Honey House (10 page)

“Shut up Gregory. He’ll never buy the man to man thing,” I said with a tired smile.

Gregory grinned. “That’s why you have to tell me. Seriously, as far as I know, you weren’t expecting him to come over last night. What happened?”

I recognized the futility of trying to avoid his questions. With a sigh, I told him about Quinn showing up to ask about Jason, about his walk through of my apartment, and about the dead coyote on the back porch.

“Quinn was offering some comfort and one thing led to another. That’s all,” I finished lamely.

Gregory made the appropriate noises while I was telling the story, but when I tried to leave it at that, he glared. “Oh no you don’t, girlfriend. Okay, nothing too personal.” He paused for effect.
“How big is he?”

I nearly spit my coffee. “Big enough,” I answered when I could speak.

“Oh God, I just knew it. As big as he looks in those jeans?”

“Bigger.”

He gave a happy sigh, and I hoped he was finished with me. He grabbed my arm as I started to turn back to the dining room. “Unh, unh. Not yet. How many times?”

“Gregory!”

“More than once?”

He kept going and my discomfort spurred him to new levels of outrageousness. He finally relented when I admitted it was more times than I could count, that Quinn had stayed all night, and that we’d not gotten any sleep. Gregory pretended to fan himself and I punched his arm.

“Okay, okay, no more intimate details. For now. But what happened? Why’s Quinn so black and calling you Miss Carmichael?” He gave a quick gasp. “Are you some kind of dominatrix? Do you make him call you that? Oh God, Quinn on his knees, you in leather. I could die a happy man with that picture in my head,” he said with his eyes closed, a beatific smile on his face.

“Gregory! Enough! You don’t understand. Everything was fine until he was getting dressed. He found the note from Jason. He knows I was holding something back. He thinks I was running a con on him last night to keep him from being suspicious.”

“Shit,” he said.

“Exactly,” I agreed.

****

I sat at the desk in the library, put my head on my arms and thought about all that had passed since yesterday. Joanne had said it was time I knew what I was. Amelia had said to listen to the House, listen to my heart. Well, today my heart hurt and so far, the House was mum.

I certainly hadn’t expected to fall into bed with Quinn last night, but what a tumble it had been. I’d never have believed in a million years that I would take a cop to my bed. There were way too many bad memories associated with that. Horrors I’d locked away long ago. Last night had just happened. I’d needed comfort and he’d given it. I would have preferred we walked away from it and not look back, each remembering a very pleasant night and nothing more.

It hadn’t exactly worked that way. By the time we’d been in the shower, I’d started thinking of excuses to keep Quinn visiting my bed, which was not good. Not good at all. He was dangerous, he was a cop, and he was someone who would always think the worst of me. He had the power to hurt me, which meant he needed to go.

This morning I’d stood facing my closet, gathering my clothes and my wits, wondering how I could tell Quinn to go. Hell, I’d actually been mentally rehearsing the ‘this-can’t-happen-again’ speech and debating whether it might be more effective just to piss him off so he wouldn’t want to come back.

As soon as I’d started thinking about lying to Quinn, the temperature in the room dropped, as though my thoughts were changing the very atmosphere in the House. Before I’d had time to process those thoughts, Quinn had found the note, had believed the worst of me. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

By the time I’d gotten rid of Gregory, Quinn was gone and no one else had been about. I’d wanted to lie down, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something important I needed to do first. Something the House wanted me to do.
Disturbing.

I rubbed my aching head. My eyes felt covered in sandpaper, my limbs heavy and awkward. Thoughts seemed to be dancing just out of my reach. I shook my head and gave my cheeks a little slap. I needed to clear this damn brain fog. Maybe if I made a list, I could remember the important things. I pulled the notepad over and dug out a pencil from the jumble in the desk drawer.

Pencil in hand, I stared at the notepad. Something about it seemed so familiar. I looked carefully at the logo, a full moon, a saguaro cactus, and a coyote. It was a typical southwestern design, just some business give-away as advertising. I yawned so hard I swear my jaws creaked. Giving my head another shake, I tried to stay focused.

Logo…I was looking at the logo. Why was it so damned familiar? There was no name, just the initials TWTW and a local phone number.

