She felt his hands hovering just outside her shoulders, their aura of heat awakening her skin. He withdrew. She knew he did not fear her threat. Somehow he understood
how vital it was to give a person the space to collect shattered shields and lash them back together. She wondered what had happened to him that he knew that.
“I came to get you,” she said, turning to face him. She knew her face was too tense, too pale, from the look of concern in his eyes.
Don't be sensitive, I' ll fly apart. Be an asshole. Make him one.
“Police business.”
It took him a moment to digest that, change gears. “Last night? Sarah—”
“No. Not exactly.” She hoped. It would be beyond a nightmare if he was somehow involved in this murder, and he had been in her bed. She wished he would call her Chief Wylde, wished she had the right to make him do so. She wanted to march pasthim and leave, but that was no longer an option.
“I'm here to ask your help on a case, if you're up for it.”
He looked startled, and it gave her some satisfaction to keep him off balance. “I can't imagine what crime could have occurred in Lilesville that would require my expertise.”
“It's in Marion, just over the line. It looks like a ritual murder.”
It didn't hit him at first, and she knew that was a point in his favor, unless he was a better actor than she thought he was.
“A murder, here?”
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“Maybe. We're not sure. I figure you might be our resident expert on some of the paraphernalia that was used. This hasn't hit the press yet. We've kept it off the radios. We want to identify the victim first.”
“You want…the body is still there?”
Color drained from his face. Sarah mentally cursed herself. In a small town, murder was not an everyday thing, and no matter how together Justin Herne had been in her bedroom, what she saw now was a rattled civilian. She would have done more handholding if she were asking anyone else to go look at the scene as an expert. A prime example of why it was so easy for the personal to fuck with professional judgment.
“Hey. “ She made herself reach out, touch his hand which had clenched into a white knuckled fist at his side, an unconscious reaction of defense. It wasn’t as hard as she expected it to be. She had to suppress the unusual desire to lace her fingers in his and create a stronger link. “I could really use your help. I won't make you get any closer than you feel like getting. You don't—” she bit back impatience with herself. “I can't make you do it. You have a choice. You're just quicker than calling someone in from Gainesville.”
He looked down at their hands, and he surprised her by turning his over and closing his fingers around her smaller hand. His strength was there, but unsteady, as if he drew some of hers into him from their shared touch. He took a deep breath and suddenly she understood.
She knew that look, had seen it on faces before. This wasn't the first time he'd seen someone dead from violent means, and it hadn't been long for him, if that gray pallor under the skin meant anything.
“No.” He shook his head, pulled his hand away. “If I can help, I will. We're a community here, Chief. Whoever this is, he or she deserves any help we can give. Let me just post a sign on the door and lock up before we go. I'd rather you drive, if youdon't mind.”
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If Wishes Were Horses
Chapter 6
The drive to the murder site was awkward. In the silence, Sarah regretted her sniping comments. He hadn't deserved it. Oh, maybe he had, the way he had bowled her over, but his tension was palpable next to her. It was her job to deal with it.
“You have a nice place, Mr. Herne.” There. She had been pleasant, though it was an effort.
He made a noise, somewhere between a snort and a faint chuckle. “
Mr. Herne
. I've
never been on such formal terms with a lover before.”
She stomped the brake, bringing them to an abrupt halt on the rural highway, and glared at him. “We're not lovers, Herne. We had a quick fuck and that was it. It was a mistake in judgment on my part, and if you don't drop it, it's going to be a seriousmistake in yours.”
He studied her. “Is that why you looked at me the way you did at the shop, when you thought I wasn’t looking? Because I was a quick fuck? “ He turned back to the window. “I must look like hell if you're trying to be nice to me.”
He was hard to keep up with. Sarah tried counting to ten for patience, made it to five. “I'm normally a nice person. You bring out the mean in me.”
He smiled, but his attention was on something far beyond the car.
“So why this kind of store? Why not just your average sex shop? You know, no windows, dirty books, fluorescent lights and all male clientele?”
“Well, when you make it sound so appealing, I can't imagine what came over me,” he said dryly. He spread his fingers out, long and capable, on his knees. “The easy answer is I enjoy women. A woman's desires have always fascinated me, so different from ours.”
She'd hit the right button. The store was as much about who he was as it was his livelihood, which was obvious from walking into it. She didn't want to think about whether she'd done it to pump him for information or to get his mind off of what lay ahead. She supposed it didn't matter as long as it accomplished the same thing.
“How so?”
He slanted a glance at her, and she thought he knew what she was doing, because a look of amusement crossed his features, as if he were laughing at both of them.
“Sexuality for women is such a deep, spiritual part of them, connected to the sacredness of the Earth herself. Male sexuality is the curiosity of the rover, the passion of the hunter, the bird flashing into the sky in a sudden burst of exuberance. It is woman's body that grounds him, that brings above and below together and balances. To find ways to bring forth that deep sensuality in a woman to make it easier for the
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two to come together, that’s a sexual experience surpassing anything a casual rut with the campus cheerleader can bring.”
“So your faith is a 'make love not war' type of thing?”
He did not smile this time. “It's easy to think of it that way, more harmless. That only touches on the surface of some very deep waters. The Goddess is as much warrior as creator.” His gaze moved to her badge clipped on her belt, her gun in the shoulder holster. “You know that.”
They pulled onto the service access road. Justin blinked. “You didn't say this adjoined my property.”
