Deadly Violet - 04 (23 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“Sir, I’m not sure about this,” Hampton stuttered.

“Oh, don’t be such a fraidy cat.”

They were both back in the blackened depths of the huge mansion, far away from any window. And Raine
– the business of the last couple of days forgotten – had been trying to persuade his manservant to accompany him on one of his trips out through the solar system. But Hampton wouldn’t be convinced.

“It sounds excessively dangerous, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Raine laughed.

“Nonsense. Nothing risky in the least about it.”

And then, seeing his companion’s frame of mind was set against it, he decided to persuade the man.

“I can take you anywhere you want,” he told him. “Show you anything your heart desires. So tell me, where would you rather be than here in Massachusetts?”

Hampton stopped and thought about it carefully.

“Er … somewhere with a bit of sun, sir?”

“Somewhere …?”

“I
– uh – absolutely loathe the depths of winter, and always have done. The biting cold, the freezing winds. The miserable late mornings and the early nights. It wears me down quite badly, to be honest. So I wouldn’t be averse to going somewhere warm.”

He had finally been sucked in by the idea, and his master took that in with unconcealed delight.

“Then that is where I’ll take you,” Raine assured him. “Hold onto my hand. There’s nothing to it. Close your eyes, and try to let your spirit float. I’ll do the rest.”

Hampton did as he was asked, albeit rather anxiously.

He felt a rushing motion, but it only lasted for a few brief seconds. And then violent heat surrounded him. And when he opened his eyes again …

He was on a barren, jagged, rocky landscape, lit up brilliantly with orange-yellow light. And when he lifted his gaze, the man jumped.

The sun looked close enough to touch. It filled up nearly half the sky. He could see the surface of it swirl and boil and eddy. Massive gouts of flame were shooting from it, stretching out and curling around.

“Uh, where exactly have you brought us, sir?” he asked.

“The sunward side of Mercury,” came the reply.

“The
planet
Mercury?” Hampton yelped.

“Well, of course the planet. Hot enough for you, old chum?”

The manservant looked down, and realized he could still see his hands and arms, his blue-clad belly and the polished tips of both his shoes. And from the way that this whole process had been described, he’d not been expecting any of that.

“Um, I still appear to have a body, sir.”

He looked across at Woodard through the heat-haze shimmering around them.

“Ah, not really,” Raine told him. “If that were the case, then we’d both have been fried to cinders the instant we arrived. But I’ve given us the
semblance
of bodies, the sensation and appearance of still having them. How could we properly enjoy the sunshine otherwise?”

Hampton thought about it, saw the sense of that idea, and started calming down. He mopped his brow, yanked off his tie and started undoing the collar of his shirt.

“Know what I could use right now?”

“I think that I can guess,” his employer answered.

Raine waggled his fingertips – there was no way he could click them. And a pair of large, comfortable looking sun recliners suddenly appeared in front of the two men. Between them was a low glass table with two frothing pitchers of beer set on it, condensation trickling down their sides.

Both of them sat down and stretched out, Hampton kicking off his shoes and socks.

“You know what, sir?” he ventured a touch nervously, glancing over. “You can be pretty off the wall, sometimes. But in a very good way.”

“Yes,” Raine grinned, shutting his eyes. “I know.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

I was back to being a cop. That puzzled me at first, but then I noticed that it was the height of summer, so I knew this was a dream. I’d recently come to the end of a shift, and pulled up outside my front yard in my blue-and-white cruiser.

My little son Pete was out there waiting for me, beaming from ear to ear and bouncing around with excitement. And I wondered what he was so worked up about, but it can be anything with five year-old boys. So I killed the motor, then took off my shades and got out calmly.

Off inside my house, I could hear the phone start ringing. It purred away insistently for a good long while, and I wondered why Alicia wasn’t picking up. But then it stopped.

“Dad! Dad!”

I reached down and ruffled Pete’s blond hair.

“What’s up?”

I noticed he was holding the same tennis ball that he’d been carrying around all summer.

“I’ve taught myself to throw a sinker!”