The more I tried to figure out why the logo was familiar, the more elusive it became. My limbs felt heavy, weighted by possibilities, and I realized it was more than the lack of sleep that was bearing down upon me now. I’d felt this way before, on the ship, during those times when I glimpsed someone’s future. My mind and my body slowed, each beat of my heart marking time. I tried to put pencil to paper, but it felt as though I was moving through some viscous fluid.

I blinked and when my eyes opened, I watched tiny dust motes float slowly across the beams of afternoon sunlight. They moved gracefully, performing an intricate dance, exquisitely detailed and purely for my enjoyment. I turned my head slowly and a small movement caught my eye. I watched the blinds stir ever so slightly in the gentle breeze, and then I watched the breeze itself. I could see the tendrils of air caress the room, cooling the heat of my skin.

The palm in the corner of the room was leaning toward the western window. I watched in amazement as it moved in infinitesimal increments, reaching for the golden light. It leisurely opened its fronds, like eager fingers, seeking that which would make it complete.

There. I recognized it immediately. That was the thought I’d been waiting for. It moved through my mind with deliberate slowness. The questions built inside me, pulsing, pounding, filling me.
What is it that will make me complete? What is the essential part of me that is missing?

Everything was still moving in slow motion, giving me plenty of time with each thought. Somehow, the events of the previous twenty-four hours had brought me closer to discovering the piece I hadn’t even known was missing.

I’d been happy to be on my own, free from worry, no one depending on me for anything. Okay, maybe happy was a bit of an exaggeration, but at least I’d been content. Hadn’t I? I just wasn’t very good at building relationships and hadn’t felt the lack of them. I’d thought I’d been born this way; that my unconventional upbringing had failed to teach me to make important personal connections.

All my life, I’d worn my detachment like a cloak, collar up, shoulders hunched. I’d been shielding myself against the harsh wind of loss, the chill of pain. Now I was willingly shedding that cloak, basking in the warmth of the Honey House, collecting people to care about. Since I’d been here I’d had more up close and personal moments for me than I’d ever had to process before. How had all these people come to matter to me?

I hadn’t loved Jason. I hadn’t even liked him very much by the time he’d died. But he’d belonged to me because he‘d stayed at my House, come to us for shelter. He hadn’t deserved to have his life stolen. Gregory hadn’t stayed at the House, but he’d found blood here, seen death coming, even if he hadn’t recognized it. He’d become someone that mattered to me, to the House. It felt as if he was mine now, too, and by extension, so was Owen.

Quinn.
God, Quinn
. It was as though he’d ridden me into submission, had lowered my defenses, taken me further than casual sex was supposed to. I didn’t love him; he wasn’t even my type of man. But he’d stayed with me, held me through the night, brought me out of my skin and laid me bare. He had stayed at the House last night and now, in some indefinable way, he was mine too.

What was I? What magick was expected of me? There was a fierce protectiveness growing inside of me and I knew it was part of the answer. A sense of responsibility for those to whom I gave shelter, to those called by the House. There was a slow build to a white-hot fury over the fact that someone would dare hurt one of mine.

I was surprised when I saw the muddy brown eyes staring patiently at me.
Where did they come from? Where am I?
A slow blink and I wasn’t in the library anymore.

*

I knew was dreaming or I thought I was. It was like watching a television show, and I was playing the role of someone else. An actor who could feel and see, but was powerless to stop the scene that was unfolding. I was on the trail that passed behind the Honey House, and I was running. I was afraid, Christ, so very afraid. Thoughts rolled through my mind…not
my
thoughts, but still, they were in my head.
If I could only reach the door, if only KC could hear me. Someone hear me, please. I don’t want to die. I didn’t mean to find out. No one will believe me anyway. Full moon. Supposed to be full moon.

Something hit me from behind, a force so powerful it knocked me off my feet. I flew through the air and landed on the trail.
Can’t breathe. Move my feet, must move my feet.
The next blow came, then the next. Hot blood spilled from somewhere. I was being torn apart, eaten alive.
Can’t scream, can’t breathe, can’t—

*

I woke with a start, my heart pounding in my chest. I wiped a shaky hand across my forehead and it came away glistening with sweat. I grabbed the notepad to write down what I remembered of the dream and it was as though everything shifted to slow motion again. The silence was suddenly upon me, a deafening absence of noise.

