The others were waiting for me but I took a moment to peer through the Charger’s tinted windows, just in case. It was unoccupied and spotlessly clean, which surprised me a bit. It seemed at odds with her gung-ho nature.
Lesbians tend to be neat freaks, Little Peter observed.
What are you talking about? Cruz isn’t a lesbian.
All single women with short hair are lesbians.
That is the dumbest thing you’ve ever come up with. Where do you get these ridiculous ideas?
From you, of course. Duh.
“Peter, are you okay?” Olivia asked worriedly.
“I’m fine,” I told her, trying to shake a lurid image of Cruz and Daraxandriel making out in the back of the Charger out of my head. “Let’s get this over with.”
We caught up with Dad and the others and continued along the side of the building towards the back. Just before we reached the corner, a young-ish Hispanic woman stepped into view. She wore a short thin-strapped flowery sundress with white sandals and dark sunglasses and it took me a startled moment to recognize her. I’d never seen Cruz out of uniform before.
Except in the locker room this morning, Little Peter reminded me.
Melissa hid her hands behind her back but there was no disguising the sword in Daraxandriel’s hand. Cruz didn’t seem to notice anything untoward, though, as she looked us over. If she thought it was strange that Dad brought two teenagers and whatever she perceived Dara to be with him, she kept it to herself.
“What’s the situation, Cruz?” Dad asked quietly.
“He’s still inside,” she replied.
“And there’s no one else with him?”
“No, he’s alone.”
Dad glanced up at the side of the building but there were no windows on this wall. “Any idea what he’s doing?” She shook her head. “You said he got in through the back door?”
“Yes. It’s this way.” Cruz turned on her heel and disappeared around the corner. We followed her with Dad in the front and Olivia and me bringing up the rear.
“Who is that person?” Olivia asked dubiously.
“That’s Constable de la Cruz,” I murmured quietly. “She’s my partner this week.”
“She doesn’t look like a police officer.”
“She’s off duty.” A small leather purse dangled from Cruz’s shoulder on a thin strap and I wondered if she had her badge in it. She seemed like the type who always considered herself to be on duty, regardless of the shift schedule.
“She has short hair. She probably likes other women.”
Told you, Little Peter smirked.
“There’s no correlation between hair length and sexual orientation,” I told her firmly. “Why would you even bring that up?”
“Momma says that love between two men or two women is a sin.”
“Okay, one, love is love, it doesn’t matter who or what it’s with. Two, that has nothing to do with short hair. And three, what about you and Dara?”
“That’s different!” she insisted, but she wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“How, exactly?”
“I like boys! Dara’s just, um, a fling, or something,” she mumbled. “Besides, I’m dead so it doesn’t count.”
“Right,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Peter,” Dad asked sternly, “is everything all right?”
“Oh, um, yes,” I stammered, suddenly realizing that everyone had stopped to stare at me. “Everything’s fine. Sorry.” Cruz’s expression was hard to read behind her sunglasses but she didn’t seem terribly impressed with me. She turned away without saying anything, though, and led us to the back door, which was closed tight. Dad tested it with his hand but there was no give in it.
“How did he get in?” he wondered out loud.
Cruz shrugged but I said, “He probably borrowed Mrs. Kendricks’ keys.”
“Hmm.” He stepped back from the door and looked left at right. The only other entrance was the loading dock at the far end of the building, but there was no way we’d ever be able to get that open. “Any ideas on how we’re going to get in?”
I did, but since it involved Olivia doing her poltergeist thing, I didn’t want to say it out loud in front of Cruz. We had to get rid of her anyway, since we weren’t going to be able to subdue the incubus without using magic.
“We can probably take it from here, Dad,” I told him, inclining my head towards Cruz with what I hoped was a significant glance. Dad caught it and nodded.
“Thanks for your help, Cruz,” he said. “You can head out.”
“I think I should stay,” she argued. “You’ll need backup.”
