by Jaycee Clark
“I guess you don’t have any coffee yet, huh?” Mike Killian asked.
“We don’t technically open for almost an hour, you know, Mike.”
She stood in the doorway as Mike Killian and his partner, St. Cyr, stopped on the sidewalk, in the same place the woman had stood. She glanced down at the spot, then glanced up and down the street. “Did you see anyone?” she asked.
“Anyone who?” St. Cyr asked, motioning behind her.
She rolled her eyes and walked back into the bakery, the scent of baked breads, blueberries and chocolate filling the air, but then it always did.
St. Cyr and Mike were partners, but she knew St. Cyr because he was best friends with her best friend’s brother. He’d been around a lot when they were in college together. She always thought Sammy and St. Cyr would get together, but as of yet, it hadn’t happened.
“Come right on in.”
“Come on, Paige,” St. Cyr said. “We need coffee, cher. We had a late night.”
“Late night, try an all night,” Mike said, watching her.
“I don’t want to hear about your exploits, boys.” But she went over and got their favorite coffee out to grind. They were both police officers who worked homicide. St. Cyr used to be partnered with the oldest Riggio brother, but for the last few months, he’d been with Mike.
Mike. Nearly as tall as St. Cyr, he was almost lanky and blond, dirty blond. He grew stubble quickly, which she knew from one wild drunken night with the man. Okay, maybe it had been more than once.
Now though?
Now they sort of skirted around each other. These two men often stopped in for coffee or baked goods, but she and Mike had never really hit it off anywhere other than in bed. In bed they were good, no great. He’d wanted more, she’d give him that. She just hadn’t been interested in a relationship. Been there, done that. She’d learned the hard way that men got sort of funny when you said you could see dead people—and talk to them. Her ex had urged her to seek help and when she hadn’t… well, he was her ex for a reason.
She liked Mike, liked when they spent time together, enjoyed his almost daily stops at the shop, and she didn’t ever want to see him look at her with disbelief, or worse, pity if he found out she was a little…weird. Who knew when she was going to freak out and see things, talk to people. Hear voices…
Paige poured water into the percolator and ground the Community Coffee beans the guys preferred. The air filled with scent of fresh ground coffee as she dumped them into the percolator as well and switched it on. She grabbed them two blueberry muffins each and the carrot one for Mike. He always had two and carrot was his fave, but she needed to get rid of yesterday’s blueberry muffins. There were only about six left.
“I’ve got to get the cinnamon bread and babka in so if you guys want to talk, you’ll have to come into the back.”
They both followed her back and she said, “The coffee will be ready in a minute.”
For a minute the only sound was her dumping ingredients into the large mixing bowl.
“There’s some quiche left over from yesterday if you want it, but you’ll have to get it yourselves, I’m behind.”
St. Cyr mumbled a thanks and opened the commercial fridge.
Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
“Hey,” Mike walked up beside her, took her hand and held it.
She let him for a moment, his heat warming her and she leaned into him. Realizing what she’d done, she tried to pull it away, but he didn’t let her go.
“Your hands are cold. Are you sure you’re okay?” His eyes studied her for a moment. “Who did you see when we pulled up?”
She shook her head, pulled her hand away and then poured warm water into the mixture before she took her frustrations out with the wooden spoon.
“Don’t you have a mixer for that?” St. Cyr asked around a mouthful of cold quiche. Man hadn’t even bothered to warm it up.
“So what if I do? Sometimes things are better with hand jobs,” she said, smiling at him, “rather than machines. Or don’t you know that yet?”
St. Cyr choked out a laugh. “Cher I learned long ago machines don’t do anything for me and if you’re comparing the two, clearly Mike needs to take better care of you.”
She had nothing to say to that one.
St. Cyr chuckled and went back to the fridge. She focused on the dough.
Mike made a noise in his throat, one she knew bordered on his waning patience. “Who bothered you, Paige?”
