I was off the highway now, on the smooth, more narrow road that led farther into Jefferson County and my house. Trees blocked the view, so the stars seemed farther away. I pulled into my driveway and saw the faint shine of lights against the living room drapes. Micah or Nathaniel had waited up. It was after three A.M., and someone had waited up. I felt guilty, happy, and apprehensive. Nothing good had ever come of my father and Judith waiting up for me. I still wasn’t completely used to living with anyone, so sometimes old reactions crept up, like I was seventeen again, and there was a light on. I told myself I was being silly, but this would be the first call-out like this one since Nathaniel had the right to make more demands on me. I wasn’t sure, yet, what all of those demands might be. So I was a little nervous as I put my key in the door. Was I being silly? Only one way to find out.
They were sitting on the couch. I thought Nathaniel was asleep with his head in Micah’s lap, but he turned as I came through the door, and I caught the flash of his eyes in the light from the television. A look of such naked relief crossed Micah’s face before he managed to hide it behind a smile. He was back to his usual smiling neutrality, back to making as few demands on me as possible, but I’d seen that first look. That look that said more than any words, that he’d wondered if he’d ever see me again. I hadn’t kissed him good-bye.
I had forgotten to call from the car, tell them the officer down-calls weren’t me. The thought cut deep like some guilty knife.
Nathaniel got to me first, then slowed, before he actually touched me. The look on my face, maybe, or the fact that I just stood there halfway between the couch and the door. The look on his face was so disappointed. I got a flash of emotion from him. So sad. He thought I was drawing back, away, too scared to really be with him, with them.
That wasn’t what I was scared of.
You can’t shoot someone from less than three feet away with a sawed-off and not get blowback. I had blood in my hair, on my arms.
I’d gotten some of it with the wet wipes I kept in the car, but not all of it. I wasn’t clean. If I’d been just a cop, and the dead woman just a human, then I’d have worried about blood-borne disease. She could have AIDS, or hepatitis, but she was a vampire, so she couldn’t carry anything, unless you counted vampirism. Yeah, I guess that counted, but Nathaniel and Micah couldn’t get that either. But maybe I could. If I killed humans, then I was in more danger from disease, but vamps were cleaner. It was too weird for me tonight, too much thinking.
“Anita, are you alright?” Micah asked, and got off the couch to move up beside Nathaniel.
I jerked out of reach. “I’ve got blood on me, other people’s blood.” I was shaking my head over and over. “God knows what I brought home with me.”
“We can’t catch anything,” Nathaniel said, “not even a cold.” He didn’t look lost anymore, he looked worried.
“Blood can’t hurt us,” Micah said.
They were right. I was being silly about contagion, but… “Do you really want to touch me while I’ve still got the blood of my victims on me?”
“Yes,” Nathaniel said, and moved to hug me.
I moved back, just enough that he stopped. I was afraid if I let them hug me that I would lose it. I would just sink into their arms and sob.
“Victims?” Micah said. “Anita, this doesn’t sound like you.” But he came with Nathaniel; he tried to hug me.
I moved back until the door hit me, and I was shaking my head. “If I let you hold me, I’m going to cry. Damn it, I hate to cry.”
Micah gave me a look. “That’s not it.”
I closed my eyes and let the equipment bag fall to the floor. He was right, that wasn’t it, not completely. I tried to be honest. I tried to say what I felt. “If I get any sympathy, I’m going to fall apart.”
“Maybe that’s what you need to do,” Micah said, and he moved just a little closer, “maybe just for a little while, let us take care of you.”
I kept shaking my head. “I’m afraid.”
“Of what?” he asked, voice soft.
“Of letting go.”
Micah touched my shoulder, gently. I didn’t pull away. He moved slowly, gently, easing me away from the door, and into his arms. I stayed stiff and unyielding for a moment, then my breath came out in a long wavering line, and I let myself fold around him. My hands grabbed at his shirt, handfuls of cloth, as if I couldn’t get close enough, or hold on hard enough. I wanted him naked, not for sex, though that would probably come, but because I just wanted as much of him pressed against as much of me as possible.
“I’ll go run the bath,” Nathaniel said.
I reached out for him, caught his shirt, and drew him into us.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What about?” he asked, and he and Micah exchanged a look.
The first tear squeezed out, traitorous bastard. My voice was almost steady when I said, “I didn’t kiss you good-bye, either of you.
I just drove off. I’m sorry.”
They both kissed me, soft, chaste, a mere touch of lips. Micah brushed the tear off my cheek. “We understood.” He looked at Nathaniel. “Run the bath.”
“I’d rather have a shower and get to bed.”
They exchanged another look, but with a nod from Micah, Nathaniel went for the bathroom. I looked at Micah’s face. The only man in my life I didn’t have to look up to to meet his eyes. “What’s happened?
What have I missed?”
He smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was the smile he’d had when I first met him. A smile that held sadness, self-deprecation, mocking, and something else, something that sadness was too light a word for. I’d almost broken him from that smile.
I grabbed his arms, almost shook him. “What happened?”
“Nothing, I swear, everything’s fine, but Jean-Claude warned us not to let you get in the shower. He said, and I quote, ’not between glass walls.’”
I frowned at him. “What are you talking about? Why should Jean-Claude care about how I clean up?”
The phone rang. I jumped like I’d been stabbed. I said what I was thinking. “If it’s another murder scene tonight, I can’t do it.” Even saying it, I knew I’d do it. If they needed me, I’d go. But what I’d said was true, I’d go, but I wasn’t sure I could handle it tonight.
Admitting that even to myself scared me. It was my job. I had to be able to do it.
Micah went for the phone, while I stood in the darkened living room and prayed for it not to be the police. He called, “It’s Jean-Claude.”
“Why is he calling on the phone?”
“Come and find out,” Micah said.
I walked to the lights of the kitchen. It was only the lights over the sink, not that much light, but I blinked like a deer in headlights. I took the receiver from Micah, while he tried not to give me worried eyes. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Ma petite, how do you feel?”
His voice was the joy for me it usually was, but tonight even that voice left me flat and empty. “Like shit, why?”
“How long has it been since you fed?”
I leaned my forehead against the wall and closed my eyes. “I ate some peanuts and chips in the last day, why?” Nathaniel had put some munchies in my glove compartment.
“I am not referring to food, ma petite. ”
Suddenly the emptiness spilled away, replaced by panic. “Jesus, Damian.”
“He is well. I have seen to it.”
“How can he be well, he started to die if I went just a few hours over six. I’ve gone almost twenty-four hours. God, I cannot believe this, so stupid.”
“And when in the last twenty-four hours could you have fed theardeur, and who on?”
The question stopped the self-recriminations and helped me think.
I guess there were worse things than forgetting about theardeur during a police investigation. Like maybe, not forgetting theardeur during a police investigation. Several horrible scenarios went through my head, like theardeur rising in the van with Mobile Reserve, or Zerbrowski in his car. I was suddenly cold, and it had nothing to do with my earlier pangs of conscience.
“Ma petite, I can hear your sweet breath, but I need to hear your sweet voice.”