Jezebel's Blues (2 page)

She stepped back. “My grandmother would never forgive me for turning away a stranger in trouble. Come on in.”

The relief on his face, even in the dark, was unmistakable. “Much obliged. I won’t be any trouble.”

“Wet as you are, I’ll be lucky if you don’t die of pneumonia before morning.” She sized him up, thinking quickly. “Stay right there. I’ll get you something dry to put on.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he protested.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She headed for the back room, leaving the candle for him. He hovered near the door.

There wasn’t much to choose from, but Celia found an old pair of overalls of her grandfather’s and a shirt she was sure would be too small. Might not fit well, but it would be better than freezing to death.

The stranger still stood right by the door when she returned. A puddle had formed under his feet. His outer garment, a long vinyl poncho, had been shed, and the big pack rested against the wall.

The lights flashed on again, so suddenly they startled Celia. In the blazing, unexpected illumination, she stared at the man by the door. It was only by sheer force of will that she kept her mouth from dropping open. Men like this never walked into her quiet life. They crossed movie screens and album covers; they rode bucking horses in rodeos and raced cars in the Indy.

They didn’t appear on her porch in rural Texas in the middle of a rainstorm.

His hair was black as sin and already curling around his neck and ears. The face was broad and dark, with high cheekbones and heavy brows over thick-lashed eyes. Amid all the masculine angles and jutting corners, his mouth was uncommon and compelling, even with a bloody cut obscuring it. The lower lip was full, sensual; the upper cut into an exquisite firm line.

There was only an instant for her to absorb the lines of his body, for the lights flashed off as quickly as they’d come on.

She laughed a little breathlessly, not quite sure whether the sound stemmed from excitement or fear. “Well, that was fast. I wonder if we’re going to be treated to a light show.”

“Somebody at the plant better get smart quick and turn everything off,” he said, “or there’s likely to be fires all over the county.”

The man shivered and Celia hurriedly gave him the clothes. “I’ll wait in the kitchen.”

Standing there in the dark, nibbling popcorn from the bowl on the table, she wondered if she was completely insane. The world was not the same place her grandmother had lived in, although Celia supposed there had always been serial killers and rapists roaming the countryside. Computers had just made it simpler to track them down. The thought made her smile briefly.

The stranger’s voice, with its odd edge of roughness, sounded directly behind her. “Jezebel’s acting up tonight,” he said.

“Jezebel?” Celia echoed, turning.

He’d brought the candle with him, and the light cast eerie shadows over the hollows of his face. She saw a grizzling of dark beard on his chin and top lip. It added an even more rakish appearance to his rugged face. Celia frowned at the blood on his mouth. “You’re bleeding,” she said, and reached into a drawer for a dishcloth.

Distractedly, he pressed the cloth to the cut, then lifted it and licked the spot experimentally. “I didn’t even feel this,” he commented.

Celia lifted the candle closer to his face, and understanding her intention, he lowered the dishrag. “You probably need a stitch or two,” she said. “But it looks like you’ll have to live without them until morning.”

“I’ve lived through worse.”

There was no boast in the words, just a simple statement of fact. Celia realized she was still standing next to him, the candle held aloft, peering at his face for clues to his nature like the heroine in a Gothic novel. She put the candle on the table. “Who’s Jezebel?” she asked.

“The river. That’s what the old-timers call her.”

“Why?”

“Because,” the man said, cocking his head a bit ironically, “she’s as dangerous as a faithless and beautiful woman.” He spied the popcorn and pointed. “You mind?”

“Help yourself.” Celia ladled up a handful for herself. “Pretty sexist. Why isn’t she like a faithless man?”

A slow grin spread over his face. “Because no man alive can outsmart a wise and evil woman—and the old-timers knew it.”

His voice, low and husky, acted like moonshine on her spine, easing the muscles all the way down. She straightened. “What makes you think she’s acting up?”

“I’ve seen her do it.” He glanced toward the window, as though the river was a banshee about to scream through the night. “Unless it stops raining right now, she’s coming.”

Celia frowned and crossed to the window. It was dark—inky dark. The pond in the hollow had crept up another four or five inches, and she thought she could see a fine film of water all over the saturated ground. “It’s been flooding for weeks,” she said. “Everyone says that happens every year.”

