In the midnight hour, p.16
In the Midnight Hour, page 16
“Right. ‘Hi, you don’t know me, but I used to live here. Is it okay if I rip up your floorboards looking for something that might or might not still be there?’ They’d call the cops.”
“Or rip up the floor themselves thinking that you left a valuable item.” Ryne tipped her bowl to scoop up the last of her sherbet. “But you’re slick enough to talk your way inside and convince them to loan you a crowbar.”
“Maybe,” Deke said with a shrug. “Except I don’t want to chance it and get arrested. I bent the rules some when I was a PI, but I was an honest cop. I don’t want anyone I used to work with to answer the call, see me, and think I wasn’t.”
Ryne nodded. She could understand that, but she had an unanswered question. “Why did you quit the force?”
Deke looked down for a moment, and she suspected he was considering how much to say. “I got sick of the bullshit.” His voice was quiet. Tired. “I spent most of my five-year career in a high-crime area, and I expected to have people swear and spit at me there. I didn’t expect it when I was transferred to one of the more affluent divisions.”
“Drunks?”
“No. Routine traffic stops were opportunities to tell me I was a brutal racist. You know why? Because I was wearing the uniform. Yeah, there were and still are bad cops on the LAPD, but most of us weren’t beating the shit out of people. Most of us were doing our jobs because we wanted to protect citizens, to make things better so that kids could go outside and play without worrying about a drive-by shooting. And some asshole in a Beemer whose most meaningful contribution to society was writing a check to a charity for the tax deduction was accusing me of horrible things.”
Ryne reached out and stroked his thigh. She wanted to soothe him, comfort him, and she didn’t dwell on the whys.
“It happened too often.” He shrugged. “Finally, I thought fuck it, I don’t have to do this. I had a buddy who’d left the force and gone to work for a big-name detective agency. He was always trying to recruit me, so I called him up and less than a month later, I had a new job.”
“One that probably paid more and had better hours.”
The corners of his lips tipped up. “Definitely better pay. It was still iffy on the hours.”
“I’m sorry you had to listen to the abuse.”
“All things considered, that was better than ’toon town.” She began another apology, but he cut her off. “Do you realize where your hand is?”
Ryne froze, glanced down, and saw what her fingers were brushing. “Crap,” she muttered, and jerked her arm back.
Instead of teasing her, he said, “I have a spoonful of crème brûlée left, it’s yours if you do that little hum again.”
“Stroking you wasn’t enough?” Ryne knew better than to say that, but something about him tempted her to play his game.
“Only the very generous would call that a stroke.”
She opened her mouth, but before Ryne could get a word out, Deke fed her the last bite of his dessert. This time she expressed her pleasure with a sigh.
As they left the restaurant, she said, “I enjoyed dinner. Thanks for bringing me here.”
“I enjoyed it, too. Right up until you paid for it.”
Ryne was trying to decide how to respond when the air in front of them shimmered. Even as she pushed Deke against the wall and put herself in front of him, she was reinforcing her protection spell. He tried to get out from behind her and Ryne brought her elbow back hard into his stomach. She’d barely started an incantation to protect Deke when Anise materialized.
“Co-aigneach, you disappoint me,” the woman said.
Ryne didn’t stop, not until she closed the spell and had cast the barrier to keep humans away. It was only then that she realized it wasn’t Anise but a perfect image of her. She looked around, trying to discover if her mentor was projecting from nearby. Ryne sensed nothing.
“I’m not like you,” she disagreed.
“Deny it all you wish, but we are kindred. Twenty years ago, I was the same as you are today. I know the power calls to you, mo cridhe, whispers through your blood like a siren’s song. I shaped you, molded you. No one knows you as I do, and you know me every bit as well.”
Ryne nodded. It was why she’d been assigned to hunt the older woman and it was why they’d fought to so many draws. The student and the teacher, each had learned from the other until their set of skills was nearly identical.
