Dead Eye (A Tiger's Eye Mystery Book 1) (23 page)

“That was a blessing,” I agreed, but then a thought struck. “But it’s also odd. If Melody and her parents were in the car, where was Shelley? It happened in the evening, right? So she wouldn’t have been at school.”

Larry glanced over at me, clearly surprised. “Why, she was over with her cousins. The Kowalskis. Mrs. K was keeping the little girl while Melody took her parents out for a fancy anniversary dinner, somebody told me at the time.”

Icy dread started to zing through my nerve endings. Shelley had been at the Kowalskis’ house. Melody had been killed in a terrible car accident exactly where the monster illusion had run me off the road.

Maybe Melody’s accident hadn’t been an accident at all.

What could Melody have known that had gotten her killed? And could I get confirmation of this information? Larry was a nice guy, but he wasn’t necessarily the most reliable witness.

“Who told you that? Are you sure? That Shelley was with Olga?”

He shrugged. “I think it was Deputy Kelly. It was really bad, much worse than yours. Poor boy was first on the scene, and he was still pale and kind of green in the face from throwing up by the time I got there. I didn’t go anywhere near the car until the ambulance folks had done their job.”

His face, in the dim light from the dashboard, had turned sad and grim. “You just see too much in this job, you know? Too many things you can never un-see.”

I reached over and patted his arm, as much to comfort myself as to comfort him. “But at least sometimes you get to be a hero, like you were for me tonight. Thank you again, Larry. My family is out of town, and it was getting to be a little bit scary being out there by myself.”

I didn’t tell him about the magic or the monster or the witches. There was no point, because there was nothing he could do about it. Also, I just didn’t have the time. I needed to reach Jack, find out exactly what the plan was for the Blood Moon the next night, and call Special Agent Alejandro Vasquez. I had a feeling we were going to need all the backup we could get.

*

After I thanked
Larry again and paid him, I watched forlornly as he drove off. Then I let myself in Jeremiah’s house. I had my own key, so I didn’t need to use the one that was taped to the underside of the rocking chair on the front porch. On second thought, I went back and got it, so nobody else could use it either. Once I got inside the house, with the door locked behind me, I started going from room to room, checking windows. Tonight was a night that I wanted to be extra sure that there was no stealthy way into the house.

Although, when I was dealing with the kind of magic that could cause people’s heads to explode from a distance, I wasn’t sure how much help a locked window would be. Still, it was a psychological thing, and I could feel myself relax with every
snick
of a lock.

When I finished, I filled the electric kettle in the kitchen and switched it on. It felt like a good night for a cup of tea and a telephone call to my friendly not-so-local P-Ops agent. My call went straight to his voicemail, so I left a quick message that didn’t say too much. Just in case somebody unfriendly happened to listen in to the call. But I was pretty sure I’d managed to convey the urgency of the situation.

Okay, basically it was “Alejandro, help. Blood Moon. Black magic. Help.”

Still, I was giving myself points for being concise.

After that, I called Jack again, but his phone went straight to voicemail too. I didn’t start to worry yet, because I knew that cell phone service out in the swamps was horrible. Instead, I drank my tea, checked all the doors and locks again, and then I headed for Jeremiah’s office to try to find anything—anything at all—that might give us some clue as to what was going on in Dead End.

Three hours later, I had torn Jeremiah’s office apart, but was no closer to any kind of an answer. I stood in the middle of the room with my hands on my hips and looked around one more time.

“Think, Tess. Jeremiah was a very smart man. If he had something to be worried about, even though he didn’t tell you at the time, wouldn’t he find some way to let somebody know about it?”

Unsurprisingly, the empty room didn’t answer me. However, my gaze was drawn once more to that photograph. Jeremiah, Melody, and Shelley, all holding cups of colored ice in front of a dolphin tank. It was a lovely photo, and they all looked very happy. So what was it about the picture that felt a little bit off to me?

I walked over and picked it up. The frame was nothing special, just a small wooden frame, the kind you could pick up at the drugstore for five or ten bucks. I turned it over in my hands and looked at the back, but there was no writing on it. Nothing that said
CLUE
in giant letters, for example.

Nancy Drew would be so disappointed in me.

At this point, I had nothing left to search, so I figured what the heck. I took the frame apart to look inside and, holy crap, there was actually something there.

Maybe, just maybe, I’d finally gotten my first clue.

There was nothing written on the photo, but there was a folded piece of paper tucked between the photo and its cardboard backing. I unfolded it, holding my breath, and recognized Jeremiah’s neat, cramped writing.

Blood Moon ritual? Molder, p. 85.

Now I just needed to figure out who or what Molder was, and find page eighty-five of the appropriate book. It took me a while, but I read the spines of every book in his library. No Molder anywhere. I checked his living room, kitchen, and bedside table for books (there were more books, but none were by or about anybody named Molder), and then finally gave up in disgust and went to the kitchen to get a bottle of water.

I was exhausted, dirty, and worried sick. Neither Jack nor Vasquez had returned my calls. I kept wavering back and forth about calling Susan. I didn’t think she could possibly be in on any evil plots, but if Olga could create giant alligator-rhino monsters, she might be able to perform mind control tricks on deputies. I decided I just couldn’t take the chance, at least not until I talked to Jack or Vasquez.

Jack’s motorcycle finally roared up outside, so I ran into the living room. Before I flung open the door, though, I looked out the window to be sure it was him. At this stage of the game, I’d learned a little bit of caution. Anybody could’ve been driving Jack’s bike. In fact, it could have been a different motorcycle. It’s not like I knew enough about bikes to distinguish between the sounds of their engines.

