Forest Moon Rising (11 page)

Forcibly, I yanked myself away from that memory.

“Oh, God, they’re still punishing me,” Donovan gasped, dropping onto the sofa. He set the cup down and buried his face in his hands.

Scrap faded back to his normal gray-green.
Time for a snack, babe. We going out or eating in?

I didn’t answer him.

In.
He popped out, probably to the laundry room in the basement where mold grew thick and deep behind the washing machines.

“Maybe they are ensuring Lilly is loved and cared for by the best person for her to learn about life, from both sides of the chat room. Maybe they need you to settle down and live a normal life with a wife and no more plans to create a homeland for half-breed demons before entrusting you with a precious child,” I said soothingly.

“Marry me. Help me prove that I’m the best person to raise my daughter.” He looked up, catching my gaze and holding it.

“Sorry. Wrong formula again.” His third proposal and he still didn’t get it that he needed to ask me because he wanted me, just me, to be the love of his life. He always put his agenda ahead of that, not realizing that if he loved me, and me him, then I’d gladly help him with anything he needed. “Why don’t you discuss it with your girlfriend? I believe you are seeing Doreen.”

“Doreen can’t compare to you and what you and I have together, what we can do for each other. What’s it going to take to convince you that we belong together? The other women are just diversions to distract me from you.” He rose up to his full six feet of height, shoulders hunching upward in anger again.

“Figure out what I need and we might have something. Until then, I’m sorry you can’t have Lilly. Maybe you should move to Cape Cod. Then you could at least visit her more often.”

“If you’re trying to get rid of me, I don’t have to move three thousand miles away. Good-bye.”

The doorframe shook for long seconds after he slammed it in his wake.

Allie hummed softly as she closed her cell phone.

“So, when’s the wedding?” I asked casually. Since I’d discarded the crutches in favor of an ugly strap-on boot over the cast—Dr. Sean still refused the lighter air cast, wanting to keep me as immobile as possible—I’d retaken control of my kitchen. In a few minutes we’d have fish baked in a gentle lime and mango chutney sauce, brown rice pilaf, and a salad with a variety of fresh local produce from the farmers market.

At least I had an appetite again. My brain had only partially awakened along with my stomach. I’d added three chapters to my manuscript, enough to send to my editor as proof of my progress. That should buy another extension on the due date.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t squeeze any more money out of them until I finished the book. Maybe my royalty statement next month could breathe some life into my checking account.

“We have to decide some things before we set a date,” Allie said. Her dreamy-eyed gaze and humming halted abruptly. She began twisting her ring round and round her finger.

Until that moment, she’d looked happier and more relaxed than I’d seen her in a long time.

Uh oh, trouble in Lovesville
, Scrap chomped down on his cigar.
Don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to deal with it.
He flew from his perch on the wine glass rack, which now held two glasses, through the closed French doors onto the patio.

“Decide what?” I hadn’t asked why she lingered in my apartment a week after she’d been cleared of wrongdoing on her job, two weeks after Steve returned to his house and job in Illinois.

“If I want to go back to being a cop. Do we want to live in Chicago,” she mumbled almost inaudibly. “Can I stand living in Cape Cod if I’m not a cop? Can Steve tolerate going home again? Can we find jobs out here?”

A long moment of silence. What did I say to that?

“Tess, I’ve wanted to leave home for a long time. But I didn’t dare get too far away from The House without you there to guard it. How could you leave vulnerable a plot of neutral ground containing the right energies to open a rogue portal to a demon dimension? How could you leave your father and his life partner alone with no protection?”

“Your cop partner can guard it,” I mumbled.

“Mike went back to Miami.”

“Say again?” I’d heard her. I needed confirmation.

“Mike, the part water demon, went back to Miami now that Darren Estevez no longer holds his family hostage. The House is wide open to attack.”

“Would you believe I took out some insurance before I left?”

“What kind of insurance?”

The scar on my face grew hot and knife fresh. I was surprised Allie couldn’t see it glowing. “Insurance that cost me a lot.”

I set my chin in an expression she had to know meant I would say no more.

I couldn’t say more.

My hand shook as badly as it had when I held a very special onyx fountain pen. I felt it between my fingers, watched myself dip the nib in a pool of my own blood and sign my name. My full name that only my mother used: Teresa Louise Noncoiré. With each stroke my veins and arteries filled with searing warmth, a precursor to the flames that would consume the document and myself from within if I ever violated that contract of silence or returned to The House for more than five days at a stretch.

The House stood on neutral ground. It had to remain in neutral hands. As a Warrior of the Celestial Blade I was decidedly not neutral. My dad and his partner were.

Donovan had signed a similar oath about his past as a gargoyle after he fell. I’d had to figure out his “Big Secret” on my own.

Allie set her chin in a similar stubbornness to mine. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to make some calls, start looking for a new career.” She pocketed her phone decisively and rose from her curled position on the end of the sofa.

“Doing what?”

She shrugged and began setting places for us on the bar.

