Polterheist: An Esther Diamond Novel (20 page)

Feeling his touch, sensing the shift in his thoughts, my heart picked up the pace.

“I’ll be late.” My voice was faint.

“Don’t go yet.” So was his.

I saw the look in his eyes. And a moment later, I knew he saw the look in mine.

My voice shook a little as I said, “No, I should go . . .”

“Stay,” he urged softly. The streetlights shone on his black hair and shadows shifted across his face as he leaned closer to me. “This is nice. You. Here . . . with me.”

I was breathing faster, aware that his gaze had shifted to my mouth. Aware of what he wanted. What I wanted, too.

Lopez’s hand tightened on mine as he leaned very close, so that his breath was tickling my lips as he whispered, “I miss you.”

His lips were warm, full, and soft. I fell into his kiss like I was tumbling into a dream, losing all sense of reality and my surroundings as soon as his mouth touched mine. I could have been floating in outer space or sinking underwater, rather than sitting on a hard park bench in a public place, surround by people and traffic. I wouldn’t have known the difference.

I hadn’t forgotten that he
really
knew how to kiss, but it had been a long enough drought that I had forgotten the effect his kisses had on me. Now I clung to him and whimpered a little, my mouth opening to invite him in, my head spinning, and my hands reaching for his coat to pull him closer.

He was all silky heat on the inside, his mouth seductively hot compared to the cold air on my skin, his stroking tongue making my pelvis quiver reflexively. And on the outside, he was all cuddly warmth, my shelter in the cold night, his arms cradling me as he nipped and nuzzled me affectionately.

When we came up for air, I murmured, “You taste like chili dogs.”

We both laughed breathlessly, our hands grasping each other like swimmers trying to survive a riptide together.

“Esther . . . now that you know the worst . . .” he whispered.

“The worst?” I rubbed my forehead against his.

“My parents.”

We laughed again.

“Couldn’t we . . .” he breathed. “I mean . . . Us not seeing each other . . . It’s not really working out, is it?”

I started to pull away, coming to my senses now that he had mercifully paused in kissing me.

Lopez didn’t stop me. “Am I wrong?”

“You’re not exactly . . . wrong.” I scooted a little away from him, unable to think or talk sensibly when he was that close.

“But . . . ?” he prodded.

“I don’t think I’m very good for you,” I said in a rush.

He looked around, as if searching in our vicinity for an intelligent response to this. Finding none, he said, “Does that matter so much?”

“Are you listening to yourself?”

“Not really,” he admitted and tried to kiss me again.

“Wait! No,
wait.”
He could probably tell from the excited breathlessness in my voice, as well as my innate inability to move away from him again, that I was trying to think rather than rejecting his touch.

Lopez let out his breath in a gush, held up his hands, and nodded. He scooted back, putting a little safe distance between us on the bench.

After a moment, he said, “I know I’m the one who broke up with you, and—”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s not that,” I said firmly.

A swift, sharp intake of breath. “Are you seeing someone else?”

“No. It’s not that, either.”

“Oh.” He sagged with relief. “Okay.” A pause. “Then, what?”

“I nearly got you killed,” I blurted. “More than once. It was because of
me.
I can’t go through that again! I
can’t.
I won’t be the reason you get–get—” Now that I had said it aloud, I was surprised to hear my voice break.

Yes, this was a fraught subject for me; but I hadn’t realized I would cry if we talked about it. I felt tears spill down my face, and I couldn’t go on. My throat was too choked with emotion. I put my hand over my mouth and started whimpering with distress now, rather than passion.

He was clearly taken aback. Whatever he had imagined I might say, it had obviously been nothing remotely like
this.

“Oh, Esther. Hey. Come on. Shh, shh.” He slid across the bench to put his arms around me, comforting now rather than seductive. “What’s all this, huh? Shh. Everything’s okay.” He kissed my hair, murmuring soothing things while he used one hand to fish around in his pockets. After a moment, he produced a crumpled handkerchief that had seen better days.

That snapped me out of my bout of sniffles. I shied away from it when he tried to press it into my hand. “Where has this been?”

“Sometimes I use it to pick up evidence. When I don’t want to get fingerprints on—”

“Ugh! I can’t touch
that.
Put it away!’

“You’re already sounding better,” he noted, pocketing the sad piece of cotton.

I scrubbed my hands over my face and took a deep breath. “I just get very emotional thinking about you lying in the basement of the Livingston Foundation, dying of an ordeal poison.”

