Craving (13 page)

I stared at him and tried not to blush. “Something occurs to me,” I confessed.

His head tilted as it had in the coffee shop downstairs. “What?”

“I have no idea what your name is, and I feel like an ungrateful idiot.”

He grinned and it was the first time I had ever seen him smile fully. It was absolutely magnetic and lit up both his face and my dark insides. I felt as if I was already healed, like getting over it all would be so easy.

“Arthur,” he revealed.

“Like the King of Camelot? Do the rescue thing often?”

He shrugged and the moment of levity passed. With a supportive nod, he pulled the door closed. “I’ll be right outside if you need anything.”

I sat for a while. As disgusting as I felt, I wanted to preserve the evidence. If Eva was sure I was the one to solve the mystery and expose the truth, then I had better start living up to her expectations. There was no room to freak out, lose my nerve. I clutched angrily at my elbows, pissed off that I had allowed myself to be terrorized. I should have done something. I should have stood up for that guy. I should have kicked at least one of those security guards in the balls. Where was all my self-defense training from those stupid afternoon classes that had given my husband a timeslot to ruin our marriage?

Getting into the tub was a process of tugging, feeling ineffectual, and trusting gravity to be my friend for once. After about fifteen minutes, my clothes were carefully folded on the floor and I had somehow managed to slide into the tub with minimal whale-splash.

The soreness was setting in, my body rebelling against my terrible treatment and the absence of the natural drugs that had kept it going. I took the bar of soap to my skin in rage, massaged suds through my crispy hair, and lay in the water like a dead fish.

Floating there, Arthur’s advice made sense. I couldn’t ignore my physical body; forcing it to do more than it could, or pushing it to work outside of the realm of its experience was foolish. If I was clever enough, my mind would figure out what I lacked, but since it was a part of my body, I had to take care of that first and foremost.

The man at the club was dead after all, nor was he a man that I should want to save. Ursula was already a criminal, and though I was sure valuable evidence was being washed away even as I scrubbed myself clean, something had to remain. There was no way she could cover the truth forever.

Blood will out.

I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, pushing the oxygen I collected into my toes, and pulled all the toxins and horrible byproducts of fearing for my life to my lungs to be expelled. I could feel my body slowing, coming to an uneasy acceptance of the demands I had, and as it reached a truce with my brain, notions formed. Connections drew themselves, and eventually my body had to struggle yet again.

I fought to get out of the tub, but there was no way it was going to allow me that freedom. I huffed in frustration and there was a soft knock on the door.

“Are you alright, Lilith?”

“Yeah . . . I just can’t…” I tugged on the edge again. “Get out!”

“Do you want me to help you?” There was no eagerness in it, none of the masculine irreverence I might have expected from another human, but then again, I was quickly becoming accustomed to Arthur’s sensitive and understanding deportment. Trying to appreciate normal men again would be like trying to chug beer after sipping port, which made the thought of accepting his help that much more intriguing.

“Could you? I mean I know we’re practically strangers, but.”

The door was already opening. He dropped beside the tub and politely kept his eyes glued to mine. “Arms.”

I hooked them around his neck and hid my face in his collar. He smelled wonderful, like soap and incense, and the soft fabric of his shirt tickled me. Certain I was already a bright shade of pink, I tried not to look at him, until I realized that nervousness was just built on an assumption that he saw anything he might like. For all I knew, he could be gay. After all, at no time had I felt that appraisal that inevitably took place in any and all male/female relationships.

Heedless of the water, he stuck his arm in and caught my legs again. Dripping, I was lifted out and deposited on the chair, where I sat shivering until the towel found me. Even though he fluffed my skin helpfully, the gooseflesh remained until the robe was wrapped around me and the towel draped over my head like a veil. He knelt at my feet and began putting Band-Aids on the little nicks and scrapes. My leg was wrapped in gauze and medical tape, my knees coated with a thin layer of Neosporin, before socks were slid onto my feet like glass slippers from the fairy tale.

