“No. It was too dark. I don’t even know if it was a live or a dead person.”
They stood under a light and Marley leaned away a little. She turned her hand palm-up and his heart thundered.
“We’re going to an emergency room,” he said. “My God, Marley. The wound needs stitching.”
“It looks worse than it is,” she said, and pulled together a tear in her sleeve.
“Show me that.” Nat took hold of her wrist before she could hide her hand. “When did you get this?”
She shook her head.
“Tell me!”
“I don’t know exactly, but it was this evening at that building.”
“Who did it to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did they use?”
She hesitated. “A spine on their skin—or hide,” she said. “As far as I could tell.”
“Uh-huh.” Nat didn’t sound convinced. “My guys are spreading out. They’ll keep checking in. If what you describe exists in this city, we’ll find it.”
“I want to be there when they go in,” Marley said.
“Any particular reason?”
“Because I care. If I’m right, someone suffered there. I don’t want anyone walking all over it like it’s a park.”
Nat put his hands in his pockets. “My people are very careful.”
“I want to be there before they go in.”
“Okay. If they find it, you will be. Now I want you to come with me.”
Marley frowned at Gray.
“I’ll stay with you,” he said. “Nat’s a good guy.”
“I want to go home and sleep,” she said, never taking her gaze from his.
With me?
Sometimes his basic urges carried him away. “Can’t this wait?” he said to Nat. “Marley’s had a long day.”
“No, it can’t. Unless you insist on my getting an order from a judge, Marley, I’d like our people to run DNA from that wound.”
A
steady, warm drizzle fell. Rain and a murky damp had taken turns for hours to make the night as difficult as possible.
“We’re going in circles,” Gray said.
“Uh-huh.” Marley hardly had the energy to keep walking. “We are. That’s kind of the point. Eventually I’ll see something I didn’t notice before. I need coffee.”
Without breaking his stride, Gray landed a hand on the back of her neck and pushed her through the door of a corner café with empty booths along both of its windows.
Marley slid onto a split, green plastic seat and shook her head. She was glad she couldn’t see what the humidity had done to her hair.
“Look at those curls,” Gray said. “You could audition for Orphan Annie.”
She scowled at him. “Thanks, I needed that.”
His smile made her laugh.
“You’re bad, you know that?” she told him. “Do you think they have toasted cheese sandwiches here?”
“You don’t want chocolate syrup on chocolate cake?”
“That’s dessert.”
A waitress brought coffee and nixed the toasted cheese. They could have pizza by the slice.
“Do you have anything else?” Marley asked. “Oatmeal? Grits? Corn pudding?”
“Nope. We’ll nuke the pizza for you, though.”
“Six pieces, then,” Marley said.
The woman rolled her eyes and left.
“You’re going to eat six pieces of pizza?” Gray said.
“I’ll share.”
“We’re avoiding the issue, Marley. This isn’t going anywhere, this hopeless search. You don’t want to hear this, but go back to the beginning and think it through. Second by second, move by move.”
He was right, she didn’t want to hear it. “Coffee first.”
“Nat’s still out there, too,” he said. “He’ll keep going and so will his people.”
“Nat believes me,” Marley said, surprising herself. “I’m not sure when I knew it, but it’s true. He doesn’t think I’m making any of this up.”
Gray settled his spread fingers on the table and looked at her.
She inclined her head in question.
“You’re not making it up,” Gray said.
Marley formed another comment, but stifled it. Instead, she watched Gray. Slowly, his expression became distant, as if he was moving away and withdrawing into himself.
The waitress set plates in front of them, then slid a platter of pizza slices into the middle of the table. “That’s more than six,” Marley said.
“We got extra,” the waitress said with a one-sided smile that shifted with her gum. Her eyes crinkled when she looked at them. “Nice. You make a nice couple. Even if you could use a bunch more good meals. Get plenty of bacon fat in your greens. Gumbo puts meat on your bones. Rice. Beans. A couple a muffulettas for your mornin’ snack.” She looked Marley over. “You got the best hair, though. If I don’t have a perm, I got bleached pumpwater. Yeah, you got the best hair, kid.”
