Hex Appeal (16 page)

He hung up and spread his hands in a gesture that made me smack him on the arm. “Seriously! They’re going to send me a fruit basket now! You couldn’t just tell them I had a cold?”

“Had to make sure they let you off, didn’t I? Now, you need to do what I said. Go right on to bed.”

I was still caught between outrage and delight, and delight finally won. “All right,” I said. “You want to come with me?”

He gave me a crooked smile, and said, “Ma’am, I am a minister, you heard me say it on the phone. I minister to your needs just as often as I can, but I promise, not today. You crawl in and sleep, and I’m going to go talk to those two resurrection witches you said weren’t telling you the truth.”

That drove away the cobwebs for a moment. “Andy—”

He kissed me—sweet and light and undemanding, this time. “You go on,” he said. “I’ll get you up for lunch. Then we’ll see what we do about making up for lost time between the two of us.”

He was right, I did need the rest; I was asleep practically from the moment my head hit the pillow.

*   *   *

When lunchtime came, I woke up to Andy’s kissing me awake, and the delicious warmth of that gave way to a rumble of real hunger as he stepped back and put a bed tray over my lap. “There,” he said. “Grilled ham and cheese sandwich, just like we used to make it back in Amarillo, when the streets were paved with cow chips. Only difference is I used presliced bread instead of having to hack it off the loaf.”

He plunked himself down on the other side of the bed as I dug into the meal; when Andy cooked, it was always with a down-home enthusiasm that denied the existence of cholesterol, and damn, it was great. I tried not to think about the calories, which was actually a lot easier than normal since I’d skipped two meals in a row.

“Did you eat?” I asked after I’d swallowed the last delicious, buttery piece of the sandwich. He picked up the remote control and flipped on the television mounted on the wall across from the bed.

“Yep,” he said. “Ate, cleaned up the kitchen, waited until I was sure you’d had at least six full hours. How you feeling?”

“Great,” I said. “You’re not seriously going to watch TV now.”

He’d tuned it to a show that featured drunk people wandering around screaming at each other. Reality television. “Can’t help it,” he said. “Don’t really want to watch it, but I still do. Don’t seem right, people putting their personal business out like this, for everybody to gawk over. In—” He caught himself, and grinned. “I was about to say
in my day,
but that’d make me feel about two hundred years older than I actually am in body. But in my day, folks kept their private lives private.”

“I guess it’s a different way of looking at things,” I said. “Maybe as connected as everybody is now, there’s no way to keep your business all that private anymore. And not as much need.”

He put the remote aside, moved the remains of the lunch tray, and kissed the side of my neck. It felt warm, comfortable, and seductive at the same time. “I have no mind to share any of you with an audience, Holly Anne. I want to keep you all to myself.”

I knew that we ought to be talking about the case, or about what we were going to do to find the killer, but as his arm went around my shoulders, as I curled into his warm body, I felt no real desire to spoil this.
We need this,
I thought.
We need this time.

Because there would never be enough time. I knew that. All lovers faced a ticking clock, but ours was loud, and close, and inevitable, and we both knew it. Andy was strong, but his strength couldn’t hold, it
couldn’t.

“Hey,” he said, and tilted my chin up to meet my eyes. He had deep, richly brown eyes, full of secrets. Full of warmth, too. “You’re thinking too dark, you know that? Leave it out there.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I keep thinking about those girls. We failed last night. We didn’t get him. You really didn’t find anything, either?”

“We really going to talk about this now?”

I nodded silently, and he sighed and settled back against the pillows, staring at the flickering TV screen again. “I had some knowledge of someone who’d hired an avatar witch. Not through the network.”

I sat up and stared at him, but he didn’t meet my eyes. “
What?
”

“It’s a dead end,” he said. “I mean that exactly, ’cause when I tracked the son of a bitch down who handed over the money, he was dead and buried in a ditch out behind his house.” There was something unnatural in the focus he was giving the stupid reality show, and I knew he wasn’t really seeing it. What he was seeing was far worse. “Didn’t have time to do a real resurrection, so I took some shortcuts.”