To someone else, they were tiny gestures, but to someone who couldn’t have gotten her husband to take out the garbage if she taped it to his ass, they were monumental and rekindled the faith that had died with my parents.

I couldn’t thank him again. He would make that face that people made when they didn’t want their generosity revealed, like they wanted the mystery of their craft to go unexplained. He would only accept an individual returned to her natural state, so as he helped me to my feet and guided me to his bedroom, I dropped my theory in his lap.

“My sister had a lot of money in her bank account.”

He said nothing, but was in no way ignoring me. He pulled some sheets from the linen closet and ushered me through the door. He intended me to stay there, and I was too tired to protest. I just hobbled behind him.

“I don’t know how that woman did what she did, but what if . . . this sounds nuts, but what if my sister got hired by Moksha . . .”

Arthur halted and raised an eyebrow in my direction. “Moksha?”

I gave a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, I know, right?”

He absolved the man of any misdeed with a fatherly shake of his dark head. “If he chose the name, then he is more aware of his failings than we could ever be.”

I lifted my brows in surprise. “I don’t know about that, but he sure fails at being suave.”

“I am glad he at least tried.”

I yawned. It was the bed’s fault. It was the “bed” bed, the one from dictionary photos; brass frame, wider than a twin, white and crisp as he draped it. “So what if she was hired by him to keep their records, right, and they realized that she was a really fantastic researcher? I mean that’s what he told me, that she was excellent at doing the in-depth research he needed, finding facts and that kind of thing.”

Arthur nodded and removed the dirty pillowcases.

“What if, while she was working there, he realized he could use her skills in a different way?”

He considered it, hugging the pillow beneath his chin. “I see.”

“Yeah, like…” I picked up the blanket and unfolded it. He took it from me. I looked after it in mild amusement at his chivalry. “What if that’s how he gets ahead? What if he brings them to Ursula’s club and she does whatever it is that she does, and then my sister writes it down, organizes it, researches it, and comes up with a truth, right? A truth that Moksha can use to further his aims? They both get a cut and everyone’s happy. Maybe Moksha even bought Ursula that property, I mean, Unger said they were into real estate.”

“And the wicked witch stays in her tower as long as she is given a healthy supply of fresh young men?” he queried.

“Right. I mean that’s the story behind the club’s name, right?”

“And Eva’s conscience pushed her over the edge?”

“Yeah,” I murmured, suddenly self-conscious in the spotlight of his even-handed thinking.

“But before she ended it, she somehow managed to point you in the right direction, just so that you could avenge their wrongful deaths in a way she could not.”

The more he talked in that ridiculously mature tone, the more hesitant I became. He had to know I needed his support; he was training me to accept him and trust him completely. The pessimistic part of me wondered if he would do like all the other opportunistic bastards had, and go for the treasure right away.

“Yeah,” I said defiantly, “maybe!”

He looked at me as he smoothed out the comforter and there was not a single trace of mockery. “It will be difficult to prove. It’s a tidy theory, though, and makes use of all the facts in evidence.”

“Context right? You’re trying to say that there might be some facts I haven’t yet discovered.”

He blinked. “Who can say, but I believe your assessments of the characters are sound.”

My ire cooled instantly. “Then you think Moksha sounds like the kind of guy who would use Ursula to get information?”

He came around the end of the bed and folded back the covers. “If you were greedy and had someone with that kind of power, would you make use of it?” He pointed at the turn down.

“Then you believe me? You don’t think I’m making it up?”

The lips twitched. “Are you?”

“No.”

“Then if I am your friend, I must believe you.”

“You don’t have trouble trusting me? I mean I thought Unger was my friend until . . .”

“You have yet to make demands or threaten my safety,” he pointed out. “Now sleep.”

“You’re going to tell me that there’s nothing I can do about it, right?” I asked, collapsing onto the bed to stare up at him in dismay.

But he shook his head. “There are several things that you can do, but I’m telling you not to do those things in your mind over and over. Sleep first, then fight injustice.”

