Love Is The Bond: A Rowan Gant Investigation (28 page)

I looked back down at the room, and it still
seemed dark to me. For a moment I thought it might simply be the
ethereal pounding in my skull, especially considering the fact that
my ears were buzzing and colors were starting to flare and bloom as
my sight shifted in and out of focus.

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath,
trying to find a decent ground. It hadn’t been that long ago that I
was wishing to slip across the veil as I’d done so many times
before, but now I found myself fighting against it.

When I eventually opened my eyes, the flares
of color had faded, but nothing else had changed. The lighting in
the room still wasn’t right. As I continued to stare, however, a
far more mundane reason for the dimness became apparent. The
torchiere lamp that normally stood next to the front doorway was no
longer there. I allowed my gaze to pivot farther downward, and I
saw that it was now scattered across the hardwood floor where it
had fallen and shattered into countless pieces.

Intermixed with it was the base of a small
antique end table, which had apparently been toppled over as well.
Its marble top was now broken into two distinct pieces. Completing
the jumbled mess were the remnants of something I couldn’t readily
identify but looked vaguely familiar.

“Excuse me, sir,” a voice filtered into my
ears.

I didn’t respond. I simply stared at the
shattered pieces of the unidentified object, trying to get a handle
on where I’d seen them before. In my head I treated them as a
jigsaw puzzle, mentally flipping them over and shoving them
together in different ways until I formed an image that made sense.
The exercise actually had a side benefit in that it gave me
something on which to concentrate; that helped me remain grounded
in this plane, for the time being at least.

After a moment it finally dawned on me that
the ivory-colored chunks were the remains of a good-sized, ceramic
faerie statuette that had once graced a recessed shelf on the wall
of our dining room.

“Excuse me, sir,” the voice came again. It
was still calm but this time much more insistent.

I blinked and looked up to find the officer
looking at me questioningly. “Sir, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“I’d like to ask you a few questions if I
may?”

“Where are the dogs?” I asked absently,
seizing on the fact that I could still hear them barking and
growling somewhere in the house.

She pointed. “They’ve been pawing at the
first door down the hallway over there.”

“That’s the basement. Did you put them down
there?”

“No sir, that’s where they were when we
arrived,” she replied.

I started toward the hallway to head for the
basement door, and she took hold of my arm once again. “Leave them
where they are, sir. They’ll be fine for now.”

“But…”

“Trust me, sir. It’s for their safety as well
as ours. They’ll be fine.”

I turned my attention back to her and nodded
as I said, “Okay.”

“Do you think you can answer some questions
for me?”

“Sure. I’ll try.”

“Are there any friends or relatives that Miz
O’Brien might attempt to contact?”

“Her parents, I guess,” I said with a shrug.
“We have quite a few friends too, but I don’t think she would
contact any of them. Her parents either… She’s not exactly herself
right now.”

“Can you give us a list of names and phone
numbers anyway, sir?”

“I suppose. I’ll have to look them up.”

“All right,” she told me with a nod then
continued. “Other than friends or relatives, do you have any idea
where she might go?”

“At the moment, no.”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital!”
Mandalay’s voice raised a pair of notches to be heard over
everything else.

I turned away from the officer who was
questioning me, so I could see what was happening.

Constance was still sitting in a chair at the
table but now had a wad of gauze affixed to the side of her head. A
paramedic was looking into her eyes as he flashed a penlight to and
fro.

“Listen to ‘em, Connie,” Ben ordered.

“I’m fine,” she spat in return. “And, don’t
call me Connie. You know better.”

“Detective,” one of the paramedics addressed
Ben. “Please. You aren’t helping.”

“Agent Mandalay.” The other medic was talking
directly to Constance. “You’ve sustained a serious blow to the
head. You most likely have a concussion and you really need…”

“…
Sir? Sir? Mister Gant?” The officer
was prodding for my attention.

I turned back to her. “What?”

“I need for you to focus, sir, and answer
some more questions.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said with an impatient shake
of my head.

“Now, is Miz O’Brien a substance abuser?
Alcohol? Drugs?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head again as I
screwed up my face. “Not at all. I mean, she has a few drinks every
now and then, but…”

“Has she been drinking today?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Sir, we were informed that Miz O’Brien is
suffering from a mental disorder. Is she currently taking, or is
she prescribed any anti-psychotic medications?”

“No. She’s not on any medication. What you
were told… Well…” I stuttered. “That’s not… It’s… Well, it’s not
entirely accurate.”

“Not entirely accurate how, sir?”

“She doesn’t have any mental disorders,” I
replied, knowing full well that in one sense I was telling the
truth, but in another I was lying through my teeth.

She looked back at me with a flat expression
then continued into the next query. “Have you been having any
marital problems?”

“No.”

“You’re certain? Everything is okay here at
home as far as you know?”

“Yes.”

“Does Miz O’Brien have a previous history of
violent behavior?”

“No,” I replied with a puzzled shake of my
head.

“How about yourself, sir?”

“What? No,” I snapped.

“We could really use your cooperation here,
sir.”

I didn’t know quite how to reply. There was
no way for me to tell her the whole truth and not look like I was
in need of medication myself. Why I hadn’t simply played along with
Ben’s story I don’t know. Maybe it was an inherent need to protect
Felicity from a social stigma or perhaps even the fact that I was
still feeling overwhelmed by everything that had happened in such a
short span of time. Whatever it was, I got the feeling I hadn’t
done myself, nor my wife, any favors.

