Water of Souls Read online

  “Terrance, order me a cappuccino and a blueberry scone, will you?”

  He turns to me inquisitively and I tilt my head in the direction of Mr. Barrington. “Ah. Sure.”

  I leave Terrance in line, waiting for the brunette with the high ponytail—I’ve seen her before... I think her name is Shanna—to turn around and take his order.

  “Allen?” I say his name softly when I’m several feet from his booth. The powder blue and cream vinyl of the bench seat is covered in spider web cracks, but they do not go through and compromise the filling. “Allen?” I say his name once more and he looks at me, his gaze unfocused and his thoughts far away from this little café and this little town.

  “Oh, Ms. Cage. How nice to see you.” His voice is distant, in some other space and time. It floats back to Earth, like a falling star.

  “It’s good to see you too, Allen. Are you staying in town?”

  He points at the bench on the other side and invites me to sit down. I do. “No. I drove back this morning to visit with my Timothy again. Your coroner here has been very gracious, to let me see him two days in a row.”

  “Doug’s a good guy.”

  “He is.”

  I jump a little when slender hands crowned with bright pink fingernails, set a warm scone and foamy coffee in front of me. “Thanks so much,” I look up, see a name tag. I’d been close. The girls name is Shannon, not Shanna. “Shannon.”

  “No problem. Chief said he was going to have his in the car and to take your time.” Her voice is good cheesecake smooth, more mature than her looks would make one expect. She walks away and when she turns, I see that her apron is tight around her abdomen. There’s a small mountain there. She’s pregnant. And now, looking closely, I see a small band of silver around her ring finger. Funny, I’ve seen her several times, and I always took her for a high school girl.

  “Allen, can I ask you some questions?”

  “Of course.” He picks up a crumbled piece of biscuit and puts it in his mouth. The look on his face as he chews tells me that it tasted as dry as it looked. “Ask me anything.” He pushes the plate away.

  “You told me a little bit about the dynamic between Timothy and your ex-wife. Were they still in contact after the divorce?” I take a sip of the cappuccino. It is deliciously hot, the kind of heat that burns your tongue and instantly sends your senses into ‘wake up’ mode. After the burn wears off though, I can taste the bitterness of a machine that needs a thorough cleaning before the next brewing.

  “Not often, but yes, they still saw one another. Mostly at the holidays. I told you Tess was young, younger than me by fifteen years. She remarried quite fast. Her boss, actually. A reconstructive surgeon with a practice in Georgetown. He’s the best in the state actually. I wonder if they were together before our split. There are only so many times your wife can tell you that she has to stay late to file before you start to get suspicious. Every time I’d take Timothy to the practice there, I’d have to really hold my tongue to not get into it with Tess.”

  “When they were in contact, did they get along? I mean, were things better than they were before?” I’m focusing on the mother’s relationship with her son, but I also feel like I’m missing something. Something important.

  Allen shook his head slowly, his eyes glazing over. “No, he called me upset after most of their visits. He wanted to be accepted by her so badly. The worst was the last Christmas he spent with her. He brought Darnell along and she could not understand how he could associate with a male identity and then fall in love with a male. She said it was more evidence that he was wrong, that he should go back to being what he was according to his physical body. A female.”

  “How has she been since Timothy disappeared? How’s she taking the news that he’s... been found?” I stumble over the last two words. Timothy wasn’t found. He was gone. And his body was frozen, holding secrets to what happened to him.

  “Yesterday was the first time Tess and I have spoken since the day he disappeared.”

  I take a bite of scone, stewing on this information. “Isn’t it strange that her child could disappear and she’d not be somewhat concerned and frantic? Regardless whether she agreed with Timothy’s choices, she would still grieve for the daughter she knew, wouldn’t she?”

  “I’ve given up trying to understand Tess.” He picks up another piece of crumbled biscuit, shifting the plate further away from him after he starts chewing and remembering how dry it was the first time.

  “What did she say yesterday when you told her?” I focus on my scone, slowly pulling off another piece and tossing it into my mouth. The berries are plump and sweet and they make my mouth water.

