Cravings (27 page)

"WHAT?" the man across the table asked sharply, pulling his hand away.

"It wasn't your fault. The fire."

He made a low, angry sound. "She didn't die in the fire. Whoever killed her
poisoned her first."

Antonia gasped, but Grant Marshall was already speaking again. "I should have
been home with her!" The words came out as a menacing growl that would have sent
her running in the other direction if she hadn't been glued to her chair.

She and this stranger were speaking a kind of shorthand now. They'd met only
minutes ago. He hadn't told her that someone had burned up his house with his
wife inside. She'd pulled that terrible image from his mind. And more. The fire
had left him with scars. Not physical marks but guilt and unbearable pain that
ate at his soul.

"You didn't know anything bad was going to happen."

Antonia had uttered that phrase many times in the past. Sometimes it gave
comfort. Not now. There was only one thing that would give Grant Marshall any
kind of cold comfort. And he didn't want her to know about it.

He stood up. "This is a mistake," he said, sounding angry.

Desperation came out as a plea. "Don't leave."

"You… see too much."

"Maybe I can help you find him," she said quickly, then sat with the breath
frozen in her lungs.

He stood a few feet away, but she imagined she could hear his heart pounding.

When the chair scraped back again and he sat down, she allowed herself to
breathe.

"You got that picture of the burned house from my head," he said in a voice
that told her he didn't want to believe her insight.

"Because you've been focused on it for a long time."

"What else are you going to see?" he asked.

His wary tone made her tread carefully.
More than you want me to see
,
she silently admitted. She was still frightened. Not of him, although she knew
violence was not far from the surface of his mind. That should worry her. Yet
she was more worried that she would drive him away if she said too much.

"Let's use the cards," she said, wondering what she was going to do now. She
couldn't be dishonest with him. That would violate her personal code of ethics.
Yet she'd learned to soften bad news.

"I've never asked for a tea leaf reading. Or anything else like that. Maybe
you'd better tell me something about these cards," he said, buying them both a
little time.

"Well, I don't mess with tea leaves." She laughed. "All I'd get from them is
wet fingers."

Ignoring her attempt at a joke, he pressed for more information. "Then how do
you read the cards?"

"Braille markings. After that, because I know the pictures so well, I see
them in my head." She went on quickly, "The tarot deck has seventy-eight cards.
They're divided into the twenty-two Major Arcana, cards which reference the
archetypal passages in our lives, and the fifty-six Minor Arcana which deal more
with day-to-day life."

Sensing that he was listening intently, she pushed the deck toward him. "Take
a look at them. Each one is full of symbolism. Some go all the way back to
Egyptian mythology or the Hebrew Cabala. But it's all open to interpretation.
And no card is either good or bad. It's all in context."

She heard him shuffling through the deck. "What about this one? With Death
riding a white horse."

She heard the strong emotion in his voice, emotion he was struggling to hide.
She knew why he had pulled out the card. He was contemplating his own demise,
but she didn't need to tell him that.

Instead, she said, "It looks scary, but it's not so bad. It can symbolize
transformation or rebirth. The king is dead! Long live the king! It can come up
when people are going through lifestyle changes. It can signify that it's time
to move on. It can mark new beginnings rather than endings."

It seemed he was too restless to stay seated across from her. He put the
cards down, got up from the table, and paced the room.

"You know why I came here?" he asked.

"To my house? Or to Sea Gate?"

"Sea Gate."

She swallowed. Again she wondered how much to say. "You know there was a
similar murder here. You think it's related, and you hope the person who did it
is still in town."

"Yeah."

Unspoken words hung heavy in the air between them.

Under the table, she squeezed her hands into fists, considering her next
move. She knew she was taking a chance when she said, "In the summer, I run this
place as a bed and breakfast. Well, I have people who do the actual work. There
are plenty of rooms. You could stay here."

"I wouldn't be very good company."

"I'm not looking for company. And I could use the money," she added, not
because money was really an issue, but because it might help him make up his
mind. "I can give you a winter discount, a hundred dollars a night. For the room
and breakfast."

Again she held her breath, waiting. When he said, "All right," she felt
almost dizzy with relief.

"You can bring your luggage in," she said quickly.

When he walked toward the door, she wasn't sure whether he was walking out of
her life. And she'd never been more frustrated in her blindness. She wanted to
follow him to the car and see that he was getting his suitcase. But that would
surely send him away.

Her own anxiety shocked her. She was desperate to keep this man from killing
himself. More than that, she ached to make him realize that life was worth
living. But she couldn't force him to see things her way, so she pushed back her
chair with deliberate slowness and walked into the hall.

When the door opened again, she wiped her damp palms on her slacks. "Grant?"

"Yes."

"The room at the end of the hall is one of my best, and it has a good view of
the ocean," she said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wished she
could call them back.

He had thought too often of the ocean, of the cold, black waves swallowing
him up.

She longed to go to him then, to wrap her arms around him and give him the
blessing of simple human contact. The warmth of her body could help take away
the chill that had sunk into his bones.

But she wasn't going to fool herself. There was more she had glimpsed in
their brief encounter. Things she didn't dare name because admitting her desires
and seeing them crushed was worse than never acknowledging their existence. Once
her life had been full of possibilities. After she'd lost her sight, she'd
learned not to ask for too much.

Did she dare to open herself up to the pain of rejection? She didn't know
whether she had a choice.

 

GRANT set his duffel bag on a luggage rack near the bedroom door and looked
around. The room was charming, with refinished mahogany cabinet pieces, a
four-poster bed, and blue and white curtains at the double-hung windows.

Had Antonia given directions for the decorating? Had she bought the furniture
at country auctions? He could picture her wanting to know every detail.

