Love Is The Bond: A Rowan Gant Investigation (3 page)

“Twenty-five months, today,” I offered.
“And don’t tell me you didn’t know that. The two year anniversary
was marked on your friggin’ calendar. That’s how
I
knew.”

“What were you doing looking at my calendar?”
she barked.

“Checking to see if you were free so I could
surprise you with a night out,” I shot back. “You know, dinner.
Symphony. Maybe even a hotel room just to be different…”

She closed her eyes and gave her head a quick
shake. “I’m sorry. I was out of line.”

“You were evading the subject is what you
were doing,” I replied.

“Yes, well, Kimberly’s death has nothing to
do with this.”

“Yeah… Right…” I nodded as I paused, then
fixed her with a serious stare. “You know, I thought the same thing
after the first time it happened to me… Ariel Tanner was my friend,
and I figured that pretty much had to be the reason for all the
ethereal bullshit I was dealing with… I spent a lot of time trying
to convince myself of that… You know that… But then… Well, we both
know how that worked out, don’t we?”

Her gaze softened a bit. I could tell by the
look on her face that my reference had hit home. The first homicide
case I’d ever been dragged into by the spirit of the victim had
affected her as well. Ariel had been my student of The Craft as
well as a good friend to both of us. And, unfortunately, she was
but one of a series of victims who were brutally tortured and
murdered by a serial killer bent on a misguided quest that I still
didn’t understand. I didn’t know that I ever would, but it haunted
me on a daily basis, and that was bad enough.

Finding and stopping her killer hadn’t really
brought me the peace I so desperately sought. In fact, it seemed
more as if it had created a permanent connection between the other
side of the veil and me, and ever since then the voices of the dead
had become a constant din in my ears.

A few years later when Felicity’s friend,
Kimberly Forest, was murdered, my wife ventured down that very same
path with the same devastating results. I knew it was taking a
toll, even now after all this time.

“Aye, but even you haven’t had anything major
happen since Kimberly either,” Felicity countered. “Maybe it’s
over, Rowan. Maybe we can finally get back to a normal life.”

I closed my eyes then reached up and pinched
the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. I could feel
a headache coming on. It was hovering directly between my eyes, but
unlike some of the ethereally induced pains I’d faced over the
years, I was pretty sure this one could be easily addressed with a
fistful of aspirin. At least I hoped it could.

“I wish I could believe that, honey,” I
finally muttered. “But, I still hear them.”

“But…”

I didn’t let her finish. “Felicity…
Sweetheart… It’s been a nice reprieve, but I think we both know
this is probably just the calm before the storm.”

“Aye, maybe so,” she muttered. “But I’m still
going to do this.”

“Why?” I pressed.

“Because I want to, then.”

“Okay, but why? Why do you want to?”

“Because I find it interesting,” she stated
with an unconvincing shrug, once again trying to sidestep the
issue. She turned her back to me and picked up a wide-toothed comb
from her dressing table. Gathering a handful of her hair, she began
intently working at detangling a section.

I watched her for a moment, silently mulling
over my impending choice of words. I had been exactly where she was
now, and I understood far better how she felt than anyone else
possibly could. What I was about to say to her was something she
had said to me more than once, and I didn’t want to come off as if
I were feeding her own words back to her—even though that was
exactly what I was about to do. After a measured beat I responded.
“Because you find it interesting, or because you have something to
prove?”

“What would I have to prove, then?” she
asked, shifting her gaze slightly to look at my reflection in the
mirror.

I took in a breath and with my words laid
open the wound. “Maybe you feel guilty because you couldn’t save
Kimberly Forest.”

She wheeled back around to face me and thrust
the comb in my direction. “Don’t…” The word caught in her throat,
and I thought I could hear her voice crack slightly. “Don’t… Just
don’t go there.”

I nodded. “I thought so.”

“Damn your eyes, Rowan Linden Gant!” she
admonished.

“Yeah, damn my eyes.”

I stepped forward and pulled her close,
wrapping her in a tight hug. She melted into me as she rested her
cheek against my shoulder. I knew she was harboring a desire to
cry, but at the same time I was all too aware that she wouldn’t. We
stood there for quite awhile, neither of us saying a thing but
still communicating with clarity unmatched by simple words.

She finally pulled away then turned back to
the mirror without comment and began working at her hair again. Her
darkened mood was obvious from the vicious strokes she was making
with the comb.

“Aye, I’m still going to do this, you know,”
she eventually announced.

“Yeah,” I answered softly, placing my hand on
her shoulder and giving it a light squeeze. “Yeah, I know you
are.”

* * * * *

There are certain inalienable truths.

We’re born. We grow old. We die. And,
somewhere within that span we live our lives. If we’re lucky, we
find someone to live that life with. If we’re very lucky, we find
that particular someone who makes us whole.

That was one of my personal truths.

In Felicity, I had found just exactly that
person who made me whole. I suppose that would explain why I was so
adamant about protecting her from those horrors I had already
experienced—and would surely experience many more times before
reaching that final truth.

At this particular moment, however, the
biggest conflict in my mind was the fact that she was, for the most
part, correct.

I
was the one
who talked to the dead.

It was
me
who had this preternatural connection with the
Otherworld that brought unimaginable agonies to my life, both
mental and physical. Felicity had only been dragged into the fray
because she was desperately trying to protect me, even if it meant
sacrificing herself. After repeatedly watching me go through
ethereal visions so intense that bloody stigmata mimicking a
victim’s wounds had appeared on my own body, she had seen more than
enough. From her side of the fence, it had been a wholly different
kind of torture, and when the tables were turned and I witnessed
her going through the same things over Kimberly Forest, I gained a
healthy respect for her feelings. I guess I couldn’t blame her. She
was only doing exactly what I would do.

