Sliver of Silver (Blushing Death) (3 page)

When I’d started five years ago, I had been the model employee. I was early, stayed late, and went above and beyond what my duties were. Now, with the added responsibilities to Derek, Patrick, and the Pack, I was lucky to get into work on time. Let alone be pleasant. I wasn’t getting enough sleep and something in me just wasn’t right. I felt like I’d been burning the candles at both ends and I was quickly running out of wick.

I wanted to add something, say something that would make him feel better and made me look better. The problem was, I had nothing to say. Everything he accused me of was right. My job had taken second, maybe even third priority and I’d let it.

“What’s going on?” he asked, almost pleading with me to give him something to hold on to. Concern shown in his eyes as he sat, edging forward to the front of the chair. He probably thought I was on drugs or something. That would have been an easier way out. There was at least help for that.

What do I tell him? I’m still upset that one of my boyfriends died and I’m having weird after effects from eating a piece of his heart.
He’d think I was crazy or worse, mocking his concern. No one could take that statement seriously, not unless you’d been there.

“I’m having some personal issues right now,” I murmured and even to me it sounded pathetic. I hoped to hell he’d accept that as an answer and move on.

No such luck.

“I know Danny’s death was hard on you,” he said with quiet distress. He didn’t like confronting people or dealing with other people’s emotions. This whole situation was hard for him, especially with me. I was the rock. There was nothing I could say to make this easier for him, or me.

“Perhaps you should see someone,” he said, sounding strained.

My eyes shot up at him, wide with shock and horror. The thought of therapists led my mind straight to electroshock and a remembrance of trauma from years ago. For a brief moment, I smelled the remembered scent of singed flesh and hair filling my nostrils. My heart pounded in my throat and I couldn’t stop swallowing, trying to force the lump down. Panic filled every cell of my body and my entire form went rigid in the chair.

My parents had chosen electroshock therapy when I was sixteen. They didn’t believe that I actually saw spirits, ghouls, and ghosts so, in their minds, I had to be crazy. I still hadn’t forgiven them and they didn’t understand why.

He watched my reaction with curious eyes and pursed thin lips. I told myself it was a long time ago, and couldn’t hurt me anymore. Once, twice, and three times, I repeated that mantra in my head until my heart slowed and the heat from my flushed face receded.

I shoved everything into the black box buried deep that had saved me pain and suffering more than once. Since Danny’s death, that little black box had been opening and leaking out more and more. It was too full, too small for what I’d shoved in there. I gritted my teeth and slammed that box shut, closing off all emotions. Everything was easier that way.

I opened my eyes, much calmer and much more pleasant than before, even if it was just a show.

“I appreciate your concern,” I said with as much grace as I could force through gritted teeth, “but I would prefer to deal with this on my own.” I finished with a slight smile but I knew my eyes were still cold.

“I appreciate your independence and your veracity,” he said with an equally pleasant smile. Then his eyes fell on me like lead. “But, Dahlia, we need someone here who is
here
and not constantly somewhere else.” The authority in his voice was surprising. “If you can’t . . .” He left the rest unsaid. He didn’t need to say it. I nodded since I could not quite bring myself to say anything coherent. I went back to my office, shut the door, and cried.

Chapter 3

Sitting on the couch in my living room, reveling in the silence, I let my shoulders slump. The tears I
thought
I was done shedding ran down my cheeks again in hot streams of frustration. I never imagined my life spiraling out of control to the point where I’d be in trouble of losing my job. I buried my head in my hands and then someone knocked on my front door. I thought long and hard about not answering it until his gentle voice rolled through the door.

“Dahlia,” he said. “I can hear you breathing.”

I sighed, a deep
get-it-together
kind of sigh that shuddered on the way out. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I got up and jerked the door open.

Dean glared down at me. His deep olive-green eyes met mine with concern, seeing too much of me, seeing things I didn’t want him to see. The red, puffy outline of my eyes where I’d been crying burned. His lips pressed in a hard line across his square jaw as he stepped through the door. He closed it behind him softly with too much tension in his body.