She shrugged it off, whipped the spoon harder, hitting the side of the bowl. “No one. No one was there, were they?”
“Something, or someone’s bothering you, I want to know about it,” Mike said, watching her. She could feel his eyes on her as she dumped the bread into the loaf pans and set them near the oven as it warmed.
“Why?” she asked, finally grabbing more ingredients for the babka.
“Why?” he asked.
“Please help me,” the voice whispered from the back of the room.
Paige whirled. The woman in white stood against the far wall near the pantry with her bloody red scarf. She could see the blood now. Why hadn’t she seen it earlier?
Her chest tightening, Paige tried to throw up walls like she and Sammy had practiced when she’d finally confessed her own fears and neurotic tendencies.
“What’s wrong?” Mike asked her.
“They’re the police. They can help. Hurry. You have to hurry before he leaves. The light is almost right. I can hear him,” the woman said to her, her voice seeming to echo. “He’s waiting on the light and it’s better. He’s in a hurry. He’ll leave and then what? No one will stop him. He’ll find another. He’s already said next time. Next time. He hurt me. He’ll hurt another.”
Paige shivered.
The woman continued, “If I’m dead, he killed me. He’ll kill the next one, too.”
Mike stood in front of her talking to her but she didn’t hear him.
She blinked. “What? What did you say?”
Her head really hurt.
“Your nose is bleeding.” He led her to a stool and she realized that St. Cyr was on the phone with someone asking when they’d be here. She realized then whomever he was talking to he was talking about her.
She swallowed and looked back into the corner of the room.
The woman stood there. “I’m against the fallen angel of DeLuth. Hurry.”
The woman vanished, her tears brilliant in the bright lights of the kitchen. The blood on her red scarf was even brighter.
“He hurt her,” she heard herself say.
“Who hurt her?” Mike softly asked.
“I don’t know. I just know he hurt her.”
“Who?”
“DeLuth. She’s against the DeLuth angel,” she said. “Fallen angels. Bloody scarves.”
Pain shot through her head before blackness simply cut out the lights.
Chapter Three
Mike caught Paige before she hit the floor, but then, he had been holding her arms. She went slack, her face devoid of color, but her eyes had been bright, pupils wide and unfocused. She’d seen something. He glanced over his shoulder to the corner where she’d been looking. Nothing was there, but she’d seen something.
Chills danced over his skin.
“What the hell?” he muttered and laid her down on the black and white tiles in the kitchen. “Paige. Paige. Damn it.” He leaned over her, made certain she was breathing. Her pulse was strong if a bit fast.
A small trickle of blood ran out of her nose, over her lip and slid down the side of her face. He wiped at it, only managing to smear it.
“Here.” St. Cyr handed him a dampened paper towel. “Want me to call 9-1-1?”
She moaned.
“No, I think she’s coming out of it.” He would take her to the doctor himself.
She opened her eyes and gasped.
“You’re okay. You fainted,” he told her.
Something had scared her, but he w
asn’t sure what or if he wanted to know.
The woman was complicated. He aught to know, he’d been waiting on her to come around to the idea of the two of them.
Hell, he’d tried with the woman, he liked her. Went by here several times a week and for what? So she could practically ignore him? Though she didn’t. He caught the way she looked at him under her lashes when he was here. If Sammy was here and waiting on him, Paige would track him with her eyes. They hung out together, hell, they’d slept together a few times, and every time he’d tried for more she’d shied away back into their normal routine.
He knew Paige was fine with them as whatever they were, more than friends, less than lovers, but he wasn’t.
When he’d asked Sammy about it, she’d told him that her friend didn’t trust men. What that meant, he had no idea, and he kept coming back to the confusing woman. Apparently, he was a masochist. She pulled at him. Pulled at him and made him want to strangle her, kiss her, and take her home where crazies didn’t roam the streets.
He pressed his hand on her shoulder to keep her down when she tried to sit up. “Stay still. Give yourself a minute.”