She left and Marley scooped up a piece of pepperoni and
olive pizza with plenty of pesto. She took a big bite and munched. “Heaven,” she said. “Eat, eat.”
Gray continued to look at his hands on the table. He turned his gaze slowly up to Marley’s face and her tummy flipped. Those whiskey eyes had darkened and his heavy lashes cast deep shadows.
“Talk,” he said. “Tell me everything.”
She breathed in deeply and started again, not touching what she’d witnessed while she’d been joined with Liza because it couldn’t have any bearing on what had happened in that empty building.
Gray leaned across the table, watching her mouth with every word she spoke.
“Stop,” he said. “Go back and tell me that last bit again.”
She followed his instructions.
“Where was the bicycle helmet?” he said.
Marley picked olives from a piece of pizza and kept her eyes on Gray’s face. “What helmet?”
He looked in her direction, but she didn’t think he was seeing her.
“A pink helmet with writing on the back, near the bottom. A shiny helmet. You saw it.”
She hadn’t seen any such thing. Where had he got the idea? Marley was afraid to interrupt him.
“You picked something up,” he said.
Marley said, “No.” Her head began to ache and a pain centered behind her right eye. She rubbed her forehead.
“You did,” Gray said. “Did you get rid of it?”
She swallowed. Had she really made herself believe all the signs that Gray had paranormal powers would go away? They were crowding in on him in front of her eyes and one of them, she was almost sure, was remote vision. Incredibly potent stuff. Marley understood the discomfort in her head. Gray was actively confronting her mind. She knew he didn’t fully understand what that was or meant, but from the speed
of his development, it wouldn’t be long. Then he would have to learn a few basic covenants of using paranormal power if he was to survive in a world with unique expectations and responsibilities.
What she couldn’t prove was that she had set all this in motion for Gray, yet why else would this be the time of his awakening?
“Marley,” Gray said. “Where is it?”
She felt irritated. “I don’t know what helmet you’re talking about. Drop it, please.”
He drew back and his expression showed confusion.
“Tell me about the sign again,” he said quietly.
“Long,” Marley said. “Not very wide. A picture of something in neon. Turquoise and yellow.”
“And some green?”
Startled, she cast back and isolated the sign. “Yes. Some green.”
“Leaves, d’you think?”
“Yes.” She started to get excited. “A border of leaves on the inside. All the neon is pale. Washed out, sort of.”
He turned his face to the window.
Minutes slipped by.
“The sign is on the other side of a high wall,” he said. “A stucco wall, but the plaster’s peeling off.”
Marley stopped breathing.
“I can hear the gravel under someone’s shoes. They’re scared.”
She got to her feet. This was coming from her. Gray had started to read her mind with ease, only he took what he read farther and his senses filled in details she hadn’t experienced, or perhaps remembered.
“Let’s go,” he said, getting up and pulling her from the booth. He started for the door then paused to fish some bills from a pocket. “Thank you,” he called to the waitress, putting the money on the table.
“It’s a snake,” he said as they hit the sidewalk. “A yellow snake and there’s a turquoise border with green leaves inside.”
“A quiet area. Away from the center of things,” Marley said while they ran. “We don’t know where we’re going.”
“I think we do. That’s the Gold Snake—a hole in the wall. It’s near a club called Alexander’s.”
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed. “Nat. Meet us at the back of Alexander’s. I’m sure you know where it is. Let’s get there.”
Gray grabbed a cab that showed it was off duty and the driver agreed to take them where they needed to go because it was on his way home.
They got out in front of a small club called Alexander’s and Nat walked to meet them. Marley couldn’t see any other cops, but presumed there were some around.