He’d kept a close eye on me since Danny’s death. Sometimes I appreciated it but other times, like now, I didn’t want him to see how bad I’d gotten.

His face was stern and unreadable but there was an edge to him that hadn’t been there before Danny’s death. The edge was in his energy as it washed over me like a thousand hot jittery bugs crawling on my skin.

“Everything all right?” he asked. I went back to the couch and plopped down hard.

“Yeah, peachy,” I quipped. I just wanted to be left alone. “What can I do for you?” I asked. I was trying to hold it together for appearances, for a little while, anyway. He crossed his arms over his chest, bulging his biceps and chest out to ridiculous proportions as if he didn’t believe me.

“You were at a crime scene this morning,” he stated. He was blunt and to the point, like me and I appreciated it about him. There was no beating around the bush when he decided to talk. The problem was that you had to get him to say it. He was the strong silent type . . . very silent.

“Yeah, how’d you hear about it?” I asked. I hadn’t told anyone yet and I didn’t like the feeling I was being watched. Running my hands through my hair to get the strands out of my face, I huffed on the verge of shaving my head in anger if I couldn’t keep it out of my face. Me . . . on edge? Nah! 

“Tag was on shift this morning,” he said.

I gave him a blank stare, having no idea what the hell he was talking about.

“Stewart Taggar.” He paused. “Thin guy . . . red hair.” When he mentioned the red hair, I vaguely remembered a ginger at the single Pack meeting I’d attended. I remembered him more from the crime scene at Mrs. Corning’s murder, Midnight Ash’s first victim. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to shake Midnight Ash or her carnage.

With my spark of recognition, Dean continued. “He works at the coroner’s office. He took the body away.”

“Well, he saw the body,” I snapped, annoyed. If he already knew, why come to me? Why did he keep coming around? “He can tell you as well as I can.”

“Tag’s transport only.”

“Fine,” I huffed. “I’m pretty sure it was a werewolf kill. There were two of them,” I almost growled. I just wanted him gone. I wanted everyone gone.

“Were you going to tell me?” he asked, anger flaring and giving his voice a deep, dangerous, edge he usually only used with his pack. Power prickled around me, heating up with his anger. It was scorching before, now it physically burned.
A
nnoyance blazed in his glare as his eyes narrowed on me. His jaw tightened to granite with muscles jumping and veins throbbing in his neck as he ground his teeth.

“I just got home, for Christ’s sakes,” I snapped.

He watched me for a long moment, his pulse ticking an unsettling rhythm I felt in my entire being. Under his evaluating eye, I felt raw and open. I got up and went into the kitchen. I couldn’t handle his gaze, reading every thought on my face as if he was in my head. Slamming the cabinets, I shoved dirty dishes into the sink, shattering a few. I could buy more.

“What happened today?” he asked, his voice cooed behind me in a gentler tone that seemed to untwist my insides and helped me relax. His tone almost made me think he cared. I almost believed he wasn’t there because Patrick had asked him to be, or that he felt some weird Pack duty to Danny. I didn’t want to be someone’s pity project or their burden. I could take care of myself, damn it. I turned with fury in my eyes.

He leaned on the doorjamb to the kitchen with his arms folded across his chest like he belonged there, seeming less austere, more forgiving. He watched me with an expression I couldn’t fathom but made me tingle down to my toes. I swallowed hard and met his eyes.

Only ten minutes earlier, I thought I wanted to be alone. Now that he looked at me with compassion—that’s what it was, compassion—I couldn’t keep the words back.

“I was late going in to work again today. That damned body took longer than I thought and I got ‘the talk’ from my boss. You know the one,” I blurted as a tear rolled down my cheek. “One last chance to shape up or I’m out. You know what goes on around here,” I said, my bottom lip quivering. “I can’t do it.”

