Craving (12 page)

“They’re not going to follow you,” he breathed, and I could see knowledge there. He was certain, and even though that certainty had nothing to do with reality, it made me feel worlds better.

“Where’s your car?”

I gasped and reached for my chest, wriggling in his arms like an infant. He set me down gently out of sight of the pursuers, and limping in a circle, I dug the keys out of my purse, somehow still hooked around my bicep, its metal chain undamaged. With quaking fingers, I pressed the alarm button, cursing and begging it to work. After a few seconds, a set of headlights blinked and we found the car.

I was already tottering toward it when he scooped me up yet again and carried me to the passenger side. Without a second thought or any hint of fatigue, he pulled open the door, placed me in the seat, and belted me in. He got in on the other side, took the keys from my trembling grasp and pulled away with tires spinning just fast enough to placate me.

While my heart did its best to escape my chest, my mind touched gingerly on what I had seen, and when I realized I had just witnessed a woman tear a man to pieces with her bare hands, I put my head between my knees and cried so hard, I thought I might just suffocate myself.

Chapter 9

He pulled behind his shop into a tiny parking lot and came around to my side of the car. Still shaking, I frantically unbuckled my seatbelt.

“We can’t stay here! They saw you! They’ll find me!”

He bent down, and with gentle fingers, eased my bruised ankles across the floor mat. “They’re not going to look for you. Trust me. Arms around.”

I looked at him, dazed and completely unable to form ideas that made contextual sense. “I’m heavy.”

He had that look again, that strange expression of detached admiration, like I was an adorable child who belonged to someone else. For some reason, it soothed my frazzled nerves.

“You’re not heavy,” he said compassionate. “Arms!”

I reached out and wrapped my arms around his neck. He lifted me out of the car and carried me inside. We entered at the back of the bindery, where a storage room butted up beside a staircase.

“Do you live here?” I said quietly in his ear.

“Yes.” His apartment was more like a studio. The kitchen and living area was one long room of the same dimensions as the coffee shop. There were only a few pieces of furniture, and not a single decoration. No photos or personal belongings, just more books and, strangely enough, several candle stands. He carried me into the bathroom, a stark white, subway-tiled room with a claw-foot tub and pedestal sink, and put me down on the toilet.

“I’ll be right back,” he soothed, but no matter how comforting he was, I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone.

I grabbed his wrists and shook my head wildly. He disentangled himself and cupped my face in his hands, staring into my eyes for as long as it took me to understand that he was not leaving me for good.

“Just a moment?”

Shivering, I nodded. While he did whatever, I took scattered stock of my person to keep from feeling adrift. My shoes were gone. My beautiful new blouse torn, smeared with grease and whatever had congealed on the ground from the packing plant. My pencil skirt was ripped at the seam in several places. My knees were skinned and bloody. A single gash ran down the side of my right shin. I was covered in forming bruises, my hands were scratched up, and my feet looked as if I’d walked across a bed of broken glass. I reached in my purse and managed to drop everything on the floor while attempting to open my compact. My makeup was smeared like a kabuki performer with hay fever. Bits of trash clung to my overly gelled curls. All in all, I was a sorry mess and it didn’t help I was shaking like a leaf.

He returned with a chair, a first aid kit, and a box of Epsom salts. I was tenderly transferred to the chair and the hot water was turned on in the tub. He lifted my feet up and put them into the rising tide that instantly turned a pinkish brown. As he sprinkled the salt into the water, the overwhelming cold began to leach from me, until I stopped shivering and felt numbness take over.

“This is a bad cut,” he murmured, ladling water with his hands onto my shin. “I’m not sure yet if you need stitches.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t speak yet. Not even the sting of the salt or the careful prodding of his fingers had any effect on my anesthetized body.

He glanced up at me. “You have glass in your feet and knees. It will take me a while to get it cleaned out.”

I closed my eyes. In the darkness, with the rushing of the water, I saw it all again; the way Michael cried out, Ursula’s ravenous eyes, the ring of blood around her lips and the chunks of flesh stuck to her fingernails. My hands went to my face and I shuddered.

