Words to get you. None of the guys can just stop there without shopping for days; they’re worse than women in a shoe store. I asked if I could use your restroom.”
Andrew’s eyes were following the memory and he nodded, saying, “The downstairs sink was out of order so I told you to use the one upstairs in my apartment.”
“Which, you know, is someplace I’d never been - well, not by myself anyway.”
He winced at that. She knew why. He was ashamed of the tiny space in which he lived, or at least ashamed of what she might think of it, because at his core he still worried that it might matter to her.
“It was nice of you to trust me,” she said. “Though, maybe you shouldn’t have. I have impulse control and I’m crazy about you.” Before he could respond to that, she went on briskly, quite like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “There I was, alone in the room where you sleep. Your bed was a little messy. And I went over to just have a look.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to get in and snuggle under your sheets and breathe in the smell of your pillowcase. I didn’t do that - too many people too close by. But I might have lifted your pillow for just a minute, just to maybe put my face against it, and I saw my book was underneath. I put the pillow back, and then had to go about my life like it wasn’t the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. Don’t be mad, Andy.”
“I might be mad. I’m not sure. I’m confused.”
A question had been burning through her since the day she’d snooped in his room so successfully. “Why do you keep it under your pillow?”
A bit defensively, he remarked, “It wasn’t always under the pillow.” That wasn’t an answer. He said, “Sometimes I’d get to missing you, between episodes. I could put my hand on it, and it helped me sleep.”
Good thing for the air conditioning. Rosemary felt flushed, liquid, melting. “You know I’m in love with you, right? That’s not a big secret.”
He chuckled, but not very happily. “I know. I don’t understand why.”
“Don’t fish,” she teased, using an expression he’d used with her before, when he thought she was looking for unnecessary compliments.
“I’m not fishing. I’m just scared to death of spoiling you.”
“Like, with presents and attention?” She liked that she’d made him smile.
The smile was only brief, though. “You keep yourself hidden from me, but I see plenty - with my sneak, and with my own two eyes. That sonofabitch David Merchant hurt you. He did something to you when you were just a little girl. I don’t know exactly what, but I can guess. I know you don’t date. Greg says you’ve never had a steady relationship. But then, in Colorado, he showed up and you went off alone with him for so long.” It had only been a couple hours, Rosemary recalled, and she could see that Andrew was making an effort not to sound accusatory.
She explained, “I was keeping him away from you, Andy. That’s all it was. I didn’t want you to read his mind.
I was mortified that he was there, talking to me like we were still old friends. Honestly I think that was worse than the preta zombies.”
“Did he try anything? When you were alone with him?” Andrew had gone into his own train of thoughts, and Rosemary was too mesmerized to reply. He answered his own question. “No, no – now you’re an adult who can protect herself. But when you were a kid – what kind of goddamn gall does it take? I wonder how famous he’d be if people knew. I’d like to make a gift of his head on a platter for you.”
Rosemary could have happily murdered David Merchant right then, for leaving this stigma on her. Ordinarily she didn’t think of David at all. But he was making Andy unhappy and that wasn’t acceptable. She remarked, “The hell with David Merchant; that asshole barely ever crosses my mind. I don’t date because I’m saving myself.”
“For marriage?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
“Well if that were the case, I’d date all the time; you don’t have to bone somebody just because they take you to a steakhouse.”
A hard chuckle escaped him. “That should be on the menu at KC Front.”
“Where do you think I heard it?” Relief flooded her when he did not badger her with more questions about David Merchant. She turned the topic further away. “My best friends have always been guys anyway, Greg, and then Stefan and Judge. What did I need a boyfriend for? It just seemed like a good idea to wait for a quality man to come along. Then you showed up.”
“I showed up? Oh no, you came to me. Busted into my store with your book and needled me into being on your show.”
“The book you didn’t sell, which leads us back to the beginning of this, which is supposed to be you, confessing that you’ve been snuggling my book at night and pining for me. I’d like to hear more about that because it’s about damn time. My gods, I have been so worried all this time that I was going to play it cool, and I would never push you or play games, but while I’m wasting my life taking the high ground, some Omaha book slut with long, flowing hair might steal you away.”
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