War-N-Wit, Inc. – Resurrection (8 page)

 
 
 
 

Chapter Fourteen

 

After the chocolate éclair, we walked back up to

Lafayette Square
and sat on one of its benches to wait for the next bus. When we saw it coming,
we walked over to the boarding point and resumed our second round trip tour,
getting off at
River Street
to explore in the daylight. We wandered in and out of shops. I was getting
tired and the afternoon was getting on, so we headed to a set of the uneven
stone steps to cut up to
Bay
Street
for the walk back to our hotel. From
nowhere, a black cat ran at my feet. I gasped and stumbled, barely managing to
avoid a fall by grabbing onto Chad’s
arm. As I straightened, I found myself eye level with a newspaper box. The headline
hit me hard in the stomach, but it was the picture that stabbed my heart.

“Chad!”
I pointed to the newspaper. “That was our little waitress last night!”

Savannah Student’s
Body Found in Alley
, screamed the headlines. Our little waitress Diana
smiled at us from the front page.

“Damn it!” Chad
reached in his pocket and inserted quarters into the slot. I grabbed a copy as
soon as the latch lifted.

“The body of college
student Diana Tolbert was discovered in the early morning hours in an alley
near the restaurant where she worked…”

“Chad,
that’s not right! I saw her last night walking right down

River Street
! Why would she be back up by
the restaurant?”

“Com’on.” Chad
took my arm. “Let’s cross the street and sit down over in the park. Time to
check in with G.”

I held back. It had been such a great afternoon I hadn’t
even thought about or needed a trip to a ladies’ room until the last half-hour
or so, and then I’d figured we were heading back to our room to change before
dinner and hadn’t looked for one. It seemed the game plan was changing. I had a
feeling we weren’t going to be back in our room anytime soon and this personal
problem wasn’t going to do anything but get more pressing.

I glanced at the shops behind us. A restaurant. Good. “Let
me make a side trip to the ladies’ room first. Why don’t you go in and get us
two coffees to go while I do. Be out in just a minute.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

He walked to the bar area while I headed for the door with
the feminine silhouette. I heard the door open and close while I was in one of
the two stalls. I nodded to the woman waiting by the sink as I walked over to
wash my hands, though I was surprised to see her just standing there. The other
stall had been empty when she’d come in. And she still didn’t seem in a hurry
to take either of the stalls now that I was out.

I turned from the mirror to the paper towel dispenser. From
nowhere, a hand flashed out, smothering my nose and mouth with a cloth reeking
with the sickeningly sweet smell of chloroform. The hand was attached to an arm
wearing the pinstriped black sleeve of a man’s coat. The cuff of the dress
shirt glowed blindingly white as I followed it down into darkness.

 

 
* * *

 

I came abruptly out of total black but not into full light.
Candlelight, that was it. And firelight. I was upright and could pass as a
duct-tape dispenser, my arms secured at wrist and elbow bend to the arms of a
chair. For good measure, another swatch of duct-tape ran on top of and across
my fingers, rendering them immobile too. From the curve of the arms and what I
could see, I was in a straight-backed chair of the Empire style. And just in
case that didn’t hold me, another few turns of duct tape ran under my breasts
and around the back. My ankles were crossed and looped with the damn stuff, too.
Well, standing up and taking the chair with me was out. At least for now. Taped
as they were, I couldn’t stand flat and didn’t think I could balance on the
sides of my feet.

I looked around the room. I knew I was in the

Jones Street
house.
The Empire style chair itself was a dead give-away and so was the room. It was
wallpapered in dark red that seemed almost black in the muted candle-fire glow.
It had been almost five o’clock when I’d seen the newspaper. It had to be full
dark by now though the heavy velvet drapes, also dark red and trimmed with gold
edging, wouldn’t have let much light in in any event.

It was a bedroom. Against the far wall stood a heavy
canopied bed matching the décor of the last century that dominated the whole
house. There was an antique washbasin, complete with a water pitcher in
Wedgewood blue and white. The knick-knacks on the fireplace mantel looked like
somebody’d robbed the British
Museum. Not to mention
the andirons holding the burning logs looked to be the original cast iron ones
placed there when it was built.

