15

DONNA AND EDWARD DID a tender but decorous good-bye. Peter rolled his eyes and scowled as if they'd done a lot more than a semi-chaste kiss. He'd have had a cow if he could have seen them smooching earlier at the airport. Becca kissed Edward on the cheek, giggling. Peter ignored it all and got in the car as soon as he could as if afraid "Ted" might try to hug him, too.

Edward waved until the car turned onto Lomos and out of sight, then he turned to me. All he did was look at me, but it was enough.

"Let's get in the car and get some air conditioning going before I grill you about what the hell is going on," I said.

He unlocked the car. We got inside. He started the engine and the air conditioner, though the air hadn't had time to cool yet. We sat in the expensive hum of his engine with the hot air blowing on us, and silence filled the car.

"Are you counting to ten?" he asked.

"Try a thousand and you'll be closer."

"Ask. I know you want to."

"Okay, we'll skip the tirade about you dragging Donna and her kids into your mess and go straight to who the hell is Riker and why did he send goons to warn you off?"

"First, it was Donna's mess, and she dragged me into it."

My disbelief must have shown on my face because he continued, "She and her friends are a part of an amateur archeology society that tries to preserve Native American sites in the area. Are you familiar with how an archaeological dig is done?"

"A little. I know they use string and tags to mark where an object is found, take pictures, drawings, sort of like you do for a dead body before you move it."

"Trust you to come up with the perfect analogy," he said, but he was smiling. "I've gone with Donna on weekends with the kids. They use freaking toothbrushes and tiny paint brushes to gently clean the dirt away, or dental picks."

"I know you have a point," I said.

"Pot hunters find a site that is already being explored, or sometimes one that hasn't been found, and they bring in bulldozers and backhoes to take out as much as possible in the least amount of time."

I gaped at him. "But that destroys more than they can possibly take out, and if you move an object before its site is recorded, it loses a lot of its historical value. I mean the dirt it's found in can help date it. What is found near an object can tell all sorts of things to a trained eye."

"Pot hunters don't care about history. They take what they find and sell it to private collectors or dealers who aren't too particular about how an object was found. A site that Donna was volunteering on was raided."

"She asked you to look into it," I said.

"You underestimate her. She and her psychic friends thought they could reason with Riker, since they were pretty sure it was his people behind it."

I sighed. "I don't underestimate her, Edward."

"She and her friends didn't understand what a bad man Riker is. Some of the really big pot hunters hire bodyguards, goon squads, to help take care of the bleeding hearts, and even the local law. Riker is suspected of having been behind the deaths of two local cops. It's one of the reasons that things went en smoothly in the restaurant. All the local cops know that Riker's a suspected top killer, not personally, but of hiring it done."

I smiled, not a pleasant smile. "I wonder how many traffic tickets he and his men have acquired since it happened."

"Enough that his lawyer filed a harassment suit. There is no proof that Hiker's people were involved, just the fact that the cops were killed at a dig that had been partially bulldozed, and an eye witness that saw a car with a partial plate that might have been one of his trucks."

"Is the witness still among the living?" I asked.

"My, you do catch on quick."

"I take it that's a no."

"He's missing," Edward said.

"So why come after Donna and her kids?"

"Because the kids were with her when she and her group formed a protest line protecting a site that was on private land that Riker had gotten permission to bulldoze. She was their spokesperson."

"Stupid, she should not have taken the kids."

"Like I said, Donna didn't understand how bad a man Riker was."

"And what happened?"

"Her group was manhandled, abused, beaten. They fled. Donna had a black eye."

"And what did Ted do about this?" I was watching his face, arms crossed over my stomach. All I could see was his profile, but it was enough. He hadn't liked it, that Donna had gotten hurt. Maybe it was just that she belonged to him, a male pride thing, or maybe ... maybe it was more.

"Donna asked me to have a talk with the men."

"I take it that would be the two men that you put in the hospital. I seem to remember you asking Harold if two guys were still in the hospital."

Edward nodded. "Yeah."

"Only two in the hospital, and none in a grave. You must be slipping."

"I couldn't kill anyone without Donna knowing, so I made an example of two of his men."

"Let me guess. One of them would be the man who gave Donna the black eye."

