a Touch of Ice

by L. j. Charles

This compulsion to find out what happened to Tony is complex, scary, and embarrassing. I don’t do the PI thing like you do, and it’s not only possible, but likely that I could put you in danger with my ineptness. That’s what’s wrong with me this morning.”

  “It didn’t seem to bother you to drag me out in the middle of the night when we broke into Tony’s.”

  “Then I knew, my gut knew, that Tony’s house was safe in spite of the awful images connected to his death. It was one of those times universe-speak was actually clear.” I cut a quick glance to Violet’s side of the car. Looked like she was grinding her teeth. Best to keep talking. “The picture of this barn has given me chills since I first saw it. I can only imagine what the real thing will be like. Besides, it’s one week today that Tony was killed. It’s strange, like a bad anniversary.”

  Violet took a bite of McMuffin and a sip of coffee. “All right. I accept that. So you want to abort thi—”

  I waved my hand toward the road. “Go, find the barn. Let’s see what my fingers pick up, but I think we should be extra careful.”

  “Eat. You’ll feel better,” Violet said as she pulled back on the highway.

  By the time we turned onto Farrington Road, I’d finished my breakfast, wadded both of our paper wrappers and napkins into a ball and stuffed them in the McDonalds bag. It felt good to keep my hands busy, out of trouble. “Do you know where this barn is located? If memory serves me, Farrington Road goes on for miles.”

  Violet shrugged. “I don’t have anything more pressing to do right this very minute, do you? It’s a beautiful day, sun shining, birds chirping, two girls taking a day off to explore the country. What could be better?”

  “You know exactly where this barn is, don’t you?”

  “I asked Mitch yesterday. Seemed the prudent thing to do. We go up here a couple miles, take a right-hand turn onto a dirt road, and we’ll see it off to the side. Should be there in about fifteen minutes.”

  We drove in silence the rest of the way. I needed to ground myself, as was obvious by my earlier Chatty Cathy impersonation. And Violet? Who knew where Violet’s thoughts were. She was careful not to get within touching distance of me this morning, and probably thought I wouldn’t notice. I always notice when someone who’s typically comfortable with my touch suddenly starts acting like I have an acute case of an infectious disease. Violet was hiding something. Not helpful info considering my sense of impending disaster.

  “That’s it.” Violet pointed to a weathered barn, once red, with so much character it practically begged to be photographed.

  I scooted out of the truck, cautious, leaned against the door with the palms of my hands pressed against it, held there securely with my backside. “Uh-huh. Looks like the photograph.” I wasn’t at all inclined to move my body one inch toward that barn.

  Violet had a camera strap slung over her shoulder, a clip board in her hand, and was making tracks toward our destination, stopping to jot down notes and take pictures as things caught her attention. After a few minutes she spun to face me. “Everly?”

  “Coming.” I pried my hands from their hiding place, but I didn’t seem to be moving. Free hands, but feet glued to the ground.

  Violet made some more notes, then tucked her pen in the back pocket of her jeans, jogged back to me. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yeah, I do. That barn. It’s screaming at me to touch it. I just can’t seem to move my feet.”

  “Maybe if you start by touching the ground? See if it helps to touch something, anything besides the truck.”

  I looked at the space around my feet, grassy, some clover, nothing threatening. I could do this. I squatted down, t-shirt riding up to expose my lower back to the sun. Warm. Comforting. Yeah, I could do this. I ran my fingertips along the ground and my mind filled with images, mostly blurry. That wasn’t surprising because the earth dissipates energy quickly.

  I bounced to my feet. “Looks like there were cars, two I think, nothing clear, but I did catch a glimpse of the guy I saw breaking into Mitch’s, the short one with too-big clothes. Messy.”

  “I wondered about him, why he wasn’t at the murder scene. Are you ready to move yet?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but slowly. If Messy was here, it seems likely I’ll pick up images of Shaved Head and Pudgy. This is all tied together, isn’t it? It really isn’t my imagination. Tony, the photos, Mitch—”

  “Yep, it’s all tied together. The question is why.”