But the kicker was the man sitting in a matching chair
across from me. He was dressed in a three piece suit, complete with watch fob
and chain. He wasn’t stuck to his chair with duct-tape. I didn’t think he
needed to be. He was a lot more immobile than me. He stared straight ahead, but
I was pretty sure he wasn’t seeing anything. I’d never seen anybody in a
catatonic state. Until now, that is.

“Hello, Mr. Hedgepath,” I said. “We haven’t met before, have
we? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure you haven’t left this room in a while, have you?”

No response. And no surprise.

The door opened. It creaked. Surprising, really, in a house
this recently restored and so well-maintained.

I wasn’t surprised to see Oliver Hedgepath walking in. Or at
least, the Oliver Hedgepath we’d been seeing.

“Well,” he said. “Ariel Garrett. The new Seer of the Tear of
Isis. You’ve led me a merry chase.”

I didn’t respond.

“Cat got your tongue? Oh, dear, where’s that caustic
repartee I’ve come to know and hate? Can’t think of any new names to call me?”

“I know exactly what to call you. Dead man walkin’.” I
deliberately spaced out my next sentence, punctuating each word. “My. Husband.
Is. Going. To. Kill. You. You know that, don’t you? Whoever you are?”

“Well, he’s done it before. Several times, as a matter of
fact. But I’ve done it to him a few times, too.” He dropped the glamour
cloaking him as Oliver Hedgepath. The man now standing before me was tall. Not
fat, not thin. Soft-looking, though. Longish dark hair threaded with gray.
Surprisingly smooth face, no character lines. Obsidian eyes. The eyes gave him
a reptilian air.

He moved closer and held the Tear of Isis in front of me. I
saw the man I’d seen last night, rutting like a pig over the helpless maid.
Neville. That time around, he’d been Neville Thornsberry. Now he was fully
clothed, in a room straight out of Regency England, a man’s private study. A
young girl stood in front of him, shaking with rage, but she wasn’t any maid.
And she wasn’t helpless.

“No daughter of mine’s
marrying any damned tenant. You’re Lady Anne Thornsberry and you’re marrying
Edward Davenport! He’s a Baron, girl, you’re not throwing your life away on a
farmer!”

The girl, Lady Anne. She was me. This pig had been my
father
?

“I’ll marry who I
please! And who I please is not some fat pig willing to replenish your coffers
so he can wallow on top of me like you wallow on the maids when you think no
one’s looking!”

The slap delivered two hundred years ago stung just as much
now as when he’d delivered it.

“You shut your mouth,
girl! My coffers need no replenishing!”

Her hand—my hand—covered her cheek.
“Your coffers are empty! Tradesmen are pounding on your doors! You’ve
gambled almost everything away and I will not be the sacrificial sheep to save
your miserable skin! I’m in love with Jamie Daniels! I’m marrying him. Yes, a
farmer! A tenant on your lands! Until the merchants take them from you!”

Pounding on the doors.
“Sir
Neville! Sir Neville! The Sheriff’s here! There’s been a terrible thing happen!
Jamie Daniels, he were set upon on the road on the way back from market last
e’en. He’s dead, Sir Neville!”

Lady Anne—me—stared at Thornsberry. Her hiss carried the
venom of a cobra.
“You! You did this!”

“I told you, girl. No
daughter of mine’s marrying a farmer.”

The vision in the Tear faded. I looked at the man I still
only knew as Hedgepath.

“You know, first thing I’m doing when we finish all our
business this time is calling my daddy and tellin’ him how very grateful I am
he’s my father.”

He laughed shortly. “Yeah, well, lot of good all that did
me. Seein’ as how you ran away to London
and became a governess. Owe me a debt of thanks on that one, after all, girl,
the Duke you were working for was fool enough to fall in love with you after
his wife died and married you. Ended up a Duchess in that life.”