  “She said,” he stops talking and I look up from my pastry to find tears streaming down his face. He swallows, picks up a wrinkled white napkin from the table and wipes his face. “She said that her daughter died a long time ago.”

  I reach across the table and wrap both of my hands around his thin forearms, which are now folded across his body, hugging himself, trying to keep it together. I squeeze softly, trying to show support, but I feel anything I might do to give him comfort would be useless. Too little.

  “Allen, may I have Tess’s contact information? I think it’s important that Chief Goodman talks to her.”

  He nods, reaching for a clean napkin from the chrome holder next to the standing, colorful dessert menu. A pen emerges from the inner pocket of his tweed sports coat. He slides the napkin over to me when he is done. His writing is shaky, but thick and bold.

  “As soon as Doug gives me the go, I’ll set a new date for the funeral, Allen. Were you able to make arrangements to preserve Rosemary?” I say the dog’s name and get a little lightbulb over my head. “I know a taxidermist outside town if you’d like to take her there for preservation? Or if you bring her by the funeral home, I can place her in the temperature-controlled room?”

  “That would be wonderful, Ms. Cage. I’ve been keeping her in the deep freezer at home.” He smiles, just the smallest upturn of his lips that makes the tears roll in different directions down his cheeks. “Darnell opened it the other day and screamed. I forgot to warn him that she was out there when I sent him to get the frozen peas.”

  Frozen veggies and a dog’s corpse. Not a combination I plan to have on my dinner table any time soon.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thursday comes and goes. The county sent over Mrs. Leeds body. She smelled. Not just the normal death smell where bowels have loosened and urine has seeped into clothing and dried. She smells like years of neglect, like no one has been around to care for her in her weakest moments. She’s ready now, looking as well as I can make her, in the discount, banged-up coffin waiting for a discount funeral. No one cared for her in life, but I could care for her in death.

  She will be buried in the ground with only myself and Max and Dean as witnesses. At least her soul was long gone. She must have been more than ready to leave this life.

  Sometimes I worry I will become a Mrs. Leeds. I shake, fold my arms across my chest and knit myself back together one emotion at a time.

  And then strong arms wrap around my body and further glue me together. “You okay?” Kyle’s voice murmurs throatily, his lips pressed near my ear, his face nestling gently against my hair. “You look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

  “Not the whole world.” I whisper, leaning back into his body, letting the warmth of him calm me down.

  “Goodman will find out who’s doing this, Tori. You need to let it go for a while, try and relax.”

  “It’s hard to relax when someone’s out there murdering women and treating them like disposable toys, Kyle.”

  “You’re going to drive yourself nuts over this, babe.”

  Kyle has never called me babe before and I don’t like it. Not even a little bit. It’s one of those icky couple nicknames that I’ve always refused to use with my boyfriends. “I hate babe. And baby. Honey is something you put on toast. An
d I only call kids Sweetie.” My tone is snippy, not nice. I immediately feel the need to apologize.

  Turning around in his arms, I kiss his neck. Little dainty whispers of lips against his skin that has a first brush of new hair that needs trimming. “Sorry, I’m in a shitty mood.”

  “You have every right to be.” He strokes my hair, his fingers getting tangled towards the bottom. “Let’s at least concentrate on something else. Like me. The living, breathing, antiquated Viking warrior.”

  “Yeah, about that.” I shuffle my feet, look down at the small gap between our bodies, and then push away, suddenly uncomfortable. “I’ve been wanting to really talk about what Liam told us. About you being drawn to me because of what you are and what I am. I don’t feel like... we’ve thought about this enough.”

  “Tori?” He says my name like a question and quirks an eyebrow. His face is thoughtful and curious now. “I told you none of that matters. None of it.” He stops talking for a moment, his eyebrow falling back into place like a lazy caterpillar. “But you feel differently? Bad different or good?”

  I sigh, shoulders slumping. “Honestly, I don’t know yet. Maybe bad.”