Still, I was just as stubborn as she, and
when it came to being the protector, I felt it my place to assume
that role. It was the very meaning behind the name Rowan, after
all.

I plunged the tip of a shovel down into the
soft earth and used my foot to shove it deeper still. Pulling back
on the wooden handle, I levered a sizeable chunk of dirt upward and
plopped it off to the side then repeated the process as I continued
mulling over the events of the morning thus far.

We had reached an impasse. Felicity had it in
her head that she was going to add herself to the list of freelance
crime scene photographers used by the local police departments. As
a matter of fact, at this very moment she was literally on her way
to fill out the necessary paperwork.

The plain truth was that I was most likely
worrying myself over nothing. Ben had told us that the local
departments rarely used the freelancers. They were primarily there
for the specialized photos just as Felicity had said. The only
reason she’d had to go through the crime scene technician
certification courses was to meet the requirements set forth by the
city police department. What it really came down to was that the
freelance program was really nothing more than a contingency plan
born of an anal retentive bureaucracy.

So, as it stood, the likelihood of needing
them was minimal, much less Felicity having her name drawn from the
pool. Still, anyone can tell you that Murphy’s law will invoke
itself without warning, and I just had a bad feeling that if her
name was on the list, she was going to end up in the middle of
something. What’s more, I feared that since she had been fully
across the veil once, it would only take a single, highly charged
experience to drag her under in an ethereal riptide. That was how
it happened with me, so I had to figure it could happen with
her—unless of course, I had any say in the matter.

And, that was the very reason why I was
standing in our back yard on a chilly November morning, digging a
hole in the rock garden.

It was cold enough to cause my breath to
condense in rapidly dissipating clouds of steam yet still far
enough above the freezing mark that the somewhat soggy ground was
soft and easy to penetrate. My most laborious task so far had been
moving the small boulder from the spot where I wanted to dig.

I had waited until I was certain Felicity was
well on her way so that I would have ample time to complete my
project. It was a task that was a long time coming. Something I’d
started better than two years ago and now felt compelled to finish
without delay.

I struck the point of the shovel into the
hole with a repeated chopping motion, widening the small excavation
to suit my purpose. I only stopped for a brief moment when my heart
skipped a beat upon hearing our English setter and Australian
cattle dog yelping at the gate. But, I immediately breathed a sigh
of relief when I caught a glimpse of someone walking past the house
on the sidewalk out front. For a frightening instant, I feared
Felicity had returned too soon.

I finished squaring up the hole, which now
looked to be better than a foot deep, then set the shovel aside.
Kneeling next to it, I opened a small, metal toolbox I had set off
to the side before starting the manual labor portion of this job.
Inside the shallow container, pristine as when I had placed it
there, was what would at first glance be considered a toy. It was a
fashion doll to be exact, complete with long red hair and a smooth,
ivory-tinted complexion. If ever there was a perfect representation
of my ethnically stereotypical wife, this was it. The doll was
wrapped securely in clear cellophane and trussed with a
criss-crossed purple ribbon. It was a piece of SpellCraft commonly
known as a binding. A powerful act of magick with, in this case,
one purpose—to keep Felicity safe from harm. It was something I had
worked immediately following my wife’s experience with Kimberly
Forest’s kidnapping and eventual death.

Unfortunately, the day I had set about
casting the spell, she had come home unexpectedly, and I’d had to
hide the box before I could bury it. Soon after that, everything in
our lives had calmed. It had been so quiet for the past two plus
years that I had never seen the need to fully complete the spell.
Still, I had kept the old metal box in the back of my desk’s file
drawer all this time, hidden but not forgotten. I knew, as it sat
now, in some sense it was working its intended magick. However,
placing the poppet into the earth would bring the spell completely
to fruition beyond any doubt—as long as Felicity didn’t know about
it.

And, right now, something was telling me that
it was imperative for the spell to be finished. I tried not to
dismiss those “somethings” when they talked to me. Because, even
though they usually got me in trouble, ignoring them just made the
trouble that much worse.

I finally realized I was staring blankly at
the doll and broke myself out of the shallow trance. I closed the
lid and snapped the latch shut then nestled the box snugly at the
bottom of the hole. I stood and with almost mechanical repetition,
scooped the loose dirt in on top of it then tamped it down with the
back of the shovel. After rolling the decorative boulder back into
place—as well as muscling it around to make sure it looked close as
possible to its original position—I scattered some of the fallen
leaves around it in an attempt to hide any evidence that it had
been disturbed.

I stood there staring at the rock for a long
while, leaning on the shovel handle as I pondered the magnitude of
what I had just done. A spell was supposed to be cast in perfect
love and perfect trust. I could easily claim perfect love, but the
issue of perfect trust was another story entirely. I was inflicting
my will upon my wife without her knowledge, much less her blessing,
and I knew for that I would eventually pay. Even so, if it kept her
safe, the debt was one upon which I would gladly make good.

Finally, even though there was no one there
to hear the words but me, I simply said, “Not on my watch, Felicity
Caitlin O’Brien. Not on my watch.”

A few minutes later, I stowed the tools back
in the shed then went inside to clean up and get down to work. I
had a client with a system crash and two more with remote updates
scheduled for installation this afternoon.

It was going to be a full day. Had I realized
how full the days beyond this one were about to become, I would
have considered it a vacation.

Tuesday, November 8

12:27 A.M.

Suite 1233, Concourse Suites

St. Louis, Missouri

She couldn’t remember the last time she had
been this frustrated. Even the bath hadn’t helped, and she’d even
used six cans of milk instead of four.

Of course, maybe milk wasn’t what she needed
to use. Perhaps purity wasn’t the remedy she needed to seek.