Companions (3 page)

"It's the rum, isn't it?" she murmured to herself.

"I heard that."

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Mothers had the most amazing hearing, at least hers did. Downright preternatural.

Selena took her cake and sidled closer to the cousin who was the object of all these mysterious Midwestern female tribal nuptial rites. The wedding was scheduled for the Church of the Sacred Heart, the reception for one of the luxurious tour boats that sailed Lake Michigan out of Navy Pier. This shower was the first of many celebrations leading up to the Bride's Big Day. Selena had been reluctant to get involved with wedding plans at first, but after good long talks from both her cousin and her godmother, she took a deep breath, plunged in with both feet, and found that she was enjoying the whole family-bonding thing immensely. She guessed she had been too aloof from her roots as well as the ordinary world in the last couple of years.

"So, Karen?" she asked the bride to be. "Did I get it right?"

"Pretty good for an amateur," the bride acknowledged with a sweeping look around.

Okay, so she had not been the most social member of the clan in recent years. "At least you didn't say
old maid."

"Detective Crawford, I know you have guns in the house." Karen's blue eyes returned to Selena's with a teasing twinkle. "We are playing party games, right?"

"I keep guns in the house."

"I want games."

Selena winced. "Not the toilet paper wedding dress thing. Please say you don't want to do that."

"It's traditional."

"I don't have any extra toilet paper."

"I brought a bag."

"Fiend."

Karen giggled. "It's my party."

"And I'll cry if I want to," Selena muttered around a forkful of cake.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," her mother add from the other side of the table.

How did she
do
that?

Her mother gave Selena a quick once-over look, and Selena knew exactly what she was thinking: that she'd rather see her daughter dressed as a bride than as a bridesmaid.

"I'm so glad you chose green for your attendants," Selena's mom said to Karen. "They all have the coloring for it. Especially Selena."

Karen Bailey was Uncle Mike's only child: bright, pretty, just out of college, and engaged to Kevin
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Crawford, one of Selena's cousins on her dad's side of the family. The two families were thick as thieves, and this was not the first time a pragmatic Crawford had wed a whimsical Bailey. Selena had a decade on her cousin, but they were close. There was a strong family resemblance, Karen being a shorter, thinner, more fashionable version of the Bailey fair-skinned, red-haired, tall Celtic genes. Selena was six feet to Karen's five foot five, athletic being a kind description of Selena's large-bosomed figure. She was pleased to have been picked as a bridesmaid, and the green dress wasn't
too
ugly.

"Are you having a shoulder holster made to match?"

There was a moment's tense silence after the question was asked by one of the other bridesmaids. This young woman was a college friend of Karen's and a stranger to Selena, so the girl was unaware that her words had been annoying rather than a lame attempt at humor.

Selena had the temper to go with her flame-red hair and was well aware of the nervous looks turned on her by her relatives.
Her
relatives knew not to discuss her job. They all knew she was a Chicago cop, and some were aware she worked mostly as a homicide detective with the violent crimes unit, but they'd learned long ago that cops did not like to talk business with civilians. And cops
really
hated having their profession used for entertainment value.

Karen could get away with a joke about her having guns in the house, but for this stranger, the most polite thing Selena could manage was a stiff smile and a shake of her head. Then she gave her relatives a quick glare for worrying that she'd go off on someone who didn't know she was being rude.
You raised
me to be a proper hostess, Mom,
she thought and got an amused look from her mother. Mom had not been one of the family who'd tensed up.

Selena turned to the punch bowl, only to have her hand stop in middip when her mother said, "What I'm wondering is who you're bringing as a date to the wedding, Selena."

What Selena wanted to know was why her mother was in the mood for throwing bombs at her this afternoon.

"It probably has something to do with grandchildren."

Selena spun to face the woman who'd spoken.

Aunt Catie continued without bothering to look up, "You're an only child, and you're not getting any younger."

There was a folding table set up in a corner of the living room, draped in a paisley shawl. Caetlyn Bailey sat behind it with her back to the wall, with her favorite deck of cards spread out before her. Aunt Catie was Mom's sister, and she was as colorful as Mom was prosaic. Catie was Selena's godmother, had chosen her name, and was the closest thing to a confidante Selena had among her huge family. Aunt Catie'd volunteered to do tarot readings for the shower guests and had been too busy telling fortunes to join in the conversation until now.

"The urge to mate and reproduce is an irresistible one," she went on placidly, flipping out cards in a cross pattern. "It seems your mother feels it's high time it caught up with you."

"What about that young man you were seeing a couple years ago?" her mom asked. "Catie told me all about him."

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"Not all," Catie said, still turning cards and not looking at her sister.

"Catie says you've kept in touch."

He's not that young,
Selena thought.
And no, wehaven't.

"He certainly understands about mating urges," Catie said. "Doesn't he, Selena?"

Selena put down the punch ladle and her empty cup to the sound of snickering female laughter. Holding her temper was getting harder by the second, but for Karen's sake, she was going to do it. Or die trying.

She turned to face the room, a big smile on her face, and rubbed her hands together briskly. "Game time!" she announced. "We're going to divide up into teams and see which team comes up with the best toilet paper wedding dress."

It was after ten o'clock when Selena finally closed the door on the last of the shower guests. Her mother and Aunt Catie had lingered to help with the cleanup, but the conversation over the dishpan had turned to recent movies and favorite television shows rather than men, mates, and babies. If the success of a party could be gauged in how long it took people to leave, Selena decided she could call the wedding shower a success. Overall, she was pleased to have played hostess but was delighted to finally be alone after a few hours in company. She'd done her bit for the wedding cause, proved that she wasn't a complete recluse, showed off her cooking skills, there were lots of leftovers in the fridge, and her apartment was the cleanest it had been in years.