“Yeah, I get pretty emotional when I think about it, too. That was grim.” He added, “Mostly, though, I remember seeing Dr. Livingston go off to kill you, and I couldn’t move a muscle to stop her. That was the
really
grim part.”

“See? You wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for
me.
You never would have gone to Harlem that night and confronted that evil, demented, deadly—”

“Well, sure, I would,” he said, sounding puzzled.

I paused. “Huh?”

“She was a
killer,
Esther. And she was about to kill again. Yeah, it made me crazy-violent that it was
you
she going to kill. And since she’s dead and I hope I can trust you not to repeat this, I will candidly admit that I violated some of her civil rights when questioning her and tearing apart her place in search of you. But Esther . . .” He brushed my hair off my face. “I would have gone to the Livingston Foundation that night no matter
who
she was trying to kill. That’s my job. It’s what I do. You know—that whole ‘protect and serve’ thing. I don’t get to say, ‘Well, I don’t really feel attached to the person that demented bitch is going to murder tonight, so I guess I won’t try to stop her.’ I have to go even if the victim is a total stranger—which is usually the case, and frankly a lot easier for me to deal with.” Apparently hoping to lighten the mood, he added, “Esther, listen to me. I’d have to go to the Livingston Foundation in those circumstances even if the victim was Max.”

That made me snort with laughter, even though I was actually, at that moment, thinking about how much alike he and Max were. These two men, centuries apart in age and living in such different realities; yet both so unwavering in their purpose and selfless in their mission. And both so dear to me.

“By the way,” Lopez added, continuing to shift the mood away from my brief bout of tears. “What the hell did Max
do
to me that night? Or
for
me? If anything?”

“If anything?” I repeated indignantly. “He saved your life!”

“I thought so, too. But when I got to the hospital later . . . Uh, you do remember that’s where I decided to go once I found out what some of the
revolting
ingredients were in that potion he poured down my throat?”

“Yes.”

“They couldn’t find anything wrong with me. They couldn’t find evidence that anything
had
been wrong with me, either. There was no trace or evidence at all of whatever Dr. Livingston had done to me, or of whatever Max gave me. Nothing,
nada,
zip.”

I hadn’t realized this, but I wasn’t surprised by it. Medical practitioners weren’t trained to look for mystical means of killing and curing, after all. And for all I knew, when Max’s cure restored balance to Lopez’s body, perhaps it even eliminated all mystical traces of what had happened to him that night.

I tried again to explain my fears. “But if you hadn’t been so upset about knowing she was holding
me
captive somewhere, she wouldn’t have been able to catch you off your guard and—”

“That’s flattering,” he said. “And maybe it’s a view of my prowess that I should encourage in a woman I want see naked.”

“Oh!” Well,
that
had caught me off guard.

“But I’m not Superman, Esther. Dr. Livingston was a very clever and devious woman, with extensive knowledge of exotic ritual poisons—about which I know exactly nothing. I had no
idea
she could kill me just by touching me with a topical poison. And I don’t understand why, in that case, it didn’t kill her, too.” Lopez blew out his breath hard enough to make the hair on his forehead flutter. “
If
that’s what happened. I’m skeptical by now. I wonder if that ‘poison’ was just some weird short-term hallucinogenic that she’d developed a resistance to, since I was completely fine later, as if nothing had ever happened.”

I didn’t bother trying to explain that Dr. Livingston had been a bokor, a dark sorceress indebted to very powerful and dangerous spirits. It was the sort of explanation that never got us anywhere. I wondered if I should even try to broach my concerns about nearly getting Lopez killed on other occasions . . . but when I thought about it, those were cases he was already involved in, and—based on what he had said tonight—those were risks he would have taken as part of his duty, regardless of whether or not I was involved or in danger.

He put his hand on my cheek and met my eyes. “So . . . are we okay? You know I care about you. But you get that I do my job even when I don’t care, right? Well, don’t care in a personal way, I mean. So this stuff you were crying about a minute ago . . . which,
God
, that’s painful! I really,
really
can’t stand making you cry, so let’s agree—”

“Shh,” I said, and I kissed him.

He was still cooperating enthusiastically when his phone rang a few minutes later. Breathing fast, he rested his forehead against mine and murmured, “That’s work calling . . . I have to take it . . . I’m sorry. They must have found something in the search.”

I stiffened, thinking of Max and Lucky. “You’d better take it, then,” I said breathlessly, wanting to know right now if either of my friends was in trouble, rather than wondering what Lopez would learn when he checked his messages later.

He nodded, kissed me quickly again, and answered the call. “Lopez.”

