“And tell you it was a present sent only to you,” he whispered back. He slowly made his way to the rail beside her.
Joy laughed and it was as pure as her song. “Yes. I believed her then and I believe her now.”
“It’s good to have someone to believe in,” he said.
She looked at him suspiciously, though she still smiled. “Is that a pick up line?”
“No,” he said and then he grinned, “Unless, of course, you want it to be.”
“Don’t spoil it,” she said.
“Then I’ll say goodnight,” he said and soft as one of the snowflakes falling from the sky, he kissed her cheek. And then he was gone.
JJ touched the place on her cheekbone where he’d placed his kiss and wiped away the tear that leaked from the corner of her eye. It was a sweet gesture, probably made out of pity. She wondered sadly what Nardo would say if he knew that these last few minutes were the sweetest minutes of her life, at least the life she could remember.
The warmth inside her grew.
Chapter 18
Faith ignored her breakfast and watched the door with frightened eyes. She still didn’t speak, but she communicated a great deal through her eyes and facial expressions. It was another sign of an active mind behind her usual façade of blank indifference. She was much more comfortable in the company of the women, particularly JJ’s, though it was clear she liked Broadbent’s reading as long as he didn’t come too close. In the presence of the other men, however, she reverted to blind eyes and deaf ears.
Since JJ didn’t know how to act all gentle and gooey, she spoke to the young woman the way she did everyone else and Faith seemed to appreciate it. JJ enjoyed their time together and quickly learned to read the young recluse’s body language fairly well. Faith’s encouraging smiles or bored frowns made it clear she preferred personal revelations and House gossip to talk about television and JJ found herself revealing things to her silent new friend that she’d never think of revealing to anyone else.
“It’s moving day and the whole house is in an uproar. Hope and Nico have waited months for this. You’d think they could wait a few more days, but no-o-o, they have to pick the night after a snowstorm.” JJ tried to keep her voice conversational, though it wasn’t easy when the conversation was one sided. “The guys all looked mortified when I offered to help move furniture. Grace giggled something about masculine pride and Dov made some crack about hanging curtains. He’ll pay for that next time I get him on the mats.”
Faith jumped at a loud crash from the hallway followed by several thumps and loud curses. The twins were at it again.
“I’m going to open the door, okay? Maybe if we can see what’s going on, it won’t seem so scary.”
Faith’s hand shot out toward the door, fingers splayed, her wide eyes clearly saying, “No!”
“Yes,” JJ countered, “There’s nothing out there to be afraid of. If any of them give you a hard time…” She grinned and called the blue fire to her fingertips “I’ll zap their ass.”
Faith looked at her curiously.
“Yeah, my fire’s different from yours. You heal. I just light ‘em up.” She stood and reached for the knob. “Now, don’t you panic,” she said firmly. “This house is as safe as Fort Knox and those are the good guys out there. They won’t hurt you and it’s time you got a handle on that.”
Faith’s wide eyes began to tear. “Please don’t open it,” they begged.
“Aw, honey, bad shit happens. Sometimes all by itself and sometimes because we fuck up. It scares the crap out of us. We wouldn’t be human if it didn’t.” JJ bent so she and the younger woman were face to face. “I’m not telling you to forget what happened. You can’t. But you’re free now and you have to start living like it. Otherwise the bastard wins. You can’t spend your life locked away because you’re afraid. That’s just exchanging one prison for another.”
Faith gave little snort and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right,” the gesture said, “Look who’s talking.”
Instead of opening the door as she planned, JJ sat back down with a thump. “Damn. Dear Abby heal thyself, huh? You think I should listen to my own advice.” She considered it and shook her head. “It’s different for me. I have a life out there. I come and go as I please. I’m not living in fear.”
The other woman drew back her head, pursed her lips and stared down her nose at JJ. “Oh please. Say it enough times and maybe we’ll both believe it.”