“There’s a warehouse out back. It opens onto an alley, but goes all the way to the street behind. The warehouse is locked.”
“Unlock it,” Gray said, holding Marley’s hand and striding past the side of the club.
“You know I can’t do that without a warrant,” Nat said, keeping up. “We can wake up a judge for that if you’re sure this is the place, Marley.”
She caught sight of the illuminated sign on the other side of the wall to her right. “That’s it,” she said breathlessly. She broke into a run and they reached the entrance to the warehouse. “Can’t we just get in there? We could say we found it open.”
“That would be nice and convenient,” Nat said, but with laughter in his voice. “Cops are pretty stupid. They fall for stuff like that all the time.”
Marley felt mortified and said, “Sorry,” in a small voice.
Gray let go of Marley and used his sleeve to try the handles on the double doors. He turned his back on Nat, produced a credit card and in seconds the doors swung open.
“Well, would you look at that?” Nat said. “Some people watch too much television.”
Several uniformed cops materialized from the darkness. They hesitated as if waiting for instructions.
“I want to go in there,” Marley said and walked through the open doors.
Someone pushed a powerful flashlight into her right hand and she shone it around. She broke out in a sweat, but walked forward, moving the beam from side to side, pierced the darkness all the way to the walls.
“Empty,” one of the cops said.
“We already knew that.” Nat sounded tetchy.
“Where’s the bike rack?” Marley said. She started to move rapidly around the space. “And the bike? They’re gone. But they were here. I swear they were.”
Nat used his own flashlight to look more closely at the concrete floor. “Do you remember where it was—the rack?”
“No. It was dark and I only found it because I felt it.”
“Could you have been by the wall, ma’am?” one of the officers said. “There’re pipes in places. And brackets. They could feel like a rack of some kind if you were nervous.”
“I was nervous,” Marley snapped. “Who wouldn’t be? But I felt a bike rack. And the wheel of a bike. Its seat. It was pushed into the rack.”
“There’s no sign of any of it now,” Gray said quietly.
“They were here,” Marley said stubbornly. “They’ve been taken away.”
“They’ll have to look for evidence of that,” Gray said.
“It’s late,” Nat said, joining them. “I vote I have my people come back in the morning and look at things in the daylight. I’ll have someone run each of you home.”
“If you still believed I was telling the truth you wouldn’t leave this place without taking it apart,” Marley said.
“I…I want to believe you,” Nat said. “In a way I do, but you can’t deny that the things you said were here aren’t.”
“I don’t understand it,” she told Gray. “Honestly, I saw someone on the ground. I didn’t have a chance to get close.”
Gray held her arm and Marley sucked in a sharp breath. If this went on with him, she’d have to discuss what it would mean if they…well, if they made love.
Still holding on to her, Gray went toward the door, but rather than walking outside, he pulled the right-hand door away from the wall.
“We could wait in here until morning if that’s what Nat wants,” she said.
“Nat’s going to want a bunch of things,” Gray said. “Look at this.”
He stooped to pick something up and when he straightened, Marley trained the flashlight on what he held.
One shiny pink bicycle helmet.
“This should help,” Gray said. “Must be the brand. We’ll need to follow up on dealers who carry them. Come and see this, Nat.”
On the back at the very bottom in black script were the words
Pearl Brite
in the symbol of a lightning flash.
F
our in the morning when temperatures pretended they were cool. It was the coolest part of the day, but it wouldn’t last long before the air warmed and the myriad scents of the Quarter rose about as fast as the familiar noises of the populace getting about their business.
“How are you doing?” Gray asked.
They stood outside the gate into the Court of Angels. “If I told you the first word that comes to mind, I wouldn’t sound polite,” she said. “Every one of my muscles aches. I don’t feel I could walk another step. But my mind is doing jumping jacks. I wanted to keep going and at least do
something
.”