As he did so, I probed and prodded in vulnerable places inside myself, waiting to hear Dr. Livingston’s nasty voice scaring me yet again. But she remained silent. I had a feeling that Lopez had finally shut her up for good.

Snuggled next to me on the cold park bench, he sat up so alertly I was startled.

“What?”
He listened to his caller. “Say that again . . .
Jesus.
This will be a three-ring circus. Yeah, you
bet
I do. Where is he? Okay, I’m on my way.”

He ended the call and stood up, helping me rise from the bench as he put his phone way. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. Right now.”

“Okay.” Thinking of Max and Lucky, I asked warily, “What’s happened?”

“There’s been another hijacking. About an hour ago.”

“Oh!” No wonder he had to go.

“And this time, someone shot the driver.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “Is he alive?”

“He is.” Lopez added with relish, “And he’s identified the shooter.”

16

B
ack at Fenster’s, I wanted to find Lucky and Max to tell them the news right away. Lopez wouldn’t say anything to me about the identity of the shooter, who was still at large, though he told me it would probably be all over the news once the gunman was apprehended. So this was the break in the case that Lucky had been hoping for.

Depending on who the shooter was and what could be learned once the news broke, this might also assist with our mystical problem at Fenster’s, if our poltergeist was indeed connected to a nefarious scheme to commit polterheists. (Well,
I
thought it was clever.)

The cops were done searching the locker room and all gone by the time I got back there—which was to be expected, I thought, when I saw the time. I’d been gone longer than I’d realized. Time really flies when you’re lip-locked with a man about whom you’ve fantasized far too much.

I took off my coat, donned the elf ears-and-cap which I had shoved into my pocket earlier this evening, and checked my reflection in the mirror. I looked disheveled and excited . . . and my ears were a little smooshed and bent. Oops. Oh, well. They only needed to last for two more days.

With less than an hour left before closing, I decided not even to bother touching up my makeup, and I left the locker room as I was. I realized that after I got out onto the floor, I probably wouldn’t be able to leave it again until closing time. So, just in case Max and Lucky had gotten tired of searching for me (or had gotten hungry and thirsty), I popped quickly into the break room to see if they were there.

“Oh, hi!” I said, startled. “Um, sorry,” I added, realizing I had interrupted something. Followed by, “Uh, is everything all right?”

I was looking at Rick and Elspeth. This late into the shift, no one else was in the break room—everyone who wasn’t on the floor now had clocked out—and they were alone together in here.

And this wasn’t just happenstance, I realized; they were clearly
together.
But not in a good way, it seemed.

Rick was holding Elspeth by the shoulders, and he looked furious with her. I saw the way his fingers were digging into her flesh when I walked in on them, and I thought she’d have bruises tomorrow. Elspeth looked . . . oh, pretty much the same as always. Sulky, sullen, angry, snide, slouching. And . . . triumphant, I realized with surprise.

Maybe she was glad she had made Rick angry—which, for someone like Elspeth, probably counted as an achievement. Or maybe she had the upper hand in their argument, whatever it was.

“Hi, Esther.” Rick took a breath and released Elspeth.

“Hi.” I noticed that Elspeth didn’t move away from him. He must have been hurting her a moment ago, or perhaps trying to intimidate her, but she didn’t seem to be upset with him. Mostly, I thought, she just seemed annoyed that I had intruded on their scene. After an awkward pause, I asked, “What’s up?”

Rallying, Rick said casually, “Miles couldn’t find you before he left for the night, so we all thought you went home and forgot to clock out or something.”

“Oh, I had sort of an unexpected detour this evening after Karaoke Bear malfunctioned,” I said vaguely. “I’ll talk to Miles tomorrow and explain.” Actually, Miles would do most of the talking, and since I didn’t really expect to get paid for kissing Lopez, I’d go along with having my pay docked for the time I’d been missing.

“The singing bear malfunctioned?” Rick said alertly. “What happened?”

He and Elspeth exchanged a glance. She looked smug. Rick’s face—unusually, for him—was unreadable.

“Yes, what happened?” Elspeth asked me.

I hadn’t realized these two were more than scant acquaintances; but it was obvious from their body language and eye contact now that there was a relationship between them. The extent or the nature of the relationship wasn’t at all clear to me, though.

“He short-circuited or something, I think,” I said.

At Rick’s prodding, I elaborated a little; but I didn’t hint at what had really happened. Not with Elspeth in the room, watching me with those simultaneously hostile and avaricious eyes. There was actually something vampirish about this ardent
Vampyre
fan, I realized. This was the way she had looked at me when asking me what it had been like to be embraced by actor Daemon Ravel, and also when later asking me how I’d felt upon thinking I might die. It was as if, lacking access to her own emotions, she fed off of other people’s.