Edward smiled happily. "Tom."

"And the other one?"

"He pushed Peter and threatened to break his arm."

I shook my head. The air had begun to cool, and it raised goose bumps even through my jacket, or maybe it wasn't the cold. "The second guy has a broken arm now?"

"Among other things," Edward said.

"Edward, look at me."

He turned and gave me his cool blue gaze.

"Truth, do you care for this family? Would you kill to protect them?"

"I'd kill to amuse myself, Anita."

I shook my head, and leaned close to him, close enough to study his face, to try and make him give up his secrets. "No jokes, Edward, tell me the truth, Are you serious about Donna?"

"You asked me if I loved her and I said, no."

I shook my head again. "Dammit, don't keep evading the answer. I don't think you do love her. I don't think you're capable of it, but you feel something. I don't know exactly what, but something. Do you feel something for this family, for all of them?"

His face was blank, and I couldn't read it. He just stared at me. I wanted to slap him, to scream and rant until I broke through his mask into whatever lay underneath. I'd always been on sure ground with Edward, always known where he stood, even when he was planning to hurt me. But now suddenly, I wasn't sure about anything.

"My God, you do care for them." I slumped back in my seat, weak. I couldn't have been more astonished if he'd sprouted a second head. That would have been weird, but not this weird.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Edward, you care for them, all of them."

He looked away. Edward, the stone cold killer, looked away. He couldn't or wouldn't meet my gaze. He put the car in gear and forced me to buckle my seat belt.

I let him pull out of the parking lot in silence, but when we were sitting at the stop sign waiting for the traffic to clear on Lomos, I had to say something. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," he said. "I don't love Donna."

"But," I said.

He turned slowly onto the main street. "She's a mess. She believes in every new age bandwagon that comes along. She's got a good head for business, but she trusts everyone. She's useless around violence. You saw her today." He was concentrating very hard on the driving, hands gripping the wheel tight enough for his knuckles to be white. "Becca is just like her, trusting, sweet, but ... tougher, I think. Both the kids are tougher than Donna."

"They've had to be," I said, and couldn't keep the disapproval out of my voice.

"I know, I know," he said. "I know Donna, everything about her. I've heard every detail from cradle to the present."

"Did it bore you?" I asked.

"Some of it," he said carefully.

"But not all of it," I said.

"No, not all of it."

"Are you saying that you do love Donna?" I had to ask.

"No, no, I'm not saying that."

I was staring so hard at his face that we could have been driving on the far side of the moon for all the attention I gave the scenery. Nothing mattered more right that second than Edward's face, his voice. "Then what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that sometimes when you play a part too long, you can get sucked into that part I and it becomes more real than it was meant to be." I saw something on his face that I had never seen before, anguish, uncertainty.

"Are you saying that you are going to marry Donna? You're going to be a husband and a father? PTA meetings, and the whole nine yards?"

"No, I'm not saying that. You know I can't marry her. I can't live with her and two kids and hide what I am twenty-four hours a day. That good an actor I'm not."

"Then what are you saying?" I asked.

"I'm saying ... I'm saying that part of me, a small part of me, wishes I could."

I stared at him opened-mouthed. Edward, assassin extraordinaire, the undead's perfect predator, wished he could have not a family, but this family. A trusting new age widow, her sullen teenage son, and a little girl that made Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm look jaded, and Edward wanted them.

When I trusted myself to be coherent, I said, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

I couldn't think of anything helpful to say, so I resorted to humor, my shield of last resort. "Just please tell me they don't have a dog and a picket fence."

He smiled. "No fence, but a dog, two dogs."

"What kind of dogs?" I asked.

He smiled and glanced at me, wanting to see my reaction. "Maltese. Their names are Peeka and Boo."

"Oh, shit, Edward, you're joking me."

"Donna wants the dogs included in the engagement pictures."

I stared at him, and the look on my face seemed to amuse him. He laughed. "I'm glad you're here, Anita, because I don't know a single other person who I'd have admitted this to."

"Do you realize that your personal life is now more complicated than mine is?" I said.