Her eyes slid closed. “I don’t really have a minute. There’s too much to do. Sam’s busy today and it’ll be hours before Lyle comes in and—”
“Sammy’s coming in,” St. Cyr said. “I already called her and she was on her way anyway.”
“She’s—” She shut her mouth.
Paige rubbed her head. Dark hair was already coming out of her braid. She always wore her hair in braids to work; a French braid, sometimes a single one down the back of her head, sometimes multiple ones across the back of her head, sometimes twisted up. He always wanted to take them down and run his fingers through her long hair.
But, she probably wouldn’t let him do that now, even if her head hurt.
“Let me up.” She pushed at his hands even as he helped her.
“You didn’t have to call—” She hissed out a breath and rubbed her forehead again. “Sammy.”
“Really? ‘Cause you’re up to getting everything ready this morning? Did someone attack you before we got here?” Mike asked, the idea taking root. When they’d pulled around the corner it had been to see her standing in front of the store with her arm raised above her head.
She swallowed. “No. No. God, my head hurts all of a sudden.”
“Migraine?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. I haven’t had one in a long time.”
“Okay. Well, we just got off, so we can take you to the ER if you—”
“No!” She shoved at him, stood and swayed, gripped the metal edge of the counter. “No. I don’t do ER’s, hospitals, doctors.”
Oh-kay. He stepped closer to her in case she passed out again. He rubbed a hand over his face, tired and getting pissed off at the pale woman in front of him, whose nose started to bleed again.
“Sit the hell down.” He practically shoved her onto a stool in the corner, took a paper towel and handed it to her. She pressed it against her nose and tilted her head back against the wall behind her. He wet another towel, wrung his frustrations out on it and then walked back to her, wiping the blood off her face before he folded it, pressing it to her forehead. She was pale.
St. Cyr leaned against the wall sipping from a cup of coffee. “You know, we could take you to the ER anyway.”
He shot his partner a look.
“You could try.” Her smile was saccharine, and thankfully not aimed at him.
“I could call Mrs. R.,” St. Cyr gave her the same smile back.
Paige glared at St. Cyr with shiny eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, I would, and while Mike shoves you in the car, handcuffed—”
“Mike does like to play with his cuffs,” she said.
“—I’ll call Mrs. R.,” St. Cyr finished ignoring her.
She huffed out a breath. “Look, it’s been years, but I’m sure I still have some migraine meds somewhere. I’ll just go home and take one and then come back to help Sammy.”
Mike cleared his throat. “Children. Stop.” To St. Cyr, “You’re not helping. You,” he said pointing to her, “you’ll go home, take a migraine whatever and then go to bed.”
This time her hazel eyes rose to his. “I’m a big girl.”
“Then act like it,” he snapped. “What the hell had you scared out on the sidewalk? What were you talking about earlier?”
“Fuck off, Killian.” Her eyes widened as if she was just as shocked as he was at her language. She rarely cursed. “You’re not the boss of me.”
He leaned down, gripped her chin. “Someone needs to be, darlin’ and I’m the one standing here.”
She stared at him for a moment and started to lean toward him. Then shoved his hand away from her chin, and looked back at the far corner again, quickly as if someone had called her name. The color anger had put into her cheeks fled in the blink of an eye.
“Damn, it’s cold in here, what do you have the thermostat set on?” St. Cyr complained.
Her eyes slid closed.
“I think... I think someone’s hurt,” she whispered.
“Where?” Mike asked.
She opened her eyes, swallowed and swallowed again. “Will you go check the cemetery? Please?”
The cemetery?
“Which one?” St. Cyr said, “There’s more than one.”
She glanced over to the corner again. “I—I don’t know. The one with a DeLuth fallen angel. The angel is missing its wing. I think... I think she’s there. Close, it’d have to be close for her to find me.”
“Who?”
“Probably one of the St. Louis cemeteries,” St. Cyr muttered.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head.
