Dark & Disorderly

by Bernita Harris

  “He claims his weakened condition is caused by a form of glamourie created by you.”

  Soul sucker. The crude words didn’t have to be said aloud. And the bean sidhe had called me cousin. She’d called me Leannan—the Sweetheart. Impossible. A form of friendly address, no more. At most, it was a recognition of Talent. But if Nathan believed it, believed in Powers, it would explain much. From his point of view, it would also justify and excuse his actions. Nathan’s calling me a lamia I’d taken as a cruel jibe, no more. Maybe he meant it. Was it as simple as that, after all? Not money and inheritance, but simple fear—and a fortuitous friend ready and able to assist him?

  “You can’t be serious. Nathan knew I was a Freak when he married me. That’s probably why he did. He thought I’d be a useful tool. I didn’t go chasing after him. I didn’t seduce and entrap him. And he had a pretty good line in soul-sucking negativity, believe me, if that’s what you’re talking about.”

  I licked my lips and went on, more slowly, “Nathan spoke sometimes as if his fear of the paranormal was linked inextricably with his sense of survival. I’ve wondered if that’s why he founded ASP and why he was so fanatical about it. And often so angry with me. Just what am I supposed to have done, to be?”

  Johnny’s gaze centered on my mouth. “Lillie, I’m not sure you know what you are. I know I sure as hell don’t.”

  I knew one bitter thing for sure. Nathan was the Normal and I was the Freak. I was alone. I set my jaw. If Nathan were subsequently proved to be tied to any of the attacks on me, one could argue Nathan’s claim laid the ground for a form of self-defense. Blame the victim. Some attitudes never die.

  “What a clever diversion. So what happens now?”

  “I have to check out his story. You understand that, I hope,” he said. He quit rubbing the back of his neck, shook his head, grimaced and got out.

  The flock of sparrows fled in silent and sudden confusion.

  As he swung around the back of my car, I cranked down my window.

  “Sergeant Thresher, do me one favor? The next chat you have with Nathan, be sure to tell him I’ve changed my will.”

  He broke step, waved and kept going.

  I glimpsed Johnny Thresher in my side mirror as he strode across the wide lot to the cop shop, head bent to a cell phone at his ear. I remembered another time he’d demanded to know my itinerary. Apparently, my movements were no longer of interest. Not worth the bother. Couldn’t blame him, really. I’d blown him off both personally and professionally. I watched him shrink smaller and smaller in the mirror. Like hope.

  I forgot that objects depicted thus are always closer than they appear.

  31.

  Eventually, I retrieved my bag with my wallet from under the seat and drove to the laundromat. Everyone seemed to have the Monday habit. Not that the place was crowded exactly, but customers had commandeered multiple machines. Not a good choice. I should have skipped the laundry run until later and gone straight back to the office.

  I dropped my bag of laundry in a corner and went back to retrieve the Ghost Walk/Death Walk file from my car, intending to be productive while I waited to dump my stinking clothes in the first available washer.

  Leaning against the partition that separated the mega-dryers from the main banks of machines, I listened to a lady named Darleen discuss with her friend Tanya the events from their favorite hospital soap while she unloaded and folded her dry wash piece by piece. Darleen made as much sense as the file in my hands. Maybe because I tensed at every footstep slapping the gritty tile floor, half expecting the shimmering aura of the bean sidhe to show between the ranks of machines. For all I knew, maybe she toured each laundromat in turn.

  On the whole, I thought it a good thing if she did not show; to see a bean sidhe was itself a warning, and I would find it most difficult to refrain from asking a certain question. I wasn’t at all sure it was one I wanted answered. What good would it do to know if one was truly cursed?

  Real life complications dropped enough problems on my plate without worrying that I was lethal to any potential lover like some belle dame sans merci. I banged open the lid of the washer when it clunked to a stop and earned a sharp look from the attendant.