"Now I know I'm in trouble," he said. And we left it on a lighter note, on a joke, because we were more comfortable that way. But Edward had confided in me about a personal problem. In his way he'd come to me for help about it. And being who I was, I'd try to help him. I thought we would solve the mutilations and murders, eventually. I mean violence and death were our specialties. I was not nearly so optimistic about the personal stuff.

Edward did not belong in a world with a woman who had a pair of toy dogs named Peeka and Boo. Edward was not now, nor ever would be, that cutesy. Donna was. It wouldn't work. It just wouldn't work. But for the very first time I realized that if Edward didn't have a heart to lose, that he wished he had one to give. But I was reminded of the scene in The Wizard of Ozwhere Dorothy and the Scarecrow bang on the Tin Man's chest and hear the rolling echo. The tinsmith had forgotten to put in a heart. Edward had carved his own heart out of his body and left it on a floor somewhere years ago. I'd known that. I just never knew that Edward regretted the loss. And I think until Donna Parnell came along, he hadn't known it either.

16

EDWARD DID TAKE ME through a drive-up window, but he didn't want to stop. He seemed anxious to get to Santa Fe. Since he was rarely anxious about anything, I didn't argue. I requested we go through a carwash while I ate my French fries and cheeseburger. He didn't say a word, just drove into one beside the highway that let us ride through in the car. When I was little, I'd loved watching the suds slide down the windows and the huge brushes roll by. It was still nifty, though not the thrill a minute it had been when I was five. But the carwash did mean that I had a clear view out all the windows. The dirty windows had made me feel ever so slightly claustrophobic. I'd finished my food before we left Albuquerque. I sipped on my soda as we drove out of town and towards the mountains. These were not the black mountains, but a different range that looked more "normal." They were jagged and rocky looking, with a string of glittering light near their base.

"What's with the light show," I asked.

"What?" Edward asked.

"The glitter, what is it?"

I felt his attention shift from the road, but he was wearing his sunglasses, and I couldn't really see his gaze shift. "Houses, the sun is hitting the windows on the houses."

"I've never seen sunlight on windows glitter like that."

"Albuquerque is at 7,000 feet. The air is thinner than you're used to. It makes light do strange things."

I stared at the sparkling windows like a line of jewels imbedded in the mountains. "It's beautiful."

He moved his whole head. This time so I knew he was really looking at it. "If you say so."

After that we stopped talking. Edward never did idle chatter, and apparently he had nothing to say. My mind was still reeling from Edward being in love, or as close as he would probably ever get. It was just too weird. I couldn't think of a single useful thing to say so I stared out the window until I thought of something worth saying. I had a feeling it was going to be a long quiet drive to Santa Fe.

The hills were very round, covered in dry brownish grass. I had the same feeling I'd had when I stepped off the plane in Albuquerque ¨C desolate. I'd thought the hills were close until I spotted a cow standing on one. The cow looked tiny, small enough for me to cover with two fingers held up, which meant the "hills" were really small mountains and not nearly as close as they appeared to the road. It was late afternoon or early evening depending on how you looked at it. It was still daylight, but you could feel night looming even in the brightness. The day had worn away like a piece of candy sucked too long. No matter how bright the sunshine, I could feel the darkness pressing close. Partly it was my mood ¨C confusion always makes me pessimistic ¨C but it was also an innate sense of the coming night. I was a vampire executioner, and I knew the taste of night on the breeze just as I knew the feel of dawn pressing against the darkness. There had been times when my life had depended on dawn coming. Nothing like near death experiences to hone a skill.

The sunlight had begun to fade to a soft evening gloom when I'd finally had enough of the silence. I still had nothing helpful to say about his personal life, but there was the case. I'd been asked here to help solve a crime, not to play Dear Abby, so maybe if I just concentrated on the crime, we'd be okay.

"Is there anything about the cases that you've withheld from me? Anything I'm going to be pissed that I didn't know beforehand?"

"Changing the subject?" he asked.

"I wasn't aware we were on a subject," I said.

"You know what I meant."

I sighed. "Yeah, I know what you meant." I slumped in my seat as far as the seatbelt would allow, arms crossed over my stomach. My body language was not happy, nor was I. "I don't have anything to add to the Donna situation, or nothing helpful."

"So concentrate on business," he said.

