Fire & Frost (12 page)

He buttoned the top button on the shirt of his body, feeling what he could only interpret as tenderness for it.
Him.
This man who’d never caught a break. It was strange to contemplate his own light brown hair, his own ear. To look at himself in death.

He’d felt like such a failure in life, but this man had tried hard to be a good cop and a good father. He’d died trying his best. A sob caught in Max’s chest.

“Cut it, Don Johnson,” he muttered.

He’d had these extra chances to make things right; that was something most slain cops didn’t get. He’d made major strikes against Salvo’s organization. He and Veronica had set up a fake police charity to funnel money to his sister’s family to help them care for Teresa. He’d gotten to know this extraordinary woman. But Salvo was on the warpath now—he’d known to send witches. Max had never even known witches existed aside from storybooks, but Salvo had figured it out. The fight would escalate in a supernatural way now. He and Veronica needed to go on the offensive or she was as good as dead. It would help to know why the hell Salvo was after her in the first place. The Council witches had seemed to know.
Why get involved in petty mob business? Why not just kill the guy?
the one had asked.

Who were they talking about? What had Veronica done?

Max grabbed his body by the feet and pulled it down the small hall and out back. The arm caught in the door and he yanked, forcing it free. A piece of meat. It wasn’t him, dammit! It bumped down the steps behind him and onto the gravel out back. He grabbed it by the shirt and belt and heaved it up there with the Kite brothers.

Six bodies. Getting them through downtown Malcolmsberg would be bitch enough, but the railroad yard was manned at this time of night. Unless the trains were backstacked, he was screwed.

He returned to the living room to find Veronica asleep. He spotted Jophius curled up by the fireplace. Well, if she thought she was safe with that thing, then she was safe with it. She knew her business well enough.

He grabbed the warm socks and legwarmers from the radiator and sat next to her on the couch, slowly drawing off her leg warmers. Then he took off her cold, damp socks to reveal her feet. One foot was pale and pretty. The other was shriveled and striated with angry flesh from past operations. He’d seen this foot once before, purely by accident. Veronica hid it assiduously, but he loved it because it was difficult and strange and fiery, like Veronica herself. Gently he rolled the warm, thick sock over it, and then slid the leg warmer over that, over her leggings and clear up to her knee. He repeated the process on her good leg and left for the railroad yard.

HE’D SEEN HER FOOT.

She’d realized this immediately upon waking and finding new warm socks on her feet and her woolly leg warmers over her leggings.

He would’ve had to see her foot in order to put on the new socks. He may have seen her ankle and maybe even her leg.

She hated him for it with a sudden ferocity.

She knew it was irrational, that he was trying to help, but she felt invaded, stripped of dignity. The idea of his wide, frank face drawn tight with pity at the sight of her misshapenness filled her with horror and made her want to yell at him and banish him.

But she could barely lift her head.

She should be thinking about her frozen core instead of her leg. She was dangerously chilled, deep down to the cells. She needed deep, deep warmth. She wished she was strong enough to take a bath, but her muscles were jelly. And she’d enlarged and deepened the tub with magic at the beginning of winter; in her condition she’d slip right down and drown like a baby.

Unless she had help. But she couldn’t bare her leg to him again. It was stupid, because it was just a leg, but it had been the secret, festering center of her being and everything she should be ashamed of for so long that it wasn’t just a leg.

It could never be just a leg.

Her teeth chattered. She eyed Jophius, snoring softly by the fireplace. He looked so cozy and warm with his little monster snout nestled between his cloven hooves. She wanted to go over and curl around him and be warmed by him, but she felt too weak.

Max returned at around ten, and she pretended to be sleeping. He touched her hand, then put his deliciously warm fingers to her neck to check her pulse. She wished he’d put his whole hand on her neck, her cheek. She felt as if every molecule in her body oriented toward his warmth and his strength the way sunflowers oriented to the sun.

He left then, and returned with a mop and pail.