“You didn't ask, and I didn't know for sure, though I suspected. You've got a pretty sizeable chunk of land. We have to park here and walk a ways. It's marked with tape.” She glanced at his polished shoes. “Sorry. I should have warned you we'd be going through the woods.”
“It's all right.” He got out, bent out of sight behind the door. When he came around to join her, he was barefoot, carrying the shoes in one hand, the socks folded inside them.
He should have looked silly, but he didn't. Instead, she was reminded forcefully ofwhat he had looked like in the woods the previous night, bare except for the antlered headdress. She recalled also that the shoes in his hand were the ones he had worn less
than a few hours ago while he knelt on her bed, driving into her.
He’d caught her staring. That knowledge started her from her musings, warmed
her cheeks.
“Aren't you worried about the slacks?” She gestured toward the expensive summer
wool.
“Do you want me to take them off?”
It was a sardonic comment, without humor. He apparently wasn't feeling likelaughing, at her or with her.
“Sorry, I wasn't thinking of it that way. Come on.”
He followed her to the murder site without another word. When they got to the lip of the shallow valley where the victim was located, Sarah saw the scene through his eyes. The dark earth, the pale, uncovered body, the staring eyes. She glanced at him, studied his face as both cop and lover. She acknowledged the necessity of the duality atthe same time she regretted it, though she wasn't yet sure which one caused her the most chagrin.
Up until his face changed, when she told him what she wanted him to do, she realized she had felt as though he had the upper hand, that he was untouchable, nothuman. A woman was allowed to be a bit touchy and defensive around a man who had overwhelmed her every defense. Maybe that's why now she felt so much more kindly disposed toward him.
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He had paled again, but the set of his jaw was grim and he didn't turn away. Heappeared frozen, every muscle of his body locked. His pulse pounded visibly in his throat.
There was a uniform overseeing the site with Eric, but they weren’t doing much,just waiting for her to bring Herne to view the body before they removed the victim. “No press yet?” Sarah asked.
Chief Wassler shook his head. “We're out in the middle of nowhere, and so far we've kept it off the radio. I’ll do a press release after the coroner picks her up. Justin, good to see you. Thanks for coming.”
Herne nodded, his mouth a thin line. Sarah let him take the lead, subtly motioning Eric to hang back with her as they approached the ritual site and the woman's body. Shekept to Herne’s left so she could see his profile. As he got closer his face grew moreempty and still, as if he were mimicking the corpse’s lack of animation. When heswallowed and went glassy-eyed, she prepared to leap forward and push his head between his knees before he keeled on her. Then she saw his eyes start moving. She could almost hear the wheels clicking, as they had for her when she viewed her first victim. Focus on the clues, the evidence, portion it down so you don't lose your mind oryour stomach.
“This is a typical circle casting,” he said at last. His voice was rough and strange. Sarah saw his jaw had not relaxed a fraction, his gaze still on that white, motionless body.
“She most likely used a dark, dry dirt to cast the circle and pentagram. It’s a good ingredient, because you can do a liberal coating but it will blow away and remix with the earth, less clean up. She'll have called the quarter spirits, names for the four elements that would have suited her purpose. That’s what the oak branch, candle, censer and goblet represent. Four of the nine stones mark them, the others for the five points of the pentagram, as you can see. If there are carvings on them they may be symbols you'll want me to see and identify. They could be bindings, to hold whatever she called in, or reinforcements for the spell she was casting.” He swallowed again. “The cat’s blood was to help call it.”
He closed his eyes.
Sarah cursed herself, gave in and put a hand on his arm. “Can you take a closer look at the body?”
Justin raised his lids, looked at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. “Yes, I can,” he said.
He took the necessary eight steps to draw near her, and Sarah could almost feelhow difficult each of those steps was for him. She and Eric stayed close behind him, exchanging a glance.
Justin stopped, looked down. “May I touch her?”
Sarah turned to the uniform and he provided a pair of latex gloves. “You can, but wear these. And give me your shoes.”
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He hesitated, nodded and made the exchange. Inevitably, their fingers brushed, and his eyes flickered up to hers.
Sarah held his gaze with a flat expression of her own. She could keep the impassive cop face in their present surroundings, but it was harder than usual. He turned away, put on the gloves and knelt by the body.
He touched her face, traced the sunken cheeks, the drawn lines around the mouth. “She's not this old,” he said.
“She shows evidence of being a hard drug user,” Sarah began, but he shook his head again.
“No, it's not that. Something sucked the life from her.”
A chill skittered up Sarah's spine. “Are you suggesting she called some type of vampire?”
“If I did, I'm sure you wouldn't believe it. I'm telling you I knew this woman.”
Sarah came to attention and felt Eric do the same. “How did you know her?” Wassler asked.
“Her name is Lorraine Messenger. She's in her early thirties. She moved to the county area about three months ago. I don't know where she was living, if she was living anywhere. She approached me about joining our coven. It was obvious her addiction made her unstable. I told her…” He stopped, and for a moment Sarah could not see his face, because he averted it, stared at the woods. “She would not be permitted to join our coven unless she took steps to clean herself up. I offered to get her into a program. She declined, and I didn't see her again.”
He rose, turned back to Sarah. When strong emotions seized him, she realized that all those perfect features grew still. His dark eyes seemed to go flat and yet fathomless at once, and Sarah felt as if she could be lost in the abyss of their desolation.
“The blood painted on her arms and legs is likely hers. The cat’s was used to strengthen the outer circle. Your own blood is the most powerful binding agent. She was calling something to her specifically,” he said.