  Until Nathan appeared in the flesh, officially undead so to speak, I could not request a restraining order, file for divorce, or do damn-all. Nathan probably anticipated with utmost pleasure my ensuing difficulties when he chose to appear. On the other hand, he’d chosen to reveal his survival, so maybe I was safer now from things like sabotaged cars.

  An elderly man with white eyebrows, white polo shirt and beige shorts shot me a reproachful glance when I beat him to a just-emptied dryer at the end of the row. Earlier, he’d been too slow to snag a washer before me. Tough. I set the timer on minimum, plunked in my coins and found, finally, a vacant seat.

  Nathan alive and pretending to be dead. Johnny practically ordering me to pretend to be dead. Dark games. For what? I didn’t understand their allure. Just as I didn’t understand why the BD wanted me to observe and assess a Ghost/Death Walk. Nothing like giving proper notice either. What did they expect me to do, interview and certify the ghosts as authentic?

  Digging into the file I learned that was precisely what they wanted me to do. They wanted me to check out each location, prior to their granting a license, to make sure the advertised apparitions were not inimical to any members of the public trotting through. I also learned that “Walk” was misleading. The representation was for an open house tour and not a street stroll around the town’s historic buildings, through parks and past graveyards and churches in the old-fashioned Ghost Walk style.

  Since ancestral ghosts were no longer the exclusive property of old money and old families, but available to social climbers and the nouveau riche who wished the status that such ghosts implied, some people acquired them with enthusiasm. Not everyone considered the ghostly phenomenon a problem. Noting that Cornett’s property on the River Road wasn’t mentioned, I was trying to remember if any of the addresses listed had previously been swept clear of entities under the Clean House program, when a draft from the door moved the moist, detergent-scented air. Johnny Thresher, wrapped in testosterone like a cloak, stood scanning the interior. We locked gazes.

  He held the door for Darleen to motor out and then stalked straight for me. In an instant of double vision, he appeared bare-chested and baldriced with a spear in one hand and a targe in the other. I smelled wood smoke and heard shouts and clamor and the rush of water. I blinked twice and the fantasy disappeared. A foolish notion. John Thresher was no Champion.

  Scrambling to my feet, for a silly moment I contemplated bolting out the back. Without my boots to give me height, he seemed taller than ever.

  “Lillie, I need you.”

  “How thrilling,” I said. “How did you find me this time?”

  “You mentioned laundry. We need to talk.”

  I faked a yawn that turned into a real one. “In the past that has meant I talk and you go ‘Hunh’ and then imply I’m up to something nefarious. I’m tired of it. There’s no incentive.”

  “How about dinner?”

  “And be condemned after in your usual style? Not very damned likely.”

  “Coffee, then?”

  “Outside of official business, I have no reason to give you the time of day, John Thresher. In fact, I have two very good reasons not to. You’re a jerk, and you’re a jerk. Besides, I’m occupied.” I sat down, reopened my file, smoothed the crumpled pages and pretended to read.

  The big feet in front of me didn’t move. A big hand twitched the file from my fingers. Johnny flipped through the pages. I gritted my teeth and kept my mouth shut.

  “Hunh,” he said, dropping it back on my lap. “Shouldn’t be your responsibility. Not worth your time.”

  Which naturally made me want to assert that it was.

  “Miss, your dryer’s stopped.” The old guy with the white eyebrows pushed his clothes basket up against the machine an
d blinked at me hopefully. My clothes did a last tumble and flop as the drum came to rest.

  “You could say it falls under official business,” Johnny growled over his shoulder. He swung open the dryer door and scooped up my laundry helter-skelter.

  The hovering old man picked up a pair of my red panties that fell on his basket. Handing them to Johnny, he smirked and waggled his eyebrows at me. Male dominance reasserted, I suppose. I stuck my nose in the air and hoped he’d screw up sorting his wash so his underpants all came out pink. Johnny stuffed the red scrap in a pocket and headed for the front of the laundromat. An efficient method of coercion, I had to admit.

