Twice Cursed (14 page)

“
It’s obvious to me this
conversation is going nowhere,” she said, drumming her fingers on
the side of the mug. “We’re at an impasse. You can’t wrap your head
around what I’m telling you, and I have a rogue vampire I need to
kill. I could try and explain, but I think you’ve had enough
revelation for one day.” She paused. “At this point, the only way I
can see us clear, is for you to do whatever it is you need to do,
and I do whatever it is I need to do.”

Lily looked down at her mug and
frowned. “Tell Shaw whatever it is you need to tell him. It’s not
going to affect me that much.” She lifted her chin, shifting her
gaze to meet his. “I know what I have to do.”

Ryan was quiet. Doubt and suspicion
still warred in his eyes, but they had lost their defensive glare.
His forehead creased, and Lily could see him mentally gauge the
probabilities. Unfortunately, nothing in his training had prepared
him for this. He sat down again, his forearms flat on either arm of
the chair, while his hands curled and uncurled around the
edges.

Lily watched as he grappled with
reasonable explanations and came up empty. “Are you okay?” she
asked, taking a tentative step forward. But he put his hand up, and
she stopped.

Annoyed with herself, she
exhaled through her teeth.
Mouth almighty
strikes again.
She had pulled the rug out
from under everything he knew, or thought he knew, about this
world, and then told him to suck it up. How else did she expect him
to react?

You went on a vigilante
rampage…remember?
Terry’s voice was sharp
in her mind. Turning back toward the counter, she opened the
cabinet and took out a glass and a bottle of Jamison’s, pouring him
two stiff fingers of scotch.

“
For what it’s worth, I
know exactly how you feel,” she said, placing the glass on the
table in front of him.

He picked up the glass but then set it
on the table again. Looking over at her, he hesitated, “Lily…I
can’t,” he said shaking his head.

She put her hand up, considering him
for a moment. “I know Ryan. Just do me a favor and don’t assume
that I’m crazy. Someday I’ll tell you about how I came to know what
I know. It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Although ironically,
that’s where I did a lot of my hunting.”

Ryan picked up his glass, giving her a
quizzical look.

“
Never mind. That’s a story
for another time,” she said with a dismissive wave. “Drink your
scotch; you look as if you could use it.”

His gaze softened, and he gave her a
faint smile. “Rose-lipped maidens, light foot lads…“ He lifted the
glass in a quick salute and then shot the drink back. Swallowing
hard, he winced, coughing a bit. “What about you, or don’t you need
one?” he asked, tilting the empty glass toward her.

She shook her head. “No. I need to
keep my wits about me, just in case I get another
visitor.”

He looked at her strangely, and then
it dawned on him what she meant. “You mean visitor, as in the goes
bump in the night kind?”

“
Exactly,” she answered,
picking up his glass, exceedingly aware of his eyes on her. “I’ve
never heard that toast before, but I like it. Where’s it
from?”

“
Talk about changing the
subject. It’s from a poem. A. E. Housman's
Shropshire Lad
, 1896.”

She shrugged, putting the glass in the
sink. “Guilty. I just didn’t want to get into it again. You have
enough to digest, don’t you think?” She raised an eyebrow at
him.

He nodded and pushed himself up from
his chair. “Lily…”

She held up a hand. “Don’t. Just sleep
on it, Ryan. Nothing is going to get done tonight, no decisions are
going to be made. We can talk tomorrow, after you’ve had time to
think.”

Shoving her hand in her pocket, Lily
balled up her fist, pressing her nails into her palm. Regardless of
how civilized and calm they both appeared, neither could deny the
immense leap of faith this was going to take for this case to
proceed. The burden belonged to both of them. The question
remained, could they shoulder it together?

The hall was dim, and the warm,
reflected light from the kitchen did nothing to ease the feeling of
melancholy that washed over her as she handed Ryan his coat. He
slipped it on without a word, fishing in his inside pocket for
something.

“
Here’s my business card.
It has all my numbers on it. Call me if anything else weird
happens, or if you ‘get’ anything that might help us out.” His
voice was flat, but at least it wasn’t hostile.

Lily took the small white card from
his hand. Us. Did he mean the two of them or did he mean the
police? From down 8th Avenue, the sound of sirens in the distance
echoed through the apartment, their muffled shrill almost answering
her question.

Ryan put his hand on the doorknob, but
turned back, his eyes questioning. “What you said before, about tap
dancing through my brain—you weren’t kidding, were you?”

Lily shook her head, regret biting
into her gut at the reminder. “No,” she answered softly. “But then
again, I wasn’t kidding about any of it. I just hope you see that
before it’s too late.”

She crossed her arms in front of her
chest, expecting something, but he left without another word. The
door closed behind him, and the sound of his feet on the stairs
vanished almost immediately. Lily turned back toward the kitchen,
an empty feeling welling up inside her chest. Did they accomplish
anything today, or as usual, did she just make things harder than
they had to be? The question didn’t need answering. She had the
power to fix this, and unlike the last time she went hunting, she
wasn’t alone. She had Sean.

***

Jack got out of the car and walked
around the block toward the house. “Crowded, crazy city,” he
mumbled, stepping up onto the curb, juggling a pizza and a bottle
of red wine. He stopped as a black and white cat raced out of the
alley between the buildings, and skittered to a stop in front of
him. Its hackles rose, and it hissed, before taking off across the
street and disappearing behind the dumpster next to the Korean
market.

He shook his head. No
self-respecting wolf had any use for the feline set, except as
hunting practice. He glanced back over his shoulder, watching as
the cat sat perched on top of the dumpster like it was king of the
hill. Jack chuckled to himself. The full moon was only a couple of
days away, and…
here kitty,
kitty
.

He opened the vestibule door and
pressed the buzzer next to Lily’s name on the call box in the
lobby.

