Raven's Cove - Jenna Ryan (7 page)

Carla’s action was out of character, and it made Jasmine’s skin prickle. Why would the no-nonsense sergeant be drawing tiny black birds on her suddenly extra-long fingernails?

The moment the thought formed, the female cop looked up. Bloodred eyes laughed at her, at all of them. Then the fog turned black, thunder crashed, and Carla’s head burst apart.

A thousand ravens packing guns and rifles flew out. Dukes jumped up, waving his arms and shouting that the evil had gotten inside. Then he exploded, too. Costello and Victor dived for their guns, but there were ravens everywhere and now feathers raining down from the ceiling.

A moment later, the house went dark. The cacophony remained, but she could no longer see the one person she wanted. Until…

Hands gripped her arms. “I’m taking you out of here, Jasmine.”

Rogan. Thank God.

“You have to trust me.” He spun her around. His kiss was hot, hard and strangely erotic, considering the circumstances. “I won’t let them hurt you.”

She believed him, but had a difficult time holding the thought as bullets flew, ravens cried and bodies thudded on the floor.

Rogan kept her ahead of him, fired into the filthy fog behind them.

Lightning forked from the ceiling. He pulled her into the kitchen, toward the cellar door. But when he opened it, a huge raven blocked their path.

“I am only the messenger,” the bird croaked. “I can do no harm, cause no one to die.”

Rogan brought his gun level with the feathered chest. “Maybe you can’t harm or kill, but I can. Move.”

“You kill for love, not hate.” The raven stepped back. “Beware the one for whom the reverse is true. …”

The creature vanished with the last word. Fog rushed in, dense and dirty. Three feathers appeared in Jasmine’s hand. Fear churned in her stomach. She knew what they meant. She was going to die.

“No, you’re not,” Rogan said as everything, including them, started to dissolve. “But I swear to you, the person who wants you dead is.”

Once again, she believed him. And yet…

Out of nothing, the man-size shadow of a raven took shape, projected now onto an enormous white wall. Lightning speared through a nonexistent sky. While Jasmine watched, spellbound and terrified, the shadow raven split into two men. One grew larger, the other smaller. Still nothing more than a wall shadow, the larger man raised a gun, pointed it at her heart.

And squeezed the trigger.

* * *

“
I
T WAS HORRIBLE.”
J
ASMINE
shuddered away the remnants of her nightmare the next morning. “It had more Wonderland elements than Wonderland. When the man who’d made up the evil half of the raven went to shoot, you threw me down. I wound up on the floor in Daniel’s bedroom with Boris trying to pull me out of a tangle of sheets and blankets and Boxman banging on the outside door. He said I screamed, but I don’t believe him.”

“Neither do I,” Rogan said. “You only scream during sex.”

Leaving Boris with Boxman, they’d driven the treacherous mile from Daniel’s cottage to the edge of Raven’s Cove. A cockeyed sign stood next to the stone wall where Rogan parked his truck. It read Road Ends Here.

In leather boots better suited for hiking than last night’s stilettos, Jasmine walked to the edge and looked down. And down and down. “Anyone who doesn’t like a good cardio workout should not live in this town. How many feet above sea level are we up here?”

“Over four hundred.”

“So, not really a tourist-friendly place.”

She peered through the layers of fog that drifted over the terraced slope to which the town of Raven’s Cove clung. Rogan joined her. His presence would have distracted if she hadn’t been stunned by the hundreds of uneven stairs that led down to a rock-strewn beach.

“Nice location,” he remarked.

His easy tone brought a laugh to her throat. “Well, yeah, I guess. Navigable, too.” She widened meaningful eyes. “If you’re a goat.”

He set his head next to hers from behind. “I’m whatever I need to be, love. So are you. Come on. I want to have a chat with the chief of police.”

“That’s what Boxman and I thought you were doing last night.” She accepted the hand he held out in preparation for the downward trek.

The half grin appeared, but she was determined not to be swayed by it. Or not very swayed.

“Boxman’s not my superior officer, Jasmine. I don’t owe him any explanations.”

“Or anyone else, it seems.”

“Think need to know. And look at it this way. You’re here today. Boxman isn’t. If we’re lucky, a few minutes from now, you’ll know a great deal more than he does.”