I looked back at the cop, and I could tell by
the expression on her face that she had already decided that I was
lying to her. After a moment she looked down and scribbled a quick
note then sighed and paused before looking back up at me. It didn’t
take long for me to realize that she wasn’t looking at me straight
on, but instead she was silently inspecting the obvious fingernail
scratches on my cheek. Out of reflex I reached up and brushed my
fingertips across them and let out a sigh of my own.

“Mister Gant, do you have any reason to
believe that your wife would want to hurt or even try to kill you?”
she asked in a flat tone.

“Officer,” I appealed. “I understand your
concerns here, believe me, but I think you might be reading
something into this that you shouldn’t.”

“Mister Gant,” she replied. “The only thing I
am reading into this right now are the facts, and those are the
following. One, your wife assaulted a federal officer. Two, she
secured said officer’s sidearm. Three, she fled the scene and is
now considered an armed fugitive.”

I had always considered the comment “worrying
yourself sick” to be nothing more than an exaggerated metaphor. But
tonight, in a closely linked pair of painful moments, I changed my
mind about that turn of phrase.

The first came, of course, when the final
point ticked off by the police officer struck me like a solid punch
directly to the abdomen. Apparently, the Gods had decided that it
wasn’t enough that I had already been agonizing over Felicity and
what was now happening to her to the point where I couldn’t
concentrate on anything else. As was their penchant for doing, they
wanted to see just how far they could push me.

My stomach had been churning ever since I
discovered that my wife had ducked out of the police station, so I
was on the edge as it was. I knew that she stood a real possibility
of inadvertently coming face to face with the killer due to what I
suspected was their shared possession, and I couldn’t imagine that
such a clash would be without some level of violence.

On top of that, and just as bad, was the fact
that she seemed likely to act out one of the killer’s fantasies and
actually murder someone. After what she had apparently done with
the officer while filing the complaint against me, this scenario
seemed almost to be a given.

That is, of course, unless we were able to
stop her first.

But, as I said, that simply wasn’t enough
strife for whichever deity happened to be pushing me around the
cosmic chessboard on this particular day. Now, a whole new bolus of
foreboding had been mainlined directly into my bloodstream, and
that fear was of an overzealous cop shooting my wife because she
was now considered an armed fugitive.

The column of bile that this sent rising up
my throat came startlingly close to being heaved out onto the floor
right where I stood. Fortunately, I managed to contain it; how, I
can only assume by pure luck. All I knew was that in the end, it
had taken me a good five minutes just to bring myself under enough
control to even think about functioning.

Of course, this was right about the time the
second moment of the fateful pair elected to reveal itself. I was
just regaining my composure when I glanced toward the dining room
only to see Constance being helped onto an ambulance gurney. Ben
was staunchly remaining by her side, as well he should. The problem
was that they were the two people whom I knew I could count on to
believe me in all of this, and they were now wrapped up in their
own concerns.

A panic attack tried to set up residence in
my chest as I realized exactly how alone in all of this I truly
felt. And then, I knew that I truly was worried sick.

* * * * *

The paramedics had finished strapping
Mandalay onto the gurney while I was sitting on the arm of a chair
in the living room. They had the head of the folding rig propped
upward in a partial sitting position in order to keep her torso
elevated, so I could see that she was still conscious and
alert.

She had made it clear that she wasn’t happy
about the trip to the hospital but had agreed to at least go and
get x-rayed. Not that it mattered, however, because I had the
feeling that whether she agreed or not, Ben was going to see to it
that she went. Judging from the bleeding she had done, I suspected
some stitches would be in order as well.

They were ready to wheel her out, but she had
insisted on talking to me first. Considering how isolated I had
been feeling only a few moments before, her demand gave me a
renewed hope.

“Okay, Rowan…” Constance said with a thin
smile. “Explain to me why I shouldn’t kick Felicity’s ass the next
time I see her.”

I sighed and shook my head. It was obvious
that she was making a small attempt at humor in the face of
everything that had happened. I shouldn’t have been surprised
because I’d met only a very few members of the law enforcement
community who didn’t do that sort of thing. There was no reason for
her to be any different.

But, I was also betting that, even with the
dry humor, there was more than just a hint of seriousness in the
words.

I couldn’t say that I blamed her.

According to her recounting, the physical
entity that was my wife had invited her in as if nothing was wrong
but then immediately blindsided her as she came through the door.
She had struck her hard enough with a ceramic statuette to be able
to overpower her and then restrain her with her own handcuffs.
Considering that Constance was a trained FBI agent, I could only
speculate that it had been a lucky shot.

But, in that vein, I was also betting that it
had been somewhat humiliating for Constance to identify herself as
an FBI agent after being found that way by the responding
officers.

Were I in her position, I would be more than
a little miffed myself.

On the other hand, whoever was possessing
Felicity could just as easily have killed her, and she didn’t.
That, in and of itself, said something about the motivation of the
entity in control of my wife’s body. At least, to me it did.

“Listen, I know it sounds unbelievable,
Constance,” I finally replied. “But, all I can say is that it
wasn’t really Felicity who attacked you.”

She laid her head back on the pillow and
closed her eyes for a moment, letting out her own sigh before
quietly assuring me, “I know, Rowan. I got that distinct feeling
when she was standing over me. The look in her eyes was… it was
just odd.”

“I know,” I replied.

“Ben said you thought it had something to do
with the crime scene this afternoon.”

I looked over at my friend and he shook his
head. “I told ya’ I couldn’t really explain it.”

“It definitely has something to do with the
ritual that was performed there,” I told her. “I just still need to
do some research.”

“It was like she was a completely different
person,” she repeated. “I couldn’t believe it.”

“That was only her body. I think the person
you know as Felicity is most likely drifting out there somewhere in
the ether waiting to return.”

“The
gwo-bon-anj
,” one of the paramedics
mumbled.