Tortured Spirits (8 page)

“I didn't see you jogging every morning like you do in NYC.”

She's almost as bad as Laurel,
Jake thought. Laurel Doniger, a psychic healer, occupied the storefront in Jake's building. Every time she touched Jake—sometimes intimately—she learned everything there was to know about him. “I was on a tight schedule. My budget for this operation is far from unlimited.”

Maria fiddled with the radio until salsa music replaced Jake's rock. “You do all right for yourself as a PI, though, right?”

“Yeah, I do okay.”
When my clients live to pay me.

Ten minutes later, they sat on the patio of a restaurant facing the Atlantic. Seagulls hovered in the breeze, rising and falling like kites as the sunlight faded, and sailboats traveled the waves. Jake held birdseed out to Edgar, who pecked at the food from within the cage on the tabletop.

“Do you always dote on him like that?”

“When I can. When I can't, my assistant does. When she can't, a neighbor does.”

“That psychic lady downstairs from your office?”

Damn.
Jake would never grow accustomed to people
knowing so much information about him. “Sometimes.”

“You doing her?”

Sometimes,
Jake felt like answering again, though the truth was,
not anymore.
Other than a couple of interludes with Laurel and the one with Jasmine, he had been celibate since Sheryl's murder. “No.”

A young woman with tanned skin and long dark hair stopped at their table. She wore a belly shirt and denim shorts. “I'm Maribel. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“I'll have a margarita with salt,” Maria said.

“Just water,” Jake said.

“He'll have a beer.”

The waitress looked at Jake with raised eyebrows.

“Make it a Corona Light,” he said.

“I'll be right back.”

When Maribel had left, Jake said, “Are you trying to corrupt me? You know I don't drink.”

“Edgar told me you're no alcoholic.”

“No, I'm not. But drinking can lead me to worse habits.”

“Coke, right?”

He nodded.

“How'd you fall into that trap?”

“I didn't realize an interrogation was on the menu tonight.”

“Like it or not, we're going to be partners for the next week. I want to know more about your character.”

Jake drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Homicide was more complicated than I realized. A few cases gave me nightmares, so I started drinking more. Then I found
that wasn't stopping the nightmares, so I tried something stronger.”

“How long?”

“Six or seven months. Then I killed those skells in the bar.” Kevin Creed and Oscar Soot:
Dread and Baldy.

“And you resigned so you wouldn't have to take the drug test?”

“It seems to be pretty common knowledge in the department.”

“You miss getting high?”

Pursing his lips, Jake shook his head. “I've been through so much since then. I know booze and drugs could never dull the pain.” He did miss Sheryl; too bad she had run off with an angel.

Maribel returned with their drinks and set them down. “Are you ready to order?”

“I'll have the scampi,” Maria said.

“Same here,” Jake said.

Maribel collected their menus and disappeared inside.

Jake studied the sweating bottle of beer and squeezed it. Since defeating Old Nick in the Tower and defying Cain, he'd hardly thought of alcohol, let alone cocaine. But he'd carried a small part of Sheryl's soul inside him, and he never knew if her energy kept his demons at bay or cleansed him. She had reclaimed that part of herself, and now he was on his own.

“Don't drink it if you don't want to. I just thought, who knows what's going to happen over there? Enjoy a cold one. But if you're worried you can't stop after one …”

“I can stop.” He raised the bottle to his lips and allowed the cold beer to wash over his tongue, which curled with pleasure, and down his throat. He put the bottle down with a satisfied sigh.

“I know how you felt. I thought Homicide would be glamorous by NYPD standards.” Maria sipped her margarita.

“Do you have nightmares?”

She looked him in the eye. “Only since you dropped sixty zombies on my doorstep.”

“Zonbies,
with an n. I dropped a lot more than sixty. Edgar and I wiped out a factory full of them in the Bronx, probably a hundred in all. That puts my total at over a hundred.” He resumed drinking.

“Why didn't Edgar tell me?”

“He wanted to protect you. Not just from the danger but from the knowledge.”

“I might have been able to help.”

“Or you might have been killed. Or Edgar could have been killed and you'd be in that cage right now. It doesn't do any good to look back and wonder.”

“You really took those sixty
zonbies
out by yourself?”

“All by my lonesome.” The beer tasted so good going down he wanted to moan.

“How'd you manage it?”

“Katrina and Malachai had my back against the wall, and Katrina had already transformed Edgar. Desperate times, desperate measures.”

“You shot them all in the head.”

“It's the only way to stop them, other than blowing them to pieces. Their brains act as receivers so they can receive telepathic commands from their bokor. Drain their liquefied brains, break off that communication, and free their souls.”

“Souls?”

Staring at the golden cross around Maria's neck, Jake hesitated. He had let his guard down and said too much. “Figuratively speaking.”

“You're an atheist, right?”

“Not anymore.” He finished his beer.

“You ever killed a living person besides those two skells?”

The Cipher. An assassin named Ashby Morton who worked for White River Security. Weiskopf from the Order of Avademe. And in collaboration with a genetically engineered monster, Old Nick himself. He never counted Kira Thorn, who had been one of Tower's Biogens.

