Face the Fire (11 page)

“Shut up. That was high school.”

“I liked you in high school.” Because he had, he tried again. “I’m glad you and Mac bought the house. It’s a great spot.”

“Yeah, we think so. No hard feelings your old man sold it out from under you?”

“It was never mine.”

She opened her mouth, shut it again. For a moment he’d been the lost and restless boy she remembered. And had cared for. “You messed her up, Sam. Seriously messed her up.”

He stared at the cliffs that rose over the sea and spilled down to it. “I know it.”

“Then I messed her up.”

Puzzled, he looked back at Ripley’s face. “I don’t understand you.”

“She didn’t tell me about this morning because we’re just getting back on even ground again, after a long time. I dumped her just as hard as you did, so I’m thinking . . .” She drew a breath. “I’m thinking I don’t have any right to take shots at you, when part of it’s just to ease my own conscience. You knocked the ground out from under her, but I didn’t stick around to help break her fall.”

“You want to tell me why you didn’t stick?”

She sent him a hard, level look. “You want to tell me why you didn’t?”

He shook his head. “No. Why don’t we start dealing with now? I’m part of this, and I’m sticking this time around.”

“Fair enough,” she agreed. “I say we can use all the help we can get, from whatever the source.”

“I’m going to do whatever I can to convince Mia to let me back into her life.”

“I’ll wish you luck.” At his surprised glance she smirked. “But until I make up my mind about you, pal, I won’t say whether that’s good luck or bad.”

“Reasonable.” He held out a hand, and after a moment’s hesitation she took it.

Heat shimmered and sparked. “Figures,” she said in a dour voice.

“Connections.” He gave her hand a friendly squeeze before releasing it. “What can you do?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out. I have to finish my patrol.” She waited a beat, inclined her head. “After you.” She jerked a thumb at his car. “And keep that phallic symbol on wheels under the speed limit.”

“Oh, absolutely, Officer Friendly.” He sauntered back to his car. “One more thing? Let’s not mention my little visit here to Mia. She’ll just get pissy about me questioning her skills.”

Ripley snorted as she climbed into her own car. She had to give Sam credit for one thing. He still knew his woman.

S
he wouldn’t tell Mia, but Ripley didn’t consider
that her discretion was required to extend to Mac. She was pretty sure there was some loophole in the confidentiality law that applied to spouses.

The way she looked at it, if you loved someone enough to promise them a lifetime, you got to tell them all your stuff and listen to all of theirs. It was a side benefit and balanced out having to share closet space.

Though they lived together, slept together, woke together, they met for lunch a few times a week at Café Book. The few times a week Mac wasn’t so buried in his work that he remembered what time it was. The lunch date, she decided, was as long as she could hold out before she spilled her news.

She itched to relay the story to Nell, but after a complex internal debate, she decided Nell cut too close to Mia and didn’t come under the dispensation rule.

Mac would have to do.

“So,” she continued as she plowed through a grilled tuna and avocado salad, “he stood there, all handsome and brooding—it was still cool and misty, so he had on this long dark coat and it was all, you know, billowy. Perfect
tortured-hero look. So he’s like that, on her front lawn with that big old house behind him and the mists just burning off, until I made him leave.”

“He vanished the remnants on the road?” It wasn’t easy to get a word in when Ripley was on a roll, but Mac had carved out one salient point.

“Yeah—poof. It can be a pretty intense spell, depending on the, you know, quality and complexity of the evil and stuff.” She jerked a shoulder and grabbed her coffee. “But I didn’t see a trace of it, and I stopped and took a good look on the way back, just in case he’d missed something.”

“Had he?”

“Nope. Not even a stray vibe left, which means he swept it clean.”

“I wish he’d talked to me first,” Mac complained. “I could’ve gotten some on-site readings and taken a sample for lab tests.”

She sat back, shook her head at him. “Oh, yeah, just what I want my guy to have his fingers in, some evil black ooze.”

“It’s what I do.” Mac sulked about it for a minute, then decided he might as well take a drive out and see if some of his more sensitive equipment could pick up anything.

“So let’s backtrack a minute,” he continued. “He told you that Mia told him she’d seen a large black wolf with the pentagram mark on his muzzle.”

“That’s the manifestation. Black wolf, red eyes, big fangs. Her mark on it. Had to be a hell of an image to shake the queen of weird.”

“An image is just the point,” Mac said. “Not an actual wolf. No living creature was possessed this time out. Could have something to do with her branding it last winter. But it was still potent enough to send her into a skid. That’s interesting.”

“And a bad one, from the way Sam was shaken up. I’ll
tell you what else is interesting.” She leaned forward, hunching over what was left of her lunch and lowering her voice. “The guy sweeping up behind her, standing there looking at her place like some contemporary version of Heathcliff looking over the moors for Catherine—”

“Good one.”

