Buried Secrets (9 page)

When Zack turned the key, the car's engine came alive, thrumming through her body. “I thought this was some New Age resort town.”

“And yet somehow the Fighting Gurus just didn't have the right ring to it.”

He snorted a laugh at that, and she liked it. She liked that he was a good shot. Him saving her life hadn't hurt either, even if she disliked the helplessness of it.

She suspected she liked too damned much about this man.

He made her notice her breathing.

“Are we coming back tomorrow?” she asked, watching as the hillside they'd been forced to abandon glided into their past. She could still smell his maleness mixing with the car's leather scent. No more incense—not now that they were out of danger. “Check for clues into the boy's death? I did see beer cans.”

Zack released a deep breath. “We could. On the other hand, I've got the EMT report from when the locals retrieved his body. It's one thing to take a quick look, see if they missed anything. But if we're gonna have to rent climbing gear and maybe some snake handlers just to get down there…”

His hand brushed across the outside of her knee, making her jump. Then shiver. “Sorry,” he muttered, shifting gears.

“Maybe it should drop lower on the to-do list?” she finished, her knee tingling. Her body felt imprinted by his. And there he sat, filling his side of the car, inches away….

“Not that we can't come back, if we think there's something out here we really need,” Zack added quickly.

“Well sure,” she agreed, in case he thought she was some kind of wimp. She would go back if she had to.
If
they had reason to believe there was anything out there to warrant the risk. Now that they knew the risk. They were just being practical.

“But there's other ways we can be using our time,” he continued. “It's one weird town.”

“No argument here.”

“Good,” he said.

“Good,” she said.

“Then it's a plan,” he said—and turned up his CD player.

Except that it was a
non
plan. Would they start interviewing other magic users tonight? Seek out Ashley for more questions?

How long was Jo going to have to sit this close to him, with all this intense
feeling
going on? She tried not to relax into his nearness, having someone else do the driving for once. Why get used to it? That was another good reason why she shouldn't enjoy Zack Lorenzo's size, strength and warmth right beside her. The expert way his hands moved on the steering wheel and the gearshift, sometimes brushing her leg again.

His thick wrists…

By the time they reached the highway, she felt ready to jump out of her skin. That was a bad place to be on a job, wearing a gun. When they pulled into the motel parking lot, and parked by his room, she felt so alert she could have exploded.

This meant they were calling it a day, right?

She remembered his big, unmade bed and wasn't sure she could stay sane with him and a bed in the same place just now. With him widowed. More or less. She might do something stupid, and then he'd refuse to work with her—for real—and maybe she could investigate alone, but what did she know about fighting evil? Beyond blowing it up, anyway?

Climbing out of the low-slung car woke every ache in her ill-used muscles, reminding her of the rescue all over again. Of Zack's life-giving strength. Of his thick body, under hers…

God help her, she actually said, “So…”

“So…” he echoed, hesitating between the car and the door to his room. The maid must have been in to clean. The drapes were wide open and the bed, visible through the window, sat neatly made. “I don't suppose you're willing to stay home tomorrow.”

They were calling it a day, thank God. “I don't suppose so.”

By tomorrow she would be in better control again. Except she wasn't leaving yet. Why didn't she? It wasn't like she expected an invitation to dinner. In fact, that would be a bad thing!

“See you tomorrow, then.” He took a step backward and
folded his arms. Yep. Calling it a day. That was them. “Eightish.”

His clear determination to watch her get into her truck allowed Jo to relax into mild exasperation, far safer than the other feelings she fought. After all, a gal never knew when she might need manly protection in a well-lit, small-town parking lot.

She went to her Bronco, thought to check it for snakes and climbed in. Zack was still standing outside his motel room.

When she cranked the engine, which hurt her scraped hands, it took three tries to catch. It was just old, but the comparison to Zack's Ferrari felt sad. Finally the engine caught and settled into a regular rumble, if not a purr. When Jo glanced back to #7, Zack was closing the door behind him.

She relaxed for the first time in what felt like hours and steered from the parking lot toward the highway. Only as she stopped to wait for a passing car did she look behind her one more time, at the motel room.

Zack Lorenzo had pulled his drapes.

 

Some men shouldn't take that first drink, or light that first cigarette—or hell, pick up that first
Playboy.