“They like to forget about old Jezebel.” He shifted. “Legends aside, this is a flood plain, and the river runs in cycles. She’s gonna flood and you’d best be on high ground when she does.”

“There’s an attic here if I need it.”

He scooped up another big handful of popcorn. “Is it stocked?”

She shrugged. “Sort of.” She pursed her lips. “Do you think the river’s going to overflow tonight?”

He wandered to the window, and as he stood next to her, looking out at the rain, Celia realized he was much, much larger than she. What if all this talk of a flood was just a way to get her up into the attic to ravish her or something? She crossed her arms over her chest, smelling whiskey and something deeper, a scent of hot nights that she tried to ignore. There was no law that said serial killers were ugly and hard to get along with. In fact, how did any of them get close to their victims unless they possessed a certain—well, animal magnetism that promised erotic rewards in return for trust?

But his voice was so very grim when he spoke again that Celia had no doubt that he was telling the truth. “She’s coming,” he said, the dread in his voice unmistakable.

Suddenly, from the depths of childhood came a memory. Celia had awakened thirsty and padded into the bathroom for a drink of water. On her way back to her room, she heard her father in his office, shouting into the phone. Curious and alarmed, she had paused by the door.

Her father had been a big man, as big as a grizzly, he liked to tell her. That night he hunched in the swivel chair by his desk, with his hair wild and his face buried in his hands. “What’s wrong, Daddy?” Celia asked.

He turned in his chair and gestured for her to come sit in his lap. Then, because it had been his policy to tell Celia the truth, he said, “There’s a flood back in Texas and I can’t get through to make sure Grandma’s all right.”

Celia didn’t really understand anything else about the incident, but obviously, Grandma had been fine. She’d only died last year—in her sleep.

Thinking of it now, though, she realized the river had probably flooded then. “Okay,” she said, taking a breath. “Jezebel’s going to flood. Since you’re here, you can help me lug things up to the attic.” She crossed the room, taking the candle with her, and opened the oak cupboard by the sink.

“What happened to the old woman, Mrs. Moon, who used to live here?” the stranger asked as Celia took cans and boxes from the shelf.

“She died last year.” Celia flashed him a grin out of proportion to his statement. Relief made her sigh. If he had known her grandmother, he wasn’t likely to be a serial killer.

“Are you kin?”

“I’m her granddaughter. She left me the house.”

He nodded, chewing popcorn. “What’s your name, granddaughter?”

“Celia.” She glanced at the nearly empty bowl. “You made short work of that popcorn. Are you hungry?”

“Celia Moon.” His drawl and the ragged edge of his voice made her name sound beautiful. “I’m Eric Putman and I’m starving.”

She tossed him a box of crackers and found the peanut butter. “That’ll have to do for a little while.” His name sounded vaguely familiar, but when she couldn’t place it, she let it go. There weren’t many names she hadn’t heard on her grandmother’s lips at one time or another. For a nice old woman, she’d been the world’s champion gossip—not mean, for there was always an undercurrent of understanding in the way she told her stories, even when the preacher of the Methodist church fell in love with the choir director, who was then only seventeen, and ran off to Louisiana with her. “You must be from around here,” Celia commented.

“Born and raised.”

A harsh undernote told her he’d been glad to escape. A common attitude. She was the only one who’d run to Gideon instead of away. And the funny thing was, they were running to the very places she had left behind, places whose very names promised glamour. “You’ve been gone awhile,” she said.

“Yep.” He dropped the peanut butter and crackers into the box with the other food. “You have any other candles? I can get some blankets and stuff if you’ll tell me where to look.”

She dug in a drawer, and just as she was about to light the candle, a massive flash of lightning shimmered over the sky, a pale electric blue that seemed to hang for minutes in the darkness. On its heels came a crack of thunder so loud, it rattled the dishes.

As if a hole had been cut in the sky by the violent thunder, the noise of the rain suddenly doubled, then tripled. Celia gasped. “I didn’t think it could rain any harder!” She went to the window and looked out, laughing lightly. “It looks like there’s a thousand garden hoses going at once.”