  “I was worried you’d say bad. Come on, coffee’s hot and the couch is cozy. You’re all done working for the day, right?”

  “Yes, all wrapped up neat in a casket downstairs. Poor Mrs. Leeds.” I push past Kyle, enjoying the way it feels when our bodies brush. “I don’t want to end up like her. Dying alone, no one to bury me. My body showing years of neglect. I don’t want to live my life that way.”

  Kyle reaches for me, grabs my arm, and pulls me back to him. The hug he gives me is firm and reassuring. “That’s never going to happen, Tori. You’re so easy to love.”

  The blush that creeps into my cheeks is hot as fire; it reminds me of the feel of Mordecai’s blood as I drew it to me, pulling away his life cell by cell. This time though, the heat does not scare me. It’s good and kind, like a fire’s light after a day spent too long in the cold. Kyle continues to hold me. I don’t push away or fight it. Seconds stretch into minutes. Finally, after the minutes have merged into forever, I pull away.

  Because our feelings could all be mystical crap, no matter how genuine and warm they seem.

  “So, coffee and chat.” I say, gripping his hand and pulling him towards the kitchen.

  He already has my favorite mug on the counter. The Wednesday Addams one. I smile when I see it. And I smile wider when I see it next to a new addition—a sunny yellow cup that says ‘Good morning, Sunshine’. It’s so opposite my own cup, such a juxtaposition, that I know it speaks volumes for who Kyle and I are as people. I wonder if I deserve him. Again, maybe I don’t. Magical magnetism sucks.

  He may be a berserker. He may ‘beast out’ when necessary. But he doesn’t want to kill people.

  I know this to be fact.

  Once we’re seated on the couch, me criss-cross applesauce and him with one ankle resting on the opposite leg’s knee, I begin to ramble—like I do when I’m nervous, uncomfortable, uncertain about the future. We don’t know anything new of course, apart from Liam has already told us, but me just talking more about the unusual connection between necromancers and berserkers helps ease my mind and heart.

  Kyle stay quiet for a long time as I yap like my life, and love, depends on it. I wonder what he’s thinking. Is he finally coming to his senses—that he never understood why he would be attracted to me in the first place? Is he debating how to break it off with me, now that I’ve beaten the dead horse and talked him out of loving me?

  Finally, after my throat starts hurting, Kyle takes a deep sip of coffee. It’s long gone cold and he grimaces as the cool liquid and sludge at the bottom of his cup slips down his throat into his belly.

  “Tori, I get the feeling that maybe you want me to wake up and realize it’s all magic and I don’t love you.” He leans forward, uncrossing his legs and setting his now empty mug on the coffee table. “Who gives a fuck if we wouldn’t have been drawn to each other if you weren’t what you are and I wasn’t what I am. The fact is that I love you, Tori. You, Tori. I love your laugh. I love the way you see the world. I love the way you treat people and the way you look in the morning before having a chance to tidy your hair. Being a necromancer is part of you. Being whatever the hell I am—”

  “A berserker,” I offer, even though I know he knows the word and is just having an issue coming to grips with the reality.

  “Yes, that. I just another part of who I am.” He reaches for me, taking both of my hands in his. “Do you love me the person? Or,” he tilts his head, a wry smile warming his face, “do you love my animal side?”

  I’m silent for a second, thinking. It’s not the right thing to do when someone asks if you love them, but I have to pause and give it consideration. I jumped into love with Adam, which was the right thing to do, because it just was. I’m more reserved now in matters of the heart though. If I say the words now, it wouldn’t even be the first time. When I’d said them before though, I’d said ‘I love you, but I don’t know’. And that means there was a caveat to the confession of love. It means that it wasn’t unbridled or fully true. I thought I loved him. Now I need to give him an answer that does not contain doubt. “Yes, I love you.”

  “Then none of it matters.”