“
Who is it?”

“
It’s Jack the Ripper, who
else?”

“
Ha. Ha. Don’t flatter
yourself. Did you remember the pizza?”

“
Yeah, yeah. Buzz me up,
will you?”

The buzzer sounded, and he jostled the
door open and headed up the stairs. “Pizza Man!” he shouted,
surprised to find the apartment door unlocked. Lily must be
seriously hungry, considering how she’d reamed his ass about
leaving the door half-open his very first day.

Lily came out of the living room, her
iPod playing in the background. She looked tired. “Oh, man, that
smells great!” she said, taking the box from him and heading
straight into the kitchen. “…and you need to open whatever bottle
you have hiding in that brown paper bag, ‘cause I could use a
drink.”

Jack put the wine down on the table
and took off his jacket. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed. “Was
somebody here?”

“
Yeah. Detective Martinez.
He’s working the case with me—or he was, at least. He drove me
home, why?”

“
Whoever he is, the boy
left a funky smell in the air, that’s all,” he said, coming into
the kitchen. “Hey, do you by chance own a cat?”

Lily looked up, licking her fingers, a
confused look on her face. “No. And even if I did, I’ve been gone
for the past two months, Jack. Do you think I’d be that neglectful
a pet owner?”

He smirked. “Nah, just checking. This
cat raced out of the alley just before, and with the full moon and
all, I thought I might have a little fun with it...you know.” He
waggled his eyebrows, his meaning crystal clear.

Lily stopped, her fingers holding
stringy mozzarella cheese halfway to her mouth. “Oh, no you won’t,
Jack. I mean it! This is not Maine, and these are not wild animals.
That cat probably belongs to someone, and I won’t have you
terrorizing the neighborhood pets.”

He just looked at her, the smirk still
on his face.

“
Jack? I’m serious. Don’t
make me call Sean.”

Hmmph
. “Party pooper. Just wait until you’re a full Were, then
come talk to me about being PCC.”

“
PCC?”

“
Pet politically
correct.”

Lily burst out laughing. “Talk about
comic relief after the day I’ve had! You seriously need to go on
David Letterman. Come on, open the wine and have a slice of pizza,
there’s a lot going on that I need to tell you about.”

Jack stiffened, all humor gone.
“What?”

Lily put a slice of pizza on a paper
plate and held it out toward him. “Stop right there. It has nothing
to do with Edward Parr or wild, horny Weres chasing me down. So sit
down and I’ll tell you.”

Eyeing her, he took a corkscrew from
the top hook of the sideboard and sat down. “Then spill it already,
or I’ll be the one calling Sean,” he said, pointing the sharp edge
of the corkscrew her way. He didn’t mention Sean had already
slammed him with a telepathic inquisition, wanting to know why
Lily’s mind was in such a logjam. Now both men were suspicious, and
whether she wanted to or not, she was going to tell them what was
going on.

He took the plate from her hand and
put it down on the table, reaching for the bottle of wine. He cut
the thin metal casing away from the cork while he waited for her to
start talking.

“
After you dropped me off
this morning, I met with the chief, and two of the detectives
involved with the case,” she said, getting up to grab two wine
glasses from the cabinet.

“
You’re not telling me
anything I don’t already know. What happened after that?” he asked,
twisting the corkscrew into the top of the bottle.

“
I got a small glimpse of
what happened at the crime scene the minute Detective Martinez
handed me the case file. From there I asked to go to the
morgue.”

“
And?” Jack prompted,
pulling the cork from the bottle.

“
There was a Shade at the
morgue.”

Jack looked up from pouring the wine
into the two glasses. “A Shade? Like Terry?” he asked, pushing one
of the long stemmed glasses toward Lily.

“
Yup. One of the
victims.”

Jack didn’t say a word; he just stared
at Lily with the bottle still poised over the other wine
glass.

“
Don’t worry. I’m not being
haunted or anything. But from that point, the images that followed
made it imperative I see the crime scene.”

He put the bottle down on the table.
“For Christ sake, Lily! Land your plane, already! Stop giving me
minor details and get to the point. What happened?”

She took a sip of her wine. Just
thinking about what she had seen and smelled made her hands shake.
“The crime scene was destroyed. It was worse than if a car bomb had
gone off. But the horrific images from inside the building told me
there was no way a human was responsible.”

Jack finished pouring and took a sip
of his wine, his eyes locked on Lily. “A Were, then?” He pressed
his lips together, the taste of the words sour in his
mouth.

“
No. Vampire.”

Jack opened his mouth to say
something, but then mashed it into a thin line. He put his glass
down on the table and pushed himself up from his chair. “Are you
sure? I mean, you’ve never actually had any contact with the
undead.” Standing with his hands flat against the table’s smooth
wooden surface, he leaned forward, his gaze locked on Lily’s
face.

“
Yeah, I have. Whom did you
think I was hunting before I headed back to Maine to track Jerard?
Like you said, I cut my teeth on things way hairier. I guess you
didn’t realize that included the fanged set, as well.”

Staggered, Jack just stared back at
her. “You hunted vampires? Sean never said anything about that. Are
you fucking crazy, or just plain stupid? Vampires are more vicious
and bloodthirsty than any Were you’ll ever encounter. They kill
without provocation, just because they can.”

Lily shrugged. “You were the one who
found the crossbow among my things while I was unconscious after
Jerard’s attack. What did you think it was for?”

Jack took a deep breath and blew it
out slowly. “Lily…this is bad. Have you told Sean yet?”

Lily shook her head. “ No. I haven’t
had time. Things got a little hectic this afternoon.”

No shit,
Jack thought. “How many?” He needed to know,
especially if Lily was going to be involved, and knowing her, she
was probably already up to her ears in it.