Comes the Dark

by Celia Ashley

  Maris fished in her purse for the motel key. “This is my room. So now you know. Sorry I didn’t call you earlier with that information.”

  “This is your room?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Nothing. May I come in for a minute?”

  Maris lifted her gaze to blue eyes shielded by the downward turn of his lashes. Somewhere inside, in some unexplored place, she knew him. Had to be the eyes, the same as the friend she used to talk to in the night as a child. Imaginary, sure, but the impact of the memory remained.

  “Sure,” she said as she inserted the key into the door, her back to him. She gave the room a quick onceover, speculating what he would think when he walked in. As a police officer, he might wonder why her unpacked suitcase lay in the middle of a bed she should have slept in the night before.

  He entered behind her and shut the door while she placed her leftovers in a dorm-sized refrigerator. She couldn’t decide whether she should offer to put his in there, too, as that might imply she expected him to stick around a while.

  She indicated the desk chair. “Have a seat.” He remained standing. “Or not.” Maris yanked her suitcase off the bed, stowing it in the open cupboard. Let him think she was the type who lived out of it rather than utilizing the dresser in the room. She then went into the bathroom and returned a few minutes later to find he hadn’t moved.

  With a snort of impatience, she crossed the floor. She grabbed the take-out container from him and shoved it into the refrigerator. “Would you sit down? You make me nervous standing there. I assume you want to finish the conversation we started?”

  “I…First, I want to know what happened in that damned stone circle.”

  Maris pointed at the chair. “Sit.”

  He complied, straddling it backward, his arms crossed over the curved back. Maris sat opposite him on the edge of the mattress.

  “I don’t know what happened, Dan. I really don’t.”

  “You were talking to someone.”

  “There was no one there.”

  “I heard you talking, and there was this…this…” He lapsed into silence, staring at the floor.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Maris repeated. “I don’t know what I saw. There’s no one I can ask, either, now that Aunt Alva is gone. I could have spoken with my father about it, once upon a time, but he’s gone now, too.”

  He frowned, scrubbing at a worn place on the carpet with the toe of his boot. “Is this the type of thing you deal with because of this…this ‘gift’ you have?”

  Maris shook her head. “No.”

  “But when you look at me, you see something, don’t you? Something you are familiar with. Something you recognize. And it’s bad, isn’t it?”

  Maris curled the ring finger of her right hand until the nail dug deep into her palm. “I don’t fully understand what I’m getting from you yet. I’m working through it.”

  Dan nodded. “Okay. Fine. And what happened in the preserve, that’ll leave me eventually, right? Because I feel like I need a really hot shower to wash the sensation from my skin.”

  Odd, she hadn’t perceived the episode in that way at all. She’d been frightened, yes, but she didn’t feel sullied. “Do you want to hang out here for a while? We could watch television. A mundane occupation might be just the thing.”

  He lifted his head and met her gaze. “Yeah. I think I would.”

  Chapter 9

  Had he actually agreed to watch television with a woman in her motel room? Maris stood up from the corner of the mattress and turned on the set with the remote. She switched to the guide and began scrolling through the options with a running commentary on each one. When he didn’t respond, she finally picked a sitcom and settled on it.

  “A laugh will do you good,” she said before striding to the bed and yanking the pillows from beneath the bedspread, which she then piled against the headboard. “You may as well be comfortable.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll sit next to you. No big deal. I’m pretty damned resistible so I’m not worried.”

  She was dead wrong about that one, but he wasn’t going to argue. Dan pushed up from the chair and stood. “You don’t know me.”

  “You don’t know me either. We just shared a rather disturbing experience together, so I think we can cut the cop and suspect bit for a while at least.”

  Dan slid the chair back beneath the desk. “I didn’t say you were a suspect.”

  “And I’d say I’m all you have right now.”

  Perched on the edge of the mattress, Dan loosened the laces on his boots. “I told you the fingerprints are routine. The questions are routine. Family members are always questioned first in order to eliminate them. Do you mind if I kick these off?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Dan arranged himself comfortably on one side of the bed as Maris tossed the remote his way. “Is that door locked?”

  In two strides, she was at the door and turning the dead bolt. “Whatever that was, I think it belongs to those stones, and it certainly didn’t have substance. It’s not going to follow you.”

  Dan started flipping through the channels. “I thought you said you didn’t see anything.”

  “What I said was that no one was there and I didn’t know what I had seen. There’s a big difference.” Maris pulled her food back out of the refrigerator and forked a huge dollop of potatoes into a mug from the kitchenette counter. “Want some?”

  “Thank you, no. Not hungry. I can’t imagine how you are.”

  She didn’t answer, but put the mug in the microwave to heat.

  “I’m still trying to wrap my head around you and what you claim, Maris.” Dan crossed his arms over his chest, squinting across the room to make certain the door was, indeed, bolted. “How are you not scared by this life you lead?”

  “What happened tonight isn’t part of my life. I don’t know what the hell it was.”

  “That’s not reassuring at all.”

  The bell dinged on the oven. Maris removed the steaming potatoes and eased down on the bed’s edge, leaving plenty of room between them. Maybe she wasn’t as comfortable about the two of them together as she pretended to be.