Something warm was wrapped around me. I looked up to see him sitting on the edge of the tub, facing me. He was reaching for my face and I had caught him. Instead of hesitating or looking embarrassed, he finished the gesture and took a long, deep breath.

“Talk about it when you’re ready,” he whispered, “and not before. I can wait.”

But suddenly the rational side of my mind kicked in, and as if appalled with the fact that it had been ignored, did so with a vengeance. I snatched his hand from the air and clamped my fingers around it in a way that must have been painful to him, though he said nothing.

“No! We have to call the police! I have to call Unger! My god, we have to do something right now!”

His dark brows drew closer together. “Take a deep breath, Lilith,” he commanded and his voice was so strong that I couldn’t disobey. “What happened?”

“She . . . Ursula, she . . .” But I couldn’t match words, those precise little things, to such images. It just didn’t seem to do the memory justice.

His hands were back around my face, forcing me to look at him. “What did she do? Is someone hurt?”

“Someone . . . someone’s dead!” I shouted, and it was like a release. I sobbed and settled my hands in the crooks of his elbows. “She tore his throat out! He was bleeding everywhere! They were going to kill me!”

There was pressure behind his touch, telling me to stay focused on the present and not fall into fear for things gone by. “Are you sure he’s dead?”

“There was so much blood!” My voice crumbled into dust, my dry mouth sticking to itself. I tipped forward and instead of letting me pitch into the water, he propped me up with his shoulder and held me.

There were no more tears in me, but somehow, I still managed to cry. Never in my life had I seen something so horrible. I was no stranger to ends, dead bodies, black clothes, soft-spoken well-wishes that never turned into actions, but spurting veins and monstrous insanity were new to me. What kind of person could do such a thing, and why, for the love of all that was sacred, would Eva be mixed up with them?

Finally, I had an answer, finally, I understood, and in one final quake, I lost that hatred for her. Perhaps it had happened to her exactly as it had happened to me and she had jumped to free herself from a world that had turned her into an accessory to crimes unimaginable.

“If he’s dead, there’s nothing we can do,” my rescuer said quietly.

“I have to call Unger; he’ll know what to do! He will!” I pulled away and tried to convince him with my raccoon eyes, but something in his expression told me that I was missing some key facts. “What? What is it?”

“I don’t think he’d believe you, Lilith.”

Caught off guard, I shook my head. “Of course he would! There was blood! Didn’t you hear me? They’ll find the blood!”

He was already shaking his head almost imperceptibly. “If this is something that woman does often, it will be completely gone by the time any help could arrive.”

“So what?” I demanded irately. “We just ignore the fact that a man is dead!”

“If you rely upon Unger,” he warned, “not only will the man be forgotten, but you’ll find yourself in a position to do absolutely nothing about it.”

“What are you talking about!” I found myself shouting. My fist pummeled his chest, but it had no effect on him. To a man strong enough to toss me over his shoulder; it was a useless gesture. But he understood, let me go, crossed his arms and continued to advise me with his gaze.

I had ignored his advice once before, and as he had said, I regretted it almost more than I regretted taking the later flight. Gripping the edges of the chair, I stared into the bathtub.

“What do you mean?”

“Detective Unger was here today.”

I blinked at him stupidly. “Here?”

He nodded. “He wanted to know how close I was to your sister.”

I frowned, even though my face felt as if it was made of rubber. “How did he find you?”

“He’s been following you.”

My mouth fell open.

“I told him exactly what I told you, until he started asking about your mental state, if psychological problems ran in your family, if you might do something to hurt yourself . . . or someone else.” His face tipped forward, as if with the point of his nose, he could direct my mind to the reality of the situation.

I tried to give Unger the benefit of the doubt. My vision gave me details about him that he didn’t possess about me, and indeed, colored any positive impression I might have made. Despite the unexplainable prescience, I was jeopardizing an investigation with rash decisions, so of course he’d want to be sure I was a solid individual. As a serious police officer, he
should
be investigating me.