  I caught up with Johnny just as he reached the door. “What’s the mad whoring rush? This had better be important,” I spit at his back. “If I didn’t need every stitch I’ve got, you could…”

  I swallowed the rest. He’d stopped to hold the door again. A silvery voice cadenced downward like a ripple of harp strings, “Thank you, young Warrior. A good day to you.”

  The bean sidhe towed a shopping cart this time, but the red shoes and green outfit were the same as before. She smiled up at him appraisingly. When Johnny bent his head in salutation, a white hand traced a double spiral in the air between them, rose to hover over one of the ornate combs in her russet hair and then fell reluctantly to her side.

  She smiled again and switched her attention to me. “And good day to you, young Cousin. Remember to take care, Leannan,” she said as she glided past, her green eyes sparkling with deliberate, gentle malice. Her cart wheels creaked under the weight of her wash, heavy with the smell of blood.

  I nipped the bundle from under Johnny’s arm and bolted past him out the door.

  When Johnny arrived a few seconds behind me, I was busy trying to jam the trunk key in the door lock of my car and wishing I could use one of those gizmos that unlocked things automatically. Those gadgets clearly had uses. Like faster getaways.

  He pried them out of my fingers, selected the correct key, unlocked and opened the passenger door.

  “We definitely have to talk,” he reiterated, tossing the keys in the air and catching them. Instead of handing them back, he closed his fist around them, stepped back and folded his arms.

  “If I’m not mistaken, we just encountered a Woman of the Ford,” he said.

  After I leaned in to shovel my laundry into the back along with the file, I slid down on the passenger seat to sit sideways in the open door. To avoid looking at him, I used the excuse of letting down my hair and rewinding it into a more comfortable knot. “A bean-nighim, a bean sidhe, yes,” I answered, after several deep breaths. “They have multiple aspects.”

  “You’ve met her before, that’s apparent from what she said.” Grit in his voice.

  What had her gestures toward him meant? Had she intended to mark him down, or just to lure him with her comb like the legends said?

  “Lillie, tell me why she called you cousin.”

  I roused at that. “How to hell would I know? A courtesy, I suppose. I am a Talent. Maybe she considers that a relationship. Maybe it’s the same as calling a person neighbor or sonny. Now, what official business do you consider so important that you hijack my laundry like a college frat boy on a panty raid? By the way, I’d like my panties back, please. They’re much too small for you.”

  He wasn’t diverted.

  “Leannan,” he said.

  “Don’t call me sweetheart.”

  “Why not, my lovely? I have just heard on excellent authority of a sidhe, no less, that you are a Sweetheart, the sort that feed on men’s desire and snare men’s souls. And it clicks with a lot of items that have made me curious, like why I have such a goddamn hard time keeping my hands off you. Your voices are the same.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I was afraid I did.

  “I think you damn well do.”

  Public place be damned. I climbed out of the car and faced him on the sidewalk. Drew myself up and let him have it.

  “Sergeant Thresher, I may be an abnormal human but I am human. I am not some avaricious, soul-sucking paranormal creature in disguise. In the past, bean sidhes were alleged to have attached themselves to certain families. Maybe that’s the situation here. One acquires a lot—an awful lot—of ancestors over the centuries.”

  “Why didn’t you report the encounter?”

  “Because her appearance and comments are irrelevant to the present investigation.”

  “Why didn’t you mention it to me, at least?”

  “Why should I? From our first meeting, you have viewed me with active suspicion, way beyond the normal objectivity and natural caution one expects from a police officer. Seems every other person’s word, every time, is believed and counted before mine. The most remote interpretation of events is acceptable to you, as long as it impugns my veracity. You’ve made your prejudice abundantly clear. And I’m sick of it. I tired of it. I don’t understand it and I don’t need it. And I’ve bloody well had enough of it!”

  I could have gone on and on, but the flame of rage that fueled my tirade spluttered out, along with my breath. In a way I did understand him. Maybe he distrusted and despised his own form of Talent and transferred that distrust to me. My knees began to shake. I gripped the top of the car door for balance and thrust out a palm blindly. “And you can hand over my car keys.”