  “So,” she said around a mouthful, “you accepted tonight’s occurrence, and yet you’re hesitant to believe what I’ve told you about me. I’m not sure most people would have been aware of what took place. There’s something in your past that opened you up, whether you are willing to admit it or not.”

  He muted the volume on the television. “You’re right.” He dropped the remote onto the bedspread. “You’re absolutely right. Two years—no, three years ago now, I was involved in an investigation which brought me in contact with something I hadn’t encountered before. I ended up in the ER, thought I was having a heart attack after. I never spoke of it with anyone except the woman directly involved because she had experienced it, too.”

  Maris scraped the inside of the ceramic to scoop out the last of the potatoes, sucked them off the fork tines, and set the mug aside on the nightstand. She brought her legs up onto the bed, laced-up boots and all, and clenched her hands together in the folds of her skirt. Dan studied the shape of her wrists, narrow-boned, blue-veined, and waited.

  “Thank you.”

  Dan stirred, shifting around on the bed to face her. “For what?”

  “Being honest. Most people want to hide that type of experience, for many reasons. Denial, avoidance of ridicule, fear. I’m not going to ask you the details. I don’t need to know them, but I want you to understand you can talk to me, okay? It’s no fun being alone with this.”

  He pictured what that would be like, sharing things that frightened him with a woman. The things that didn’t. The things that mattered.

  Beside him, she bit her lip, loosened her hands, reached for the remote. He stopped her, closing his fingers over her own. “Do you read my mind?”

  She didn’t remove her
hand from his grasp, but her entire body went still, like a hunted animal avoiding the notice of the hunter. He flinched, pulled his fingers back, and settled them on his thigh.

  “I don’t read minds. That is a parlor trick. But what I do receive sometimes is the essence of someone’s thoughts, or occasionally an actual image. It doesn’t happen all the time, and I don’t control it.”

  “But you have known what’s been going on in my head at least a few times since we’ve met.”

  She cleared her throat delicately. “Yes.”

  “This could be troublesome.”

  Maris giggled, the earthy, liquid sound he found so charming. “Or entertaining,” she whispered.

  “God, no.”

  “Certain thoughts are subconscious, not the type you’d say to someone’s face sort of thoughts. Some are very dark—not yours,” she hastened to add. “Evident of places I don’t ever want to be.”

  “And do you…do you ever speak with the dead? See them?” Dan stared at the socks on his feet, the gray toes on white. The same style his dad used to wear. With sandals even, in the summers before he passed.

  “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

  “So you know what I’m thinking right now.”

  “No, Dan, I do not. I’m talking theoretically, what I believe you meant when you asked that question. Good Lord, let’s just watch some TV.”

  Maris turned the volume on, settling down into the pillows at her back and crossing her arms over her breast. Dan slid down beside her, his arms also crossed, keeping the space of convention between them. Okay, so he didn’t quite understand what all of this meant, but he was beginning to give more credence to Maris’s world. With his personal experience, there was no reason to fight acceptance so much. What had Maris said about a card on her aunt’s table?

  Suspending disbelief. Right. A lucky guess on her part, that one. He couldn’t give her all the credit, after all. But she’d mentioned the Priestess card still lying on his desk, her voice marked by a strange authority as she spoke of changes in the world.

  He tightened his arms across his chest. It was too late to return the card now.

  Trying to suppress any guilty vibes that might be headed Maris’s way, Dan focused on the commercial playing across the television screen.

  * * * *

  He looked a different man in sleep. Everything gentled, his lashes lying dark against his lower lids, his mouth relaxed, the stern set of his jaw slackened. He must have looked so as a boy. Maris wondered about his parents, his father in particular. She’d gotten that loud and clear. The socks and sandals. Why did some older people wear them paired that way? Were their feet always cold or did the socks cushion thinning skin from the rubbing of leather?

  She would have asked Dan about his dad, but she didn’t want him freaking out. He’d had enough to deal with tonight.

  Easing from the bed, Maris sought the floor with her bare toes and stood. Dan slept on undisturbed, the television playing on low volume, words indistinct. A background sound she chose not to eliminate because the sudden absence of flickering light against his lids, the vanished murmur of voices, might wake him up. She didn’t want him to wake up. His presence comforted her.

  She went and peed in the dark to avoid the clacking whir of the fan, then brushed the stale beer taste from her mouth. Creeping back into the room, she stopped in the middle of the floor. The bed was empty.

  “Dan?”

  Movement near the door caught her eye. Standing in shadow, Dan struggled to put on his boots.

  “You can sit down to do that, you know.”

  He paused, footgear in hand. “I can’t. I don’t want to sit on the bed. I won’t want to leave it.”

  Maris took two steps closer, a warm flush racing over her skin. “You don’t have to.”

  His pale gaze burned in the semi-darkness. “I do.”

  “Work?”

  “No.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.” Maris strode to the end of the bed and sat, cross-legged, watching as Dan attempted to balance himself with fingers splayed across the wall while he tugged his boot on with the other hand. “I didn’t even think to ask if you had someone in your life. I guess spending the night, however innocently, with a woman in her room could cause issues.”

