Broken Heart 07 Cross Your Heart (21 page)

“Why? I’m already dead.”

He stared at me and then barked a laugh. “Good point.” He looked down at the papers. “Okay. So, Elizabeth died first. Then Mary and Catherine.”

“Wait,” I said. I dug around in my memory. “My grandfather was born in the spring of 1890… and he was two years older than his brother. So, that means Josiah was born in 1892.”

“Good job, Ellie Bee. That means your great-grandmother died in either 1893 or 1894.”

“Someone killed her,” I mused, “but the other two women died by their own hand. They committed suicide, and both claimed their husbands were unfaithful. Sound familiar?”

“Just like your friends.”

“And there’s no convincing them otherwise, either, even though it’s patently untrue. The shadow demon is messing with their minds somehow.”

“We might be looking at some sort of hysteria,” said Tez. “Maybe along the lines of the Salem witch trials.”

“He’s targeting the women of the first five families. He’s the curse of Broken Heart.”

“Doesn’t explain Patsy,” said Tez. “She’s not part of a founding family.”

“He needed access to the house, to his little treasure room. She was just… collateral.”

Tez nodded. “Let’s see if we can find some proof.”

He returned his attention to the newspapers, and I dug through the crates.

The first one was filled with old-fashioned women’s clothing wrapped in parchment and tied with string. I assumed they all belonged to my great-grandmother. They were in remarkable condition, and none was stained or torn. Most likely, a servant had packed and stored her clothing after her death. Again, it wasn’t something I felt should’ve been hidden for nearly a hundred years. I saw nothing thus far that indicated anything other than sentimentality.

Then I removed the last wrapped item, and opened it.

It was a brown hat with copper roses along the brim. I must’ve made a sound of distress because Tez was at my side in an instant gently untangling my trembling fingers from the hat.

“It’s hers,” I said. I knew Elizabeth was communicating with me. She wanted me to find out the truth. She wanted peace, for herself and for all the troubled souls of Broken Heart.

I reached out for the hat, but Tez shook his head. “The man who killed her grabbed it right out of her hands and tossed it to the floor of that room. Right before she died she’d wondered what happened to it.” I stood up and started to pace. “She was thinking about her new dress, about her duties as a hostess and a mother.” I pressed my hand against my quivering mouth, and lamented my inability to cry. “She died so young. And she never got to raise her sons. It’s tragic.”

“Death often is,” said Tez. He perched the hat on the corner edge of the crate and then took me into his arms.

I laid my head against his chest and listened to the comforting sound of his heartbeat. “How did you do it, Tez? How do you face the gruesomeness of murder every day and still have any hope at all?”

“Who says I do?” He rubbed my back. “Humans can do really vicious things to each other. They get greedy or jealous, or just go crazy. It’s been hard for me, Elizabeth, because I’ve wanted to separate the just crimes from the unjust. If an abused wife gets sick of being beaten and stabs her asshole husband in the heart, I secretly applaud her. I’d still arrest her and charge her, but I wouldn’t like it. I’ve always judged my cases that way. It isn’t looking at the messiness of death that bothers me; it’s the motivations for murder that sicken me.”

I pulled back and studied Tez’s face. His voice held anguish and fury, and his eyes echoed that pain. “You didn’t just go on sabbatical to find Broken Heart, did you?”

“I quit.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you someday.”

I tightened my arms around him. “Okay,” I said. Then I rose up and kissed him.

My attempt to comfort him flared into passion. I could sense he needed the distraction… that he wanted to lose whatever memories had surfaced, to quiet whatever inner demons roared inside him.

He had given me so much, and I wanted to give back to him, too.

I lowered myself to my knees and grasped the waistband of his sweats.

“Elizabeth.” His voice was hoarse, his gaze darkened by his pain and his need.

“Let me.” I pulled down the sweats, and his already hardening cock sprang free. I kissed the length of it, and then sucked the tip of his shaft into my mouth, swirling my tongue around the ridged edge. He tasted earthy, and oh-so-male.

Excitement pulsed through me.

His fingers slid into my hair, and rested lightly on my scalp.