“I’m the only one who’s ever loved you.”
“That’s not true,” Ryne said calmly.
“But it is. Your parents had no time or interest in you. Your own sister has forsaken you. Who do you have? That human cowering behind you?”
Deke growled and Ryne brought her elbow back again to keep him in line. All she needed was him falling for this.
“I’m heartbroken that you think I’m so unlovable.”
“Sarcasm,” her mentor said, making a tsking sound, “and when I came to offer you a gift.” The Anise image snapped her fingers and a lifeless body appeared at her feet.
It was Deke’s friend, Jay.
12
CHAPTER
Deke tried to get around Ryne to check on the old man, but she hit him hard enough with her elbow to drive the air from his lungs. It brought him back to his senses. Even if minutes could make the difference between life and death, he couldn’t do anything until the woman who wanted him dead was taken care of.
“Why are you so frightened?” Ryne asked.
“You don’t scare me, mo cridhe.” The woman shook her head as she laughed, tossing her blond hair behind her shoulders.
“Perhaps not, but the human does. Don’t bother to deny it. If he didn’t, you’d be here in the flesh instead of projecting an image of yourself from a distance and you wouldn’t have sent in powerless creatures to do your dirty work.”
Projecting? Deke studied Anise more closely, but she looked as solid as Ryne did.
“You assume much,” the woman said with a smile that made Deke’s skin crawl. “That’s to my benefit.”
Ryne was assuming. Maybe she had the whole thing wrong. If that were true, they were wasting their time, doing things that brought them no closer to resolving his situation. The time they had was short, he should—Deke felt his anxiety lessen suddenly and realized it had come from outside himself. Damn it, had Anise caused him to doubt Ryne?
“Don’t try to manipulate his mind and emotions again,” Ryne said with a growl. “It won’t work.”
“No, but you’ll have to use magic to keep that protection in place and it leaves you at a disadvantage.” The woman held out her arms. “But perhaps I won’t need to kill you. You’ve felt the power of the dark forces more strongly than ever before and you’re tempted. It’s merely a matter of time until you join me.”
He felt Ryne stiffen. “I’d rather die than turn.”
“Such bravado, but we both know how close you were mere days ago. Think of what we could do as a team, mo cridhe.”
“Stop calling me that.” Ryne’s voice sounded placid, but something told him that she wasn’t calm.
The other woman laughed and Deke figured Ryne hadn’t fooled her either. “I wish I could stay and talk with you longer, but I have plans. I’ve missed you, mo cridhe.” That last was tacked on deliberately to irk Ryne, he knew it, but before she could say anything, Anise disappeared.
Deke immediately moved to check on Jay, but Ryne brought her elbow back yet again. “Just because she’s not visible, doesn’t mean the threat is over,” she warned.
“I have to get help for Jay,” he insisted.
“He’s beyond help, but you’re not. Stay still.”
“What the hell do you mean he’s beyond help? He might be alive but badly hurt, you don’t know.”
“The life force is no longer in his body, I can sense it from here.”
“That’s pretty damn iffy,” Deke growled.
Ryne stepped aside. “Go ahead, verify it for yourself. Anise is far enough away that I can’t pick her up and it should be safe.”
He didn’t wait for a second invitation. Kneeling in front of Jay, he tried to find a pulse, but as Ryne had said, there wasn’t one. The old man was dead. Deke wanted to swear, but didn’t have the heart for it.
It was his fault. All his. Ryne had told him that anyone he contacted from his old life would be in danger from Anise. He should have listened.
Five months till retirement. Shit.
Facts about Jay flew through Deke’s head. His wife’s name was Inez. They’d had six children and he’d been proud of them, elated that they’d gone to college. Grandchildren. How many times had Deke seen pictures of the grandkids? Jay had been proud of them, too, eager to show the latest snapshots to anyone who’d look.
“Deke,” Ryne said, resting her hand on his shoulder. “We have to get out of here.”