“Hey, I read. Anyway, him standing there, emotions all swirling—and trying to act all cool and casual about it. That’s interesting.”

“From what you told me, they had a very intense relationship.”

“Had,” Ripley confirmed. “I could see him being all moony if she’d dumped him way back when. But he’s the one who pulled stakes.”

“Doesn’t mean he got over her.”

“Guys don’t carry torches for a frigging decade.”

Smiling, Mac rubbed his hand over the back of hers. “I’d carry one for you.”

“Get out.” But she turned her hand over, linked her fingers with his. “Anyway, he doesn’t want her to know he went out there. He says she’d be ticked if she knew he’d backed up her charms. And she would. But if you ask me, there’s another layer. He doesn’t want her to know he’s stuck on her. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so complicated, and if there wasn’t so much at stake.”

“Whatever was between them, is between them—or isn’t—plays into what happens next. I’ve got some theories.”

“You’ve always got some theories.”

He smiled, inched forward. “We need to have a meeting. All parties.”

“I figured.” Like his, her voice was a whisper now. To the casual observer, it might have appeared they were flirting, or plotting an insurrection. “Let’s have it at Zack’s.
Nell’ll cook. We’re scraping the bottom of the leftover barrel at home.”

“Good thinking. How do we handle how much we know, and who told us what who doesn’t want somebody else to know we know?”

“Jesus, I understand that.” She grinned at him. “It must be love.”

“Well, if it isn’t Bill and Coo.” Mia stepped up to the table, ran an affectionate hand over Mac’s shoulder. “Don’t the two of you look adorable?”

“Yeah, we’re thinking about entering a contest.” Ripley eased back, studied Mia’s face. She had to give the woman credit, nothing showed but bone-deep beauty. “So what’s up with you?”

“Oh, this and that.” Mia left her hand on Mac’s shoulder. Something about him always comforted her. “Actually, there is something I need to speak with you about—and Nell.”

A shadow of worry crossed her face as she glanced back at the café counter. “It’ll have to wait a bit, though,” Mia decided. “She’s pretty tied up with customers at the moment.”

Ripley considered how to play it, then went with instinct. “If this is about your dances with wolves, I know about it.”

It was a toss-up, she thought, who looked more stunned, Mia or Mac. But at least Mia didn’t kick her under the table. She shifted, which gave her the opportunity to kick Mac back as she reached toward a neighboring table and dragged over a third chair.

“Sit down a minute.”

“I think I will.” Struggling to settle, Mia slid into the chair, folded her hands. “I didn’t realize you and Sam were such confidants.”

“Oh, can it.” Ripley pushed what was left of her lunch
aside. “I ran into him out on the coast road.” Which was true, Ripley thought. Mia’s house was on the damn coast road. “He cleaned up the little mess you left behind.”

“The . . .” She trailed off, paled. My God, how could she have been so careless! She hadn’t so much as thought of the smear of power that might have stained that section of the island.

“Give yourself a break,” Mac said gently. “You had to have been badly shaken.”

“It doesn’t matter. It was my responsibility.”

“You don’t get it, professor.” Casually, Ripley broke off a piece of the éclair Mac had picked out for dessert. “Ms. Perfect here isn’t allowed to make mistakes like the rest of us lesser beings.”

“I should’ve cleaned the area,” Mia repeated, and gave Ripley a genuine jolt of concern when she didn’t snap back.

“Well, you didn’t. He did, and all’s well. Anyway, while I was ragging on him and threatening to haul him in on some trumped-up charges just to brighten my morning, he filled me in. I’ve filled Mac in, so you just have to bring Nell up to speed when she’s off her shift.”

“Yes, all right.” Mia rubbed at the vague pounding in her temple. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a headache. And her stomach was queasy. She’d have to take the time to balance her chakras so she could think clearly.

“I would like to go over it with you in more detail, Mac. I tend to believe it was nothing but a scare tactic, but I don’t want to shrug it off and miss something critical.”

“You’re right, and as it happens Ripley and I were just saying we should have a meeting. Why don’t we see if we can get together at Nell and Zack’s tonight?”

“At dinnertime,” Ripley chimed in and made Mia smile.

“Yes, why waste time or an opportunity for a free meal?
I’ll speak to Nell.” Mia got to her feet, then looked down at Ripley. “I intended to tell you about it myself. I just needed to clear my head first. I don’t want you to think I was keeping secrets. It’s past time for that between us.”

Ripley suffered a pang of guilt over Sam, but sucked it in. A deal was a deal. “Don’t sweat it. Besides, it gave me a chance to needle the pretty boy.”

“That’s something, then. I’ll see you later.”

When she walked toward Nell and was out of earshot, Mac leaned forward again. “You’re good, Deputy. Really good.”

“Did you doubt it? Now I’ve got to make tracks and get to Sam, let him know what I told her and what I didn’t, before she gets to him and everything’s screwed.”