  We approached the barn, my steps slow as I took care to place my feet deliberately on the ground. No point disturbing any sleeping monsters, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that monsters lived here. You could feel them out there, ready to devour the unsuspecting. My skin crawled, the air still and heavy with foreboding.

  Really great barn. Really horrible place. I circled around to the back where the car had been parked. Violet followed, her eyes boring holes in my back. Probably she was afraid I’d bolt, scream, have seizures, or otherwise disgrace myself. I understood her concern, because I’d given serious consideration to all of those options.

  “I’m going to touch the ground here too. Can you write down what I say? I’d feel better if you made notes right away instead of waiting to go over it later.”

  “Sure, whatever you say—” she clicked her pen a few times— “but I’m thinking you’ll give better detail when you sit with the images and describe them without on-the-spot stress.”

  “We can do that later. It’s important to do this now, and don’t ask me why. I don’t have a clue why.” I touched the ground. Pain slashed through my chest, stealing my breath. “Wow. Okay. This isn’t good. It’ll take me a minute.”

  “You don’t have to—” Violet’s words hung between us, heavy with worry.

  “Yeah, I do. More so now that I know…” I centered myself, breathing deeply into earth energy, and then rested my fingers on the ground again. “It’s a green Jaguar. The cat on my storyboard. This is the cat.”

  I sucked in a breath. “No, I’m wrong. The owner of the car is the cat, and that does a terrible injustice to felines everywhere.” I jerked to my feet, scrubbing my hand on my jeans.

  “You okay?” Violet eyed me, head to feet, nodded. “No, you’re not okay. What happened?”

  Dragging in another breath, I pushed the words out. “His face, it shifted. Almost became cat-like. You know, with the angles and squared jaw. But then it shifted back to…human.”

  “You’re saying, surely you’re not saying—” Violet snorted— “that this guy is a shape shifter. Like in science fiction?”

  A shiver rippled over my skin. “No. Well, maybe. I know there’s no such thing, but it was strange how his face…moved. How about we forget about the shifting thing and focus on how terrible he is. Black inside. His energy is insidious, Violet. It would have surrounded me if I hadn’t moved my hand, and I’m not sure…if it seeped into me. I don’t think I could escape.”

  “Has that ever happened to you before?”

  “No. Not like this. Gruesome thought, his energy seeping into things. It’s like sewage.” I shook my right hand and wiped it down my thigh again. And I wasn’t going to forget how his face shifted. Not that I’d ever mention it again, but it was stuck on permanent rerun in my mind.

  “You ‘re not okay. Not okay at all.” She pulled a bottle of water from her back pocket. “Drink.”

  I chugged the whole bottle, then made my way to a nearby stump and sat. “I’m sort of okay. The image I got—he was ready to get in the car, had opened the door, it looked like he stopped to check out the surrounds before he got in and drove away. Makes sense. When you’re that creepy, you must have a ton of people who’d like to do you in.

  “He was pale with light blue eyes. Maybe more like silver-gray. Eerie eyes. And not just because of the color. There was nothing in them. Empty.” I shuddered. “He dressed arrogantly, nothing but the best. I’m not up on men’s suits, but his was tailored to fit, probably cost enough to outfit
a small army.”

  My eyes met Violet’s. “I think that’s it for this image. I’ll try to pull it up later, see if anything else pops.”

  “I think you need a break before we check out the barn. Stay here and I’ll grab a snack and more water from the truck.”

  I was moving toward the barn before Violet made it back. I didn’t want to linger here, needed to be done with this.

  The pain came out of nowhere. Flattened me, slammed me to the ground.

  Life seeped into slow motion.

  A loud pop exploded near my ear, and I fought for breath. Someone shot you, Everly Gray! Shot. You. Breathing would be good. Suck it in, then move. Get the hell out of the way.

  I tried to scuttle along the ground, find something to hide behind. Holy crap, this was so not in my job description. I slapped my hand over my butt to stop the pain. Why do people always think the pain will stop with a touch? I’m here to tell you, the only thing that happens when you touch a bullet wound is you get your hand covered in blood. It’s amazing how much time the human brain has to think when it’s stuck in slow motion.