“I know,” Gray said. Most of all he didn’t want to leave Marley when he doubted he could think of anything else but her. He sure as hell wouldn’t be able to write and he needed to get back to a proposal he was working up for a piece on oil rig workers in the gulf. He didn’t want to think about it.
“Would you feel comfortable coming in and talking?” Marley asked. “I still don’t feel like I can wind down. Anyway, I don’t know how you’d get back to the Faubourg Marigny at this hour.”
He looked ruefully at his feet. “The options don’t appeal. If you can stand me a bit longer, I’d love to come in. I’ll make us some coffee.”
“I’d rather pour us a brandy, unless you don’t drink.”
“I drink.” He grinned at her. “Not Nat’s Bong vodka, but a glass of brandy would be perfect.”
She unlocked the gate and led him through a cool, dark alley with gray stone angels tucked into niches.
The alley opened out into what must be the Court of Angels and he saw how it got its name, even if a goodly number of gargoyles and questionable statues mixed, apparently harmoniously, with some really classy standing angels.
She put her finger to her lips. “Sykes won’t be here. He’s at his studio almost all the time—wherever that is. Willow and Uncle Pascal are heavy sleepers. But I don’t want to tempt fate—or a third degree.”
Gray followed her up green-painted metal steps, treading carefully to keep the noise down. He leaned forward and whispered to her, “I’m curious about where you live.”
She put a finger to her lips again and opened the door into a small hallway. She locked the door behind her, but still tiptoed along. “The living room,” she said, pointing into a dark room on the right. Next she said, “My bedroom,” and another dark cavern confronted him. “There’s a second bedroom like a boxroom where I have my computer and the kitchen’s back here.”
At last she put on a light and sent bright wash over an eclectic room where the appliances were the old, expensive kind, including an Aga cooker. A table built to fold up against a wall was lowered with three chairs pulled up to it. High above the speckled, green enamel sink two small windows reminded Gray of a pair of dark glasses. The walls were covered in unexpected red-and-white horizontal stripe paper with a shine to it.
“It looks like you,” Gray said and meant it. “A little bit wacky, but nice to be around.”
She gave him a sideways glance, then smiled. “That was meant to be a compliment. Thank you.”
“I don’t suppose too many people have sets of antique miniatures on their kitchen walls.”
Marley chuckled. “You just have to be able to spot the cheap and deceptive. All the paintings of doors were done by a guy who sets up in Jackson Square once a month.”
Gray laughed at himself. “Shows what I know.”
“That’s a little treasure,” she said, pointing to a slightly splotchy mirror with a plaster Rococo frame. “It’s English and very old.”
He tried to look sage and Marley burst out laughing. “You’d rather have the doors. Never mind. You can leave the art appreciation to me.”
She turned her back to him and found a couple of brandy bubbles into which she poured healthy measures from an unidentifiable bottle.
“I wish the guest room wasn’t full of junk,” she said. “I’d have taken everything off the bed if I’d known you might need it.”
He stepped back to let her leave the room first. “Have you forgotten we’re more or less strangers?” he said, and silently cursed himself for his drive to be disgustingly honest. “You probably wouldn’t want me sacking out in your guest room.”
“It would be fine,” she said, her voice completely steady. “You and I aren’t strangers.”
He almost missed his footing. “We aren’t?”
She went into the living room and put on lamps. Then she drew heavy green drapes over the front windows. “Do you feel as if we’re strangers?” she said. “Or do you sort of get the sensation we’ve known each other forever?”
Marley plunked down on the couch and patted the seat beside her.
“Well—” He blinked several times, then frowned. “I think we must always have known each other. How can that be? You were there, I just didn’t know it.”
“That’s because we were coming together. Slowly because that’s the way these things work. But it was part of the plan.”
He sat on the couch sideways so he could look at her. “How can you say things like that?”
“Because they’re true. Or they’re true in my reality. They don’t have to be in yours.”
“Did you know that the first time we met in Nat’s office?”
“I started to suspect something when you were busy sorting through the edges of my mind.”