I wasn’t experienced with giving fellatio, but I was certainly enthusiastic. Tez seemed to enjoy my efforts. I created a rhythm with my hand and my mouth, stroking the base of his shaft while I was also, as Jenna Jameson might say, going down on him.

“Elizabeth. God, baby.” He sucked in a breath, and his hands tightened my hair. He moved his hips in conjunction with my stroking. “I’m gonna come!”

Then he did.

His cock jerked as his hot seed spurt into my mouth, and I swallowed the salty essence, holding on to him until he was finished.

I was quite pleased with myself. I kissed his length, running my tongue up and down his cock until he scooped me under the armpits and lifted me. I squeaked at this sudden change in position. My feet dangled off the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked indignantly.

“Marry me,” he said.

“Humph. You just wanna have sex.”

“God, yes.” His eyes got a calculating look. “You can’t be penetrated at all?”

“Not by your… uh, you know.” I said, suddenly disturbed by the glint in his eye.

“No penis. Got it. But we have other options.”

“What are you thinking?” Then I narrowed my gaze. “Undead isn’t alive, and that counts, too. Penetration with another being means a hundred years together.”

“Don’t worry, princess. I have no intention of bringing a donkey into our bedroom.”

I gaped at him. “That thought never even crossed my mind. I was thinking you being undead wouldn’t help our situation. In case you’re thinking of… I don’t know, being Turned or whatever. I’m not even sure full-blood shifters can be Turned.”

“I like having a heartbeat,” he said. “Besides, I’m your meal ticket.”

“Are not.” I sounded petulant, which only made him grin. He gave me a smacking kiss and then put me down.

“Not that I’m complaining,” said Tez, “but why is it that you can swallow come?”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Is it considered a meal? I thought vampires could only drink blood. Unless you’re in Broken Heart.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me. “Essence is essence, I suppose. Blood, semen, saliva.
Living cells.”

“So, I was like dessert?” He pulled up his sweats, giving me a very lascivious look.

“You’re incorrigible.” I narrowed my gaze. “Why were you asking about penetration?”

He lifted one eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Tez was scheming about something, and I wasn’t sure I would like it. Or maybe I should’ve been more worried about how much I would like it. I had discovered quite a bit about myself in the last few hours—that Tez knew what tempted me; what turned me on; and that he cared enough about me to find out what I liked, to help in a sensual exploration of my own needs—and was very much afraid I was half in love with him already. He was the most virile man I’d ever met—and all that sexual potency might well kill me. Again.

I put aside the hat and repacked the other clothing. I put on the lid and shoved it back against the wall. Then I dove into the next crate. It was only half full, but the contents made me laugh. I pulled out a bottle and showed it to Tez. “Look,” I said. “Scotch.”

“So your grandfather really was keeping some of his hooch up here.”

“It seems so.” I returned the bottle, put on the lid, and pushed the crate against the wall next to the other one.

“Listen to this, Ellie.” Tez picked up a paper and read: “Dennison Clark married Wilmette Johnson in a church ceremony on last Sunday. It is the second marriage for Mr. Clark, whose first wife, Cora, died tragically six years ago.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“It’s on the back page under ‘Announcements,’ ” said Tez. “Kinda weird to throw in the info about death of the first wife with the notice about the new marriage.” He flipped the paper over, and tapped the top corner. “This is the winter of 1905. Six years prior would make it 1894. If we’re right, then all the women died that year.”

“We have four women who died the same year—the year my grandfather built the general store,” I said. “Or so we can assume at this point. We may not have confirmation yet, but I would bet my Neiman Marcus charge card that Evangeline LeRoy was killed, too.”

“Since we’re doing a lot of assuming here,” said Tez as he gathered and stacked the papers, “let’s say Elizabeth is killed by her husband, after he calls forth Mammon’s demon shadow. He’d obviously set something into motion, something he couldn’t control, or take back.”

“Because he’d already given purpose to the shadow,” I said. “I don’t think he intended to kill Elizabeth.”

“But maybe he intended to kill the other women.” Tez looked at me. “Let’s say that the ghost gets trapped in the attic with the shadow demon. They’re both released. The demon goes off to finish his task, and the ghost is drawn to you as Elizabeth’s direct descendent.”