“Only a few minutes if the police chief’s office is within thirty really scary-looking steps of our current position. People must break their legs every day around here.”

Part of a protrusion crumbled and Rogan tightened his grip. “Maybe they wear shoes with suction cups.”

“I want a pair.”

After almost landing on her butt, Jasmine took her mother’s advice and stopped concentrating on the ground. Of course, her mother had spent three years of her childhood in Tibet. With a breath in and out, she opted to have faith and let her gaze wander through the uneven array of shops, stores and houses they passed.

She had to admit, the painted exteriors possessed a certain weathered charm. But there were gothic overtones as well, whispers of other times and places. In terms of the architecture, and even the structures themselves, Raven’s Cove bore no resemblance to a seaside village in England, yet it possessed a similar old-world feel.

It was also possible the witch stories she heard on a daily basis had affected her more than she’d realized.

“Why so quiet?” Rogan asked at length.

She glanced around as a chill snaked down her spine. “Maybe I’m too busy trying not to break my neck to make conversation.” Circling in place, she made a fluttering motion with her fingers. “Do you sense something strange?”

“Always. Relax, Jasmine. No one’s going to jump us.”

“That wasn’t my concern.”

“Or shoot us or stab us or push us down the stairs.”

“So you’ve grown a pair of eyes in the back of your head since Captain Ballard’s funeral.”

“If the idea makes you feel better, yes.”

Having no desire to pursue the matter, she flicked at the ends of his too-long hair. “Dukes told me you never let anyone holding sharp objects get close to you. Were you traumatized by scissors as a child?”

“Does having my sister play hairdresser with me while I slept count?”

“Seriously? You have a sister?” Delight blotted out nerves. “Older or younger?”

“One of each. And a brother. Much younger. What?” His lips quirked as he scanned the fog-shrouded buildings. “Did you think I was hatched?”

“No.” Her smile grew playful. “But Dukes did. He said you hunted like a bird, an eagle or a hawk. Eyes on the target, no deviation. Swoop in and strike. Carla agreed with the strike part, but she compared you to a cobra. Boxman liked the snake reference, especially the slithering aspect.”

“He’d know.”

“Victor said you reminded him of an impressionist painting of a rogue wolf in human form. I think Costello’s bent for classical music brought out his artistic side.”

“It gave the rest of us headaches.”

“You have no poetry in your soul, Rogan. And apparently no rhythm.”

“You think?”

The sexual gleam came through even though she could see only half his face and nothing of his eyes.

In an effort to keep the mood level, Jasmine bumped his shoulder. “Carla liked you.” She made another casual three-sixty. “Did she ever say anything?”

“I don’t invite that kind of admission.”

“You’d rather keep it at raw sex and a predawn vanishing act.”

Now he regarded her. “Are you still angry with me for leaving after Ballard’s service?”

“I was never angry, and it was after sex after the service.”

He stopped, cupped her chin and tipped her head up. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. My life’s complicated. And dangerous.”

“Yes, I got that part the moment I met you. According to Victor, there was a rumor floating around that you had a twin brother, which explained how you could pull off such radically different personas. Then he told me he had a twin brother himself, and our conversation sidetracked because my mother has twin sisters—Aunt Bridget and Aunt Kathleen—who are freakily alike. In Victor’s case, he and his twin only look freakily alike. They’re actually polar opposites. He said that Cyrus—his brother—isn’t just older by three minutes but meaner to the nth degree.”

“Good twin balances bad twin?”

“More like good twin balances less-good twin, I think. Cyrus is a cop, too. I’m not sure where. Boxman came in while Victor and I were talking and started shouting at Dukes for not having dinner ready. He got really belligerent—Boxman did—which surprised me, because I thought they were good friends. Boxman accused Dukes of spending too much time playing computer solitaire. He said Dukes needed to get with the safe-house program. Dukes told him if he wanted to be nagged, he could go into town and phone his wife.”

“That’s called family dynamics.” Keeping her hand firmly in his, Rogan resumed the downward trek. “And before you ask, my family was normal. Not emotionally close, but not dysfunctional, either. Easier just to go our separate ways.”

She wasn’t sure that sounded normal. However, the fact that he’d spoken of his childhood at all surprised her enough that she left it alone.