“We have to call the police. Give me your cell phone.”
“No.”
Deke got to his feet and went toe-to-toe with her. “Give me the fucking phone.” He tried to use the tone of his voice and his size to intimidate her, but of course, he didn’t faze Ryne in the slightest.
She lifted her chin to glare into his eyes. “You’re not thinking clearly. We can’t afford to get involved with the police. For one thing, too many of them are going to know you. How many questions do you want to field about where you’ve been for the past four years? How much scrutiny do you think you can afford? I conjured your ID from a credit card. One run through a computer and they’ll discover it’s false.”
He scowled. “We can’t leave him here.”
“They’ll think you did it. Or me. They’ll watch us, maybe bring us in for questioning. We’d have to lie and our stories would have to match closely enough to be convincing. We don’t have time for this.”
“Jay deserves better than to be left on the sidewalk like a pile of trash.”
“Jay deserves to have his killer apprehended, to have her dealt with so that she can’t murder anyone else.” Ryne reached out, took hold of his shoulders. “The police can’t handle Anise. I can. Don’t tie my hands and make things even more difficult than they are already.”
Ryne was making sense, and damn it, he didn’t want her to. The cops would look at the two of them thoroughly if they reported the body and his connection to Jay would bring them more focus. His time on the force, his disappearance, his fake ID would guarantee he’d bear the brunt of the investigation. What was he going to tell the detectives? That a blond-haired witch had made the body materialize in front of them? They’d have him in the psych ward ASAP.
“People are going to know we were here, that we found him, and they’ll tell the police that,” Deke said.
“No they won’t. I’ve got the barrier up to keep humans away and I added spell that blurs this area. No one has seen us with the body. I’ll obscure our car, too. We’ll drive away calmly and when we’re far enough away, I’ll undo my magic. This is a busy area, someone else will find Jay quickly and he’ll be taken care of. He won’t be on the sidewalk long.”
Reluctantly, Deke nodded.
“Good.” Ryne flicked her fingers. “Come on.”
As he walked with her, he asked, “What did you do?”
“I erased any indication of our presence from the body and the area surrounding it. We can’t afford for anything to point to our presence here tonight.” They reached the car. “Are you okay to drive?” she asked.
“Yeah. This isn’t my first corpse.” But it was the first time he’d been responsible for someone’s death. He unlocked the car doors, but instead of helping Ryne in, Deke said, “Maybe no one will see us out here, but the detectives will discover we were at the restaurant and that we left close to the time the body was found.”
Ryne was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “I’ve already thought of that. I used cash instead of my credit card to pay for dinner, and I know a spell that will make everyone who saw us here forget it. We’re covered.”
Deke nodded and opened the passenger door. She didn’t get in, though, till he was behind the wheel. Damn it, he hated that she did that. And he hated feeling useless.
Shit, he hated being useless.
Pulling out of the parking lot, he headed back toward their hotel. He had to accept it, Ryne was protecting him. Like tonight. He’d stood behind her as if he were a child while she’d shielded him. Deke knew he’d had no other option, that if he tried to involve himself, he could have put her at greater risk than what she already faced. It didn’t make it any easier.
No wonder Ryne didn’t want to have anything to do with humans. With her job, caring about one was a liability, leverage for a corrupted Gineal to use against her.
“Stop brooding,” she said.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was. You warned me.”
“Anise killed him, you didn’t.”
“She wouldn’t have known who he was if I hadn’t talked to him.” Deke pulled to a stop at a red light and turned to her. “Anise has to be monitoring us.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She didn’t sound surprised and that irritated Deke. Why the hell hadn’t she told him? “Which one of us is she watching?”
“Probably both of us. You’re a threat to her for some reason we need to figure out and I’m her hunter. The only place I know she can’t pick us up is inside my house.”