  “El?” Violet’s arm snaked around me and sunlight glinted off the gun in her other hand. A burnt, acrid tang scented the air.

  Surely she didn’t shoot me.

  Wow. My head was spinning, the barn and the trees danced around. Fear slid over my skin, followed by a wave of sheer panic.

  “Breathe!” Violet, shouting in my ear.

  I hissed a breath through clenched teeth. “Shot. In the butt. With a gun.”

  “Looks that way.”

  I closed my eyes to shut out the spinning.

  “Don’t you dare pass out, Everly Gray. They left. Whoever shot you drove off. You must have hit your head on the tree stump when you went down because the wound in your hip looks shallow. Grazed your skin, maybe some muscle. I have to get you on your feet and over to the car.”

  Shot. A weird part of my brain kicked in and sent another hit of panic along my raw nerves. “Damn it all to perdition, another layer of ‘gun-loathing’ added to my phobia.”

  Violet levered her hand under my elbow, tugged. “Stop with the thinking. I repeat. Whoever shot you is gone. I heard the car start, peel off down the road.”

  She man-handled me to the truck, taking most of my weight, and tucked me into the passenger side. Then she stripped off her t-shirt, wadded it up, and pressed it against my wound. Burning pain shot through my hip. “Owww! Hurts.”

  “Need to stop the bleeding.” She took my hand and pressed it against the shirt. “Hold it tight so you don’t bleed to death.”

  “Un-huh.” Somehow it didn’t hurt as much when I had control of the pressure. Violet, also known as my guardian angel, stood there watching me in low-rise blue jeans and a sport bra with a gun tucked in the palm of her hand. “You look like Wonder Woman.” I managed to get the words out in spite of my foggy brain cells.

  “That’s me. Wonder Woman.” She fastened the seat belt around me, slid into the driver’s seat, and put the car in gear. As she tore down the road, she picked up her phone and punched a button.

  “Adam, this is Violet. Meet me at Western Wake ER in twenty minutes. I’m out on Farrington Road bringing El in with a minor gunshot wound. I’d appreciate it if no one pulled me over en route. I will be speeding.”

  I whipped my free hand up to push my hair away from my face, missed. Tried again. On the third try, it stayed behind my ear and I focused on Violet, my mind reeling through the groggies. “I’ve been shot, definitely hit my head because it’s on the verge of exploding, and my hip hurts like a son of a bitch, but I’m still alert enough to notice you have Adam on speed-dial? That indicates more than a work relationship. What gives?”

  “Nothing gives. Our jobs intersect occasionally, often enough that we respect each other. As colleagues, of a sort.” She grinned at me. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re my first speed-dial number. Adam comes in at a lowly number two. And I’m thinking you might want to stop talking. Your words are fading into slush.”

  She had a point. There were too many thoughts in my head, and it was hard to form coherent sentences. I fought for consciousness and my brain cleared…just enough to keep talking. “I’m in pain and unfortunately wide awake. I’m cranky. So let’s try this again. Twice now you’ve explained your relationship with Adam as casual. You didn’t mention speed-dial when we were talking about this earlier. Are you hiding something? Are the two of you an item?”

  I vividly remembered the images I’d seen when I touched her hand yesterday. It seemed like a good time to satisfy my curiosity, since I could blame any strange comments on a potential concussion from where my head hit the tree stump and on blood loss. The sticky, red stuff was still oozing from the wound in my hip.

  I’d been focused on Violet while I ranted, because it’s only polite to look at the person you’re about ready to strangle, and because she kept wobbling, fading into a hazy blob. I pushed up, braced my weight on my elbow, and took a look at what was happening in front of us.

  Bad idea. Dizzy. Solid wall of a semi in front of us that Violet either didn’t notice, or was intent on forming a close, personal relationship with.

  She slid into the right-hand lane, barely avoiding contact with a minivan. I started to breathe again, collapsing back onto the seat. “Rather bleed…than mangled between semi…minivan.” My voice sounded disembodied, like it was coming from the back seat, and I noticed gray edges around my field of vision. It was odd, because I felt fine.