“He was a good man,” I said, knowing absolutely that was
true. “But he wasn’t Jamie. And I never loved him. Not that way.”

“Love! Useless emotion. Clouds the brain. Been Magic Man’s
downfall before, the times I’ve taken him down. Day-dreaming on the way back
from market, undoubtedly, any fool knew you had to watch for highwaymen that
day and time.”

“Especially when a Lord’s hired them to take down the
nuisance interrupting his plans.” I said. “Avarice. Greed. Egomania. That’s
been your downfall, hasn’t it? The times he’s taken you down.”

“Yeah, well. You win some, you lose some. I’m not going to
lose this one.”

Hedgepath’s cell phone sounded. He laughed. “Wonder who that
is? But we won’t answer it right now. Let him stew a while longer.” The ringing
stopped, signaling the arrival of a voice mail. He retrieved it and held the
phone so I could hear.

“Hedgepath. I’ll be seeing you.”

The glamour throwing imposter laughed again. “Oh, I’m
counting on it, Magic Man,” he said. He turned and left the room.

 
 
 
 

Chapter Fifteen

 

“Well, Ollie,” I said to the real—and very catatonic—Oliver
Hedgepath. “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into. Any suggestions?
Thoughts? Ideas? How the hell did you hook up with that turdsniffer anyway?”

I didn’t expect any response, which is good, since I
certainly wasn’t getting one. Okay. First things first. Chad knew who
had me. The Hedgepath we’d come to know and so not love. So

Jones Street
was the first place he’d
check. Except he’d need to talk to G first and see if the Guardians had been
able to come up with anything that might shed some light on what hidden secret
the Tear of Isis held that was so damn valuable. And who in the world of magic
was powerful enough and dark enough to use it. And I hoped he was rational
enough to know that and not just storm blindly in.

And damn it, I needed to know what information G’d been able
to come up with, too. After all, I was the one sitting here. And whatever power
the Tear had that the fake Hedgepath had been using, accessing it clearly
hadn’t done Ollie over there any good and probably wasn’t going to increase my
IQ much, either.

I heard a rustling sound under the bed. Oh, lovely! Too much
noise for a roach. Or even for a bunch of roaches. A rat? A snake? A bat? None
of the above would have surprised me much. It was an old house renovated by a
practitioner of dark magic.

A dark head emerged from the bottom of the antique coverlet.
This wasn’t the best light in the world, but still—too big for either a rat or
a snake. A bat I didn’t know about and it was dark under that bed, though I
didn’t know if a bat would actually care to nest under a bed. Then shoulders
emerged. Not big enough for wings, but maybe its wings were folded. And then
the bundle of dark fur stood and stretched.

“Micah?” Now that was a silly question. First, my black cat
wasn’t even technically mine. He was a stray who’d just decided he liked Pine
Whisper Plantation. Which was over a hundred miles away. And since I’d just
decided his name was Micah, for whatever reason I’d decided it, he certainly
wasn’t privy to it. Probably wouldn’t answer to it if he was. He was a cat,
after all. I’d seen a black cat at least four or five times on this trip, twice
outside this house.

He walked across the floor toward me, precise as a ballet
dancer, a cat with a purpose. No languid feline stroll for this cat. He bounded
up into my lap and started purring. I found the sound and vibration soothing.
Calming, in fact. And in calming down, I could think with a greater degree of
clarity.

Chad
and I had a connection. By now, I accepted it so naturally I didn’t even
consciously think about it anymore, even though I’d spent several months
fighting it before I admitted it. We could feel each other. Even on the day I’d
first physically met him, as opposed to the two months prior to that when we’d
first embarked on our email courtship, I’d felt his sudden panic when he’d
hydroplaned on the interstate on the way home the night of our first meeting,
felt it so intensely that I’d damn near hyperventilated. Any sudden, unexpected
trauma affected me as much as it did him. I mean, I’d never actually had a
knife stuck through my foot, but I knew what it felt like. Because I’d felt it
when a bail-jumping pimp in Vegas had put one through his foot. I’d never
almost bled out either, but I knew what that felt like, too. Because a serial
killer’s bullet had hit an artery in his shoulder during a stake-out and I’d
followed him right on down into darkness and almost over to the other side.