“That’s all there is to tell about the bear,” I lied with a casual shrug. “Short circuit. Smoke. Pop! Keel over. Dead.”

“Dead?” Elspeth repeated—exactly the way I might involuntarily repeat Lopez’s name if someone said it right now out of the blue.

Well, no, not
exactly
the way. I had never been and sincerely hoped I never would be that creepy. But it did make me think of the way a woman would respond to hearing her absent lover’s name unexpectedly said aloud.

Stop right there. He’s not your lover
.

Well, not yet. But he said he wanted to see me naked.

God, how did he make such a bald statement sound so hot?

I thought again of his lips on mine, his breath brushing my cheek, his hands . . .

“Oh, calm down,” I said aloud.

Seeing their startled expressions, I felt embarrassed. Until I realized they thought I meant that Elspeth should calm down.

Rick chuckled and gestured to the goth girl. “She gets a little excited by death.” He tried to make it sound like a joke. He failed.

“And men get excited by genitals,” she said with open disgust.

Well, she must be
tremendous
fun in bed.

Given Elspeth’s consuming interest in Daemon Ravel aka Lord Ruthven, I assumed she was heterosexual, at least in theory. So I wondered if she was extremely disappointed in her sex life—with Rick? Or resentful of not getting sex from Rick? She’d certainly had a clumsy way of expressing her attraction to Lopez, followed promptly by being resentful when he didn’t reciprocate.

Then I wondered if “excited by death” meant . . .

No, not going there,
I decided firmly. These were not thoughts I had any interest in pursuing.

In any event, I would not have said that the sullen, emotionally stunted, poor little rich goth girl seemed to be Rick’s type . . . But then, I hardly knew Rick. Maybe she was exactly his type. His clean-cut appearance and wholesome persona weren’t necessarily evidence of his sexual tastes or emotional needs, after all. Maybe his intellectual passion for psychology translated into a personal passion for deeply troubled women . . .

Certainly he had seemed passionate when I’d entered the room. But not in a good way. I glanced at Elspeth, recalling that moment and wondering whether I should leave them alone together. But it was clear that she considered my presence an annoying intrusion. So I said that I needed to go finish the shift on the floor, and I left the room.

As the door closed behind me, I thought of Lopez’s unfounded and probably unfair assessment of Rick as an opportunist. And it occurred to me that, especially for someone who had insight into the way people’s minds worked, the rich, unhappy, and insecure Elspeth might be very easy to manipulate . . .

* * *

When I got to the throne room, I found Diversity Santa, Belsnickel, Sugarplum, and Vixen all waiting for me.

Jeff took advantage of the fact that things were slow this late in the shift to start berating me immediately. “Where have you been? I’ve been stranded here in holiday hell with Belsnickel the blind elf, his drooling reindeer, and the meanest Santa’s helper who’s ever lived! Do you have any idea how many people Sugarplum has frightened away this evening?”

“I thought you liked kids?” I said to Lucky.

“I do,” said the Santa-bearded elf. “I just don’t like their parents. What a buncha whiny schmucks.”

“Where do you
find
these people?” Jeff said.

I still thought it best, as I had thought earlier today when asking for his help with makeup and wardrobe, not to tell Jeff where I had found Lucky.

“Diversity Santa’s been a little cranky all evening,” Lucky told me.

“Oh, he’s been cranky for longer than that,” I replied. “Don’t take it personally.”

Lucky made a dismissive gesture that indicated he hadn’t let it bother him. In his line of work, after all, he had dealt with more much difficult personalities than an actor who was unhappy about the wasteland his career seemed to be stuck in.

Hoping this news would distract Jeff from his doldrums, I told the three men about tonight’s hijacking, the shooting, and the possibility that the shooter would soon be identified.

“This is great news! I gotta go out to Forest Hills and tell the boss in person. The family’s problems with Fenster’s might be almost over!” Lucky added to Max, “Doc, Nelli’s had a hard day. Do you want me to take her for a walk and drop her off at your place, since I’m heading out now?”

I glanced at the familiar and realized she looked weary and worn. Her fuzzy antlers looked floppy, her head was drooping, and she was panting with fatigue.

“Thank you, my dear fellow. That is most considerate.” As Max handed Nelli’s leash over to Lucky, he removed his sunglasses. “It will also be a relief to me to cease wearing these. It’s been almost impossible for me to see anything in Solsticeland today!”