It smelled like he’d mixed together every lemon and pine scented cleanser he could find. He’d also stoked the fire high, letting it get smoky. Maybe the place smelled; she couldn’t tell. Her sense of smell was gone. Her taste would be, too. She felt like she was pinned to the couch by a ton of concrete.

Max scrubbed the wood floor with a sponge mop. He’d changed into jeans and a threadbare plaid shirt and every few minutes his sleeves would unfurl and flop around and he’d roll them back up. After they flopped down a few times, he rolled them up rather violently, clear up to the middles of his upper arms in two tight bands. Then he started back in on his scrubbing in quick, sharp movements that had his biceps straining and flexing against the unforgiving circles of plaid.

She found herself fixating on his arms, his brutal beauty. Her mouth began to water—actually water, like she was a dog or something.

This wasn’t work he was used to doing and he wasn’t particularly good at it, but his motions mesmerized her. It wasn’t just a lust thing; watching him nourished her in a way that went beyond the physical. He was just so, so very
Max
, the tough-guy cop who’d gotten pissed and rolled his sleeves too high and tight. He was smart and generous and secretly artistic. Yet practical, too—a straight-line-between-two-points guy, and sometimes that line was a bullet. Every inch the fierce protector, her Max. He was so purely who he was, so purely Max, that he was his own kind of magnificence, with a type of beauty that seemed to deepen with every new movement. He’d hate the word beauty used on him, but that’s what it was.

His beauty touched her in a way that no beauty ever had. She wondered if it was because he was so completely out of her reach. He was strong and good and everything that was right in the world, and she was a twisted-up witch.

And he’d seen her foot. He’d even touched it.

Oh well, it wasn’t as if he didn’t already see her as warped person, she told herself. Just tonight, before he’d hauled off the bodies, she’d watched him inspect the photo of her and her little niece Alix and was reminded of how she horrified him. She shuddered to think of his opinion on her conjuring Jophius.

When he finished scrubbing the floor, he sat down on the edge of the couch.

“Hey,” he said. “You awake?”

“Kind of.”

“Teatime.”

The next she knew, he was holding a mug to her lips like she was an invalid. Christ, even lifting the tea cup was too much. But she allowed it; she needed the warmth.

She watched his mouth while she sipped. His lips were rosy for a man’s lips, and there was a crease at the center of his bottom lip, a cleft that echoed the cleft in his broad chin. How many women had he kissed with those lips? A hollow feeling formed in her chest.

“Another sip?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He put the mug to her lips. The liquid heated her throat as it seeped down. His body was warm from the physical exertion—she could tell even without him touching her, as if he warmed the very space around him. She wished he would check her pulse again, or feel her forehead or touch her hands.

She supposed she could command it; he did live at her pleasure. She’d commanded others she’d conjured. But not Max. Never Max

He sat, mug in hand, expression carefully neutral. Was he thinking about her leg?

“I’ll finish the cleaning,” she said. “Let me.”

“How long until you can bespell it clean? A day? Two?”

“Maybe.” It would be longer than that. “Surely you can do find something else to do.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ll let me handle it,” she commanded firmly.

“Says who?”

Her gaze flew to his. The lines around his eyes had gone crinkly. Laughing at her. How she hated this!

He winked and got back to work. During a break in his mopping he ducked back into the basement and got the electricity back on.

No, she couldn’t stop him from much of anything now, and she didn’t like it. Outwardly she fumed at him, but really she wanted him to sit by her and give her more tea. She was dangerously cold. She’d almost died. She still could.

Maybe if he stoked the fire more…

Jophius stood up, snorted once through his miniature bull’s snout, and curled up anew, just like a dog. His leathery scales glowed in the flickering flames.

Max took one look at Jophius and then eyed her darkly. “A wee monster curled up by the fire after a hard night of devouring witches alive. Isn’t there a Norman Rockwell painting of this?”

She smiled in spite of herself. “His name is Jophius.”

“I know.” Max grabbed new socks off the radiator. He had a sock-warming rotation going.

“You think you’re putting those on me?” She whispered this with as much strength and dignity as she could muster.

“Yup.”