  Seriously.

  I felt just fine.

  Fourteen

  Violet pulled around the circular drive and stopped in front of the Emergency Department doors. Even with my eyes closed and a foggy brain, it was impossible to miss the rolling curve of the turn. It shifted my hip against the seat belt and caused an interesting pain to pierce my backside. The car door opened and I tried to shift my body, sending another shiver of pain through my hip. Background voices faded to a distant haze. My eyelids refused to open, someone unfastened my seat belt, and several someones moved me to a gurney. I think. The haze in my head darkened around the edges, black eating through the fog.

  I heard echoes of voices. Someone asked how long I’d been unconscious. Do you hear things when you’re unconscious? Or is it when you’re in a coma that you hear things? It was my first time with this sort of experience, so I didn’t have much to go on. I thought about telling them I was awake—tried to put together a sentence—but couldn’t seem to form words, much less actually talk.

  Violet interrupted my parsing attempt. “About five minutes. She was oriented and coherent up until the time she passed out, asking questions, acting normal. Aside from bumping her head and the bullet wound in her hip, of course.”

  My eyelids popped open long enough to see bright lights and an official-looking person in blue scrubs. “Step over to that desk. They’ll need you to fill out some paperwork.”

  Darkness settled heavy over me. I’m guessing my eyes closed again, couldn’t be sure, so I focused on the pungent scent of disinfectant and managed to blink just enough to catch a glimpse of Violet reaching for a clipboard. Then I heard a male voice. “How is she?” I tried to place him, couldn’t, but his tone held a rich timbre and a faint touch of accent that brushed my memory. Who was he?

  “She’ll be fine. It didn’t look too serious to me, and she stayed conscious for most of the trip—asking all kinds of questions about why you’re on speed-dial and if we’re an item. Us. An item. I’m hoping the shock will nudge all those questions into unconscious oblivion.”

  Whoa. Interesting. That rich, gravelly voice must belong to the mysterious Detective Adam Stone. Wish I could see his face, but I’d have to move my head and—no that’d take too much energy and be a dead giveaway that I was conscious. This unconscious-but-not-really gig was definitely working to my advantage. Who knew what other secrets would be exposed.

  “You care about her don’t you? I’ve never heard y
ou slip up like that. Using my first name in front of someone.”

  Okay. Had to open my eyes. They were standing close to me, but not paying that much attention, I hoped. Maybe they wouldn’t even notice. Turns out sight is more important than you think, when you’re trying to decipher the nuances of communication.

  Violet faced a guy that had a lot of unruly, straight blond hair, cut short. Looked young, but there were deep laugh lines around his eyes. My eyes drooped closed, but the image of Adam Stone hung around. Not the tidy type. His slacks and shirt looked like he’d been up all night, but then maybe he had.

  Violet’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “It slipped out when Mitch was dumped at the hospital. Then yesterday, when I saw the picture of the license plate—”

  “Did you recognize the plate?”

  “Not exactly. It was, well, El would say the universe was trying to communicate with me. I’ll call it my spidey sense. I haven’t felt this way since I was active on the Delano West case.”

  “Hell no. This can’t be related to West.” Stone’s voice sounded deeper, with more gravel. Damn, I wished I could see without opening my eyes, or use my fingers. He’d definitely notice if I grabbed his arm.

  “Yeah it’s West. My life as Violet has reached the end of its usefulness.”

  My eyes snapped open. The shiver that racked Violet’s body was intense enough to recognize—even with my muddled vision.

  She reached toward Adam. “How about if you lend me one of those shirts you have on? I’m a little underdressed for an official investigation into a GSW.”

  Adam took off his button-down, leaving him in a snug, white t-shirt. My eyes closed again, cutting off the image. I heard fabric rustling and pushed my eyelids open a smidge to see him wrap his shirt around Violet, giving her a hug. “You want the keys to a safe house?”

  What? Their conversation was making no sense, at least not to my sloggy mind. Did she say her life as Violet was coming to an end? What the heck did that mean? A safe house? And what’s with the wrapping his shirt around her?