37

Marianne led me to the room where she'd settled Nathaniel. It was a large bedroom downstairs. Hours earlier, the room would have been filled with morning light, but now, at nearly three o'clock in the afternoon, the room was dim, almost dark. The window was open, and a breeze had finally found us, spilling the white lacy curtains into the room. A small oscillating fan sat on a kitchen chair so the fan could cool the bed. The wallpaper was off-white with a fine line of pink flowers. There was a large brown water stain in the corner of the ceiling like a giant Rorschach ink blot.

The bed was a brass four-poster that had been painted white. The bedspread was quilted and looked homemade with a lot of purple¨C and pink-flowered fabric. Marianne had folded the bedspread and placed it on top of a large cedar chest that was under the window. "Too hot for quilts," she'd said.

Nathaniel lay naked on the pink sheets. Marianne tucked the sheets to the tops of his thighs, patting his shoulder in a motherly sort of way. I would have protested his state of undress, but I could see the wounds clearly for the first time.

Something with claws had swiped him wide and deep, starting about the middle of his back and slashing downward across the right side of his buttocks. The wound was deep and ragged on his back, growing more shallow as it worked down his body. It must have hurt to have clothes over it, hurt a lot.

I was surprised that Nathaniel hadn't flashed me his wounds earlier. He usually went to great lengths to show me his body. What had changed?

Marianne pointed to the phone beside the bed. "In case your police friend calls you. I've got a cordless phone for normal calls, but I use the bedside phone for pack business."

"So no one can accidentally monitor the cordless phone," I said.

Marianne nodded. She walked to the vanity, which had a heavy oval mirror and marble knobs on the drawers. "When I was a little girl and I was hurt or lonely, especially when it was so hot, my mother would unbraid my hair and brush it. She'd brush it until it lay like silk down my back." She turned with a brush in her hands. "Even now, when I am low, one of my greatest pleasures is for some friend to brush my hair."

I looked at her. "Are you suggesting I brush your hair?"

She smiled, and it was bright and charming, and I didn't trust it. "No, I am suggesting you brush Nathaniel's hair."

I kept staring at her. "Come again?"

She walked towards me, offering me the brush, that too-cheery smile on her face. "Part of what makes you vulnerable to Raina is your own squeamishness."

"I'm not squeamish."

"Prudishness, then," she said.

I frowned at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that every time one of the lycanthropes disrobes, you get embarrassed. Every time one of them touches you, you take it sexually. That isn't always what they mean. A healthy pack or pard is built up of a thousand gentle touches. A million small comforts. It's like building a relationship with a boyfriend. Every touch builds and strengthens it."

My frown deepened. "I thought you said it wasn't sexual."

It was her turn to frown. "A different metaphor then. It is like building your relationship with a newborn baby. Every touch, every time you feed him when he's hungry, change him when he's wet, comfort him when he's frightened -¨C the everyday intimacies forge a bond between you. True parenthood is built over years of interdependency. The bond between the pack is built much the same way."

I glanced back at the bed. Nathaniel was still lying there naked except for the sheets on his legs. I turned back to Marianne. "If he was a newborn baby, I'd be fine with him being naked. I might be afraid I'd drop him, but I wouldn't be embarrassed."

"And that is precisely my point," she said. She held the brush out to me. "If you could control the munin, you could heal his wounds. You could take his pain."

"You're not suggesting that I purposely try to call Raina?"

"No, Anita. This is the first lesson, not the graduation exercise. Today, I simply want you to begin to try and be more comfortable around their nudity. I believe that if you can desensitize yourself to the more casual sexual situations, that Raina will have less hold on you. You draw away from situations like this, and that leaves a void, a place where you will not go willingly. So Raina spills into that void and forces you to go much farther than you would have gone on your own."

"And what good will brushing Nathaniel's hair do?"

She held the brush inches from me, arms folded. "It is a small thing, Anita. A thing to give him comfort while we wait for Dr. Patrick to come. Patrick will give him a local for the pain, but sometime before he is finished stitching him up, the painkiller will wear off. Their metabolism is too fast for a local, and giving more than that can be tricky. It can be deadly in one with such a low aura of power as Nathaniel."

I stared up at her, meeting those calm, serious grey eyes. "You're saying that he'll be stitched up without a painkiller."

She just looked at me.

"And that's my fault because I could heal him if I could control the munin."

Marianne shook her head. "It is not your fault, Anita, not yet. But the munin is a tool like your guns or your necromancy. Once you learn how to control it, it can do wonderful things. You must look at the ability to call the munin not as a curse but as a gift."

I shook my head. "I think you've exceeded the lesson for the day, Marianne."

She smiled. "Perhaps. But take the brush, do this one small thing. Not for me. Not for Nathaniel, but for yourself. Take back that piece of you that looks away from his body. Give Raina less ground in your heart."