  “I have no one. And it’s not innocent. Not entirely. I’m surprised you can’t read those thoughts.”

  Maris pulled her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees. A chill draft of air swept across her toes. “You don’t have to go.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “No.”

  He straightened, his unsuccessful attempt to put on his left boot leaving it swinging in his hand. “I’m a police officer…”

  “So what are you saying? Police officers aren’t allowed to have sex?”

  The boot dropped to the floor. “Jesus, Maris.”

  “Or is that not what you meant?”

  “No. It’s exactly what I meant.”

  “Then don’t leave.”

  He stood there as if undecided. She didn’t need to know his thoughts to see he’d already made up his mind. “I shouldn’t become involved like this.”

  “It’s…our business. Our secret.”

  “Sounds like the kind of statement someone makes before they sue.”

  Maris dropped her hands to the mattress on either side of her hips. “Excuse me?”

  “Not you. But I’ve heard of it happening. A man in a police officer’s position, a woman who—”

  “—is suspected of something? I thought you said I wasn’t. That everything was routine. It’s not like I was pulled over under the influence and offered you a—”

  “Maris! Stop. Please. I beg you, stop.”

  “Okay.” She stood and closed the gap between them. “Okay.” She took his empty hand, tucking two fingers into the curve of his fist, rubbing her thumb across his knuckles. “Thank you for believing me.”

  He smiled. Not the winning smile he’d given the waitress, but one that seemed meant for Maris alone. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Maris.”

  “I could offer you something more palatable.”

  He groaned, tightening his fist around her fingers.

  “What?” Maris jerked a thumb in the direction of the refrigerator. “I meant the meatloaf.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t.”

  He snatched his hand free of hers and shoved both into her hair, wrapping his fingers around the back of her head as he brought his mouth down onto her own, open and questing. Clutching his sleeves, she welcomed him, and allowed him to propel her backward to the bed. Inches shy of the mattress, he lifted her up. She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled back, letting momentum and gravity take care of the rest.

  What came next bore no connection to romantic passion, but was a conflagration designed to drive out memory. Hard and fast in places slick with yearning, the scrape of teeth on tender flesh a shock of pleasure, a game of chance, but there was no cruelty in the lightning-swift play. When she cried out, he pressed his fingers to her lips, followed by his mouth on hers, holding her in place beneath him as he pounded the final strokes of his pleasure deep inside. Afterward, he collapsed onto his side breathless and, she thought, half-ashamed.

  Yes, that was what she felt from him. Shame.

  “Dan.”

  The television sent muted light flickering over the ceiling, across his face, along the walls. He lay with his eyes shielded by shadow.

  “Dan. Say something.”

  “Like what?” She barely heard his whisper over the muffled volume of the TV.

  “Like you’re not ashamed of what we did.”

  For a long moment, he was silent, and then he threw himself off the mattress with a flurry of motion. Standing beside the bed, he yanked his clothes back into place. Only then did she real
ize they hadn’t even taken the time to remove any of them.

  “I can’t say that,” he said, “because it wouldn’t be true.”

  In less than ten seconds, he was gone, his uncooperative boot hanging by its laces from his hand as he exited the room. He latched the door upon departing, but the deadbolt remained open. She would have to remedy that, but not yet. She sat up and slid her body beneath the rumpled covers, staring at the television screen without seeing it. After a minute or two, she felt around for the remote and found it shoved beneath a pillow. The TV went off with one swift blast of static. From outside the window, the neon motel sign colored the slats of the blinds in the darkened room with a dim hue of rose.

  “Fuck.”

  Chapter 10

  “Whoa, Stauffer, what the heck happened to you?”

  “Not a damned thing. Anyone process the prints from Mabry’s yet?” Dan threw his jacket toward the coat rack in the corner and missed. Tossing his keys onto his desk, he retrieved the garment from the floor and took his time draping it over the curved wood. Something crinkled in the pocket. He yanked out a gas receipt and spotted Maris’s number written across the back. With a roll of guilt through his gut, he went and tucked the paper into his top drawer.

  “Yep. Eliminated all that were the dead woman’s. There were quite a few others, mostly downstairs in the parlor where she conducted business, so that’s to be expected, but upstairs, too. I’ll get them run through the system today. When’s that niece of hers coming in?”

  “Today. I’ll contact her today.” Dan lowered himself into the swivel chair, running a hand through his hair.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. Appreciate you asking. Might be coming down with something, I guess.” Yeah, like a whopping case of shithead-itis. He knew better. He goddamn knew better than to fall into bed with her. This case had been one screw-up after another, and all his to claim. What if she was guilty of the crime? He’d called the motel and found out she’d only checked in yesterday afternoon, not the night she claimed to have gotten here. Just where the hell had she been?

  Realizing the threshold still held the junior detective, Dan chewed on the inside of his cheek. Nearly a half year since they’d each been promoted, and Dan still wasn’t sure if Jamie Rogers resented him for his senior position. Sometimes it seemed like he did. But right now, he was acting like the same old Jamie. Dan waved him away. “I’m fine. Seriously. Just go.”