  My hand met and slid past his chest because he grabbed my arms and muscled me up against the side of the car. Surprised, I clutched at him. His hands shifted to grasp my head, his fingers sliding past my cheekbones to hold my face immobile.

  “You warned me you were a danger, Leannan, and I think this is what you meant,” he said and fitted his wicked mouth on my open one. His wicked tongue. Instant lust. I wanted to wrap my legs around him, lock my ankles and pull him tighter. Public place, with people passing by, be damned, indeed. I despised myself for that impulse. I despised him for my impulse.

  So I bit him.

  He jerked his mouth away and his eyes flared like his aura. An odd expression passed over his face, still inches from mine. I had tasted anger on his lips, smelled leather and darkness. I tensed for retaliation. By itself it might not have been enough deterrent, but just then, behind him, someone hooted and snickered and someone else advised us to get a room.

  Johnny released my face, braced his hands on the roof of the car, turned his head and said, with menace, “Fuck. Off.”

  Two sets of baggy pants and baseball caps worn backward hurried past to the video store.

  The interruption caused him to shift his body and that allowed me to slide down the side of the car to the asphalt. Firm ground. I needed it.

  “That makes one more reason not to give you the time of day. Give me my keys and keep the hell away from me.” I said it with much more aplomb than I felt, tugging my jacket back in place.

  He rubbed a palm across his mouth, looked at the streak of blood on it and smiled down at me. A dangerous smile. “So you did mean it, after all. But don’t pretend you’re not attracted, Lillie.”

  “So. What.” Shivering, I looked away. Fog curled along the street. The street lamps, triggered automatically by the mist, glowed like a row of corpse candles. Appropriate. “You bastard. You confirmed, just hours ago, that I’m still married. End of story.” I scrubbed the back of my hand across my own mouth. “Last chance, “I said. “I want my car keys.”

  He dabbed again at his lower lip, this time with a thumb. He didn’t move. I was blocked. “Recruitment test, Lillie. Let’s have coffee and I’ll explain.”

  “What you said to those teenagers. Consider it repeated.”

  “Lillie, I need you.”

  “Buy a blow-up doll.”

  “I didn’t mean…oh, hell! I’m offering you a federal contract. Federal accreditation comes with it.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute. Real jobs aren’t offered in the dingy parking lot of a shabby mini-mall—unless it just occurred to someone that they left themselves
open to a charge of sexual assault. With witnesses. Do I have idiot stenciled on my forehead?”

  Maybe I did. In large letters. Here I was still talking to him. Standing as if my runners were velcroed to the pavement. But I needed my keys back. I needed to catch my breath too, and lower my heart rate under 200. If he failed to hand them over, I would just lock up the car and walk home, sadder but wiser. Sadder, anyhow.

  Johnny rubbed the back of his neck. “I asked you to dinner. I intended to make a formal offer then, even though your background check ran into some peculiar roadblocks. That bean sidhe calling you cousin, coming after your husband’s insinuation, threw me, I admit. I had to know. An impulse. I apologize.”

  “You believed that bullshit? Your excuse for mauling me is my fatal faerie charm? Oh, I get it. The old ‘the woman tempted me’ excuse, updated to ensorcellment! Funny how some things don’t change. And Nathan is, of course, an entirely reliable source. So now you’re going to echo him? Use his accusations? And, of course, it follows that I’d want to work with someone who can’t keep his randy hands off—” I choked on the word married and substituted, “—the help.”

  “Like I just said, we need a major Talent. People we can call on for incidents in areas that do not have a capable resident or a paranormal plan in place. For anticipated malignant entities that will appear. We sure as hell don’t need a dangerous Other Worlder masquerading as a human Talent. If you were a true Leannan sidhe you wouldn’t have pushed me off again, I don’t think. Kissing you was the quickest way to find out.”