“Okay, you win. I am afraid. What if Nardo turns out to be like the others? What if, when it comes time to do the deed, I can’t… I don’t respond to him like I should.” She rested her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “And what about Nardo? He deserves better than me.”
Faith stamped her little feet and set her tiny fists on her hips. “No! You are good enough.” She waved her hand at the door where Dov and Col were arguing good naturedly and calling each other disgusting names. She rolled her eyes as if to say, “They’re no angels.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve heard all about the Guardian’s ‘huge appetites of the flesh,’ but who did they mate? Two virgins and a French goddess; two things I’m definitely not. What’s Nardo going to say when he finds out I’m no better than a scrawny whore.”
A sharp gasp made JJ look up. Faith had her hands laid over one another, tapping her chest. Her eyes were filled with tears.
“Oh no, Faith,” JJ cried sliding to her knees in front of the other woman and taking up her hands in her own. “It’s not the same. You couldn’t help what was done to you.”
Faith was a victim of demon rape. The word hit JJ like a hammer blow. Sharp pain pierced her temples and then it was gone, leaving her shocked at her physical reaction. As a cop, she’d seen her share of victims, said and written the word for her reports and she’d never reacted the way she did now. What was the matter with her?
A solitary tear rolled down Faith’s face following the scar that destroyed the smoothness of her cheek. She took JJ’s hand and placed it over her heart before placing her own delicate hand over JJ’s. The look of love she gave her new found friend said it all. “We’re the same.”
“No,” JJ said quietly, her voice rough from pain and shock, “It’s not the same. For you, it was so much worse.” And as she said it, she knew it was true, but for the life of her, she couldn’t say why.
Faith rose from her chair and without any hesitation, opened the door, stepped out and stood watching Dov and Col struggling with an armoire in the hall. She looked back over her shoulder at JJ.
JJ tried to smile and sniffed back the tears that were threatening to fall. “For someone who doesn’t talk, you sure have a lot to say,” she said, dusting off her knees. She let out her breath in a long, cleansing sigh and nodded in defeat. “You’re saying if you’ve got the guts to step out all alone, then I better find the guts to open a few doors of my own.”
Faith smiled.
*****
JJ opened the first door the next day when the others had gone to bed. If she wanted to find a place in this House, they needed to stop treating her like a guest and she needed to stop acting like one.
The third floor apartment was empty of everything Hope and Nico planned to take to their new home and Grace had mentioned it needed to be cleaned before the floors could be refinished and the walls painted for the new tenants. They wouldn’t let JJ help move the furniture or carry the endless boxes of things Hope had purchased and stored. She didn’t know anything about furniture arrangement and picture hanging or where to place the delicate bits and pieces of china and glass that Hope seemed to favor. Her idea of home décor was the stone gargoyle outside her front door.
She could, however, scrub floors and walls. She’d done enough of it as punishment back at the compound. JJ stood back from the sink and stared at her reflection in the darkened window above the faucet. She didn’t see the short platinum hair or the mature face of the woman staring back. She saw the girl she once was; hair so white it was alm
ost colorless, pulled into long pigtails at the side of her head; eyes that seemed too large for the narrow face; mouth pulled tight in a grimace of rebellion. The bucket overflowed with hot, soapy water. JJ didn’t notice. She was no longer in the kitchen of the House of Guardians.
She saw the wide boards of the floor of the dining hall, bleached almost white with hundreds of years of scrubbing. She could hear the swish, swish of the brush as she dragged it back and forth along the grain of the wood. She carefully worked her way around a leg of the table that ran the length of the room and avoided looking up at the woman standing over her.
“You wouldn’t be here, doing this, if you’d just do what he asks.” It was Miriam, the oldest of the priestesses. She was nothing but an old witch woman, handy with spells as long as she had the power of a coven to back her up. “Any of the other young women would be delighted to be chosen. It’s an honor.”
“It’s not asking, it’s telling and I’m only fourteen.” The young JJ never stopped scrubbing.