  “But, Kyle,” I swallow hard, knowing my next words are awful to say after a profession of love to a man who wants monogamy and a future and—I’d even bet—the white picket fence, two kids, and a dog, whole shebang (or would we have ghost-attracting cubs instead of kids?). “Liam means something to me too. It’s not something I can define. I don’t know if it’s romantic love or just that I deeply care about him as a friend. It wouldn’t be fair for you though, not to be honest about that.”

  His brow furrows, but his hands grip me a fraction tighter. He’s not letting me go; he’s not letting the bombshell I just dropped ruin the moment. His face tells me though, that he’s thought about this before. The wry smile is gone. Determination in its place.

  “I’m not an idiot, Tori. When he’s around, I can feel that there’s something between you two.” He sighs, looks down at the floor and then back at my face. I’m surprised when a new grin spreads his lips; this one is darkly mischievous. “But, I do have an advantage over fairy boy. If what he said is true, then you and I are fated to be together. And fate is a hard thing to fight.”

  I can’t help but smile at him.

  And part of me, most of me really, hopes what he says is true. Because I’m not the type of girl who can be in a love triangle. I barely have the capacity to really love one other person nowadays, let alone two. And Kyle is the clear choice. Not just because our bodies call to one another. Not just because the necromancer within me sings when his berserker is around, but because we fit.

  We fit like snow on a mountain’s peak. What I feel for Liam is not hot enough to melt that cold whiteness.

  At least, I pray it isn’t.

  God, when did my life get so freaking complicated?

  For a moment, I want to rewind my life, back to when I was living in the shadows, back when not a soul alive knew my secret. Back before things began to change.

  Of course, rewinding my life would do nothing to change the post-Rising world. And that is the world I live in. With its dreary weather and promise of a burning death.

  Chapter Twenty

  Friday, Kyle and I are woken by my phone ringing. I groggily turn over, reaching for the cell positioned at the corner’s edge of the teal nightstand that’s just wobbly enough that when my fingers graze the phone instead of grab it, it decides to slip off the painted wood and freefall to the floor below.

  “Dammit.” I shift my body more, my top half going off the mattress, my hands stretching out to waggle across the floor, and my braless boobs threatening to spill out of my black tank top. The phone is still ringing. It’s giving me a headache, one of those insta-come kinds that sits behind your eyes and just ‘ping ping ping’s u
ntil you down a Tylenol chased with several cups of high grade caffeine. Kyle, on the other hand, is snoring softly again. That makes me jealous.

  Finally, the phone is in my hand and I’m sliding over the answer icon. My voice sounds just this side of pissed off. “Yes?”

  “Tori, it’s Terrance.” And just like that, I’m awake.

  “Hey, Terrance, give me two seconds. I need to go in the other room.” I’m whispering, rolling fully off the bed so that I can sneak out of the room without disturbing Kyle. Although, a teensy part of me wants to be really loud and wake him up, just for the hell of it. I’m tired and I want to keep sleeping too. Terrance doesn’t respond.

  But I resist the urge and walk out of the bedroom; the floors are cold against my bare feet and when I get to the kitchen, I see the neon microwave clock screaming at me that it’s really not all that early. In fact, it’s past when I normally get up. Especially when I have a funeral. “Shit,” I mutter, knowing I won’t be able to crawl back into bed next to Kyle.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, dammit.” I sigh and the sound is loud enough to bounce around the room and settle back over my body. “I just didn’t know how late it was. It’s actually a good thing that you called and woke me up.”

  “Good. I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to talk to Mr. Barrington’s ex and her current husband today. I know you’ve got another funeral or I’d drag you along.”

  “Damn, wish it had been yesterday. I got done prepping Mrs. Leeds fairly early.”

  “The new husband, a Mitchell Sherwin, was out of town at a conference.” He pauses talking and I hear some paper rustling. He’s checking his notebook more than likely, trying to recall a name. “Tess Sherwin was available, but I wanted to talk to them together. I want to get a feel for their relationship. I’ll cook up a reason to bring them in separately afterwards and make sure it’s a time you can be there.”

  “Sure, sure.” I bite my lower lip and think. “What time are you going?”