“Are you making fun of me?” I said in a muted whine, even though I knew he wasn’t.

He put his hands on his knees and leveled the space between our gazes. “Not in the least, but I am insisting that you rest.”

I narrowed my eyes, and for a moment considered that I was back in the first grade, throwing pencils at the boy I liked. “Did you ever think that maybe some people in this world get more out of being pushed than they do out of being patched up and patted on the head?”

He stood up and patted my head. “You are not one of those people.”

I watched him go in consternation, upset that he had gotten so accurate a picture of me in his mind. I was plucky, strong-willed, a fighter, and that’s what I wanted people to see, probably so that they knew they couldn’t hurt me even if they wanted to. How could he know that I was any more complicated than I presented myself?

Tell the truth.

“I’m really just barely keeping my head above water,” I whispered.

Chapter 10

I must have passed out directly, but had no idea how long I’d been asleep when I opened my eyes. It was still dark, but I felt refreshed, or rather, I felt as if I’d slept a very long while. I sat up in the bed and rubbed my eyes. I was still wrapped up in the terrycloth robe and fluffy white socks. I tested my feet carefully, but to my surprise, they were fine.

“He’s a miracle worker.”

I opened the door quietly in case he was sleeping on the sofa and wandered down the hall. My clothes were no longer on the bathroom floor and in a momentary jolt of panic, I hoped that Arthur had been kind enough to at least bag them carefully. Then I remembered that he was a saint and smiled.

I snuck toward the kitchen, where a vague glow was beckoning, and wondered if he was the sort to have lunchmeat in his refrigerator, or if he was a non-violent vegetarian.

To my surprise, he was sitting at his desk against the left wall, surrounded by flickering candles, looking through the pages of one of Eva’s red books with such focus, I almost forgot to be confused.

“Where did you get that? Did she leave one here?”

He sat back, but didn’t turn. “Do you feel better?”

“Yes. Where are my clothes? I want to make sure that they stay preserved, in case . . . I don’t know, in case Unger pulls his head out of his ass.”

Finally, he turned and looked at me, but something about his face didn’t seem right. He was staring at me, not critically, but certainly with more attentiveness than I felt like enduring.

“What?” I said with a nervous smile. “How long did I sleep?”

He said nothing and it made me incredibly uneasy. I was waiting for some soft-spoken universal truth, but he just sat there, exploring my face in concern.

“Sit down,” he instructed quietly, and pointed to a wooden chair beside the desk.

That was what people always said to someone when they had horrible news to reveal, and before I could do anything about it, my heart was racing. I sat down, but even then, his expression didn’t change. He turned his chair to face me and leaned forward until his hand could touch mine.

“What do you remember about yesterday?” he asked.

Perturbed, I considered refusing to say anything. What was he playing at, making me relive those things when I needed to be moving forward?

“What are you talking about?” I said with a sniff.

“Humor me,” he replied.

“I went to the club, Ursula killed a man, I got hurt, and you rescued me, what else is there? I really don’t want to talk about this now!”

He sighed heavily and leaned back. My eyes flicked between his face and the book and a sinking feeling began to drain my body of energy.

I covered my mouth in expectation.

He put his hands out as if to stop me from blurting out any kind of denials or defensive accusations. “Where were you hurt?”

In a flurry of movement, I pushed the robe away from my torn knees and found nothing but unblemished skin. With a weak sound, I frantically pulled off the socks and discovered why my feet had seemed stable. There were no cuts, no gashes, no telltale signs of glass slivers. I crumpled, my face landing on my perfect knees, and sobbed like a gibbering infant.

“What’s . . . happening to me?” I panted.

His hand rested on the back of my head as before, and his fingers massaged my scalp in comfort. “You passed out as soon as you stood up,” he explained, “after we talked downstairs.”

My mind was a confusion of dates and events. If it had all been another dream, then he didn’t know me, there was no fealty of dire necessity, and most importantly, the man from the club was still alive. I sat up suddenly, and instead of pulling away, his hand slid down the side of my face to cup my chin.