No doubt he would have shared the common view had he been born “normal.” Johnny chuckled as he climbed down from the bus with his white grocery sack. Had he been born without his other exceptional ability, he would also be long dead. His Beautiful One would not have fallen in love with him had he been unable to appreciate the exquisite pleasures she offered.
Johnny sat on the hard bench to wait for the next bus. So many had failed his Beautiful One. This was not their fault, for they could not help it if their brains didn’t make the connections his did between pleasure and pain. But it was sad, he thought, that his second gift was so rare and so unappreciated.
Not by the one who truly mattered, though. She loved and valued him as passionately as he did her. He owed her so much. She said that debt had no meaning where there was love, but she wasn’t human. Johnny adored her, cherished her, and feared her, but she was not human, and she sometimes misjudged or underestimated what humans could do.
That’s why he was here today without her. One of his beloved’s less human traits was her manner of sleeping. While asleep, she attenuated, losing her grip on the physical—though that would change, she told him, when she fully manifested. When first they met, she had slept most of the time. Now she needed less sleep than did he, but did not know when the need for sleep might strike, or how long she would remain asleep when it did. She might sleep for a day or an hour, then remain awake for a day or a week.
She slept now. When she woke she would be angry with him, oh yes, and the thought of her anger made him tremble. But she was wrong, that was all there was to it.
The sorcerer could not be left for later. From all Johnny had learned, the man was far too good with fire.
TWENTY-THREE
LILY took some satisfaction from slamming the door—but not much. She wanted to go back and yell at Rule some more. Where did he get off, telling her what she thought, what she felt?
She couldn’t believe he’d picked now to dump that on her. That was just wrong. He was wrong. What made him think she didn’t know what she wanted? She wanted him, dammit. Marriage was . . .
She dragged a hand through her hair. Marriage was scary.
There. She’d admitted it. Marriage scared her, but it was the right thing to do . . . wasn’t it?
She started walking.
The Medical Examiner’s building was a graceless white Lego set in the midst of a sea of concrete. They were supposed to move to a new, larger facility soon—they’d long since outgrown this one, which had been built in the 1960s. But construction delays had them still working in the same old cramped quarters Lily used to visit, back when she was with Homicide.
It was stupid to feel a twinge of nostalgia for the dead house.
Cody straightened as she reached his car and fell into step beside her. “Hey, there. You’re not wearing your happy face.”
“Gee, I wonder why not. Big investigation, stinky corpse. What’s not to put a smile on my face?”
“No, that’s your just-had-a-fight face. I ought to know. I used to see it often enough.”
The past ghosted across Lily’s mind. It smelled like cigarettes and wet sand, burnt coffee and bourbon. She slowed without meaning to, tilting her head for a sideways look at the man beside her.
Cody’s face hadn’t changed much, and his body was still strong, muscular. But he didn’t smell of cigarettes anymore. Or bourbon. “I was never sure how much you remembered of those fights. Toward the end, especially.”
“Most of them. Most of them I remember better than I’d like. If it makes any difference, you were right.”
She shot him another glance. “What, about everything? That’s a dangerous thing to say.”
He grinned. “I live for risk.” The grin faded. “Not for booze. Not anymore.”
They walked in silence for a moment, heading for the loading bay on the side of the building. “I heard,” she said finally. “I heard you went to rehab.”
He snorted. “Got my ass shoved into rehab, you mean. I screwed up big-time and I got caught, which was the best thing that could’ve happened. Course, I was too stupid to see that at the time. Not entirely stupid, because I knew it was only luck I didn’t get anyone killed, but pretty damn stupid. You told me that’s where I was headed. You were right.”
She’d heard about it. Cody had been off duty when he tried to stop a liquor store robbery. Unfortunately, he was there as a customer—and way over the legal limit already, which was why the idiot had a cab take him to the store. Typical Cody, she’d thought at the time—half asshole, half hero. He’d known he was too drunk to drive, but he’d still tried to take down an armed perp.
It could have been so much worse. Cody ended up with a slug in his thigh and the clerk got his hair parted by a stray bullet, but they both survived. The perp got clean away.
Oh, yeah, she’d heard about it. Some of CJ’s friends had made sure of that. The way they saw it, if she’d stuck by him, he wouldn’t have needed to drink so much. “I didn’t want to be right.”
He smiled. “If you’re not going to take the opportunity for one helluva good I-told-you-so, I can’t make you.”
That smile flicked a lot of memories on the raw. She stopped, looking at him. “Did you know what Hammond and Sheffield said after we broke up?”
He shook his head. “I was too down-deep in my own miseries to pay attention to much else.”
“They told everyone I’d used you. That the Armani bust should’ve been yours, but I used you, took the credit, then dumped you once I got some attention from the brass.”
“Shit. Those assholes. I should’ve guessed they’d shoot off their mouths, but I didn’t. I didn’t think, which was typical for me back then.” His voice went low and fierce. “Lily, you gotta believe me about this much. After you dumped me, I said some shit I shouldn’t have. I was hurting, and I wanted like crazy for it all to be your fault so I wouldn’t have to look too close at me. But I never talked you down professionally. Not to those two or anyone else.”
Some of the rawness eased. Though she noted the qualifier—he hadn’t talked her down professionally—she could let that go. After a breakup, people talked bad about the other one . . . or that’s what seemed to be the norm, anyway. Lily hadn’t talked about Cody at all, good or bad, but that was her norm. When she hurt, she clamped down tight.
“Okay. I believe you. Maybe we’d better let all that rest in peace now. I’m here to get a look at that body. There’s a lot riding on this one.” She started forward.
He fell into step beside her. “Guess I picked a bad time to drag up auld lang syne. You’re smarting from whatever you were arguing about with your new man.”
“You said the vic was found in a storage shed.”
“I can take a hint. You don’t want to talk about him, but I can’t help wondering—”
“Is Magruder the pathologist on this one?’
He shook his head sadly. “Guess I might as well let it drop. You aren’t talking. But you could have knocked me down with a feather when I learned you’d taken up with a lupus. Fun and games I could understand . . . well, sort of. You weren’t exactly the fun-and-games type back when I knew you, but that could’ve changed. I hear lupi are real good at changing a woman’s mind about that sort of thing. But you and he are an item, right? Been together a few months.”
“I’m remembering another reason we used to fight so often. One that had nothing to do with your drinking.” They’d reached the loading dock. She jabbed the buzzer next to the normal-size metal door, but the light stayed red, meaning the door was still locked.