I think my savior could read it on my face, see me handing Unger my trust. He continued to shake his head. “Then he asked if you and she had ever fought, if Eva had ever mentioned your money troubles to me.”

“Money troubles?” I gasped. “What is he talking about? Sure I’m paying my bills alone, but I get alimony!”

Son of a bitch!
How could he be thinking I was involved? I was on the plane when she jumped. If I had really been in on something, if I had really paid someone to kill my sister, wouldn’t I have at least been smart enough to wait for a phone call before I jumped on a fucking redeye? My temper was beginning to stoke back to life, and even though I had little energy for it, it was warm to the touch.

“Is he stupid? Bastard!”

The stranger went back to cleaning my wounds, averting his eyes from my betrayal.

“I can’t believe I trusted him!”

“You can see why calling the police is probably unwise, especially if the people looking for you have any kind of influence. A madwoman suffering from grief is an easy person to blame.” He palpated my feet. It stung and I twitched. Tweezers were pulled from the kit and he began to pluck the slivers of glass from me.

“So what should I do?” I sat back in the chair, at a loss. “I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but I know what I saw! Something has to be done! She said they did it all the time! She said it was her secret.” I shook my head in disbelief. “How do I stop her?”

He didn’t seem to be listening. His eyes were narrowed and focused on my knees. Pieces of gravel clinked into the basin.

“But you’re right,” I continued. “There’s no way I could make it sound sane.” I pushed my scratched palms to my forehead as if trying to impress on my brain that it needed to function or would pay the price. “How did she do that trick?”

“What trick?” he urged.

“It was like she could read their thoughts. That was the game. She knew their secrets and made them confess. The winner . . .”

He stopped what he was doing and looked at me emotionlessly, as if freezing in the face of an unknowable predator.

“I know, crazy huh?”

“About as crazy as seeing the future,” he hinted, his brows twitching upward ever so slightly.

“He told you about that, huh?”

He said nothing. Another piece of glass fell onto the towel in his lap.

“I’m so confused,” I admitted, and it felt good to be saying it to someone. “I
feel
like I’m going nuts.”

“It is when we know a thing that we confine a thing. Confusion, therefore, is the sanest position to take.”

As he continued to pick at my wounds, I watched him, feeling as if I wasn’t good enough to be sitting there. Compared to his serenity, his economy of sound, his slow, deliberate movements that spoke of absolute certainty, I was a frenetic wet hen.

I had a moment of pause; as an individual, I had my own priorities, my own ideas of what it meant to be effective, but so did he, and in that moment, I realized that his were much better. He was worried about the person he could help. He was worried about keeping me safe, not what the cops would think, what would change my sister’s memory, or what would provide “justice” to someone who was already dead. What had I done to deserve his consideration?

“Now she has brought me you.”

Thanks, Ev.

He glanced up. Determined to mimic his example, I smiled and refused to be self-conscious. “Thank you for helping me.”

“Would you thank the ground for existing beneath your feet?”

Bemused and mildly separated from my own body, I shook my head. “Maybe, if I thought about it more. Maybe if I thought it cared.”

He scooped some water up to my open skin and rinsed out the dirt. “Don’t thank me. I lose nothing.”

“It’s nice, all the same.”

He frowned at my cut again, as if he couldn’t decide to be concerned or convivial. “I think if I bandage it well enough, it should be fine.”

“It hurts.”

He smiled. “It will.” He got up and unstopped the tub. After the drain had slurped up every trace of my roll in the gutter, he refilled it. He spilled in a few drops from a brown glass bottle, and the smell of lavender wafted in the air. A soft white towel and robe were laid across the toilet and, to my surprise, a pair of fluffy white socks appeared.

“You’re prepared,” I marveled.

“One never knows when a damsel in distress might trip into their lap,” he said with a sympathetic chuckle. He pulled a bottle of baby oil from the cabinet and set it on the sink. “For your makeup.”

I nodded, impressed despite my exertion.

“Take a bath,” he comforted, “try to ground yourself in the physical. Ignore what you saw. You’ll have time to think about it when your body is safe.”