“Who’s there? Who found you?”
“He hurt her. I think he hurt her. She said he did. I think… I think maybe… maybe he k-killed her.”
Wait. What?
“Someone told you this?” he asked her carefully.
“Yes. Yes, she said…” Paige took a deep breath. “I can’t explain it to you. Just… just please, go check.”
“Who told you this? Where is she?” Mike asked.
She blinked, then blinked again and looked at him. “She’s probably wearing a white dress. Maybe.” She swallowed and rubbed her neck. “Red Scarf. Please hurry. Please.”
He glanced over at St. Cyr who was looking between the two of them and tapping on the screen of his phone.
“Honey, did you hit your head this morning?” he asked her softly.
For a moment, she just stared at him, wincing so slightly he might have missed the flash of hurt in her eyes. She huffed out a chuckle and held the side of her head. “Oh that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?” Her eyes lost that focused look for a minute. “Hit my head and imagine things, very simple explanation. My head really hurts.”
She slumped again and closed her eyes.
Mike cursed as the door to the kitchen swung open.
Sammy Riggio, her blonde curling hair every which way. “Morning, boys.”
“You didn’t have to come in,” Paige muttered softly.
“Really? Because, sugar, you look like death warmed over, something the cats woulda left alone. We all know that people will not buy baked goods if you look like you’re about to vomit on their purchase or pass out on the floor or something. Go home. Get some rest. I’ve got this.”
Paige opened her eyes.
“Oh, honey,” Sammy said, coming closer and brushing a hand over her friend’s hair. “Again? It’s been so long, I’d thought… Well.”
Mike looked from one to the other.
“You want me to take you home? We could record what you saw, what they said in the journal and—”
“Sammy, I love you, but shut up.” Paige looked from her friend to him with her eyebrows arched.
Sammy looked from Paige to the guys. “Well, hell, we already know you see ghosts. It’s not a secret.”
“Wel
l, thanks, Sam. Mike didn’t.”
These two. They were oblivious to how much he knew about the both of them. He knew Paige thought she saw things, heard things. Hell, maybe she did. Gran spoke to the spirits on a regular basis. Left gifts for them even.
“Come on, Paige, I’ll get you home.” Mike took her elbow. How, he wasn’t sure since they were in their issued Crown Vic. He could walk her back home and catch a bus or something. St. Cyr could head on home himself.
“I can get home by myself,” she said, her voice lacking its normal spark.
“You guys need better security lights,” St. Cyr muttered. “You’re both just asking for trouble walking here every morning. The streets are dark, it’s well past time the bars wind down and the crazies are out.”
Sammy, who always took exception to something St. Cyr said, propped her hands on her hips. “Puh-lease. You just want to bark. We’ve had this bakery for twenty years. Before me, my mother walked here every morning and—”
“With your father or one of your brothers. Never by herself. You worry them,” he told her. “Both of you worry them. This area’s not the place it used to be and you know it.”
Sammy rolled her eyes.
“One day, they’ll actually sleep together and leave the rest of us in peace,” Mike thought he heard Paige whisper.
“I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one. He’s too big-brother in his own mind.” He had no idea what Sammy thought about his partner though. “And just because two people sleep together, it doesn’t always makes things better. Sometimes it scares the hell out of one side.”
She just leveled a look at him. “At least we wouldn’t have to listen to them anymore, would we?” Paige said, and tried to stand up.
Sammy turned back to her friend. “You go home and rest. I mean it.” She brushed her hand over her friend’s hair again. “Did you see something?”
Paige jerked. “I saw something, yes, but what, I’m not sure.”
“Yes you are. We’ve discussed this ad nauseam. You just need to believe in yourself.”
Paige laughed. “Yeah, because that was drilled into me. Grow up where I did and—” Paige’s eyes rose and met his. “Never mind.”
Maybe that’s why she always pushed him away. He’d find out sooner or later.