“Allie, this isn’t like you. You don’t know how to not be a cop. I remember you breaking up a fistfight between two bullies when we were ten. You read them their rights!” I paused in scooping rice onto our plates. “I’ve driven patrol with you, helped close down bar fights. Being a cop is who you are.”

“I know.” Her eyes moistened. “Police work made me feel useful. I could protect ordinary people, make the streets a tad safer, bring a sense of order and balance into our chaotic world.”

“But then life showed an ugly side you want to run away from.”
Been there, done that. Just now crawling out from under my rock.

“Yeah. I can’t be a good cop if I’m looking at every teen as a potential drug addict, every poorly dressed female with a passel of children she can’t afford to feed as a potential thief.” She gulped and closed her eyes. “Every adult male as a potential child abuser and rapist.” She bowed her head and turned her back on me.

Welcome to my world. Only I look for demons, not criminals. Same thing, I guess
. There’s a reason Earth has no demon ghetto. We are our own demons.

I gave her a couple of moments to master her emotions.

“So what will you do?”

“Steve’s not really happy in Chicago. So he’s pursuing some leads in the job market in the Portland area.”

“What about you?”

She shrugged again.

“Allie. You can hide from yourself, but you can’t hide from me.” Just like I’d tried a number of times to hide from myself, only to have her ferret out the truth.

“I got my masters in criminal justice while you were off getting yours in demon fighting. I’m looking into teaching at the Police Academy, maybe one of the community colleges.” She finally looked me in the eye. “Gollum gave me some leads.”

So that’s what she’d been hiding. Not the change in career, but the source of her contacts.

Gollum was keeping tabs on me through my best friend.

“You’re welcome to stay with me for a while,” I said quietly. “I have really enjoyed having you here, appreciated your help while I recover. I still need you to drive me.”

“Thanks, Tess. I’ll repay you, someday, somehow.”

“You’ll earn your keep next week driving two hundred miles each way to High Desert Con.”

“That’s where you met Dill. Where your friend from college got killed.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a lot of memories tied up with that Science Fiction convention. Time I stopped running away from them.” And myself.

“T
ESS!” A FEMALE ALTO VOICE that bordered on a tenor called from across the hotel lobby.

I looked up from signing a registration form for Allie and me. Allie had driven me the two hundred miles east of Portland to Pasco, Washington, home of the High Desert Con.

“Squishy!” I called back, beckoning the squarely built, forty something woman with board straight hair dyed an impossible blonde. I knew no other name for her than the handle she used on-line and for con badges.

“I need to talk to you,” my acquaintance said on an urgent whisper.

“Go have a cup of coffee. And put your foot up. I’ll take the luggage to our room,” Allie urged me toward the garden café in the middle of the hotel ground floor. She hoisted her overnight bag and dragged my wheeled suitcase toward one of the sprawling wings. The desk clerk had taken one look at my booted cast and walking staff and changed our room from the quiet third floor at the far end of the most inaccessible wing to a close handicap room on the ground floor.

I’d have to remember that trick next year. Might save me about three miles of walking each day.

Scrap turned bright yellow and popped out of my vision. He loved exploring conventions, sniffing out who wore a costume and who used costumes as an excuse to shape-change into demon form. Most of the attending demons were relatively benign, just trying to fit into modern society. A con gave them the chance to let their hair down, so to speak, and be themselves.

Donovan claimed that these were the Kajiri demons he worked to find a homeland for, the ones who were too human to live as a demon and too much a demon to truly live as human all of the time. They needed to shape-change at least once a month and take an occasional sip of blood.

Gave new meaning to “That time of the month.”

I suspected from oblique conversations that Donovan really dealt with those Kajiri who used their human facade to prey upon the innocent. The closer to their demon roots they remained, the more they needed hot fresh blood to survive.

Lady Lucia Continelli actually lived as a vampire in Las Vegas, finding it a more socially acceptable way to drink blood than admitting her very dilute demon heritage. In fact, Lady Lucia hadn’t craved blood until she tasted some as part of her facade. She worked hard at maintaining her image as the vampire crime boss of Sin City.

“What’s up, Squishy?” I asked, stumping toward the café.

“Something weird I need advice on. But more important, what happened to you?” She claimed a booth just inside the arched entrance to the eating area.

Artificial shrubs and a chest-high brick wall gave the illusion of separating patrons from the mass of convention goers. Illusion only. We could check out and be checked out by all those who wandered around in search of old friends.

“I tripped over a blackberry vine while jogging,” I muttered as I plopped into my seat and scooted toward the wall so I could stretch my leg sideways along the bench.

“You know that I’m a nurse. Anything I can do to help?”

“I guessed you were a healthcare professional from the detailed answers you give to research questions on our email list.” I shifted and squirmed to get more comfortable. The four-hour drive in a small car had been a nightmare. Now my foot had swelled because I hadn’t been able elevate it.

“What did you break?” She peered at the redness of my exposed toes.