Watching to be sure the sheriff was safely on her way, Zack wished his problem was so easily monitored. It wasn't like he could shun all women for fear they might need rescuing. But of all the ladies who should have been self-sufficient and safe…

Jo fell, he rescued, and now he was even more responsible for her than ever. Just what he didn't need.

It made her matter far more than she should.

Seeing her old truck start moving—finally—he stepped inside and quickly pulled the cords to close the drapes. With a practiced twitch, he made sure they overlapped in the middle, so he wouldn't accidentally catch a glimpse out. Better.

Only then did he turn on the room lights.

Zack didn't like uncovered windows at night, not for a couple of years now. Not with the lights on inside anyway, which was the only reason he could still drive at night. For one thing, lights turned rooms into bright displays for any buttinsky who bothered to glance in. And for another…

He just didn't like them, was all.

He hated to admit that anything scared him. Most things didn't. Once a guy faces down what could've been a demon—the junkie he'd rescued from near sacrifice claimed it was—average scares don't pack a lot of punch. Today's
Bruja
had been strange, sure, but not scary. The snakes had put him on alert, yeah, but he'd been too busy dealing with them to be scared.

But Jo…

What if he'd been standing farther from her? What if he hadn't caught her in time, or his hand had slipped? What if one of the rattlesnakes had made good on its buzzing threat, before he'd gotten the leverage to pull her up?

He didn't want another woman's death on his conscience, damn it. Sure, he wouldn't be actively at fault here, any more than with Gabriella. But there would've been something he could have done and hadn't, all the same. He'd still have to live with the guilt of that omission.

Not that Jo was anything to him like Gabriella.

From his suitcase, Zack unearthed a bottle of bourbon and poured an inch into one of the generic motel glasses. The swallow of liquor eased into his aching shoulders, his tense arms. It helped him remind himself that he
hadn't
let Jo die. He'd dragged her up until she'd landed on top of him, soft and safe and alive.

And for that, more than anything, Zack was suddenly and increasingly scared. Because
damn,
he'd liked how she felt on top of him. He'd liked her panting breaths, and her funny, macho conceits and the fact that she might be as good a shot as he was. Against snakes, anyway.

Despite his best efforts, he liked the sheriff. He was attracted to her. Nothing long-term, of course—she lived in the middle of nowhere, she was a pain in the butt and from the look of how badly she'd done the sign of the cross for Doña Maria, she wasn't even Episcopalian, much less Catholic.

But he was attracted all the same—the first time since Gabriella's death. That meant seeing her die would hurt, and he had enough to hurt about to go looking for any more.

After another swallow of liquor, Zack relaxed enough to sink onto the neatly made bed. He had calls to make—Cecil Taylor, the Ambrosia Café, even Ashley Vanderveer. But he could make them from the bed as easily as from one of those puny plastic chairs.

Even against the too-soft mattress, something poked him in the butt. He groaned, rolling onto his hip and feeling the coverlet beneath him. When he felt nothing, he stood and felt it more thoroughly. Still nothing.

Then he touched his back pocket—and fished out the silk-wrapped charm the old
Bruja
had sold him. One for him, one for Jo.
Protection,
the old woman had said.

He looked at it suspiciously, then sniffed it. It smelled like incense, like her
santuario
had. It made him wonder—

Zack stiffened then at a new sound. A bad sound.

Tickety-tick-tick.

Alone in the middle of his motel room, he forced himself to turn toward the covered windows—where he could clearly hear something skittering across the glass.

Tick-tick, tickety-tick-tick.
Like little fingernails being drummed along a tabletop, or—

For a moment, there was silence. Then—

Tickety-tick-tick.
Scratching. Like something barely corporeal trying to scrabble its way in from the darkness….

Zack tried to force himself to draw a breath; for a moment, even that seemed touch and go. Damned windows! Finally, somehow, he managed. After that, he was able to draw his gun.

More scrabbling. God only knew where he got this sickening certainty that seized his gut, his chest, but he had it. Something was out there in the dark, and he did
not
want it in.

Somehow, Zack managed to count to three, then duck across the room and slap off the lights. For a moment, he felt safer.

Then he heard it again, scratching.

Tickety-tick-tick-tick-tick.
And a long, inhuman moan.

It was the moan that finally keyed him in.