That was it. That was the crux of it and why I was so upset. I knew in the end there was no way in hell I could make it. It was only a matter of time before I lost my job. I’d never been fired before. I’d never had someone tell me I couldn’t cut it. I’d killed a demon and a 500-year-old ninja assassin, for fuck’s sake, but I couldn’t cut it.

He took a deep, uncomfortable breath, bowing his head as he stared down at the floor. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. He wanted to fix it, to make it better for me. He couldn’t, no one could. Somewhere deep down, I think he understood that, too. Neither of us wanted to admit defeat.

I reached over and placed my hand lightly on his tightly flexed forearm. A current of heat ran through my fingertips as the soft voice in my mind purred her delight. She’d been silent, leaving me alone in my anguish, but her purr was filled with longing and warmth.

He tensed under my touch with a frightening jolt of electricity as his muscles turned to stone. I slowly removed my hand. If he didn’t want me to touch him, I wasn’t going to touch him. No harm, no foul.

“Thanks anyway,” I whispered. The silence between us felt thick, like standing in mud. I didn’t know where this tension came from but it was uncomfortable.

“What can you tell me about the body?” he asked, clearing his throat of the lingering hoarseness.

“It was a woman, about 5’10” and 170 pounds, blond. They held her down at the shoulders. Her face was gone. Her guts were sprawled out all over the grass and her chest was a sloppy damned mess. I’m pretty sure her kidneys were gone. I didn’t see them lying around anywhere and the abdomen was pretty empty. I think she was still alive though, when they started. She bled out . . . a lot,” I said, pouring myself a glass of water and taking a small sip.

“They ate her?” he asked, standing straighter.

“Yes.”

His eyes narrowed on me, bright Caribbean blue flooding his olive-green irises.

“It looked like she was gnawed on a little but not that they sat down for a full meal. There was too much of her still intact.” I shrugged.

“She was
your
height,
your
weight, blond?” he asked, giving me a once over. He had a menace behind his eyes that didn’t match the calm, cool tone.

“I didn’t say that.” I shook my head.

Are you 5’10” and 170 pounds?” he asked with sarcasm.

“Yeah,” I said, exasperated. The doorbell rang and I breezed by him to answer it.

Who the hell is it now?
Didn’t people know I wanted to be alone and wallow in my own self-pity? It isn’t even dark yet.
I yanked the door open and was flabbergasted into open-mouthed shock.

“Brennan?” He was like the answer to my prayers. He was the friendly face I needed, and the normal I craved. When he smiled back at me, I forgot all the bad stuff I never seemed to be able to shake.

Brennan had been my first childhood friend, my first love, my first kiss, and my first trauma. He and I had shared an experience in a cemetery when I was seventeen that had sent me to kill, and him to God. Go figure. He was a priest now and one of the few people who knew I could see everything that goes bump in the night.

“In the flesh,” he said, grinning sheepishly at me. For a moment, he was that eighteen-year-old boy again and I was just a girl without a care in the world. “Can I come in?”

“Please,” I said with a genuine smile curling the corners of my mouth. Closing the door behind him, I turned. Dean stood looming in the doorway, watching us. His eyes had shifted completely to the crystal Caribbean blue of his wolf and the heat of his power pushed at me, wrapping around me almost possessively.

Brennan stopped in the middle of the room as the two men eyed each other.

“Dean you remember Father Williamson,” I said with a warning in my tone. “Brennan, this is Dean.” The two men sized each other up. I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like they were in competition . . . for anything.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Brennan said.

“Likewise,” Dean gruffed with a quick nod. He shoved off the doorjamb and stalked by Brennan with his long, heavy strides echoing on the hardwood floors in the tense silence. Dean didn’t offer to shake Brennan’s hand and neither did Brennan.

Stopping momentarily beside me, Dean’s arm and fingers brushed mine, sending a hot jolt through me that landed and simmered low in my body. I hadn’t expected my reaction, didn’t understand it, and didn’t want it.