It was Jack. But he parked the bike practically in a rosebush, and when he dismounted and started toward the house, his walk was…wobbly. I opened the door and stared out at him in disbelief. “Are you
drunk
?”

He shoved his hair out of his eyes with one hand and looked up at me with a gleam in his eyes that was almost feral. He ruined the effect by stumbling, but at least caught himself by grabbing the porch railing before he face-planted.

“Wow. I can smell the whiskey from here,” I said, not sure whether to be amused or disgusted. “So this is Super Soldier Interrogation Tactics 101? Get them drunk and good-old-boy the information out of them?”

He laughed and flashed his special wicked smile at me. “Oh, Tess. Tess, Tess, Tess. You’re so funny. Funny, and smart, and beautiful. All the best things, wrapped up in a red-haired package.”

Now I was starting to get nervous.

Suddenly, he crouched and then leapt up onto the porch, bypassing the next three steps and possibly the laws of physics. Even drunk, he had a tiger’s inherent grace. While I was appreciating that, he started to stalk me, and his gracefulness suddenly struck me as more dangerous than pretty.

“It’s witches,” he announced, still smiling, but never taking his eyes off me.

I backed into the house, slowly and cautiously. He followed me, step by matching step.

“I know it’s witches. I even know which witch,” I said, continuing to back away from the drunken kitty cat.

Jack stopped and kicked the door shut, and then he started advancing on me again. “Which witch is which?”

This apparently struck him as hilarious, because he repeated it three or four times as he followed me across the floor, until I was forced to stop when my back touched the wall.

“Exactly how much whiskey did you drink?” I put my hand out to stop him from coming any closer.

“Three or four,” he said happily. Then he leaned forward and took a deep sniff of my hair. “You smell so good. Always smell so good. Never like death, or blood, or battle. Always like flowers. My sweet little Tess flower.”

Oh boy.

“Jack, why don’t we go make you some coffee? I thought shapeshifters had superior metabolism. How is it that three or four shots of whiskey did this to you? And why the hell did you drive in this condition? What if you’d wrecked?” I went from amused and anxious to angry and terrified in seven seconds flat.

What if he’d been seriously hurt or even killed?

Jack grabbed my hand and placed it flat on his chest, over his heart. “So pretty,” he crooned, looking down at me with way too much heat in his deep green eyes. “Not three or four shots, lovely Tess. Three or four bottles. And I wouldn’t get hurt, because there’s a secret about tigers.”

“What secret is that?” I could feel his heart beating, slow and steady, beneath my hand, and it was mesmerizing. I realized that I was also curious about his secret, in spite of myself.

“The secret about tigers,” he said, blinking owlishly, “is that tigers bounce.”

Before I could even process the ridiculousness of
that
, he leaned forward and kissed me. Jack was a champion kisser, even while drunk. I threw my arms around his neck, because my brain started to melt into my shoes.

That’s when the universe exploded around us, and Jack threw me on the floor and jumped on top of me.

Whoa.

Stunned, even though he’d cushioned my head with his arm, I looked up at him. “What the—”

“Gunshot. Rifle,” he said tersely, jerking his head toward the big bay window, which now had a jagged hole in the center, right around the height of our heads.

So. An
actual
, not a metaphorical, explosion. Not from the kissing, at all. I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

“T
his time, I’m
going to get the son of a bitch,” Jack snarled, and seconds later he was gone.

“Jack—” But I was talking to an empty room. I ran over to the door and slammed it shut and then carefully peered out the side of the window, in case the shooter was still aiming at it—me—us. Jack was nothing but an orange and white blur bounding into the trees by the time I caught sight of him, and I closed my eyes and wished,
hard
, for him to be safe. And then I went back into Jeremiah’s office and retrieved the loaded gun I’d found in the top right drawer of his desk. I might not be a very good shot at target practice, but right now I had excellent motivation to hit whatever I aimed at. Then I walked back into the living room, turning lights off as I went, so I wouldn’t make such a good target.

Pulling a chair over against the wall facing the window, I listened, hard, for any sounds of somebody trying to sneak up on the house, but heard nothing. Those swiveling tiger ears would have come in handy right about then, but I’d have to settle for my own. Placing the gun carefully on my lap, I sat in the dark and waited, hoping that my massively drunk tiger wasn’t going to get himself killed, and trying not to think about what had just happened.

He’d kissed me.

He’d
kissed
me.

And it had been
amazing
.

I touched my mouth with my fingertips, still stunned, but then I put it away to think about later, when nobody was trying to kill us.

A long five minutes later, Jack called my name from out in the yard. I opened the door and went outside, but I brought the pistol with me. He was dragging a bearded, sullen-faced man in coveralls who had blood running down the side of his head, and what looked like a broken arm held against his chest.

“He’s hurt,” I said, stupidly, wondering how drunk Jack was going to handle this situation.

“He’s lucky not to be dead,” Jack said, all the more terrifying for being so calm. He held out his hand for the gun, and I handed it to him, relieved to be free of it when I suddenly wasn’t sure I could actually use it on a human being. Especially an injured person, like this pathetic excuse for a man.

“You’re…okay?”

He glanced at me. “Shifting shape boosts the metabolism. The whiskey is completely out of my system, all the more bad luck for this asshole.”

Jack tossed the man down on the ground, where he promptly curled up in a ball, cradling his broken arm, and hurled a litany of vile threats at us. I realized a few moments into his rant that threats—vile or otherwise—didn’t have the same effect on me that they had in the past. Now, instead of scaring me, they were pissing me off.

I wasn’t sure what that said about me, and I didn’t have time to worry about it now, anyway.

Jack nudged the man’s leg with his foot.

“Why did you shoot at us? And you’d better think hard about your answer, because whether or not you live through tonight might depend on it,” Jack told him in a voice like ice.