The light changed and he accelerated through the intersection before he asked, “What does mo cridhe mean? She called you that a lot in Gineal.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Ryne smile. “We don’t call it Gineal. It’s referred to Cànan or more frequently as the old language. Mo cridhe, though, is bastardized Gaelic. We borrowed pretty heavily from the Scots.”
Deke almost went off on a tangent. The names he’d heard so far—Frasier, Duncan, MacAlister—were Scottish. How close were the Gineal’s ties to that people? But then he realized Ryne hadn’t answered his question. “What does mo cridhe mean,” he asked a second time.
She wasn’t smiling when she said, “It means my heart.”
“Why did she call you that? Were you close?”
There was a pause and Deke felt her lift her spells. He shook his head. She hadn’t moved a muscle, but he was certain of exactly what she’d done. It didn’t make sense.
“For a time,” Ryne answered, then explained. “Apprentice troubleshooters are referred to as the cridhe—the heart—of the Gineal. Don’t ask me why; I don’t know. My guess is that it has something to do with our society only remaining strong as long as those who turn to the dark forces are kept in check. There are stories in our history of horrendous persecutions by humans. A lot of our people were killed, more ceded their powers thinking to protect themselves.” She shook her head. “God only knows how many dormants are running around because of this.” Before Deke could ask another question, Ryne straightened in her seat. “A couple found Jay. I told you it wouldn’t be long.”
“Great. Now two people who were out for a nice dinner will be traumatized by finding a body. I should have called it in.”
Ryne stared at him for a long moment—he sensed her eyes on him—before she said, “I appreciate how you feel, but you can’t protect everyone from everything. There are times you have to make choices. It’s not easy to live with some of them, but you, me—we can only do so much. You know this.”
Yeah, he did, but he’d never liked it. “You’re one to talk. You’re as bad as I am—maybe worse.”
She didn’t comment on that. “We’re not going to Jay’s funeral and we’re not paying a visit to his family, got it?”
“I got it,” Deke growled. Ryne hadn’t needed to tell him that. He knew better now. Anise was watching; he wouldn’t give her anymore innocents to use against them.
Deke took the turn into the hotel’s drive and pulled into the valet parking area. Ryne had insisted on paying for the service while they were here, and as much as he hated racking up more debt, it made sense now that the wicked witch had made an appearance. He had the suspicion that a busy entry-way full of humans wouldn’t be any deterrent, but he had to trust Ryne.
The valet opened the passenger door and waited while she reached in to get her purse. As Deke rounded the hood, he realized the boy was staring at her ass and it pissed him off. “She’s mine,” he warned softly as he held out the keys.
With an audible gulp, the kid said, “Yes, sir.”
Ryne remained quiet until they were on the elevator. “You didn’t have to scare him, you know. That valet couldn’t have been more than twenty.”
“Babe,” he said, putting his arm around her waist and tugging her against his side. “If you’d seen the way he was leering, you would have put the fear of God into him yourself.”
She looked skeptical and he didn’t blame her, but what could he say? The last thing Deke wanted to admit was that he felt possessive of her. It would make Ryne edgy, especially coming on the heels of this morning’s jealousy. Shit, it made him nervous. It had to be some weird psychological thing. Didn’t hostages develop an attachment to their emancipators? That had to be it.
Since he didn’t want to think about it, let alone discuss it, Deke changed the subject as they left the elevator. “How’d you know Anise wasn’t really there anyway? She looked solid.”
They reached their room, but Deke waited for Ryne’s nod before sliding the card in the slot and unlocking the door. Everything was secured behind them before she said, “Her image didn’t have an aura. Every living creature emits one, but while Anise is strong enough to make the likeness look real, even she can’t project her auric field that far out.” She shrugged out of her jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. “What I want to know is why Anise didn’t show up in person and attempt to blast you to pieces.”
“Maybe I’m not the danger to her you think I am.” Deke took off his own jacket and hung it in the closet. “Or maybe,” he said as he closed the door, “she didn’t want to tangle with you.”