“What I don’t understand is why the focus is on making the women believe their husbands cheated, and being so devastated by it, they end their lives.”

“You said it before, Ellie. The curse is about ruining love.”

“Do we continue the conjecture and say that he stopped after killing five women?” I looked down into the opened fourth crate and saw files, papers, books. I knew we’d found the missing archives from the Broken Heart library.

Tez finished returning the papers to the box, then put on the lid and added it to those already against the wall. “I think we’re making some pretty big leaps without very much evidence.” Tez sat down next to me and helped me empty out the wooden box. We piled the materials around us. “Once he’d killed the object of his true obsession—Elizabeth—he might’ve turned his attention to other women.”

“You mean killing Elizabeth over and over again?” I shook my head. “She died after he’d invoked the demon. I really do believe he’d planned for her to live, but… she took a lover and betrayed him.”

“Is it possible to change the demon’s purpose?” asked Tez. “Maybe he called him in for one thing, and after Jeremiah killed his wife, he decided he wanted the demon to do something else.”

“We’re missing some very big pieces of the puzzle.”

As Tez looked through a stack of paperwork, I began examining the books. There were a couple of family Bibles—one for the Allens and the other for the Clarks. On the inside page of the Clark family Bible was a list of family names. Underneath Cora and Dennison Clark were the names of their children. Wilmette Johnson had not been added to the Bible. Then again, it had probably been stored away in this loft before the marriage.

Why would these families’ Bibles be in my grandfather’s possession? I looked through each one and could discern no reason to keep them. No notes were hidden between the pages, and I didn’t see any markings other than names of the family. It was all very disappointing.

I set aside the Bibles, and picked up a small hard-cover book. “Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman,” I said. I opened it to the first page, and stopped cold. “ ‘To my darling Elizabeth, our love will bind us in this life and the next. You are everything to me. Your loving fiancé, Paul Tibbett. June 12, 1889.’ ”

Tez stopped perusing the paper in his hand and stared at me. “Who the hell is Paul Tibbett?”

I grappled with this newest truth. “My great-grandmother was engaged to someone else before she married Jeremiah.” I thought about my visions, and suddenly they made sense. The man in the attic, the one who’d strangled her, must’ve been Paul Tibbett, not Jeremiah Silverstone. He was the one mad at her for marrying my great-grandfather. Relief flooded me. Maybe I didn’t have homicidal maniacs in my family. “For whatever reason, she married my great-grandfather, and came with him to the Oklahoma territory to do the land run. They stake their claim, build their manse, and Elizabeth bears her first son a few months after they arrive. Jeremiah starts financing the town, two years go by, and she has another son.”

“But Paul can’t let go,” said Tez. “He follows her to Broken Heart. She feels guilty about the way she dumped him.”

I nodded. “Makes sense.”

“She lets him stay, maybe gets him a job in town, but doesn’t tell her husband that her old boyfriend is in town.”

“And he hangs out in the attic?” I asked. “Would she really let him live in her house with her husband and kids?”

“Maybe they were carrying on their affair.”

“You mean she loved Paul, but married Jeremiah for his money?” I didn’t want to think my own flesh and blood had done something so selfish, but times had been different. Courtship wasn’t always about love. “She was scared of him.” I rubbed my jaw. “He hit her, and knocked her out.”

“His jealousy drove him crazy. He realized she was never going to leave Jeremiah, and he decided if he couldn’t have her, then no one could.”

Could love really turn so ugly? How awful it must’ve been for Elizabeth. The hands that once caressed her with tender regard had been the instruments of her death.

“I still don’t understand why he was in the attic.”

“Maybe Paul did the land run, too. He could’ve been in town the whole time. Or maybe he was hired to help build the house and did his own project on the side so he could be close to her. Maybe she didn’t know about the secret room.”

“Wait,” said Tez. “You got Internet on your iPhone?”

“Yes, but I left it downstairs in the bedroom.”

“Damn.”

“What in the world do you need to Google?”

“The date of the Oklahoma land run.”

“April 22, 1889.”

Tez blinked at me. “How did you know that?”

“Because Oklahoma history is a requirement to graduate high school. For some reason, the date always stuck in my mind.” I paused, staring down at the book of poetry. “He dated it June 12, 1889.”