“What do you mean,
shortcuts
?”

“There are things I know you don’t, Holly Anne. Things it’s better you don’t, and this is one of ’em.”

“What are you talking about, Andy?”

“There’s a way to pull a soul back over into his own ruined body and hold it there, long as you’re not too particular about what it takes to get it done.” He paused a moment, then said, “I got a couple of questions answered, once he stopped screaming. Couldn’t hold him long. Your killer wasn’t too kind to that body.”

I swallowed hard. From the stony look on Andy’s face, it was worse than he was willing to tell me, which made it
way
worse than I could imagine. “Oh God,” I said faintly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Just did. No reason to give you nightmares, wasn’t your doing. Anyway, I found out who gave him the money to hire the witch. Name was a dead end.”

“You should still tell Prieto,” I said. “Maybe the witch he hired has more information…”

Andy was already shaking his head. “Nothing more to be learned. Believe me, your police friend ain’t gonna get any more out of this than I did.”

“It’s not just about the information. It’s about justice.”

He looked at me, suddenly. His eyes were unreadable. “Justice.”

“That witch is guilty. Maybe guilty after the fact, but she ought to be charged and her license to practice taken away, at the very least. If you don’t want to go to the police, we need to report her to the network.”

“I will,” he said. He settled back against the pillows, still watching me. “Holly…”

I slowly stretched out, facing him. We were close together now, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath stirring my hair. I held out my hand, and he took it, and our fingers twined together.

“Going to be staking out that place again tonight?” he asked.

“Probably.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

“Not at all.” I smiled, and it felt sad. “I love spending time with you, Andy. I wish there were all the time in the world to spend with you.”

“Hush, now. Don’t let what’s sad take away what’s beautiful.” His fingertips touched my cheek, lightly, and my lips parted in unbidden response. “
You’re
beautiful.”

“We’re beautiful,” I said, and kissed him. He tasted like apples and wine, sweet and crisp and clean, and his mouth opened with a wordless groan under mine. The wet, slick dance of our tongues made my skin tingle, melted warmth from the rest of my body to trickle and pool between my legs, and I didn’t resist as he shifted his weight and eased me back to the pillows

A sharp tug was all it took to pull loose the snaps on his plaid shirt, and he smiled as he straightened up to take it off. I loved the way light slipped golden over his skin, catching on his muscles and glistening on the hair on his chest; it even gilded the scars, the ones that his avatar had carried out of the resurrection even though he ought to have, by all logic, been fresh and unmarked. The scars had a kind of beauty to them—living badges of the kind of courage I couldn’t really imagine.

Andy stood up and shed his jeans, and stood there looking down at me; and then he sat on the edge of the bed and trailed his fingertips lightly over my stomach. His touch made me tremble, and my breath come faster. “It seems disrespectful to those dead girls to want you this much right now,” he said. “But want you I do, Holly Anne. This minute. And I think you want me just as much. Right?”

I deliberately pulled down the sheet, never looking away from those deep, shadow-haunted eyes. His hand moved slowly over the bunched fabric, then up my inner thigh. He grasped the thin elastic band of my panties and pulled them off. He slowly caressed and kissed my bare leg, moving up into the shadows. I gasped and arched against him as he stroked me in wet, deep, aching places. His mouth, lips, and tongue bathed my nipples in heat, and I was well on the way to a bright and shattering climax even before Andy shifted his weight and slowly, relentlessly filled me.

It took my breath away, and he held there for a moment, staring into my eyes. “All right?” he whispered, and I nodded and wrapped my legs around him, pushing him deeper, arching against him. “God
damn
, Holly…”

“Stop talking,” I whispered, and kissed him as he lost the fine edge of control to which he’d been clinging.

Our lovemaking was swift and hot and hard, different from the times before; it seemed to go on forever, one breathless deep thrust after another. No words, just indrawn breaths and gasps and whispers that had no meaning other than what we felt.

He’d never been more real to me. More
alive.
And he drove me to a shattering, gasping pinnacle with my nails digging into his skin, leaving marks. He came a few deep, fast strokes later, and collapsed against me, shuddering with the force of it.