“Hell!” Zack exclaimed—at his own foolishness, not whatever-it-was trying to get in. There
was
no whatever-it-was!

The room still dark, he checked out the peephole, then silently
undid the chain lock on the door. He turned the knob and lunged out, all in one smooth movement, just to make sure…

And saw nothing but a darkening parking lot.

The wind moaned again, hot and unending. Then he got hit in the face with blowing sand, even as it skittered across the window.
Tickety-tick-tick-tick.

“Damned son of a…” He went back inside, still muttering, and turned on the lights. At least Sheriff James hadn't been here for
that
little farce!

He dumped out the rest of his glass of bourbon, in case those two swallows had made him more susceptible to mind games.

People in his line of work couldn't afford to get scared.

It made them dangerous.

D
ane and Sigrid Thorson's den was done in whites—carpet, furniture, drapes and glass-topped tables. Silver-framed snow-scapes hung on the walls. But none of that could erase the fact that they lived in a double-wide mobile home with a broken air conditioner. Jo, with Zack, conducted the entire interview—their third, counting Ashley's—under the hum of a box-fan.

Still, the older couple were gracious hosts, offering cold “mead”—which tasted like a flat, highly alcoholic beer—and answering questions. As a priest and priestess of Asatru, a Norse form of paganism, they were apparently used to questions.

“First of all, we aren't Nazis,” said Dane, while Zack scribbled notes. Jo tried not to watch Zack's wrists. “Some Odinists are, but not our clan.
Asatru
simply means a belief in the old gods, the
Aesir
—Odin, Freya, Thor, Frigga. We're into strength, valor, honor, ancestry. Warrior pagans.”

Jo noticed an ornate sword hanging over their front doorway. “And you believe in magic?”

Sigrid, who wore a silver knotwork headband—in honor of their visit, or everyday?—cocked her head. “Don't you?”

Jo noticed Zack slant his dark gaze toward her, maybe curious himself. “I'm not sure I really understand it.”

“Magic is changing your reality through your will, which everyone does daily,” Sigrid explained. “But of course it's more than that, too. It's everywhere. We're just used to discounting it, is all. Try this. Sometime when you're alone, close your eyes, take a deep breath and imagine your feet growing roots deep into the earth—like
Yggdrasil,
the World Tree. Imagine your arms are your branches, spreading into the cosmos, connecting you to everything in the world. Then slowly open your eyes, and make note of what you see before what you call reality crashes back. You may surprise yourself.”

“That sounds awfully…easy,” said Jo.

“You'd be surprised.” Sigrid winked, then looked at Zack as he shifted impatiently. “But you had other questions?”

“Yeah. World Trees aside, have you or anyone in your clan sensed anything unusual in the area? Magically speaking, I mean.”

“Yes,” said Dane. Jo noticed some mail on the coffee table addressed to a
David Thorson.
Huh. “But this is Almanuevo, Mr. Lorenzo. A great deal of the unusual goes on—magically speaking.”

Zack said, “Unusual as in necromancy?” And despite the heat—the temperatures were pushing the 90s now—the room chilled.

“We're not into that stuff,” stated Dane flatly. “Try the guy who runs the Pet Mummification place.”

Jo said, “We didn't mean to upset you.”

“We realize that,” agreed Sigrid. “Before you go, perhaps you would let me do a rune-cast for you. If you mean to battle forces of darkness, perhaps the Gods will help guide you.”

“The more the merrier,” said Zack.

Sigrid's runes weren't the prepackaged, ceramic kind Jo had seen in bookstores. These were cut from a length of branch with the bark still on it, runic letters carved into the faint rings of the wood. Jo watched Sigrid spread some sort of animal fur—white—over the coffee table, then toss a handful of runes.

As she interpreted them, the runes agreed with
Señora La
Guadalupana
on two important points. One was that they faced a great evil—“Interesting,” mused Sigrid, “since the concept of evil is less clear-cut among the
Aesir
than some religions.”

The other was that Zack and Jo would be strongest if they faced it together.

Once they were back in Zack's car, he muttered, “
That
was a waste of time.”

But Jo had to wonder.

 

Zack didn't wholly trust Dave and Susan Thorson, any more than the
Bruja,
but he wouldn't call them flakes. Neo-pagans were big on renaming themselves, like he imagined hippies did. And they were bikers. But it's not like they charged people for their services. “Dane” made a good living as an accountant. Maybe a warrior accountant. Who could tell, around here?