“Not for this,” he told her firmly. “I’ll see you in the morning.” He didn’t actually say Dismissed but his tone clearly implied it.
Cruz opened her mouth and then closed it again, pressing her lips together. She looked at me, as if expecting me to speak up for her. Since we needed her to leave, I pretended not to notice and glanced around the back alley, wondering how long it was going to be before it was usable again. That reminded me that my car was supposed to be back here but it was nowhere in sight. The gaping hole in the alleyway left by the work crew made it impossible for a car to get in here.
“Cruz,” I asked doubtfully, “where’s my car?” She didn’t respond, still gazing at me as if she was waiting for me to do something, and I felt a sinking sensation in my guts. “Cruz,” I told her cautiously, “take off your sunglasses.”
I heard Melissa gasp in realization behind me but Cruz kept her attention focused on me. “What’s the magic word, Peter?” she asked.
I exchanged a puzzled glance with Dad. “Please?”
That wasn’t the correct answer. Cruz’s right hand came up, gripping a handgun that she probably had concealed in her purse. She shot me straight through my heart without saying a word.
“Peter!” Dad, Melissa, and Olivia all shouted together in horror as I gaped down at myself, dead once more with my clothes in a tangled heap around my feet. Dad’s hand slapped futilely on his empty holster as Melissa’s entire body flashed into black fire, but Cruz calmly turned her weapon on Daraxandriel.
“No!” I charged at her and tackled her around the waist just as she pulled the trigger, taking us both to the pavement with the gunshot echoing in my ears. I landed on top of her, gripping her wrist in both hands to keep her from firing again, but she bucked and clawed at me with her free hand, trying to twist her weapon around enough to shoot me again. She was surprisingly strong and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to subdue her, until Daraxandriel appeared at my side and touched the razor edge of her blade to Cruz’s neck.
“Cease thy struggles,” she ordered grimly, “lest thou wouldst have us discover the color of thy blood.”
Cruz had lost her sunglasses in our tussle and her dilated eyes glared up at us resentfully, but she surrendered, letting Dad remove the pistol from her grasp and turn it on her. “Are you all right, Peter?” he asked. His voice and his hand were shaking slightly.
“I’m fine,” I assured him. “Don’t shoot her. She’s not herself.”
Dad took a couple of deep breaths and finally nodded. “Here,” he said, taking his handcuffs from his belt. “Bill showed you how to use them?”
“Yes, sir.” I released Cruz and stood, only just now realizing I was human and naked for the umpteenth time today. “God damn it,” I muttered to myself, taking the cuffs. Cruz’s eyes traveled down from my face and her tongue swept across her lips. Even though she clearly knew I wasn’t the incubus, her body apparently couldn’t tell us apart.
“Turn over, Cruz,” Dad said sternly. “Hands behind your back.” Her gaze flicked to him and then to the muzzle of her gun. For a moment, I thought she was going to refuse but she finally complied. I slipped the cuffs around her wrists and ratcheted them tight before stepping back.
Melissa silently handed me my boxers and I quickly slipped them on, feeling infinitely better. “Is anyone hurt?” I asked belatedly
as I pulled on my jeans. “Where did that second shot go?”
“Through me,” Olivia grumbled. “Watch what you’re doing next time.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.” I picked up my t-shirt and discovered two finger-sized holes, front and back. “God damn it,” I muttered, but I shrugged it on anyway. This is, what, the third time I’ve been killed today? It was turning out to be the worst Monday ever in my relatively short life.
“Do you have anything to say, Cruz?” Dad asked flatly, still keeping the pistol pointed at her. She rolled over onto her back and then sat up, glaring silently at me the entire time.
“The incubus got to her,” I sighed. “I guess she told him about the alert you sent out and they set a trap for us.”
“Damn it.” Dad didn’t curse all that often, at least not when plumbing wasn’t involved. “He knows we’re looking for him now. He’ll be doubly cautious.” He looked down at Cruz and finally holstered her pistol. “We have to arrest her.” He sounded weary and resigned.