When he stirred, his kisses were sweet and soft and slow—a silent gift. We lay together, linked, for a long time before he heaved a deep sigh, and said, “Didn’t mean it to go quite that way.”

“I did,” I said, and touched his lips gently with mine. “I needed it.”

“Ah. Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint a lady.”

“That was
not
what a lady would have done.”

“I’ll have you know that I’ve known me a good number of ladies, and a fair number of them…”

I put my fingers on his mouth, stopping him. “Really not the time for your back-in-my-day reminiscences, Andy.”

He kissed my hand. “I know that.”

There was a ring from somewhere in the direction of his pants, which were on the floor, and both of us sighed. Andy touched his forehead to mine for a few apologetic seconds, then said, “I was hoping to hear from somebody on another lead…”

“Take it,” I said. He kissed me gently and slipped out of bed to grab up his pants and find the cell. He didn’t put the pants
on
, which I could only appreciate; he was breathtaking, for all his scars—or because of them. I couldn’t imagine not having him here, with me, always, and now the gnawing fear came back that this was the last time I’d have this, the last night we’d be together.

Life was so fragile, sometimes.

He said hello, listened, then cast a glance at me and left the room to talk. I got up and gathered my scattered clothes, got fresh ones from the closet, and turned on the hot water in the bathroom.

Andy popped his head in. “Sweetness, I’ve got to go meet a man about a horse.”

“Knowing you, I’m afraid you mean that literally. Want to shower? It’ll only take about ten minutes.”

He smiled, a slow and wicked expression that made my blood warm, again. “Maybe twenty,” he said.

“You’re such a gentleman.”

That made him shrug. “Not so’s you notice.”

*   *   *

It was about fifteen, truth be told, but fiercely sweet, then he was dressed and gone, with his hair still shining and wet. I took my time, relaxing in the spray and the calming scent of the lavender soap.

My cell was ringing when I stepped out. I toweled off hastily, wrapped my hair, and grabbed the phone just before the call flipped over to voice mail. “Hello?” I sounded cross, and I was. I hoped it wasn’t my day job calling, because if it was, I didn’t sound
nearly
enough out of it.

Instead, I got a male, totally unfamiliar voice. “You were asking questions about a witch who’d made an avatar recently.”

“That’s right.” I felt a quick burn of excitement. “Do you have a name?”

“I do,” the voice said. “But understand, I don’t like doing this.”

“I appreciate that. I won’t ask. All I need is a name, and I won’t tell anyone where I got it. I’m not asking
your
name, either.”

There was a long hiss of silence, as if the caller was debating hanging up, then the man said, “You know him. I’ve seen you with him.”

I frowned, racking my brain for all of the witches I’d met with in the past few months. There were at least fifteen, about a third of them male …

“It’s the one you brought back,” the voice said. “The one who won’t die. Toland.”

“What are you—” Silence settled cold inside. I was aware of the whisper of traffic outside on the road, of wind in the tree by the window, of the rattle of the air-conditioning kicking in, the warmth of the sunlight on the towel over my legs.

But the world had stopped. Just … stopped. For me.

“You’re wrong,” I said. I didn’t even mean to say it, but the words came bubbling up, out of control. “He didn’t. He’s a resurrection witch, not—”

“He can do both. He’s the
only
one who can do both. Didn’t you know that?”

And the caller hung up without waiting for an answer.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it, numbed and empty.
No.
No, it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.

But I remembered. He’d brought home five thousand in hundred-dollar bills. Cash. The way that illicit transactions were done all over the world.

He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

But he’d thrown himself into this with a furious intensity—been gone all night—interrogated a murdered man for information … was that the action of someone trying to help me, or someone trying to cover his own guilt?

Oh God, God, God …

Deep breaths, Holly. Give him a chance to explain. You can’t believe this, you can’t just think he would do something like this. You know him.

Did I? I’d seen Andy grow more and more frustrated over the past few weeks, feeling useless to contribute toward our money problems. Feeling less of a man for not finding his chosen employment in this vastly changed world. He was used to simpler times, direct actions, clear rules.