Jake picked up the bottle. “It will take a lot more than one beer to get me to confess my deepest, darkest secrets. I've offered coffee to suspects to give them oral diarrhea, but this is a new one.”

Maria held his gaze. “I'm sorry. Really, I am. I shouldn't have done that.”

“It's okay. I knew what you were up to.”

“I just feel so desperate. My life's been turned upside down since I met you.”

Jake smiled. “That makes me feel better.”

“Are we being straight with each other?”

“As much as we can under the circumstances.”

“Do you trust Miriam?”

“I see no reason to distrust her. Her motives are pretty clear.”

“We're going into a country where the US doesn't even have an embassy. One wrong move and we could disappear forever.”

“That's why I tried to talk you out of going, remember?”

“But you're still going, right?”

He didn't have to answer her.

The sun had set by the time Jake parked at the motel, the night sky still bright with orange-hued clouds. Maria bopped her head to the Latin beat on the radio until Jake killed the engine.

Maria stared straight ahead. “Do you have a will?”

“Yeah. I don't have much money, but it goes to Martin if anything happens to me.”

She looked at him. “That's sweet.”

“How about you?”

“I had one drawn up when I joined the academy. Everything I have will go to my sister's kids. Funny, a couple of legal guns like us leaving what we have to other people's kids. Do you remember Papa Joe?”

“Sure.” Joe had been the narcotics kingpin of Manhattan until Katrina's zonbies hacked him to pieces with machetes. “He had a longer run than most in his business.”

“He left a fortune to his little girl. Guy was a major league wrong number: killed people, had people killed, poisoned lives. But somehow, with all that blood and
ugliness, he created something beautiful, someone of his own to remember him. You and I don't have that.”

“Neither one of us is exactly over the hill. It's not too late.”

“I know Joe's little girl. Her name is Shana. She just turned seven. I handed her over to BCW after Joe was murdered. She saw him hacked to pieces. Zonbies, right? Poor thing was traumatized. Who can blame her? Now she lives with Joe's sister in Queens—Prince Malachai's mother. The woman's a monster, no surprise. She only took Shana in to get her hands on Joe's money. I tried to mentor Shana. Be a big sister and shit. But the aunt's her guardian and won't let me near her. She's too worried she might lose that money with a cop around.”

Jake had no trouble imagining Alice Morton's greed. He had met her while impersonating a police detective in an effort to locate Malachai. “At least the girl's alive.”

“But what kind of life does she have? Joe's woman led a somewhat normal life. She knew what Joe was and took his money, but she lived in a humble house and stayed out of trouble. This woman is a dragon. Her whole life is the business. Shana's doomed.”

“We can't save everyone. We can only try and you tried.”

Maria dabbed at one eye. “It's getting late. I want a good night's sleep before we storm the beaches. Starting tomorrow, we're both going to have to sleep with one eye open.”

“Bad news for me.”

Maria snorted. “I'll see you in the morning.”

They got out, and as Jake retrieved Edgar's cage he watched Maria mount the stairs to the second level.

Inside his room, Jake set Edgar's cage on the bed. He opened the cage door, and Edgar fluttered out and onto the covers. “Fly. Be free.”

He peeled off his shirt and tossed his watch onto the dresser. Picking up the remote control, he turned on the television. “Let's see what's on the news.” He flipped through the channels until he landed on his least favorite station, then tossed the remote onto the bed. “Maybe we can learn what the weather's going to be on Pavot Island tomorrow.”

Edgar squawked at a knock on the door.

“Sorry, bud. Back in the cage.”

Edgar croaked in protest.

“I'm not kidding. Get in there.”

Edgar hopped inside the cage, and Jake latched its door. He pulled on his shirt again and crossed the room. When he opened the door, Maria stood looking at him.

“What's up?” he said.

Maria stepped inside, reached around his neck, and kissed him.

Jake felt heat rising through his body and closed the door.

Jake returned Maria's kiss, pressing his tongue against hers. She slid her fingers through the hair on the back of his head, and he felt her breathing through her nostrils.

When she ended the kiss, she looked up at him. “I guess we're finally having that date you welshed on last year.”

“Life got in the way: bokors, zonbies, transmogrification—”

“Shut up.”

She kissed him again, and he felt her breasts and pelvis against him. Growing hard, he pulled her tighter to him.

Maria pushed him back, a playful smile on her lips and excitement in her eyes. “Are we going to make out in your doorway like kids all night?”

Jake gestured at the bed. Maria shook her head and pressed her back against the corner. Jake moved forward, his tight smile matching hers. He scooped her up in his arms,
carried her across the room, and tossed her onto the bed, causing Edgar to squawk. They both burst into laughter.

“Please put him somewhere safe,” Maria said.

Jake grabbed the cage. “Come on. You're staying in the porcelain suite tonight.”

As he carried Edgar into the bathroom and set the cage on the tiled floor, Maria said, “Good night, partner.”

Jake returned to the room in time to see Maria's green dress slip from her body and fall to her feet. As he peeled off his shirt for the second time, he admired her taut stomach muscles. Then she unhooked her bra, and he gazed at her firm, round breasts. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties and slid them off one hip at a time, then stepped out of the small pile of clothing on the floor. She had trimmed the triangle of dark hair between her legs.