Dead on Delivery (6 page)

“Don’t change the subject.” His hands circled my waist and settled me more firmly onto his lap. I let out a small gasp and he smiled. “I’m not crazy about being manipulated.”

I bit my lip and rocked a little. He groaned. “I’m sorry,” I said, and leaned down to kiss him again.

“I’ll consider accepting your apology if you’ll consider being truthful with me.” His hands slid up my body, cupping my breasts. His thumbs began to make lazy circles around my nipples. I rocked against him again, this time completely as a reflex.

He kissed my neck. “Why are you setting the alarm? I thought Sunday was your morning to sleep in.”

Usually it was and I treasured it, but Elmville was a longish drive and the memorial service started at three. Not exactly anything I wanted to explain to Ted. “No rest for the wicked, you know?” I let my head fall back. It was getting hard to concentrate on my witty banter, such as it was.

“Mmm,” he murmured. “I like it when you’re wicked.”

He was already naked, so it was perfectly evident that he liked it. He slid his hands along my back, pulling me closer and then he froze. “You’ve got a delivery to make.” He let his hands drop and looked at me, his eyes narrowed slightly.

I wiggled closer and nipped his chin. “Not exactly.”

He pushed me away and held me at arm’s length. “But it’s Messenger business, isn’t it?”

I stopped trying to use my feminine wiles to distract him. I didn’t have a lot of practice with them and apparently they weren’t all that distracting. Perhaps Mae should have taught me eye-batting along with fist strikes. “Yes. It’s Messenger business.”

“Where are you going?”

I didn’t say anything. I barely even breathed. If I told him where I was going, he was going to know it had something to do with Bossard’s death. If I told him I was going somewhere else and he found out . . . again, those flat-out lies into those blue eyes didn’t sit well with me.

He sighed and kissed me. “How am I supposed to protect you if I don’t know where you are?”

It took some effort, but I didn’t laugh. “I don’t need any protection. It’s not a big deal.”

Truth was, smart money would bet on me in any fight. Oh, sure, not at first glance. At first glance, it would be smart to bet on the six foot three inch surfer god with the abs of Ryan Reynolds. Spend a few minutes watching us in action, though, and you’d change your bet faster than I could get him in a headlock, which is pretty darn fast. I am faster, stronger and most definitely meaner than Ted.

I was also not used to having anyone trying to protect me. In this particular case, I was worried that having someone there trying to protect me would put everyone in more danger. I was planning on being discreet.

I kissed my way down his chin to his neck and then to his chest and then lower still. I paused. “I think I might know a way to make it up to you.”

He slid the T-shirt over my head. “They do say that to forgive is divine.”

Maybe my feminine wiles aren’t so bad after all.

THE NEXT MORNING, TED LEFT FOR HIS SHIFT WHISTLING AND I hit the shower. Afterward, I stood in front of my closet wrapped in a towel. It was like I’d been preparing my wardrobe to attend memorial services my whole life. I had plenty of appropriate choices. Black pants. Black skirts. Black dresses. You name it, I had it in black. I settled on a knee-length black skirt and soft gray sweater that belted at the waist. I pulled on black hose and a pair of kitten-heel pumps. I wasn’t much for stilettos. They messed too much with my sense of balance. I said a small prayer of thanks to Michelle Obama for making low heels fashionable again. I brushed my hair into a low ponytail, glossed my lips and was ready to go.

Neil Bossard would be laid to rest at the Memorial Lawn Cemetery in Elmville at three o’clock this afternoon. A reception would follow at his parents’ home. I should be able to make it to both and still easily make it back for my shift at the hospital tonight. It was a good thing I didn’t need much sleep.

Norah was in the kitchen reading the Sunday paper and drinking coffee. She looked me up and down. “You look like you’re going to a funeral.”

“Don’t I always?” I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down next to her.

She tapped her mug against mine. “True that. So where are you going?”

“To a funeral.”

She snorted, which was infinitely better than having her panic over who had died and why and if any vampires had been involved.

“How about you? You getting out of here today?” I grabbed a section of newspaper.

Norah pressed her lips together in a straight line. “Where would I go?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Yoga class, maybe. The grocery store. Over to Tina’s. Someplace besides the apartment or work.”

“You’re seriously going to lecture me about holing up in the apartment? Do you want me to get you a kettle to talk to, Pot?”

She had a point. I had some hermit-ish qualities myself. It was, however, different. I wasn’t staying in because I was scared to go out. “It’s daytime. He’s not out there. He’s home, hidden behind blackout curtains, and will be until the sun goes down.”

“Fine. He’s not out there, but what else is? I know there’s a bunch of stuff that can come out in daylight.”

“True enough, but they were out there before and it never bothered you,” I pointed out.

She flung her hands in the air. “Because I didn’t know any better! Now I know.”

But she didn’t really. That was part of the problem, too. Most of what was out there was never going to go near Norah. The majority of ’Canes didn’t want anything to do with ’Danes. Mundanes were to be avoided. Detection could cause major inconveniences at best and death or total eradication at worst. Of course there were exceptions. Alex and his fellow vampires were a good example of that. ’Danes were food. They were there to be stalked, hunted and preyed upon. The trick was to do it without detection. But while vampires and werewolves were hunters, not everything else was. A lot of the Arcane world were just folks trying to get along. Weird folks. Folks with magical abilities, but in the end, folks not much different than most of the folks in the Mundane world.

For Norah, her little bit of knowledge of what was out there in the Arcane world had scared her half to death. If she really understood, she might not be quite as afraid. “You don’t really know what’s out there, though, do you?”

“I know enough.” She took a long swig of coffee and grimaced.