"You taught me that," I said, "you and Dolph. Keep your eye and mind on the important stuff. The important stuff is what can get you killed. Donna and her kiddies aren't a threat to life so put them on the back burner."

He smiled, his normal close-lipped, I-know-something-you-don't-know smile. It didn't always mean he knew something I didn't. Sometimes he did it just to irritate. Like now. "I thought you said you'd kill me if I didn't stop dating Donna."

I rubbed my neck against the expensive seats and tried to ease a tension that was beginning at the base of my skull. Maybe I had been invited here to play Dear Abby, at least in part. Shit.

"You were right, Edward. You can't just leave. It would screw up Becca for one thing. But you cannot keep dating Donna indefinitely. She's going to start asking for a date for the wedding, and what are you going to say?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Well, neither do I, so let's talk about the case. At least with that we've got a solid direction."

"We do?" he glanced at me as he asked.

"We know we want the mutilations and murders to stop, right?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Well, that's more than we know about Donna."

"Are you saying you don't want me to stop seeing her?" he asked, and that damn smile was back. Smug, he looked smug.

"I'm saying I don't know what the hell I want you to do, let alone what you should do. So let's leave it alone until I get some brilliant idea."

"Okay," he said.

"Great," I said. "Now back to the question I asked. What haven't you told me about the crimes that you think I should know, or rather that I think I should know?"

"I don't read minds, Anita. I don't know what you'll want to know."

"Don't be coy, Edward. Just spill the beans. I don't want any more surprises on this trip, not from you."

He was quiet for so long, I thought he wasn't going to answer. So I prompted him, "Edward, I mean it."

"I'm thinking," he said. He moved in his seat, shoulders tightening and loosening as if he were trying to get rid of tension, too. I guess, even for him, this had been a stressful day. Odd to think of Edward letting anything truly stress him. I'd always thought he walked through life with the perfect Zen of the sociopath, so that nothing truly bothered him. I'd been wrong. Wrong about a lot of things.

I went back to watching the scenery. There were cows scattered close enough to the road that you could make out color and size. If it wasn't a Jersey, a Guernsey, or a Black Angus, I didn't know it. I watched the strange cows standing at impossible angles on the steep hillsides and waited for Edward to finish thinking. Twilight seemed to last a long time here, as if the light of day gave up the fight slowly, struggling to remain and keep the darkness at bay. Maybe it was just my mood, but I wasn't looking forward to darkness. It was as if I could sense something out there in those desolate hills, something waiting for the night, something that could not move during the day. It could be just my own overactive imagination, or I could be right. That was the hard part about psychic abilities: sometimes you were right, and sometimes you weren't. Sometimes your own anxiety or fear could poison your thinking and make you, almost, literally see ghosts where there were none.

There were, of course, ways to find out. "Is there a place where you can I pull over out of sight of the main road?"

He looked at me. "Why?"

"I'm ... sensing something, and I just want to make sure I'm not imagining it."

He didn't argue. When the next exit came up, he took it. We took a side road from the exit. It was dirt and gravel and full of huge dry potholes. The shocks on his Hummer took the road like silk flowing down hill, comfy. A soft roll of hills hid us from the main highway, but the road was very flat in front of us, giving a clear view of the road as it went almost straight towards a distant rise of hills. There were a handful of tiny houses on either side of the road, the major cluster some ways ahead with a small church sitting to one side by itself, as if it were part of the houses and not. The church had a steeple with a cross on top of it, and I assumed a bell inside of it. Though we were too far away to be sure. The town, if it were a town, looked down on its luck but not empty. There were people there and eyes to see us. Just our luck, the land had been so empty and the road we go down has a town.

"Stop the car," I said. We were as far from the first house as we could get without backtracking.

Edward pulled over to the side of the road. The dust rose in a cloud to either side of the car, settling over the clean paint job in a dry powder.

"You guys don't get much rain up here, do you?"

"No," he said. Anyone else would have elaborated, but not Edward. Even the weather wasn't a topic of conversation unless it affected the job.

I got out of the car and walked a little way into the dry grass. I walked until I could no longer sense Edward or the car. When I looked back, I was yards away, Edward was standing on the driver's side door, arms crossed on the roof, hat tilted back so he could watch the show. I don't think there was another person I knew who wouldn't have asked at least one question about what I was about to do. It would be interesting to see if he asked any questions afterwards.