“There is a sense in which that’s a blessing,” I said, thinking of the Hanukkah-goes-Vegas display.

Lucky said to me, “Kid, I guess the doc will catch you up on what we been doin’ today. I’ll talk to you both tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Lucky,” I said as he left.

Jeff stared after him with a thoughtful frown. After a long moment, be turned an accusing gaze on me. “Oh, my
God,
Esther.”

“Max,” I said quickly, “maybe we should—”

“
Lucky.
The
family.
Forest Hills?” said Jeff, each phrase getting louder. “The
boss!”

“Hello!” I said brightly to a child who was approaching the throne. “Are you here to see Santa?”

“‘The family’s problems with Fenster’s’?”

The kid and her parents took one look at the bellowing Diversity Santa, changed their minds, and left.

“Are you
insane?”
Jeff demanded. “Do you know who that man is?”

“Well, I gather
you
know now,” I said.

Jeff was a pretty voracious news consumer. I had hoped he wouldn’t put it together, but I really hadn’t counted on that. Mostly, I had hoped to be in another part of the building when he figured out who Lucky was.

“There is a valid explanation for Lucky’s presence here today,” Max said to Jeff. “As there is for mine.”

“Yeah, yeah, your poltergeist.” Jeff rolled his eyes dismissively.

Unlike Lopez, Jeff wasn’t stubbornly conventional and obsessively prone to seeking rational explanations in terms which adhered to his established belief system; he was just obtuse.

“Dreidel!” Twinkle came trotting over, his bells jangling as he bounced along. “I didn’t know you were still here!”

“Nobody did,” I said. “And I’m starting to wish it had stayed that way. Are you working the throne room with me now, Twinkle? I warn you, Diversity Santa is in a bit of a snit.”

“Isn’t he always?” said Twinkle.

“You brought a Gambello hit man here?” Jeff raged. “You got
me
to help you smuggle a wiseguy into Fenster’s?”

“Lower your voice, would you?” I snapped.

Realizing this was good advice, he did so. “You brought a Gambello . . . Have you lost your mind, Esther?”

Twinkle gave Jeff a puzzled look, then said to me, “No, I’m on photo duty, Dreidel. The store’s clearing out now, of course—”

“Well, it is getting late.” I said to Diversity Santa, “Just a little longer until we clock out for the night. So let’s all try to stay calm in this highly public place!”

Twinkle continued, “So I’ve just been uploading to the system the candid shots taken this evening. Probably no point, really. We fell hours behind today—we’re so understaffed! So I’ll bet all of these people have already left the store.”

“It’s all right, Twinkle,” I said reassuringly. “We’re bound to fall behind on things.”

“Especially when a wiseguy-fraternizing elf doesn’t even show up for her shift!” Jeff snapped.

“I came as soon as I could.” I added primly, “I was detained for a police matter.”

“Anything to do with smuggling a famous mob hitter into Fenster’s today?” Jeff muttered.

Twinkle continued, “And what I found when I was uploading was so . . . so
weird.
Photo after photo.”

Max said to Jeff, “The two problems may be linked. But even if they’re not, Lucky recognizes the danger of the mystical evil haunting Fenster’s—”

“Do we still think it’s a ghost, Max?” I asked. “A poltergeist?”

“A ghost?” Twinkle asked doubtfully, tapping on the computer monitor to bring up some images. “Do you really think that’s what this is?”

Max said to me, “I’m leaning away from that theory, now. I’m theorizing in a bit of a vacuum—”

“But that won’t stop you from talking,” Jeff grumbled.

“—but I suspect that Nelli’s reactions today, which were at times dramatic, were not consistent with a ghostly presence at Fenster’s. I think the entity we’re investigating may be something else entirely.”

“Good, because I don’t think it’s a ghost, either,” said Twinkle. “I think it looks like . . . something a lot worse, don’t you?”

He turned the flat screen monitor so that we could all see it.

We fell silent and stared in stunned alarm at the twenty or so digital photos he ran past us in a quick slide show.

In picture after picture, ordinary people smiling for the camera—in front of Solstice Castle, posing with Prince Midnight, greeting an elf, or visiting Santa—were unaware that, within easy reach, something indistinct and shadowy, with glowing red eyes and dripping fangs, was reaching for them with sharp, grasping claws.

When we got to the last picture in the batch, Twinkle said unnecessarily, “Here’s one of you, Jeff.”

“Holy
shit
,” Jeff said with feeling, looking at the glowing eyes that peered over his shoulder as he posed with a wailing toddler on his lap. “What the hell is that?”