Now Sirus, who ran the Eternal Companion Pet Mummification Shop downtown,
he
was a flake. Not that he'd decked himself out like an extra from
The Mummy Returns
or anything. In fact, what with his paunch and his bad toupee, Sirus reminded Zack of his Uncle Maury. But Uncle Maury had always been kinda off, too.

It was Interview Number Five, sort of. They'd stopped off to question a Santero—a priest of Santeria—en route, but he hadn't talked. Now they'd gone from the silent to the silly.

“As you can see,” said Sirus, with a gesture toward shelves of gilded sculptures, “I've designed repositories to ensure the eternal life of all kinds of animal companions. Dogs. Cats—which were sacred to the goddess Bast. Over there I offer sarcophagi designed for smaller pets such as gerbils or hamsters.”

It was at moments like this that Zack really enjoyed having Jo along—who else would even
believe
this? What did hamsters go for now, five bucks? The rodent's eternal rest would probably cost a hundred times that much.

On second thought, maybe it wasn't that funny.

“You have pets?” asked Sirus. Since Zack knew Jo did—she'd mentioned her dogs their second day out—he cut in before this glorified puppy undertaker could sniff any further.

“Actually, we were hoping you could share some information with us, Mr….”

“Sirus,” said Sirus. Just a one-name guy, like Madonna. “My brochures give you some of the basic information about the care with which I select the linens and resins for my process, and—”

Zack took the brochure but said, “About Egyptian magic.”

Sirus blinked at him. “In
Almanuevo?
” As if Zack would be asking about Disney World or the Vatican. Although actually, considering some of the rumors he'd heard…

“Really, any Egyptian magic would be a good start,” said Jo in that way Zack was starting to admire. She had a natural ability to soothe people, not by coddling them but just by being quiet and forthright and, well,
Jo.
It was almost impossible not to trust her, when she used that tone.

And Sirus did
try
to help. “Mummification itself was a form of magic in ancient Egypt, performed by their highest priests. Some people cremate their pets, and the big news now is cloning them. But if you want magic, mummification's the way to go.”

Zack said, “We were thinking more along the lines of Kemetic Reconstructionists. Hermetic magicians. Tameran Wiccans.”

Sirus stared at him. So, behind the man's back, did Jo. Zack made a mental note to explain the terms to her later and prompted, “Temple of Set?”

Sirus took a step back. “Aren't they some kind of Satanists?” Which horribly oversimplified the TOS. Not that Zack would want to meet one of them near any dark altars.

“So you don't do magic?” asked Jo. Looking to her, Sirus blinked away his confusion.

“I do pet mummification, Ms. James. Preserving your animal companions for eternity. Isn't that magic enough?”

After they left, Jo said, “He has to be magic in order to make a living at this.”

“Grief makes us do funny things.” Zack glanced at the brochure and nearly choked, because he'd misjudged the prices. Mummification would cost at least a thousand times the price
of a hamster. “Can we at least
pretend
he's the guy we're after?”

“No,” said Jo simply, opening her own car door. “Play nice.”

Which was exactly what he needed to hear. This kind of legwork would be driving Zack crazy by now, without Jo.

Actually, no matter
what
the
Bruja
and the Asatru had predicted, that could become a problem.

 

“Thanks for meeting with me,” said Ashley Vanderveer, as the waiter served them their two margaritas. “I'm almost surprised you're here.”

The nurse practitioner wore a white Mexican peasant dress with colorful embroidery scrolling down the front. She looked nothing like a Mexican peasant.

They weren't in a fancy restaurant, just a family-run Tex-Mex joint with plastic tablecloths and
Tejana
music playing from a radio over the cash register. Still, Jo felt increasingly drab in the same clothes she'd worn with Zack all day.

She didn't like the idea that she'd looked drab with Zack. “I'm kind of surprised myself. I've just felt…more like socializing, lately.”

“Well, here's to our first ladies' night out.” And Ashley lifted her salt-rimmed glass for Jo to clink with her own.

Jo did. Then she licked a bit of salt off the edge of the glass and took a sip of her margarita on the rocks, made just right. “Our first, huh?”