“Almost fifteen. Your mother would want you to do this.”
She wasn’t sure what her mother would have wanted. She brought Joy here because time was running out and the compound offered a safe haven where Joy would be cared for. Originally, her mother was thrilled to have Joy singled out, but in her final days, she seemed to have doubts. If Mama wanted her to stay here, why had she told Joy to return to the city of her birth? The acolyte in charge of her mother’s care said Mama was under the influence of drugs and was talking nonsense. Still…
“Some women are ready before others,” Miriam continued, “It’s not unusual.” The woman’s voice was soft and reasonable. The constant tapping of her sneakered toe gave away her impatience. “It would be good for us all, your power added to ours. He could help you develop those powers.”
Joy knew what it would take for her powers to completely develop. Her mother had been quite clear on that. She’d also told her what to watch out for. Her hand went to the place on her back, just over her shoulder, where her tattoo lay, inked as a portent and a reminder.
“Oh, Mama, a portent and a reminder for what?”
Water splashed on her feet and JJ jumped back from the sink, flipping the hot water tap off and grabbing a towel from the counter to wipe up the mess. She didn’t realize she was crying until she saw the tears splash on the dried tile floor. She sat back on her heels.
“Oh, Mama,” she said again, this time in a whisper of grief and pain. She’d always believed her mother was out there somewhere, grieving for a daughter believed to be dead. JJ had searched for the woman for years and often fantasized about a reunion. Joan Justice was a party loving alcoholic, and unreliable in so many ways, but she would never have willingly left her daughter behind. At least JJ had been right about that. On an agonized moan, she brought the towel to her face and sobbed.
The tawny cat nudged its furry head against her thigh and purred in sympathy. JJ rolled back on her rear and pulled the cat into her lap. She ran her hand over the cat’s silky back in long strokes from ears to tail. She stroked and stroked until her tears dried and her breathing settled.
“I don’t even like you, you know,” she said with half a smile as she picked the cat up and brought it nose to nose. “How did you find me? It’s this house, isn’t it? This is where you came from and don’t give me that innocent look. I’m a cop, remember? Those ‘Who me?’ looks don’t cut it. No one here was surprised to see you.” She settled the tiny body on her shoulder and nuzzled it with her chin. “So what’s the scoop? Why are all these memories surfacing now?” And why did they make her so angry? JJ felt a shiver of fear crawl up her spine. “Now that I know what happened to Mama, I don’t think I need to remember the rest.”
The cat gave a little hiss and dug its claws into her shoulder, not enough to hurt, but enough to let her know it wanted to get down. It gave her a look of disgust as only a cat can do, twitched its tail and stalked out of the kitchen.
“You need to find Faith,” JJ called after it. “You two would get along.”
Chapter 19
Nardo stared at the laptop on the desk in his suite. The screen held a map duplicate to the one that hung in the War Room. His eyes kept straying back to the two blue dots. There was nothing to say those markers belonged in the game at all, but he couldn’t take them off the board. The others were clustered together within a four block radius and these were at the edge of the city proper where row houses blended into older two story homes surrounded by tiny yards. Joy’s house was two streets over from where the first murder occurred.
Joy’s house. Nardo knew it wasn’t right. It bordered on stalking, but the woman would tell them nothing about her past except that she was a cop, a former cop. Beginning with that, he’d done a search on Joy Justice and found some interesting results.
She was, in fact, a cop who had tendered her resignation after a six month leave of absence; an absence that coincided with the death of her partner, John Shiroski; the same John Shiroski who previously owned her current residence. It didn’t take him long to find out she was the sole recipient of his will. The car was hers, purchased from a dealership eleven months previously, but she sold a Jeep Cherokee four months ago, soon after switching the title from Shiroski’s name to hers.
He found her old address and was relieved to see she’d never shared a home with the guy, but his relief was short lived. Why else would Shiroski leave everything he owned to a woman if they weren’t romantically involved?