“No. I don’t think you do. If you did, you wouldn’t be letting it screw with your head like this.” I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me before. What was scarier than the unknown? Poor Norah’s whole perception of the world had been thrown out of whack. She didn’t know what to expect around the next corner. A little bit of knowledge was a dangerous thing. A whole lot of knowledge, however, could be quite helpful.

I went back to my room and dragged a box out from underneath my bed. The book I was looking for was near the bottom, underneath a collection of the various belts that I’d gone through in my years as Mae’s student. I fingered the frayed edge of my white belt with its orange stripes. I remembered the day that Mae had tied it on me, showing me how to loop it properly. I’d been so little, she’d knelt on the floor in front of me to tie it. “This is a new beginning for you, Melina,” she’d said.

I’d nodded. I’d been seven, but not stupid. This lady was different from other people. She didn’t make my skin feel funny the way the strange things that nobody else seemed to see did, but she made me feel different than my mom or my teachers or my aunt. I’d felt safe with her in a different way.

I put the belt back in the box, shut it and shoved it back under the bed. Mae had changed my life when she had come into it. She’d made things make sense. Her leaving my life had made everything make a little less sense, but there was nothing I could do but cope with it. The knowledge that she’d given me had helped me be less afraid. Maybe a little more knowledge would help Norah, too.

I came back out, plopped the book in front of Norah and said, “As long as you’re not doing anything today, I think you should read this.”

She picked up the book and read the title. “
A Grimoire of Northern California
.” She looked up at me, her head tilted to one side.

“It will help you make sense of a lot of stuff. At least you’ll know what you should be afraid of and what you don’t need to worry about.”

She still looked doubtful.

“Just try it,” I said. “It can’t hurt you to try.”

And with that, I hit the road.

 

 

I WASN’T SURE WHO HAD MENTIONED MY CAR TO THE COPS and if they would be at Neil Bossard’s memorial service or not, but I didn’t think it was wise to take chances. I parked on the other side of the cemetery and hoofed it over to where the service was taking place. As a result, I was late. This is not exactly a news flash. I’m late a lot. It’s rarely my fault, or so I maintain. It’s hard to be on time when you never know what’s going to pop up and insist you deliver something to the opposite side of town right away.

This time was my own fault. I shouldn’t have spent so much time with Norah this morning, but it wasn’t exactly right to let her sit there in the apartment and stew.

When I got there, it wasn’t hard to blend in. There was a huge crowd. Elmville wasn’t that big. Half the town must have turned out for young Neil’s burial. There was a fairly large age range, with quite a few young people present. Lots of pretty young girls holding tissues to their faces. Lots of young men staring resolutely at the horizon and not meeting anyone’s eyes while they clenched their jaws.

“That Neil should be taken from us so soon after he had been returned to us seems like the greatest cruelty,” the minister intoned from the graveside. I made a mental note. I needed to find out where Neil Bossard had been. “So many times when someone as young as Neil dies, people ask me how God can be so cruel.”

I figured the middle-aged couple standing nearest the minister must be Neil’s parents. His mother’s face was chalk-white, her pain etched indelibly on her face. My own heart clenched a little as I watched her try and control herself. His father was a somewhat older version of the clench-jawed young men around us. He had the added duty, however, of making sure that his wife’s knees didn’t buckle beneath her. Next to him was an older woman in a wheelchair. Of the three, she seemed most clear-eyed and in control. Perhaps when you got to a certain age and had seen death enough times, it was easier to put it in perspective.

On the other hand, I didn’t think there was any perspective where it would seem right for a parent to bury a child. It was one of those moments in the universe where one felt everything must have been turned upside down. Even someone who had seen a lot of death would see that.

One thing I didn’t see as I looked around the crowd was much in the way of brown skin. In fact, I was pretty much the brownest person there and I’m not all that dark. I’m an olive-skinned gal, and in the summer I darken to a nice light mahogany. In California, that does not generally entitle me to a brown designation.

Everyone comes to California from everywhere. We’re a popular destination worldwide. We’ve got everything: mountains, oceans, valleys, agriculture, show business, computer geeks and hippies. Not everybody stays. Generally about a hundred thousand or so more people leave than put down roots, but that still leaves a pretty diverse group. As a result, I don’t often see a really homogeneous crowd like the one I was looking at right now. This group was white and nothing but white. When I stick out as looking ethnic, you know the crowd is vanilla. I shrugged it off. I hadn’t studied the demographics of Elmville. Maybe I was seeing a reflection of what the town was like.

I’d stopped listening to the minister and was somewhat startled to realize he’d stopped speaking. The crowd had started moving. Person after person made their way to the graveside to toss in a single flower, say a few words to Bossard’s parents and grandmother and then walk down to where the cars lined the road. I decided to circle back to the Buick and then follow the crowd, at a discreet distance of course, back to the Bossard home.

There have been moments when my continued well-being depended on catching a movement from the corner of my eye and reacting quickly. As I crossed the cemetery, the breeze picked up and something swirled in the corner of my vision. I whirled into a defensive crouch. Well, not quite a crouch. My skirt was kind of straight and that pretty much took crouching out of the stance equation, but I lowered my center of gravity enough that I’d be able to take on anything that came from any direction.

Then I felt like an idiot. A young woman who was crying stood behind a tree down the hill a short distance. The breeze had blown a few strands of her jet-black hair into the wind. I straightened back up. I doubted I needed to take on hair. The woman whose head it was attached to didn’t seem like much of a threat at first either. Her face was soft and unlined and she seemed as afraid of being seen as anything else. I pretended I hadn’t seen her and that my sudden change in stance was due to having my heel sink into the soft ground of the cemetery, which was not a total stretch of the imagination. I’d been walking on my toes already to keep my shoes from sinking down with each step.