I had been a pitcher myself, when I’d been in high school. And had spent the past couple of months trying to pass those kinds of skills onto him, showing him how to hold the cheese for every kind of throw. He wasn’t ready for a proper baseball yet, and we had our windows and our neighbors’ ones to think of, so the tennis ball had had to do. But he’d turned out to have a reasonable enough talent, learning to pitch heaters and curves easily enough. But, up until this point, sinkers had eluded him.

I stared down at him, grinning.

“Okay. Show me.”

His expression became very serious. He peered at the front lawn two doors down. Wound himself up slowly. Drew a breath, and held it. Made the pitch.

It went in a dead straight line for about twenty yards, and then dropped away smartly, hitting the turf and rolling.

“That’s terrific!” I crowed.

And he beamed again.

I sent him to police the ball up, then took him by the hand and walked with him to our front door.

But before we reached it, the bell rang, echoingly loud. And how could that happen, when we were on the outside?

I woke up.

The doorbell rang a second, then a third time, forcing me up into awareness. And as soon as my eyes came open, I could see that this was far too early. Dawn was barely a reality as yet, merely a silver tinge of promise out beyond my drapes. And
– when I pushed myself upright – I could feel the bedroom’s air was freezing. I’d forgotten to switch the heating’s timer on when I’d turned in last night.

I struggled out and found a thick robe, wrapping it around me.

The bell went off again, sounding like a claxon in the silence of my house.

When I opened my door, a blast of icy air struck at me. Saul Hobart was standing on my porch, dressed as warmly as he could manage. But his face was very glum. I wondered what was going on this time.

“Cassie tried to raise you on the phone, and couldn’t,” he informed me. “So she got in touch with me instead.”

His gaze dropped right down to his boots before his voice continued.

“Lauren’s going. Cassie thought you’d want to know.”

The same unhappiness that had gripped Hobart settled over me. I lifted a finger and thumb and rubbed some sleep out of my eyes, then tried to think what I ought to do next.

Not leave a friend standing outdoors in weather like this, was one obvious answer. So I ushered him inside, pointed him toward the kitchen and the coffeemaker, and then headed back into my bedroom and started getting dressed.

Damn.
My mood got darker with every layer of clothing that I added. This was precisely how things had panned out last time Lauren had been here. She’d turned up out of nowhere, helped us with the danger we were facing. Then, as soon as it was over, she’d been on her way, impatient to be out of town.

Part of it was down to Regan’s Curse, the voices that had to be ringing in the background of her thoughts. But she ought to be used to that. So it was something else as well.

We couldn’t have gotten through this without her. I knew that, and so did Saul, and so did everybody else. Lauren had come here of her own free will, and put her life on the line for a bunch of people who she mostly didn’t know. And there were plenty of things I’d have liked to say to her. But she was leaving us with the option of just one word. A simple, plain ‘goodbye.’

My heart was really heavy. And my body felt like lead. I went on through into the bathroom, swilled some mouthwash.
Dammit.
I had harbored the belief that she’d grown used to this place since the last time. But apparently, I’d gotten that wrong.

Saul and I went out again. There was still barely enough light to see by. He’d left his Pontiac at home, opting for a departmental SUV instead. And he had good reason for doing that. Several more inches of snow had fallen, while I had been in the Land of Nod.

Lauren was planning to drive back to Boston in this? She had to be really determined to get out of here, and that left me feeling even sadder.

But she was still getting ready when we finally turned up. The trunk of her Ford was open, and she was fitting snow chains to her tires, working in the pale glow of a nearby streetlamp.

It looked like she’d refused any help, and was doing it on her own. Cass was standing on her porch, both fists on her hips. And Martha and Willets had shown up too, and were staying at a slight remove and peering at her mournfully.

We got out, and Saul approached her.

“Busy holiday season coming up, huh, Lauren?” He was trying to sound cheerful. “Bunch of big parties and stuff?”

She glanced around at him, then returned her attention to her work.

“Not really.”

“You’re on duty?” he asked her

“No.” Her chin ducked. “I generally find this time of year an opportunity to catch up on my reading.”

She finished up one tire, then moved on to the next.

Catch up on her
what
? We stared at her bemusedly.

“Uh … you must have family?” Saul asked. “You must have friends?”

