We’d walked the length of a pier lit by tiki torches. At the very end, a table dressed in china and crystal awaited us. We ate like royalty under the shelter of a thatch-roofed gazebo. And after dessert we danced to the music of a four-man reggae band called the B-tones.
“This is amazing,” I breathed as Matt held me close, moving me to the sultry rhythms of a song whose name I never learned.
He pulled back far enough to look into my eyes. “You’reamazing.” He smiled, his teeth extra white against the natural deep tan of his skin. “But not so observant.”
“No?”
He shook his head, pulled his hand out of my clasp, took a ring off his pinky, and held it in front of my face. “I really thought at some point you’d ask me why I was wearing a girl’s engagement ring.”
“Have you had that on all night?”
He grinned. “Only since dessert.”
Then I realized what he’d just said. “Are you—are we—”
“Say yes, Jaz.”
I’d screamed, and jumped up and down, and jumped on him, and made him jump up and down with me, which turned out to be pretty funny. At which point he put the ring on my finger. It was a full-carat pear-shaped emerald. “For my green-eyed vixen,” Matt had said before he kissed me breathless.
I still had that ring. Carried it with me everywhere, in fact. I slipped my hand into the left pocket of my jeans. My seamstress had sewn a silver key ring into these, and indeed, every pair of pants I owned. A similar key ring attached the band of my emerald to the one in my pocket so I never had to go anywhere without it.
“Thank you, ma’am. Enjoy your stay.” I blinked.What . . . happened? Where am I?
Across a wide, shiny counter stood a smiling young clerk wearing a blue blazer and a name tag that said,THE FOUR SEASONS AND JUNIE TAYLOR WELCOME YOU. In my hand I held a receipt for room 219 and the key card.
CHAPTERFOUR
Holy crap, I’ve had another blackout!But as soon as the suspicion hit me I knew otherwise. I hadn’t experienced the usual warning signs, and I’d never before left my mind in a daydream while the rest of me got busy. This was something new. Something scary. Because after the knock-down drag-out with the Tor-al-Degan, I thought I’d kicked those nutty little habits that made me seem, well, nuts. Okay, the card shuffling kept up without much of a break. And sometimes words still ran loops around my brain until I forced them back on the road. But those moments were rarer now. And the blackouts really had stopped, along with the dread that someone I knew would find reason to recommend an asylum and a heavy dose of Zoloft.
Familiar laughter caught my attention. The couple from the beach. They were here, just entering an elevator. Without conscious thought I’d followed them to their hotel and booked a room. I checked the receipt. At least I’d used my personal credit card. If I’d had to explain this to Pete, well, maybe I could’ve come up with something. But I probably would’ve just resigned.
I shoved the stuff the clerk had handed me into my back pocket and strode outside. I needed to do something concrete. Something to bring me back to myself. So I phoned my sister.
“Evie?”
“Oh, Jaz, I’m so glad you called.”
“You sound tired.”
“I am. E.J. has hardly stopped crying all day. This doesn’t seem right, does it?”
Hell no! But then I’m the least qualified to say.“Did you call the pediatrician?”
“No. I know he’ll just say it’s that colic.” Her voice started to shake. “I just feel like such a terrible mother that I can’t make her stop crying!”
Now here was something I could deal with. “Evie, you are an awesome mother. This I can tell you from experience. I’ve seen you in action. Plus, I have had a crappy mother. So I know what I’m saying here. You rock. It’s tough on you guys having a baby who cries all the time. The lack of sleep alone is probably making you a little crazy. I’m still kinda grouchy and I’ve only been gone, what, a couple of days? But listen, you will figure this out, okay?”
Big pause. “O-kay.”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“It’s just . . . usually you tell me what to do. Then I do it, and things get better.”
“That was before you started playing out of my league,” I said, smiling when I heard her soft laughter. “Just . . . trust yourself, okay? You and Tim know E.J. better than anybody, including the pediatrician. And get some sleep, would you? You’re going to have bags under your eyes that you’ll be able to store your winter clothes in.”
“Okay. How are things going with you?”
Well, let’s see. I think my vampire boss should pose for his own calendar and I’m having a crazy-daisy relapse. Otherwise—“I’m doing okay. Call me when you can, okay?”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Feeling somewhat rebalanced now that I’d touched base with the most stable person I knew, I walked around to the back of the building, which faced the festival site. As I wound my way through the first tier of cars in the parking lot, a green glow near some fencing that disguised a large garbage bin distracted me from my inner teeth gnashing. It didn’t mesh with the white of the lot lights. I drew Grief and chambered a round. The glow brightened, changing color from pine needles to ripe limes.
I closed my eyes tight for a couple of seconds, activating the night-vision contacts Bergman had designed for me. They combined with my Sensitivity-upgraded sight to show me a greenish gold figure standing beside the fence. It faced me, but leaned over every few seconds, fully engrossed in whatever lay at its feet. Oddly, a black frame surrounded it, as if someone had outlined it with a Sharpie.
I moved closer, sliding past the dark hulks of parked vehicles, taking quick glances every few steps, trying to identify the thing on the ground that acted as both the source of the green glow and the subject of the outlined figure’s interest. When I finally caught a glance, I bit my lip to keep from gasping. It was the body of the security guard, the one who’d been hanging out with the two-faced man.His face, a twisted photo of his last tortured moments, warned me not to look any further. But I had to. One of the suckier parts of my job.
Okay, enough with the procrastinating. You’re at a possible murder scene with a potential suspect. Look at the body already.
Blood, everywhere, as if someone had tapped a geyser. Exposed ribs. Dark, glistening organs. Someone had ripped this guy’s chest open from neck to navel! The smell, damn, you just never get used to it. And thank God we were outside; otherwise I’d be puking like a bulimic after an Oreo cookie binge. Above it all hovered a jeweled cloud I could only think of as his soul. I wanted to regard it as untouched. The one part of the man his murderer couldn’t soil. But I could not. Because this is what had his killer’s attention.
No doubt, the one who’d taken his life stood right next to him still, and had been all day, posing as a man with only one face. “Man” was the wrong descriptor though. That outline—nobody I’d ever met had that. And when he leaned over, the frame split at his head and his fingers, allowing some of the greenish gold of his inner aura to seep through.
His mouth opened wide and from it unrolled a huge pink tongue covered with spikelike appendages. He ran it along the length of the dead man’s soul. It shivered, frantically trying to fly apart, to meld with his family, his friends, his Maker. But the spikes released some sort of glue that forced the jewels into immobility. At the same time the soul cloud bleached to pastel.