“I’ll do it.” He shoved his éclair in front of her as he rose. “I want to talk to him anyway. I need to document all of this.”

“Hey, good deal.” She plucked up the pastry.

“And you get to buy lunch.”

“Always a catch,” she muttered with her mouth full.

Mac had only been able to wheedle an hour out
of Lulu, and that was just as well now, he thought. He still had to drive back home, meet up with Ripley again, and drive back for the newly arranged dinner meeting at the Todds’.

But for now he had his tape recorder and notebook, and had primed Lulu with a box of Godiva.

“Really appreciate this, Lulu.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She drank coffee, black, with the candy. She was giving wine a little rest. “I told you I don’t much like this interview crap. Reminds me of being hauled in by the cops for protesting.”

“What were you protesting?”

She sent him a pitying look. “Come on. It was the sixties. What wasn’t I protesting?”

It was a good place to start, he decided. “You lived in a commune, right?”

“For a while.” She shrugged. Might as well get it done. “I flopped here, or there. Slept in parks, on beaches, whatever was handy. Saw a lot of the country you’re not going to see if you’re in the family minivan and stopping at the Holiday Inn.”

“I bet. How’d you end up here? On Three Sisters?”

“Heading east.”

“Lulu . . .” he pleaded.

“Okay, don’t give me that puppy-dog look.” She made herself more comfortable on the sofa. “I hit the road when I was about sixteen. Didn’t get along with my family.” She leaned over, plucked out another chocolate.

“Any particular reason for that?”

“You name it. My old man had a narrow mind and a hard hand, and my mother danced to his tune and played with the ladies auxiliary. Couldn’t stand it. I lit out first chance I got, and I’d been such a pain in their asses, they didn’t go to much trouble to find me.”

He found the offhanded way she spoke of her parents’ disinterest sad and telling. But knowing Lulu, the slightest inkling of sympathy would earn him a kick in the teeth. “Where were you going?”

“Anywhere that wasn’t there. Ended up in San Francisco for a while. Gave my virginity in a nice marijuana haze to a sweet-faced boy named Bobby.”

She smiled at that, as despite the years and the circumstance, it was a nice memory. “I made love beads, sold them for food, listened to a lot of music, solved all the world’s problems. Smoked a lot of joints, dropped a little
acid. Cruised around New Mexico and Nevada with a guy named Spike—can you beat that—on his Harley.”

“At sixteen?”

“Might’ve been seventeen by then. You only get to be sixteen for a year. Liked being a gypsy, as I had itchy feet.” She wiggled her toes in her ancient Birkenstocks. “I planted them now and then. The commune in Colorado for one. I learned to plant a garden, how to cook what I planted. Learned how to knit there, too. But . . .”

Behind her lenses, her eyes sharpened. “You want the weird stuff, right? Not the hippie-trippie memoirs.”

“I’ll take what I can get.”

“I had dreams. Not like goals,” she added. “Didn’t have an ambition to my name back then. But I had dreams of this place—The Sisters. The house on the cliff, and a woman with long red hair.”

Mac had been sketching Lulu’s face on his notepad, but now he stopped and looked up. “Mia.”

“No.” Because it reminded her of the old days, Lulu lighted a cone of vanilla incense. “She’d cry in the dreams, and tell me I had to tend her children.”

Mac made a quick notation. There had been a nurse, and the one called Earth had left the children with her before leaping from the cliffs. “Reincarnation?” He scribbled. “A link within the circle?”

“Whenever I had the dream, I just had to move again, just had to leave where I was and move on. Long story short, I ended up in Boston, broke. But I didn’t mind being broke back then. Somebody always knew somebody who had a pad you could crash in. One day this girl who called herself Buttercup—Jesus—said how we should all take the ferry over to Three Sisters Island. She liked to think she was a witch, but as I remember she was the daughter of some rich lawyer whose money she was pissing away in college. She could pay the freight to get us all over and
back with daddy’s allowance money. I went along because, hey, free ride. They made the round-trip. I stayed.”

“Why?” Mac asked her.

She didn’t answer for a moment. Despite her relationship with Mia, with Ripley and Nell, and the island itself, Lulu didn’t talk much about her own brushes with magic.

It always made her feel a little silly.

But Mac was watching her in that quiet way he had. And she was damn fond of him.

“I knew it was my place, as soon as I saw it coming up out of the water. I was high,” Lulu continued. “We all were. Buttercup was a moron, but she always had prime weed. I saw the island like it was in crystal, everything so vivid and clear. Maybe it was the pot, but it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I looked up and saw the house on the cliffs, and I thought—well, shit, there it is. That’s where I’m supposed to be. I walked away from Buttercup and the rest as soon as we hit the docks, and never gave them another thought. Wonder what the hell ever happened to her.”