“My folks are both gone. There’s pretty much no one else. And I have colleagues, guys I work with, sure. But as for friends? You know how that goes, don’t you, lieutenant.”

Then she paused uncertainly and corrected herself.

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot. You don’t. You live in a community where people like you and respect you, and are grateful for the work you do. You’ve not the first clue what it’s like to be in a world where none of that’s the case.”

And I’d read enough to know what she was talking about. But Saul obviously hadn’t.

He peered out at the far horizon, his eyes reflective and his big brow getting ruffled. And when he figured out what she was trying to tell him, you could see the disbelief on his face.

“People out there don’t like cops?” He worked his jaw annoyedly. “Well, that’s downright nuts!”

Lauren stopped what she was doing, her head sinking in between her shoulders. And I couldn’t see her face, but figured Saul’s words might have had a slight effect on her. Maybe she was closer to the truth than she had been a short while back. Because Raine’s Landing might have its bad side, its monsters and its demons. But it has a good side too.

This was a far simpler part of the world than the one she had arrived from. Kinder, when not in crisis, and less fractious and confused. No one here would shy away from her because she wore a badge. That’s a brand of nonsense that we refuse to buy into.

Cassie noticed what was going on. Saw her opportunity, and moved in closer.

“You could stay here,” she suggested brightly. “It wouldn’t be any problem. The opposite, in fact.”

Lauren threw her another swift glance and forced a smile. But then shook her head and went back to what she had been doing.

“Why not?” Cassie asked. “We’ve gotten on great, haven’t we?”

“Yes, we have. But – no offence, Cass – I don’t really want to spend my Christmas in a place where something might pop out of the ground and try to eat me any second.”

Which made sense. I had never looked at it from quite that point of view before.

“Well, that
could
happen,” I explained, “but it probably won’t. We generally find that there’s a lull between these ‘little incidents.’ So we ought to be safe, at least the next few days.”

“Even evil has to take a break sometime,” Saul added.

But none of us were really getting through to her. Consciously or otherwise. Lauren was blocking our words out. She finished with the second tire and moved on to the third, refusing to look back.

She’d not been brought up here. I reminded myself forcibly of that fact. She could cope with a town like the Landing when she had to
– she was strong enough to manage that. But getting really used to it and treating it as normal … there was some kind of barrier in her mind, preventing her from going that whole distance.

A familiar, determined look swept across Cassie’s features. She goes in hard when it comes to fighting. And when Quinn Maycott had been around, she’d gone in hard on love as well. And now
– so it appeared – she was prepared to do the same for friendship.

She went marching across and snatched the snow chain out of Lauren’s grasp, so fiercely that the blond lieutenant was forced to stand up.

“What’s wrong with you?” Cass almost shouted. “I thought that you were a smart person, but you’re not even seeing straight.”

Lauren stared at her bewilderedly, her face an astonished blank.

“You think you’ve got no friends?” Cassie held out both her arms and waved them about stiffly. “Look around! Everybody came here, way too early on a freezing cold morning, because they’re sorry that you’re going. They wanted to at least say goodbye, and see you one last time.”

She threw the chain aside.

“We’re not just grateful that you helped! We really like you, dumbass! And how can we even enjoy ourselves the next few days, knowing that you’re sitting on your own somewhere in Boston?”

From anybody else, that would have sounded like arm-twisting. But Cass was speaking from the heart.

Lauren’s gaze swept over her surroundings, and then settled on the rest of us. And we wanted her to make her own mind up about this, so we simply waited.

She thrust her lower lip out, then stared back at Cassie.

“Ah, Jesus!” Her head tipped back a few inches and she breathed deeply through her nose. “I can’t believe I’m considering this. But …”

A little of the pink around her cheeks had transferred to her eyelids.

“Okay, then. Maybe for a day or two.”

But then she rounded on the rest of us.

“I swear to God, though! If I wind up being chased down Main Street by Saint Nick, and he’s got fangs and claws and fire coming from his nostrils, I am holding you guys personally responsible!”

And she sounded wholly serious about that.

So I promised her we’d do our best to make sure nothing like that happened.