“If it turns out we hate each other's guts, it can be our only,” Ashley assured her with an easy laugh. “But since the other day, when you came by with Zack Lorenzo, I've been thinking…. Okay, this may sound odd, but ever since I met you, I had the weirdest feeling we were meant to be friends.”

The weirdest feeling?
That's because it's a weird town.

Jo didn't say that, partly because after only three days, she was struggling to keep Zack Lorenzo quotes from dropping into her head every other minute. Besides, she'd felt the same connection to the nurse practitioner, like they were both tuned into a similar frequency.

Kind of like how she'd felt when she first saw Zack—minus the sexual frustration. With Ashley, the sensation had been quieter, easier to dismiss, and Jo had done just that.
Good bedside manner,
she'd told herself, to explain the feeling. Whenever possible, she'd tried to handle her little first-aid emergencies on her own.
Long drive to Almanuevo,
she'd think.

Now, what with all this breathing and feeling, Jo was seeing her past more clearly, too. All those nights with a book, or the TV, and just the dogs for company—for years—and friendship had been in her reach the whole time. Why had she refused to even look for it, much less grasp it?

Why did you almost not take Zack's hand, on the rocks?

She curled her healing hand protectively closed under the table. “I haven't exactly been Miss Congeniality, in Spur.”

Ashley quirked an eyebrow. “On purpose?”

“I guess I needed to get away from everything for a while. From people. From confusion. From…”
Breathing. From feeling.

Jo sipped her drink, deliberately letting some of that confusion creep back. When she'd moved to Spur, she'd gotten away on several levels. Did her mixed feelings for Zack and her dinner with Ashley mean she was returning? And was that necessarily a good thing, or did it depend on what she returned to?

“You needed to lie fallow,” said Ashley, nodding. Like a field that was left to grow over a few years to get back its nutrients. Which was pretty much on the mark.

“I suppose.” The waiter brought them little bowls of salsa and a basket of chips for dipping. Tomatoes, vinegar, peppers, cilantro—absolute heaven.

“And now,” added Ashley, “you're ready to be plowed again.”

Jo dropped her chip onto the tablecloth.
“Excuse me?”

Ashley laughed. “You know I didn't mean it like—” Then she stopped and her eyes widened, as did her smile. “Should I have?”

“No!”

But Jo was too late. Ashley leaned partly across the table,
ready for secrets. “Come on, there was something between you and Farmer Lorenzo the other morning.”

Absolute proof that the nurse practitioner was off-base. That morning there'd been nothing between Jo and Zack except annoyance. Maybe some impatience. No plow. No fallow field. No farming innuendo whatsoever.

After several days, though…

Jo
did
enjoy her time with Zack. During that brief, tired moment when she'd almost let go, out on the rocks, he'd called her back, pulled her out of her isolation and onto him. It had been so long, so achingly long since she'd felt a man's body against hers even casually, much less…

Much less a body like his.

Jo didn't like being distracted this way, not when she should be thinking about whatever the hell they were tracking.
Diablero.
Necromancer. God only knew what. Her first priority should be stopping evil, not exploring her slowly reviving sexuality. If this magic was like Tio's, in the mine, she owed poor Diego—and her dead friends Frank and Gil—that much.

But Zack Lorenzo's
body
was really something. Maybe, she thought grimly, thinking about Zack's body was safer than thinking about the walking dead.

“He's good-looking in that blue-collar, caveman way of his,” Ashley insisted. “You don't think that's sexy?”

Oh, yes.
Breathing and feeling were making it a lot harder to concentrate on this investigation. But Jo couldn't regret either, any more than she regretted the slight burn of jalapeños in the salsa. Salsa was
supposed
to be spicy.

And life?

Still… “There's nothing between Zack and me,” she said firmly, and she meant it. There'd been no flirting, no kissing.

Not even any
consideration
of plowing.

“Nothing except the investigation,” she added quickly. “Which reminds me. I had some questions—beyond what you already explained about snakes.” A phone call had clarified that only mammals got rabies and yes, Ashley had seen an increase in the number of snakebites over the last year, to the point that she'd doubled her supply of antivenin.

Now Ashley held Jo's gaze a moment longer, deliberating her honesty—or maybe reading her aura? She
was
a
curandera,
and a Wiccan. Then she smiled. “What do you want to know?”