“We’ll talk later,” he growled in a low, agitated tone before he strode out the door. Dean knew all too well what Brennan meant to me, representing a troubled and painful time in my past. At that moment, I didn’t care. Brennan was a nice surprise and I was more excited than anxious to see him.

His soft brown eyes reflected the same joy warming me. The last time we’d talked, I’d gotten the feeling he’d been disappointed in me and the fact that he didn’t hold it against me lightened me somehow. The thought of Brennan disappointed in me gnarled me up inside. I’d written my family off a long time ago but Brennan was different. I needed him to approve of me. I needed him to love me even if it wasn’t in the way I’d once wanted. I’d take what I could get. He was the last link to my past to prove I’d been there; that everything had actually happened.   

“What are you doing here?” I asked, still grinning like a sap.

“I transferred to St. Joseph’s downtown,” he said as he circled around me and sat on the couch, making himself at home.

“So you’re living here?” Excitement made my voice higher and my words quick. His feet shuffled and his gaze shifted to the floor. His body language was closed off, his shoulders tight and his fists clasped between his knees. I suddenly wondered why he was standing in my living room at all. “Why and for how long?” I asked, crossing my arms underneath my breasts.

“I needed a change. I’ve been here about six weeks,” he said nonchalantly as he gazed up at me with innocence. Even if I couldn’t have smelled the lie on him, his adrenaline rush and twinge of fear that gave him away, I would have known by the look in his eyes. He wasn’t a very good liar. It comes from not doing it enough.

I slammed my hands on my hips and scowled at him. He smiled, a small twitch of his lips as he gawked at me. “I haven’t seen that look in a very long while.”

I was silent.

“You didn’t look like the girl I remembered the last time I saw you. I thought you might need a friend,” he said, but I could tell he wasn’t done yet, could see the hesitation in his eyes. He was holding something back.

“And?” I probed.

“Your parents asked me to keep an eye on you,” he grumbled. “I know you don’t get along with them but they worry about you,” he added.

“I’m over 30, Brennan. Do I look like I need a babysitter?”

“No, from what I can see, you already have one,” he said, annoyance gave his words shape as he glanced at the door where Dean had left only a few moments before. “You didn’t seem happy when I saw you six months ago and you look even worse now.” His voice was soft and reassuring. No matter how much time went by, it was the same old Brennan. My Brennan.

“All right,” I said, tugging him from the couch. “You’re off the hook. Let’s go get some dinner.”

Over Chinese, we managed to talk about everything except my life. I’d become a master at avoiding topics I didn’t want to talk about. I got plenty of practice with an anxious, overprotective vampire, a demanding Gaoh, and two meddling but concerned friends.

Brennan talked about his former congregation and how long it had been depleting. He seemed sad about it. There wasn’t any work for anyone anymore and when everyone leaves and the diehards start to, well, die, you’re not left with a lot.

“When attendance got down to less than ten every Sunday and I was doing more funerals than weddings, I couldn’t think of a reason to stay. I asked for a transfer here and there was a spot open,” he said, smiling at me. I couldn’t help but smile back. “Are you going to talk about yourself at any point, or am I going to have to guess?”

“There’s not much to tell,” I bit out, taking a sip from the straw in front of me. I directed my gaze away to the bright red and yellow Chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Anything to avoid eye contact.

“Really?” He drew out the word like an accusation.

Turning my cold stare on him, I tried hard for steely indifference but my pulse raced so fast my face flushed giving my trepidation away.

“Last time you saw me I was struggling with some heavy decisions.”

“Did you make them?” he asked, trying to prod some information out of me. I had too much practice evading the real issues to give up that easily.

“Yes,” I answered. Danny’s face flashed before my eyes. If I’d left him out, hurt him enough to make him leave me, maybe Danny would still be alive. I’d been greedy and selfish. I was still being greedy and selfish but I couldn’t seem to stop.