Maybe that was the source of the tightly controlled anger he sensed in her; the untimely death of someone she held dear. It would certainly account for the sadness he’d glimpsed on the rare occasions when she let her guard down and thought no one was looking.
A dead lover. He could fight and win against any human and most Paenitentia males. Shit, he’d been outnumbered by demons and managed to survive. But how was he supposed to fight the ghost of a dead lover? There were very few things on earth that Bernardo ad Tormeo was afraid of. John Shiroski was one of them.
He wanted to know more about Joy Justice, wanted to dig into her background and history, to know everything about her. Where did she grow up? Were her parents still alive? Did she have siblings? Did she like dogs? Cats? What books did she read or, maybe like him, she didn’t read at all. He knew she didn’t like to cook. Grace had let that much slip, but for the rest, Grace and Hope only laughed at his questions and Manon replied cryptically that it wasn’t her story to tell.
This was getting him nowhere and the others would be at breakfast. He shut down the laptop and grabbed a Led Zeppelin Archangel tee shirt from the drawer. In the bathroom, he paused as he drew his hair back in the leather thong. He didn’t even know what kind of music she liked.
All he did know was that he was becoming obsessed with the woman. He needed her the way he needed food to eat and air to breathe. He wanted to make her happy, to see her smile. And yeah, okay, he wanted to feel her writhing beneath him, screaming his name.
These thoughts brought him back to the same place he was when he switched to the map and the serial killer/vampire an hour ago. He thought he could substitute one obsession with another, but here he was, back to his need for Joy.
She’d always preferred working the midnight to 8AM shift and since she could only hunt at night, JJ had no trouble shifting to the House’s upside down hours. She was up and dressed and on her way to the kitchen by five thirty, but she stopped short of entering the hub of the House when she heard Canaan and Grace talking quietly against a background of sixties rock. She couldn’t hear the words, but she instinctively knew she’d be walking in on private time, and she was pinched again by envy and a touch of grief for John’s loss.
She missed the time they spent together sharing a glass of tea on the front porch or coffee at the table. They didn’t do it often enough to be called a routine and it certainly wasn’t the kind of ritual couples develop. It wasn’t that kind of relationship. Still, John was the only one who
knew her secret and she was the only one who knew his and she missed him. Nardo was right about that. It was good to have someone to believe in and trust.
Dov and Col’s exuberant “Good waking!” let JJ know the lord and his lady’s quiet time was over. She walked in at the same time Nardo entered through the opposite door. He smiled when he saw her and frowned just as quickly when he saw what she was wearing.
“Going somewhere?”
His eyes locked with hers and she couldn’t look away. “Y-Yes,” she stuttered and hated herself for it. His eyes bored into her, such beautiful eyes. She set her jaw and turned to Canaan. “With my lord Canaan’s permission.” She knew that was the proper way to frame it though she hadn’t asked anyone’s permission to do anything since she… left the compound. She smiled when she completed the thought without hindrance. “I’d like to go out on patrol with the twins tonight.”
“Cool.” Dov gave her a thumbs-up.
“No.” Nardo took a step forward.
“If I can’t help you here, I can leave and go out on my own,” JJ said quickly.
Canaan scowled and she almost stepped back. Almost.
“I don’t take well to blackmail.” He glanced at Nardo. “And I think the request was addressed to me.”
Nardo almost said, “But the woman is mine.” But he caught the words before they left his mouth. Instead, he nodded slightly and said, “I serve at my Liege Lord’s command.” He couldn’t help it if it was said through gritted teeth.
“I didn’t mean it as blackmail,” JJ was saying, “You’ve been good enough to let me stay here and I’d like to stay a little longer, but I’m fine now and I have to earn my keep. I can help if you’ll let me. Fighting the beasts, the demons,” she corrected, using their term, “is what I do and I’m good at it. It’s something I have to do. Will do. With or without help.”
Guardian's Joy #3 Page 14