He stared.
“You didn’t know it, but that’s what you were doing. You have paranormal powers. I don’t know the extent of them, but when you met me they went into high gear. Sykes had an idea that was the case, too. But Sykes usually figures everything out first.”
He took a deep drink of the brandy and it burned all the way down. That was a sensation he didn’t think could be overestimated.
“Do you know why I knew that helmet was in the warehouse?” he asked. “I guess I don’t have a choice about what you call
powers
, but I don’t have to like them.”
“You might as well like them. They’re part of you. If you hadn’t known about the helmet, Nat and his officers were going to walk right out of that place and relegate me to nut status again.”
“You expected to find things there and they were gone. You say you didn’t see the helmet so why did I know it would be there?”
Marley swirled the brandy in her glass. “Either I saw it without realizing and you picked it out for me—from me—or you’ve got remote sight most paranormals would kill for.”
“Kill?”
“Forget I said that. If you have the power to visualize details without ever being in a location first. You’re off the scale, Gray.” Her voice grew breathless. “You’re off just about any scale I can think of.”
He took another drink and when he looked at Marley again, she was watching him. Her face had softened, but not in the comfortable way a friend looks at a friend. More in that vaguely predatory cast when the eyes darken, the nostrils flare and the tongue makes slow passes over the lips.
Gray couldn’t look away from her mouth.
“It’s there, isn’t it?” Marley said. “The sexual thing. It’s not anything gentle.”
“Uh, no.” But he hadn’t met a woman who was quite as blunt on the subject as Marley. “I’d have said it has all the indications of turning into a tornado.”
“Would you like that?”
If he were someone who blushed, he’d be red in the face. His own nostrils flared. He was so hard there wasn’t a darn thing he could do about hiding it if she chose to gaze south. And his heart pounded in time to the thunder of blood in his ears.
“Are you hot?” he said. Sheesh, that sounded like a line.
“Take off your shirt, Gray.”
Another goodly sip of brandy—and Marley matched him swallow for swallow—and he hauled his T-shirt over his head. This was one of those times when a man could be grateful if he’d kept himself toned and hard around the edges. He had always been fit.
“Nice,” Marley said, her head tilted, her assessment unabashedly direct. “I like a little hair on a man—especially if it’s dark. Your stomach looks as if you eat ground rock for breakfast.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“You’re welcome. Feel cooler now?”
He laughed. “What do you think?”
Her smile was unexpectedly wicked. “I hope not.”
She sobered and lowered her eyes. “I don’t know what’s come over me. I don’t even sound like the Marley everyone knows.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure of myself around men.”
“Really?”
“Really.” She bowed her head and studied her hands. “Now I’m embarrassed.”
He inclined his head and waited until she looked up again. When she did, he smiled at her. “I’m not embarrassed,” he said.
“Oh, boy.” Marley took in a deep breath and blew it out. “Perhaps we should try to focus on something constructive. We could make a list of what we discovered tonight. I find it helps if I write things down.”
“What I want right now doesn’t need writing down,” he said. “Do you think you can say the things you’ve just said then move on to another topic? It’s not going to happen.”
“Gray.”
“What, Marley?”
“It’s not fair to let you get in any deeper with me. I bring some pretty unusual baggage with me.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Ooh.” She set down her glass and held her head in her hands. “Why does it all have to be so complicated? The Millet Bonding. There’s a phase that should scare the pants off you.”
He laughed until he fell against the back of the couch. “Nice line,” he said when he could speak.
“If this Bonding does exist between one of us and someone who comes into our lives, there’s a kind of test.” She held up a hand. “Please don’t interrupt. It’s a stupid test because it causes some sort of shocking reaction. Pain—addictive, so I’m told, an explosion, I don’t know because I’ve never experienced it and, frankly, I’d decided I never wanted to.”
“Until me?” he asked quietly.
She closed her mouth tightly.