“I’ll keep these socks.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He went to her and sat next to her feet. Watching her eyes, he squeezed the toes of her good foot through the sock. “Like tiny blocks of ice.” She stiffened. Would he pull the sock off? “You’re too cold,” he observed. “This is wrong. You should be getting warmer.”

“Just put the blanket over. I don’t want new socks.”

He squeezed the toes again, then he reached over and took her hand. He squeezed it and nestled it back onto her stomach, brow furrowed.

Concern. Not what she wanted from Max.

“Your core temperature’s going too low. You need a bath, Veronica.”

She shook her head. Out of the question.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want one.” She was getting her voice back. A bit of her breath. She managed to jerk her foot to show she wanted his hand off. Without his hand, her toes were so cold, though.

He grabbed the toes of her good foot again, rubbed vigorously, shocking her with his forwardness. “You want a bath, but you can’t handle it on your own.” He studied her face, then he reached up to her ankle and began to roll down the sock.

She watched him wildly. He would dare do this? And then the sock was on the floor.

He pressed his big mitts around her now-bare foot. It was invasive. It was impudent. And oh, it was heaven. He molded his flesh to hers, hands flat on either side of her foot, a prayer of warmth. For one delicious, forbidden second she imagined his whole body against hers, warming her, wanting her, loving her.

It made her feel stupidly sobby, how badly she wanted that.

He removed his hands and rolled the heated sock onto her good foot. Then he grabbed her maimed foot and rubbed it through the sock.

“Max…” she shook her head. “Don’t.” Yes, she needed a bath. Yes, she needed his warmth. She needed not to need. “No more.”

“I read about these fish in National Geographic once,” he said, rubbing gently. “They live beneath the ocean in caves way down deep where there’s no light, and over time, they lost their eyesight.”

She didn’t like where he was going with this. “Can you remind me why I keep bringing you back?”

“They didn’t need their eyes anymore because they live in darkness,” he continued. “They could see perfectly before the caves, but after they lived in the darkness a while, their eyesight faded away.”

“If you don’t use it you’ll lose it? And what am I losing?”

“Your courage.”

The air went out of her. She swallowed, mustered up her voice. “I fought four goddamn witches tonight.”

“Brilliantly,” he said. “But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about what really scares you. You won’t ever do what really scares you. You think you can’t, but you can.”

She frowned. Max was such a pit bull with emotions, always wanting to tear into whatever thing you didn’t want to talk about and shake the stuffing out of it. She wished she could crash some glass against the wall or make thunder. Or stuff him under a lid like a jack-in-a-box. A pit-bull-in-a-box. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know it frightens you to be vulnerable. To let me care for you.”

She rolled her eyes.

And then he did something shocking—he brought her foot up to his mouth, so that his lips just grazed the wool sock covering her damaged toes, and he breathed.

She stiffened as the heat from his breath bled through the sock. She tried to jerk her foot away but he her held her bad leg tight and he breathed again, watching her eyes.

“Come on,” she said, pulling weakly.

A glint of humor appeared in his eyes and again he breathed delicious warmth onto her icy toes, rubbing them gently.

“Max,” she warned.

“You don’t like it?” he asked into her sock, warming her more.

But that wasn’t the issue. She closed her eyes. Yes, she liked it. She loved it. She loved him, that was the problem.

He rubbed and breathed. He would strip her of everything, this man.

“Max,” she whispered. In the silence that followed, she opened her eyes and found him regarding her with a serious expression.

“I’m going to run you a bath now,” he announced.

“No.” She wished she had the energy to pull from his grip. “I’m power-drained, Max. I could slide down and drown.”

“Not if I go in with you. Not if I hold you.”

What?
Her stomach did a flip-flop. “No.”

“You have to get warm.”

“I forbid it.”

“Forbid all you want. You’re getting a bath.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You won’t like the consequences of defying me.”

He squeezed her toes. “I’m already dead anyway, right?” He nestled her foot back into the blanket and headed up the stairs. It was with stunned horror that she listened to the crash of water. He would strip her down and take a bath with her?