I pulled the note pad closer and there was no sound as it slid across the desk, only the pounding of my own heartbeat echoing in my head. I knew I was supposed to see something. I looked carefully at the pad, and the top sheet had clear indentations from whoever had written on it last. I held the pad up and examined it in the light. I took the pencil and lightly rubbed it across the surface. I could read what had been there.
Werewolves.

The word had been scrawled across the top of the paper so hard the impression clearly showed through to the pages below. There were more words, much lighter, as if the writer hadn’t been as angry when he’d written the others. I recognized those fainter words. They were from Jason’s note to me.

Sound came rushing back, and I could hear the birds outside, the wind rustling through the pinyon and juniper trees that surrounded the House. People were laughing somewhere, maybe the great room. Whatever had removed all noise from my world and put everything in slow motion had released its hold.

I picked up my cell phone with a sense of inevitability and dialed the phone number imprinted on the notepad. TWTW. I knew who I was calling even before the rich, deep voice answered the phone.

“The Way They Were Safaris. How may I help you?” he asked solicitously, pronouncing it “where.” As in werewolves.

“May I help you?” he asked again.

“Oh, sorry. I was wondering about a tour for tonight. I only need one ticket.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. The last tour leaves in a few minutes and is booked solid. After that, we’re closed until Friday. We don’t take tours on the full moon or the two nights leading up to it. Too dangerous, you know.”

He said it with just a hint of laughter in his voice, conspiratorially. As though we both knew he was teasing, but he needed to keep up the charade. I wasn’t so sure he was teasing, but if he was, it was a good gimmick to keep up the illusion.

I used the same teasing note. “Please? Isn’t there anything I can do to convince you? Isn’t there a special price I could pay?”

“No, it’s an absolute rule, ma’am. I can squeeze you in on Friday, if you only need one ticket and you don’t mind joining a family of five. Would you like me to hold the ticket for you?” he asked.

I closed my eyes, let my mind flow, and reached for that place that sometimes told me things. The place that told me secrets about strangers. The man on the phone believed he was telling the truth. He wouldn’t sell me a ticket for tonight. Whatever was happening out there, this man at least believed that the next three nights would be dangerous.

“Ma’am,” he prompted.

“Oh, sorry. I was just looking at my calendar. I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay one more night. Are you sure? Could I look around during the day tomorrow, instead?”

Warm laughter floated over the line. “I’m sure. Tonight’s booked, and we’re closed up tight for the next three days. I’m sorry it won’t work out this time. Maybe the next time you’re in the area. Just don’t make it a full moon. Have a nice day,” he said and ended the connection.

I wasn’t so easily discouraged. I knew where I would be come this full moon.

Jason had been one of mine. I would find out what happened.

Chapter Nine

I woke at my new usual time and greeted Aaron when he delivered the breakfast trays. Gabrielle was due in today, and I planned to take advantage of her presence to do a little shopping and a little snooping. It must have been purely coincidental that most of the items on my shopping list came from businesses that Jason had visited in his research.

I heard the front door open and Quinn entered for his usual coffee and bagel. He was first on my “To Do” list for the day. So to speak. I blushed a little at the images that I conjured in my mind. I hadn’t meant it that way.
Really
.

“Good morning, Quinn.”

“Miss Carmichael,” he said without looking up from his newspaper.

Hmm… I could stay formal. I tried again. “Sheriff, have you found anything out about Jason’s murder?” I asked.

“No,” Quinn said and turned the page.

He wasn’t going to make this easy. I refilled my coffee, but instead of returning to my usual table, I sat at Quinn’s. When his reluctant gaze met mine, I struggled to keep my breathing even. Looking into those eyes, watching his lips curve into a cruel imitation of a smile, I felt as if I had just put myself in the cage of a very hungry tiger. Instinctively, I reached out a hand and placed it on his arm, hoping to calm the angry beast that I sensed just below the surface. I pulled my hand back immediately, as though I’d received an electric shock.