“Marley, love, something happens every time we touch.”
She nodded.
“Has that happened with any other men you’ve met?”
“Never before. Once I thought it might, but I was wrong.”
His stomach rolled over and his body clenched. “But there’s more? If this bond is there, the results can be bizarre?”
“Not bizarre,” Marley said. “Mind-blowing. And according to our lore, once experienced, it’s hard not to want to repeat the process at every opportunity.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Are you hot?” Gray asked.
“Yes.”
“Take your shirt off.”
She turned bright red. He reached out to her with only his face and sucked on her lips. Marley shuddered and so did he, kept on shuddering and kept on kissing.
Putting inches between them, Marley grasped the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head. The long, tight sleeves took some working off.
Her body was beautiful. Small and compact, and completely desirable. Her soft pink bra didn’t quite cover her nipples and Gray was tempted to sit on his hands just to control them. He wanted to grab her.
He caught sight of the angry marks on her wrists and the palm of her hand. “I don’t want to hurt those wounds,” he said.
“You won’t. And if you do, I’m not going to notice.”
Gray leaned toward her again and this time he curled his tongue beneath one bra cup to tease the nipple from its hide-and-seek lace. Marley made a sound and leaned back on her hands, thrusting her breasts toward him.
He grasped her waist and pulled her close. All sensation melded together, a mix of pleasure and pain that made him feel drunk and very thirsty for more.
Vaguely he was aware that their timing didn’t feel so right. But the thought was gone as quickly as it came. She was fire and silk in his arms.
Pressure mounted through his body, expanded his veins and muscles and pumped power into him. He was a strong man, but with her he was iron.
“I can’t wait,” he said against her ear. And he kissed her deeply while she drove her hands into his hair. And from his hair she went to the bulge in his jeans. She unsnapped and unzipped the pants and forced her hands inside.
Gray moaned and heard the answering sound from Marley.
He picked her up by the hips and buried his face in her breasts. His fingers destroyed the clasp on her bra and he panted at the sight of her naked breasts. He worked his thumbs in circles, getting ever closer to her nipples until, with a growl, he used his teeth to bring sobs from her.
Walking with her, he pressed her back against the wall and let her slowly slide down until her toes touched the ground.
“I’m on fire,” he told her. “Burning up.”
“Yes.”
With one sweep he ripped off her shorts and panties and shucked his jeans.
“I want to know what you like,” he said, and slid the heel of one hand down her tummy.
Her eyes didn’t leave his. With parted lips, she panted. Her pelvis met his palm and he curled his fingers into her.
“Gray.” She said his name, long and low and pressed herself tightly against his hand. “That’s what I like. You know. You just know.” Her wince, the break of sweat on her brow, excited him even while fresh pain thudded from deep in his loins, down his thighs.
She stiffened with her release and wound her body more tightly about his.
Pounding in his groin and belly built and he gasped. The sounds from his own throat amazed him. Keening, animal cries. Tears slid from Marley’s eyes.
Once more he lifted her.
This time he lowered her rapidly and filled her, locked
his thighs and knees against wrenching vibrations to make a kind of unworldly love he had never, could never have imagined possible.
He couldn’t see clearly. The room moved.
Pressure built. He clung to Marley and clung to the wall. Dimly he feared what he might be doing to her, but she helped him, drove herself down over him again and again.
A searing, like a white-hot spear, seemed to split him in two and then, as quickly as it had all mounted, it ebbed on the sweet, soaring tide of their climax.
Gray looked down at her, at the undulations of their slick bodies, at the mixture of pleasure and pain on her upturned face.
He didn’t know how long they kept on moving together, and against each other, or how long they stroked, skin to skin, and he would never remember all the words that tumbled out of them. But when they slumped against each other and slid to sit, leaning body to body, on the floor, he knew one absolute truth. They would be drawn together again and again and they would never as much as glance at each other without thinking about the incredible sex they could share.