The flowers and other decorations had been taken away as gifts to the other guests, so she had her place back the way she was used to, simple furniture, pale hardwood floors, uncluttered and uncomplicated. Her mother had once made the comment that she'd seen better decorated convent cells, but Selena had never had much use for possessions. The only artwork on the beige painted walls were framed reproductions of pages from the Book of Kells, gifts from Aunt Catie, reflecting the Irish side of her ancestry. Selena's television was old and mostly unused, but the stereo system that took up much of one living room wall was high-end, and high-tech.

Selena put a selection of Clapton CDs on the carousel, checked the time, and settled on the couch with a book until it was eleven o'clock on the West Coast. When the time was right, she considered going to bed instead, but she got up and turned on the computer on the desk in her bedroom. She logged on to the Internet via an anonymizer browser account rather than her regular ISP account. The chat room ran on Pacific time, which was inconvenient for someone like herself who was not a night person, but she found herself drawn to the sessions just the same. She went by the screen name Layla.

Selena hadn't exactly found this very tentative online community by accident, but she had found it because of some web searching while she was involved in an investigation Homicide worked with the cyber crime child porn unit. She'd discovered a talent for working on the Internet, was taking classes to improve her skills, and was seriously considering transferring to the cyber crime unit. Then again, getting off the street could fight burnout but contribute even more to the tendency toward isolation from the rest of humanity that she'd tried to combat ever since Aunt Catie commented about how weird she was getting a few months ago. Even though it was a bit incongruous, even getting involved with this Internet group was a response to turning into a hermit. She
would not
let the bastard win! Is it always going to be this way? Her fingers typed and sent the words before she even knew she was thinking them. Selena stared at the screen, appalled at seeing her vulnerability and fear laid out in block-lettered black and white. The way she burned sometimes, the letters ought to be scorched into the screen with a branding iron.

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The only other person in the room was Fyrstartr, who typed, What way is that?

Longing. Waiting. Wanting. Obsessed. How long since you've been together?

Two years since I've seen my monster.

Selena didn't want to see him. If her mom and aunt hadn't brought up the subject this afternoon, if she wasn't alone with the de facto leader of this elite little group, she doubted she'd have mentioned the frustration that built without her conscious awareness that it was there. Bitterness seeped out of the place where she hid it and leaked out her fingertips.

When does it end?

Two years!? Fyrstartr responded. Selena could feel the other person's consternation in the words on the screen. My *friend* drove me crazy with lack of attention for a year once — for my own good. Trying to save me from my fate.

Good for your *friend*.

I LIKE my fate! Nearly drove me insane. But what was decided was for my good wasn't something I had a say in. You know how that goes.

They used a lot of euphemisms in this group. Selena didn't like all the nonsense with asterisks and code terms and veiled allusions, but she went along with it for security's sake. They weren't supposed to be talking to each other like this. They weren't even supposed to be aware of each other's existence, without permission from their "friends." Where they were and who they were was something they kept as secret as possible, from the society they lived in and from each other.
The society some of them lived in,
Selena corrected herself. Even having found them, she was still an outsider.

She typed, My friend and I aren't friends. We have a unique relationship.

Don't we all? The response was from DesertDog, the third person to enter the chat room. Finally fessing up to having a jerk boyfriend, sweetheart?

DesertDog always came off as aggressively male, despite the rules about never being gender specific in the group. Selena worried about calling herself Layla — it sounded so feminine — but she'd explained early on about being a Clapton fan and told them that was all the aka meant. She suspected that Fyrstartr was a woman, and that she lived in California. Then again, Fyrstartr might be a bearded, potbellied biker in North Dakota that ran the chat room on Pacific time to add another layer of security. You needed security when going against the rules. They were a small band of nervous rebels lost in the land of the weird. The ones currently in the chat room, which now included Ghost and Carmlaskid, were the ones who showed up on a regular basis. Then there were Moscowknight, Canuk, and Sandswimmer, whose participation was less frequent. In fact, it had been weeks since Sandswimmer'd put in a virtual appearance. What they had in common was a resentment of the way things were. There were those who proclaimed how, when they were in power, things would be different, and those like herself and DesertDog, who wanted things to be different
now!

In Selena's case, the truth was that she wanted her involvement, however tentative, with this underneath world that she still knew so little about to simply be a bad dream. One of the things that drove her nuts about the whole situation, besides the loneliness and the sicko, perverted cravings, was how little
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information she'd been given by the one who'd made her a part of this unnatural lifestyle. The jerk.

They're all jerks, Selena typed. We ought to do something permanent about them.

The gasp wasn't audible, but Selena felt it coming from Fyrstartr, who quickly typed, How can you say that?

'Cause Layla isn't as brainwashed as some of us, DesertDog typed back.

We're all entitled to our opinions, Ghost contributed.

Or should be. Right, Layla? Free speech for all!

Don't care about making speeches, Selena typed.

Maybe what you need is to get laid, Ghost typed back.

Maybe.

Me, too.

Will you two cut it out? DesertDog wrote. We're here to plot the overthrow of the master race, right?

I want a different way of doing things, Fyrstartr wrote. What do you want?

Not to get caught being naughty, Carmlaskid chimed in. Sorry I'm late. Has the revolution started? Why don't we do this in the daytime? It'd be safer, you know. We're gonna get in trouble for this.

Speaking of which, DesertDog wrote. I heard a rumor of trouble in Denver.