I’d never asked—because up until now nothing traumatic had
happened to me—if he felt my pain as intensely as I felt his. But I was sure he
did. Had he actually passed out while collecting our coffee to go when
Hedgepath chloroformed me? Maybe not, but I’d bet he’d been knocked to hell and
back and probably out of commission for all practical purposes. Otherwise, he’d
have called Hedgepath before now. Probably scared the hell out of the
restaurant staff. I hoped they hadn’t called an ambulance because trying to
explain to medical personnel would be a bitch.

I’d gotten that far in my thought process when the cat
raised his paw and started swatting my left hand. At least, I thought he was
swatting my left hand. After a few swipes, I realized he was swatting at a
target. A target barely outside the duct tape, now that I noticed and I was
sure glad of that. My engagement ring. The engagement ring that had horrified
me with the size of the diamond when I’d wakened the morning after our first
night and realized the ring he’d slipped on my finger in the midst of the
sweetness was big enough to buy a car. And I’d have been
pissed
if Hedgepath had taped over it with duct-tape and gotten
sticky adhesive on it, too. That was the feminine side of me talking. The
masculine side of me reminded me that the diamond had a side effect. I’d
discovered it the first day we were apart after that night, the week before our
Vegas wedding.

 
When we were apart,
rubbing that stone intensified our mental connection. It also produced a warmth
that began in the pit of my stomach and spiraled downward into a sensation of
physical connection. I hadn’t rubbed that stone over the last few weeks, I’d
had no need, as we’d been together pretty much twenty-four-seven. But I needed
every bit of mental and physical connection I could get right now. Because if I
got enough, it was possible I could hitch-hike enough energy to actually
somehow
see-hear
what he was doing
and saying. And if he was talking to G, I needed that information just as much
as he did. Only problem was, I didn’t have any way to rub the diamond, my hands
being taped as they were.

The cat wasn’t just swatting aimlessly. He was actually
pushing
the ring with his paw. Making it
turn sideways on my hand. He was trying to push the diamond
between
my fingers, whereupon I’d be
able to rub the stone merely by wiggling my fingers even the little bit that
the tape allowed me to move them. I tried to spread my fingers as much as
possible under the sticky mess of the tape, which wasn’t much. It was enough,
though, and the diamond moved smoothly between my ring finger and third finger.
I started wriggling my fingers, rubbing that stone like my life depended on it.
Because I figured it did.

“Micah, you did that on purpose, didn’t you?” I asked.

No answer.

“Cat got your tongue, huh?”

Low growly purr. Almost as though in disapproval.

“Okay, it was a bad pun,” I conceded. “But very apropos,
don’t you think? And even though you won’t admit it, you did it on purpose, we
both know you did. So thanks. More than I can tell you. If we ever get back to
Pine Whisper Plantation, you got a quart of cream in the ‘fridge waitin’ on you
whenever you want it. To hell with milk. How’s that?”

Low purr. Of pleasure, this time, I’d swear it. This cat had
a great vocabulary. Understood every word I was saying. And it was my cat. It
was Micah. I didn’t care if we were a hundred miles from home. It was Micah.

There it was. The warmth in the pit of my stomach, moving
lower. And higher. And expanding. And enveloping me in the strength of Chad’s
arms. I felt his body pressed against mine. I reached out with everything I had
and the room around me dissolved. I was back on

River Street
, or at least my
consciousness was, floating above Chad. He was striding down the
sidewalk, charging toward the nearest steps up to
Bay Street
. He was almost running, his
cell phone to his ear, intent on getting back to the hotel and retrieving the
SUV.

His lips were moving, but I couldn’t actually hear him. I
pushed harder, reached further, stretching my senses. There was a bright flash
behind my eyes. And then I had it. The connection.