Eric grabbed the candle. “Where are those blankets?” His voice was gruff.

“Under the stairs.” She pointed vaguely. Her attention was focused on the deluge. It excited her. A part of her wanted to run outside into that beating, pounding rain, just to feel it and taste it. Nature run amok, she thought. Humans were helpless in the face of it. A savage kind of joy raced through her at the thought.

“Come on, woman,” Eric growled. “Won’t take Jezebel long to flash her eyes now.”

Of course, she probably wanted to
live
through whatever was coming. Time enough to observe the drama when everything was safely prepared.

Celia tried to ignore the ripple of excitement that passed through her at the thought of observing the drama with Eric Putman nearby.

I
t took more than an hour to prepare the attic. They made several trips up and down the long flight of stairs, carrying water and blankets and food. Eric insisted they drag up a mattress from one of the beds, and evidently Celia finally understood the gravity of the situation, because she gathered a box full of photo albums and letters, and a metal file box he assumed held important papers of various kinds.

Eric’s last trip was to fetch his backpack and shoes, which he’d left downstairs when he changed.

Water was seeping in under the front door. Feeling the cold water on his bare toes, Eric froze for an instant. A paralyzing fear shot through his belly, and his mind flashed back to that other night, so long ago, when the water had crept under the front door and up the windowpanes—until the pressure shattered the windows, and water had rocketed through the openings. There had been no attic in that house, only a roof to cling to. He’d clung. Sometimes he could still taste the silt in his mouth, feel the slime on his arms and under his feet.

Flood. Jezebel was rising. Down the hall, the toilet gurgled ominously. Staring at the water pushing through the crack below the door, he knew what he had to do. First he grabbed the bottle in his pack and lifted it for a long swallow. Then he crossed the room and yanked open the door.

A cold press of waiting water swirled inside, rushing across the floor all the way to the couch against the far wall. Gritting his teeth, he sloshed through it to the windows. Methodically, trying not to look at the sea beyond the house, he rounded the lower floor, opening all the windows.

He returned to the foot of the stairs and paused a moment, holding his candle aloft. The room was as warm and inviting as a June morning. Wallpaper with tiny blue-and-silver flowers covered one wall, and an arrangement of framed botanical drawings hung above the fat, rose-colored sofa. Small tables littered with magazines and knickknacks and lamps were scattered around the room. Eric let his eyes rove from one corner to the other, imprinting in memory what would soon be swept away, then he hiked his pack onto his shoulder and climbed the stairs.

Celia was crouched by the window tucked under the eaves of the attic, a single candle burning nearby. He was struck again by her fey beauty, so fitting to her name. Everything about her was as ethereal as moonlight. Her hair was fine and weightless, so blonde it was nearly white, and skimmed her fragile-looking shoulders in a straight line. She wasn’t short, but her body was slim of breast and hip, and she had long-fingered, graceful hands.

But downstairs, when the lights had flashed on suddenly, it had been her eyes that riveted him, in spite of the fact that they’d been filled at that moment with fear and distrust.

Never had he seen a face so dominated by eyes. They were enormous, fringed with lashes unusually dark for one with such light hair, and the irises were pale gray, almost silver.

Fey.

Now he saw more—a mouth as ripe as peaches and a pointed, stubborn chin. He grinned, feeling relieved. She was just a woman, not some specter from another plane. “Some rain, eh?” he said with a grin.

“Amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She frowned. “Are you nipping at a bottle? You smell like whiskey.”

“Guilty.” He tugged the fifth of Jack Daniel’s from his pack. It was nearly full. “I carry it for emergencies.”

She wryly glanced out the window. “This qualifies, I guess.”

“You want a little?”

“I hate whiskey,” she said bluntly. “Go ahead, though, if it makes you feel better.”

“No.” He put it away.

An awkward silence fell. Eric dug into his pack for oranges and tossed her one, then kicked his feet out in front of him. Weariness settled into his joints as if they had been waiting for him to get still. His hands ached with the wet and the long hours clutching the steering wheel, and his legs felt rubbery from slogging through the water. A chill squeezed his lungs as he remembered the last creek he’d forded.