Darkness hung like a soft silken cloth, hanging against the sky, and the living light. It was a soft comfortable twilight, an embracing dark. A breeze blew across the open land and played with my hair. Everything felt fine, good. Had I imagined? Was I letting Edward's problems get to me? Was the memory of the survivors in their air-compressed hospital room making me see shadows?

I almost just turned around and walked back to the car, but I didn't. If it were my imagination, then it wouldn't hurt to check, and if it wasn't ... I turned and faced away from the car, away from the distant houses, and looked nut into the emptiness. Of course, it wasn't really empty. There was grass rustling in the wind, it sounded so dry, like corn in autumn just before it's harvested. The ground was covered in a thin layer of pale reddish-brown gravel with paler dirt showing through. The ground ran until it met the hills that continued on and on towards the darkening sky. Not empty, just lonely.

I took a deep cleansing breath, let it out and did two things at once: I dropped my shields and spread my arms wide, hands reaching. I was reaching with my hands, but it wasn't just my hands. I reached outward with that sense I have ¨C magic, if you like the word. I don't. I reached outward with that power that let me raise the dead and mix with werewolves. I reached outward towards that waiting presence that I'd felt, or thought I'd felt.

There, there like a fish tugging on my line. I turned to face the direction of the road. It was in that direction, going towards Santa Fe. It ¨C I had no better word. I felt its eagerness for the coming night and knew that it could not move in daylight. And I knew that it was large, not physically, but psychically, because we were not close to it, and yet I'd picked it up miles away. How many miles I couldn't say, but far, very far to have sensed it. It didn't feel evil. That didn't mean it wasn't evil, just that it didn't think of itself as evil. Unlike people, preternatural entities are rather proud of being evil. They embraced their malignancy because whatever this was, it wasn't human. It wasn't physical. Spirit, energy, pick a word, but it was up ahead, and it was not contained in any physical shell. It was free floating. No, not free ... Something slammed into me, not physically, but as if a psychic truck had run me down. I was on my butt in the dirt, trying to breathe, as if someone had hit me in the chest and knocked the wind out of me.

I heard Edward's running footsteps, but I couldn't seem to turn around. I was too busy relearning how to breathe.

He knelt by me, gun in hand. "What happened?" He was looking out into the thick twilight, not at me, searching, searching for the danger. His sunglasses were gone, and his face was very serious as he searched for something to shoot.

I gripped his arm, shaking my head, trying to talk. But when I finally had air enough, all I said was, "Shit, shit, shit!" It wasn't helpful, but I was scared. Most of the time when I get this scared, I get cold, shocky, but not when it's psychic shit. When something goes wrong with "magic," I never go shocky or get cold, I stay warm. If anything it's like tingling, warm, as if I'd stuck my finger in a light socket. Whatever "it" was, had sensed me and shut me down

I pulled my shields around me like clutching a coat against a blizzard, but strangely it had backed off. Though if that one swat of power was any indication, it could slice me, dice me, and serve me on toast if it wanted to. It hadn't wanted to. I was glad, thrilled, but why hadn't it hurt me worse? How had I sensed it from so far away, and how had it sensed me? Usually, my greatest talent is with the dead. Did that mean whatever "it" was, was dead, or had something to do with the dead? Or was this one of the new psychic abilities that my teacher, Marianne, had warned me might crop up. God, I hoped not. I didn't need more strange shit in my life. I had plenty.

I forced myself to stop the useless cursing, and said, "Put up the gun, Edward. I'm all right. Besides, there's nothing to shoot and nothing to see."

He put a hand under my arm and pulled me to my feet before I was ready. I'd have been very happy to stay sitting for a while. I leaned on him, and he started moving us back towards the car. I stumbled and finally had to tell him, "Stop, please."

He held me up, still searching the new dark, gun still in hand. I should have known he'd keep the gun out. It was his security blanket ¨C sometimes.