Striving to put her out of his mind, he crossed to the bedroom window and
stood staring out at the ocean. It was a block away, but from the second floor
of the house, he could see the swells rising and falling. The view soothed him
because he knew the sea would set him free.

He told himself he should leave this dwelling. He was used to being alone
with his mangled heart and his quest for justice. He had mated for life, and
Marcy's death had ripped away a part of himself that could never be returned.

But over the past two years, the sharp edge of grief had dulled. He saw that
as a betrayal of his wife. And he saw his response to Antonia in those terms,
too.

Not a physical response, he told himself. It was nothing sexual. He had
shared dark secrets with her. And none of it had sent her running from him.

But she saw him only as a man. She knew only the human part—the part about
the stranger who had lost his wife and was searching for her killer.

She didn't know about the wolf who had indulged his raw grief by roaming the
woods of western Pennsylvania hunting animals and ripping out their throats. She
didn't know that wolf was upstairs in her house.

He had come here for a tarot card reading. But he hadn't let her go ahead
with it. Was he afraid she would see through his carefully cultivated veneer of
humanity?

What if he took off his clothes, walked back downstairs, and said the ancient
chant that changed him from man to animal? She wouldn't see the wolf. But she
would sense his presence. And that would be the end of whatever relationship she
was thinking about.

He could end this anytime he wanted. Very dramatically. And that made him
feel safer.

So he left his duffel bag in the room while he went back to the business
district to have a look around. After driving slowly up and down Atlantic
Avenue, he pulled into a space near Bridges Dry Goods Store, Ernest Bridges,
Proprietor, and got out.

As he walked inside, he saw that several people were standing around talking
to the man behind the counter, presumably Ernest Bridges himself, who looked
like he'd been planted there for the past seventy years.

The conversation stopped, and Grant watched the crowd eyeing him
speculatively, although not with the earlier hostility of the cop. Apparently
this was one of the town gathering places—regardless of class or profession.
One man was wearing a business suit. Another had on overalls. A woman was in
jeans and a pullover. Even in human form, Grant could pick up their distinctive
scents. All of them had something in common. They'd all been to the murder
house.

"Help you?" Bridges asked.

Grant pulled his focus away from the olfactory analysis and scrambled for an
answer. "Toothpaste."

"Second aisle on the right. Halfway down."

He ambled past shelves crammed with lipsticks and boxes of graham crackers,
dishwasher detergent and beach towels on deep discount.

"You passing through?" the old man behind the counter asked as Grant came
back with his purchase.

"I might be interested in vacation property," he said for the second time
that afternoon.

The guy in the suit perked right up. "Well, I can surely help you out.
Charlie Hastings. I own the real estate office a few doors down." He held out
his hand, and Grant shook it.

When he'd started his quest, he'd thought about whether to use his own name
and decided that it might be an advantage—if his goal was to flush out the
killer.

"Grant Marshall. I'll stop by in the next day or two," he said, thinking that
the man probably knew how long all the residents had owned their homes.

Stepping outside, he lingered under the shade of the porch, pretending he was
just enjoying the sea air. Although the door closed behind him, his hearing was
excellent, and he could still pick up the conversation from inside the store.

"You think he knows property values have gone down?" Bridges asked.

"Maybe. Maybe not," the real estate guy answered.

"Sell him a fixer-upper and I'll get some business out of it, too," another
voice said, and Grant figured the guy in overalls must be the town handyman.

The group laughed.

"So, do you think I should put in another cabin in the back?" the woman
asked.

"The tourist business will pick up in the warm weather. Leastways if we can
do something about the hole in the ground that used to be the Jefferson house,"
Hastings answered.

When the talk metamorphosed into a deep discussion of Sea Gate property
values, Grant left the porch for a walk through the business district, following
the scent trails of people who had been at the murder house and also in the
shopping area. Many of the paths led to a bar and grill several blocks down
Atlantic called the Seagull's Roost. But he didn't go inside, because he knew
the alcohol fumes would make him sick.

Instead he drove back to Antonia's bed and breakfast. She wasn't around when
he stepped inside. Relieved that she was making herself scarce, he went back up
to his room.

Sleep had become something he grabbed in snatches. But the bed was
comfortable, so he lay down on top of the covers for a short nap. When he woke,
it was dark outside.

His watch said six thirty. Later he would go visit the burned house. But he
needed fuel, and his stomach told him he hadn't eaten much that day.

After a quick shower, he changed into a fresh shirt and went downstairs. He
was thinking he'd go out and get some fast-food hamburgers. But the aromas
coming from the back of the house stopped him.

He smelled homemade beef stew, and a wave of nostalgia swamped him. His
mother had made thick stews, filled with chunks of meat the way his father liked
it. Marcy had gotten the recipe, on one of their brief trips home.

There hadn't been many visits because all the werewolves he knew—his father
and his brothers—were alpha males, and they fought for dominance when left in a
room together.

His father had a couple of brothers he hadn't seen in years. Just the way
Grant had stayed away from his own adult male relatives. But he'd looked up his
cousins on the Internet to find out if they were still alive. One was a private
detective. A guy named Ross Marshall. They'd exchanged a few e-mails. And he'd
thought for a split second about asking him to help track Marcy's killer. Then
he'd figured they'd only end up at each other's throats. So he'd kept to his
private quest.

He hesitated in the front hall. He should stay away from Antonia, but he
found his feet taking him to the kitchen.

When he stopped in the doorway, he saw her stirring a large pot on the front
of the stove. The light was low, giving the kitchen a cozy feel. The simple
domestic scene made his chest tighten.

"That smells good," he said, hearing the thickness of his own words.

She turned to face him. "Cold weather makes me want to fix a big pot of
something hearty. Are you hungry?"