A faint grin appeared as the silence stretched out. “It’s not like you to wind down, Jasmine. I can’t believe you don’t have a thousand questions or comments racing around in that beautiful head of yours.”

“Many thousands,” she agreed. “But I was trying to remember what we were talking about that led us to our brief discourse on the structure of families.”

It was a lie, outright and absolute. What she’d really been thinking about was the night they’d spent together six weeks ago and whether or not she would magic it out of her memory if she could. Probably not, but knowing his thoughts on family life made being with him here in Raven’s Cove a struggle. In so many ways, their needs and wants continued to be worlds apart.

“You were telling me about life at the safe house,” he told her, and she smiled.

“That’s right, Carla liked you. But you, being you and totally focused, managed not to notice.”

“Not totally focused, love.” His head-to-toe gaze was hot enough to leave scorch marks on her skin. “I have occasional moments of distraction. Anyway, Carla’s married to a guy I work with from time to time.”

Jasmine rubbed at the heat in her midsection. “Married, separated, reunited, separated again, pregnant—wonder who the baby looks like?—and last I heard from Costello, thinking about filing for divorce.”

“The good lieutenant seems to have kept you better informed than the rest of us.”

“Than you, Rogan. You don’t invite gossip any more than you do admissions of love. Or in Carla’s case, lust, because I also heard she slept with one of the other cops at the safe house during our confinement.”

“Dukes?”

“Could be. I gather his wife has had—control issues. And more than a few affairs. From what Dukes and Boxman told me, I don’t envision a particularly pleasant woman.”

“I’ve met her.” He studied the street names. “Your vision’s dead-on.”

Jasmine regarded the shop they were passing. A hand-painted sign in the window boasted that all things raven, from lip balm to tattoos, were available inside.

Peering past Rogan down a misty side road, she let a shiver ripple through her. “Why do I feel like no matter where we go, how fast or how far, that we’re being watched?”

“Because we are.”

“Do you realize we haven’t seen a single person since we started down? It’s 11:00 a.m. on a Saturday, the stores are open and the storm’s moved on. Whether visible or not, nine hundred and seventy-six souls live in Raven’s Cove. It stands to reason that more than one of them would be watching a pair of strangers navigate the stairs that appear to constitute the main sidewalk of their cliffside town. My question is, why aren’t we seeing any of them back? What?” she asked when he drew her to the left. “We’re not going all the way to the dock?”

“Not unless you want to buy lunch right off the boat. Police station’s on this street.”

“So you did accomplish something on your sojourn last night.”

“We’ll find out” was all he said.

Since pulling teeth wasn’t her best skill, she decided to wait him out. Or better yet, let Boxman do the extracting.

The police station possessed the air of a quaint New England shop. It sat slightly apart from its neighbors and had a waist-high fence surrounding it. Ravens perched on every third post. Most of them were fake. Two of them weren’t. Their black eyes trailed them through the gate and up five short stairs to the door.

“It’s like we’re passing through an Alfred Hitchcock movie,” Jasmine remarked. “No background music, only footsteps and the eerie rustle of feathers.”

A second later, Rogan opened the door, and the illusion vanished.

“I swear to heaven and hell, Wesley, I’d do better having old Rooney Blume for a deputy.”

The police chief, a solidly built man in his late fifties, pivoted away from a younger, beefier male currently hunched next to a dented filing cabinet.

“You told me not to let anyone in.” Wesley trained his eyes on the floor. “I did what you said and stayed put all night.”

“Sawing enough damn logs to build the new station house we need but I’ll never see,
if
you don’t start doing your damn job and stop making me look like a baboon with a gun. With you in a minute,” he fired over his shoulder at the new arrivals. “Now I want you to tell me what you did after—” Halting, he swung slowly on his heel to stare. Then held out his arms and gave an incredulous laugh. “Rogan? Is that you? My God, it is. Still alive and breathing without a respirator. Last time I saw you, four of us were taking on ten in a New York City alley. Three of us lived to limp away. Only one of the ten survived, and he had to be stretchered out.” He clapped Rogan soundly on both arms. “I never figured on seeing you again, and here you’ve turned up in my windy speck of a town.”