“You can’t do that,” I argued. “She didn’t know what she was doing.”
“That’s for the courts to decide, Peter. She tried to murder you!”
“I’m already a ghost, she can’t kill me again.”
“Assault with a deadly weapon, then. We can’t just ignore what happened.”
“She probably won’t even remember any of this after we get rid of the incubus. Mrs. Phipps didn’t. You can’t ruin her career over something she has no control over.”
Dad shook his head stubbornly but I could tell he was weakening. “Can you free her like you did Susie and Melissa?” he asked.
“I hope so.” Cruz looked up at me as I stood over her. “Cruz, am I in control of you now?”
“What’s the magic word?” she asked again.
“Tell me what it is,” I ordered but she remained silent. “Abracadabra? Hocus-pocus? Alakazam?” She didn’t respond. “I think the incubus figured out how I freed everybody. He’s pulling the same trick on us that we did on him.”
“So she’s stuck like this?” Dad asked dubiously.
“For now,” I sighed ruefully. “The question is, when did he get to her? How did he even find her, for that matter? I don’t have her number and I don’t know where she lives.” As soon as I said that, I realized the answer. “He took her right after he possessed me last night,” I groaned. “She’s been his the entire day.”
“So what do we do with her? We can’t let her go.”
“No, but we can’t drag her around with us either. Can we lock her up somewhere?” I eyed the library. Maybe we could just handcuff her to Mrs. Kendricks’ desk.
“We’ll take her to the jail,” Dad said. “She’ll be safe there.”
“Dad!” I protested, aghast. “What are the other officers going to say?”
“I’ll tell Bill she was drugged by someone she met and needs to sleep it off. He’ll keep it quiet.”
I doubted that. The department was pretty close-knit and it would be impossible to keep Cruz’s presence on the wrong side of a cell door a secret for long. “Isn’t he going to want to know who did it?”
“Some guy,” Dad said firmly. “Let’s not complicate things, Peter. If she really won’t remember what happened today, she’ll just be an unfortunate victim of an unsolved assault. That’s the best we can do for her under the circumstances.”
“I guess,” I said reluctantly. We wouldn’t be doing her reputation any favors by telling everyone she was drugged by a guy she picked up in a bar.
By a girl, Little Peter corrected me. She’s a lesbian, remember?
Shut up. “How are we going to get her to the station? We can’t all fit in the Jeep.”
“I’ll take her with me, the rest of you follow in her car.” Cruz’s purse had spilled open during our wrestling match and he plucked her keys from its scattered contents, holding them out to me. “Try not to get stopped by the police on the way,” he added wryly. “I don’t need you getting arrested for driving without a license.”
“Sitting in jail’s starting to sound like a pretty good deal,” I told him, taking the keys. “At least no one’s likely to kill me there.”
16
In the movies, when the villain captures the hero, he (or she) almost never kills him right away. Instead, he gloats about the hero’s ineptitude, brags about his own superior intellect, and explains his twisted scheme for world domination in great detail. This can go on for quite a while, especially if the hero expresses skepticism about the plot or otherwise insists that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the villain is doomed to fail. The end result, of course, is that the hero gains enough time to escape the villain’s clutches and knows exactly how to thwart his nefarious plan.
So why do evil geniuses keep falling into the same trap? If they were truly as smart as they claimed, they’d understand that as long as the hero is still alive, there’s always a chance something will go wrong. The best hero, from the villain’s perspective, is a dead hero. A bullet to the head pretty much guarantees the villain’s victory, so why don’t they just pull the trigger and move on?