I could breathe again, and if Edward stopped dragging me on, I might be able to walk. The fear had faded because it was useless. I'd tried a bit of "magic," and I hadn't been good enough. I was learning ritual magic, but I was a beginner. Power isn't enough. You've got to know what to do with it, like a gun with the safety on. It makes a fine paperweight, but that's about it unless you know what to do with it.

I slid into the car, had my door closed and locked before Edward opened his door. "Tell me what happened, Anita."

I looked at him. "It would serve you right if I just looked at you and smiled."

Something crossed his face, a frown, a snarl, quickly lost to that perfect blankness he could manage. "You're right. I've been a secret-loving bastard, and it would serve me right. But you're the one who said we needed to stop the pissing contest and solve the crime. I'll stop if you will."

I nodded. "Agreed."

"So," he said.

"Start the car and get us out of here." Somehow I didn't like sitting on the nearly deserted road in the freshly spilled darkness. I wanted to be moving. Sometimes movement gives you the illusion that you're doing something.

Edward started the car, turned around in the weeds and drove back towards the highway. "Talk."

"I've never been to this area before. For all I know what I sensed is always here, just some local bugaboo."

"What did you sense?"

"Something powerful. Something that's miles away towards Santa Fe. Something that may be connected to the dead in some way, which would explain why it called to me so strongly. I'm going to need to find a good local psychic to see if this thing is always around or not."

"Donna will know some psychics. Whether they're good, I can't say, and I'm not sure she can either."

"It's a place to start," I said. I snuggled into my seatbelt, hugging myself.

"You got any local animators, necromancers, anyone who works with the dead? If it is something connected to my type of power, then an ordinary psychic might not sense it."

"I don't know of any, but I'll ask around."

"Good."

We were back out on the highway. The night was very dark, as if thick clouds hid the sky. The headlights seemed very yellow against the blackness.

"Do you think this whatever-it-is has anything to do with the mutilations?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"You don't know a hell of a lot," he said. He sounded grumpy.

"That's the problem with psychic shit and magic. Sometimes it's not very helpful."

"I've never seen you do anything like what you just did. You hate the mystical crap."

"Yes, I do, but I've had to accept what I am, Edward. This mystical crap is a part of who and what I am. I can't run from it because it is me. You can't hide from yourself, not forever, and you can't ever outrun yourself. I raise the dead for a living, Edward. Why should it be a shock that I may have other abilities?"

"It's not," he said.

I glanced at him, but he was watching the road, and I couldn't read his face. "It's not," I said.

"I called you in to be backup not just because you're a shooter, but because you know more about preternatural stuff than anyone else I know, that I trust. You hate the psychics and the mediums, because you are one, but you still deal in reality, and that makes you different from the rest of them."

"You're wrong, Edward. I saw a soul today hovering in that room. It was real, just as real as the gun in your holster. Psychics, witches, mediums, they all deal in reality. It's just not the same reality that you deal with, but it is real, Edward, it is very, very real."

He didn't say anything to that, just let the silence fill the car, and I was content with silence because I was tired, terribly, terribly tired. I'd found that doing psychic shit sometimes exhausted me a hell of a lot faster than physical labor. I ran four miles every other day, lifted weights, took Kenpo class, and Judo, and none of it made me as tired as having stood in that field and opened myself to that thing. I never sleep in a car because I don't trust the driver not to have a wreck and kill me. That is the truth about why I don't sleep in cars, no matter what I say out loud. My mother was killed in a car accident, and I've never really trusted cars since.

I settled down in my seat, trying to find a comfortable place for my head.

I was suddenly so tired, so tired my eyes burned. I closed my eyes just to rest them, and sleep dragged at me like a hand pulling me under. I could have fought it, but I didn't. I needed the rest, and I needed it now, or I wouldn't I be worth shit soon. And the thought crossed my mind as I let myself relax that I did trust Edward. I really did. I slept huddled in the seat and didn't wake until the car stopped.

"We're here," Edward said.

I struggled to sit up, feeling stiff, but rested. "Where?"

"Ted's house."

I sat up straighten Ted's house? Edward's house. I was finally going to get to see where Edward lived. I was going to snoop and strip some of his mystery away. If I didn't get killed, finding out Edward's secrets would make the entire trip worthwhile. If I did get killed, I'd come back and haunt Edward, see if I could make him see ghosts after all.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***