I think the reason has to be that world domination is a lonely business. Telling the world what you’re planning to do would be counter-productive. Your lieutenants can’t be trusted with your secrets since they’ll turn on you the moment you let your guard down and your henchmen are just disposable pawns doing the grunt work. The hero, though, was clever enough to see through your machinations and resourceful enough to penetrate your defenses. Only he can fully comprehend the grand scale of your vision and marvel at its sublime elegance. Of course, you just handed him that gun and helped him point it at your own head, but at least you’ll die knowing that at least one other person appreciates what you were trying to accomplish.
“Shouldn’t she be in the hospital?” Sergeant Finney eyed Cruz through the bars of her cell, looking disgusted and worried at the same time. Cruz, for her part, just sat on the cot, staring at me with a vaguely resentful expression.
“She’ll be fine in a couple of hours, Bill,” Dad assured him. “We just need to make sure she doesn’t wander off or do anything she’ll regret until then.”
“Why aren’t we out looking for the guy who did this to her? We can get the bar to pull its security videos –”
“If she wants to press charges after she recovers, then we’ll deal with that.”
“But –”
“Just keep an eye on her,” Dad told him in a tone that strongly discouraged any further argument, “and keep it quiet and off the books.”
Sergeant Finney clearly wasn’t done but he swallowed his objections and nodded curtly. He glanced sourly at the rest of us standing off to the side. “So what are all these girls doing at the station? Are we hosting a Girl Scout meeting I didn’t hear about?” He scowled at me and the hole in my t-shirt. I hoped he couldn’t tell what caused it because I didn’t have an excuse ready.
“I’ll explain later,” Dad said, looking like he hoped Sergeant Finney would forget before then, not that that was very likely. “Come on,” he said to us, opening the door to the main hallway for us. The girls filed out of the jail but a querulous voice stopped me before I could follow them.
“Excuse me.” Mrs. Phipps sat in the cell across from Cruz, perched on the metal chair with a fleece blanket wrapped around her thin shoulders. “Are you the young man I spoke to before?” She peered at me through her thick lenses.
“Er, yes, that was me.”
“I called Mrs. Kendricks like you suggested and she promised to come help me but it’s been hours. Have you seen her at all?” She sounded frightened and confused.
“Oh, um, no,” I lied. “She probably just got held up somewhere.”
“Oh. All right. I’ll just keep waiting then.” She slowly sat back in her chair, staring at nothing with her hands cradled in her lap.
I leaned closer to Dad. “Can’t we let her out of there?” I murmured. “She doesn’t belon
g in jail.”
“You’re the one who arrested her,” he reminded me softly.
“That wasn’t me, that was you-know-who and Cruz.” I glanced at Cruz’s cell and shivered when I met her still-dilated eyes.
Dad rubbed his forehead with a tired grimace. “Peter, she’s in the system now. I can’t just let her go.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?”
He looked at Mrs. Phipps’ forlorn figure and shook his head with a sigh. “You go on ahead. I’ll talk to Bill and see what our options are.”
“Okay. Thanks, Dad.” He nodded and waved me out and I hurried to catch up to the others huddled in the hallway outside. “This way,” I pointed and they followed me like a line of goslings towards the conference room.
The large rectangular table in the center of the room had twelve chairs, more than enough for an all-hands meeting, but only three of them were occupied when I walked in. The closest girl, a fiery redhead with a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, looked me over. “Oh, it’s you,” she said unenthusiastically. I recognized Karyn from her voice and her attitude. She wore jeans and a loose top that slumped off her shoulder, exposing a white bra strap.
The second girl, seated across from her, straightened when she saw me, brushing her fingers through her dark blonde curls and licking her lips, but her eyes narrowed when Melissa walked in behind me. That had to be Allison. She wore a red-and-white checkered cowboy shirt unbuttoned enough to reveal a white tank top.
The last girl sitting at the far end of the table could have used a booster seat to lift her up higher. She had straight brown hair and big brown eyes that were afraid to blink. She flashed me an uncertain smile that turned into a look of horror when Daraxandriel stepped into the room with her sword resting on her shoulder.
Sudden Death Page 23