"And if I can't help being embarrassed or thinking sexual thoughts and Raina comes up and tries to eat me, what then?"

Marianne's smile widened. "Then I will help you, child. We will all help you. That is what a pack is for."

"Nathaniel isn't lukoi any more than I am," I said.

"Lukoi or pard, it makes no difference to you, Anita. You are queen of both castles. Growing comfortable with one will help with the other."

She actually took my hand and pried it out from under my elbow. She put the hairbrush in my hand and closed my fingers over it. "Be with him, child. Wait for your phone call. Answer only the bedside phone. Only pack will call that number. You can't possibly answer my other phone because you are in another state. Do not answer the door, either."

"You sound like you're going somewhere," I said.

"You must learn to be comfortable around your people, Anita. That means without me looking over your shoulder."

She pulled me towards the bed by the arm. She tried to make me sit on the bed, but I just didn't bend with it. Short of pushing me onto the bed, she had to leave me standing.

She tsked at me. "Stand here and do nothing. It is your choice, child, but at least stand here." She left.

I was left standing in the middle of the room where I'd followed her, like a child not wanting to be left alone on the first day of school. The brush was still in my hand. The brush looked as antique as the rest of the room. It was wooden but painted white with a shine of varnish. The varnish had a webbing of cracks but held. I ran the pale bristles over the back of my other hand. They were as soft as they looked, silken like a baby's brush. I had no idea what the bristles were made out of.

I glanced back at Nathaniel. He was watching me out of those eyes of his. His face was neutral as if it didn't matter, but his eyes weren't neutral. They were tight, waiting for the rejection, waiting for me to leave him alone in the strange room, naked and waiting for a doctor to come and stitch him up. He was nineteen, and lying there with that raw look in his eyes, he looked it. Hell, he looked younger. The body was great. When you're a stripper, you've got to take care of yourself. But the face ... the face was young and in the same gaze old. Nathaniel still had the most jaded eyes of anyone I'd ever met under the age of twenty. No, not jaded, lost.

I walked around to the far side of the bed. I laid the hairbrush on the pillow on the empty side of the bed.

Nathaniel moved just his head, turning to look at me. No, to watch me. He watched me like every movement was important. It was a level of scrutiny that made me want to squirm or blush or run. It wasn't exactly sexual, but it wasn't exactly not sexual, either.

No matter what metaphors Marianne used, this was not the same thing as caring for an infant. Nathaniel was young, but he was definitely not a child. At least not childlike in the way that would have made this comfortable.

I slipped off the short-sleeved shirt. There was no one to see the shoulder holster, and it would be cooler. Of course, it would really be cooler if I took off all the guns and the spine sheath, but I wasn't that hot. I did lay the Firestar under the pillow. It had a short enough barrel to sit or lie down with it, but there is no such thing as a truly comfortable gun to wear if you're lounging around. Guns aren't designed for comfort. It's one of the few things that are worn, mostly by men, that are as uncomfortable as a pair of high heels.

I crawled onto the bed, kneeling, still not within touching distance. He was so easily hurt that I had to say it out loud. "I'm not upset with you, Nathaniel. I just don't like playing student."

"You like Marianne, but you resent her," he said.

That made me blink a couple of times and stare at him. He was right, and it was more perceptive than I'd ever expected from Nathaniel. Hearing him say something that smart made me feel better. If there was a brain in that body, then he wasn't just a submissive mess. And maybe, just maybe, he was salvageable, saveable. It was the most positive thought I'd had all day.

I crawled to Nathaniel's side, brush in hand. I stared down at him stretched across the bed, eyes watching me. The look in his eyes stopped me. It was too intense.

Maybe he sensed it, because he turned his head back so that I couldn't see his face. All I could see was all that long, auburn hair. Even in the dim light, it was an incredibly rich color. The darkest auburn I'd ever seen that was still truly auburn and not brown.

I smoothed my hand through his hair. It was like heavy silk, warm to the touch. Of course, that could have just been the room. The fan swept over the bed, ruffling the sheets, passing like a cool hand over my back. Nathaniel's long hair stirred in the fan's caress, the sheet over his thighs blowing like a hand had moved them. He shifted as the fan passed over his bare body. Then stillness. His hair, the sheet, everything utterly still while the fan made its circuit. It swept back, spilling over everything in reverse; the pink sheets, Nathaniel's hair, my chest this time, blowing my own hair back from my face, then past us, and the heat wrapped around us like a suffocating hand.

The breeze from the window had died. The white curtains lay like a painting until the small fan spilled over them. I knelt in the hot room with the only sound the whir of the fan and the small tick it made every time it came to the end of its cycle.

I stroked the hairbrush through his hair, and the stroke ended long before I got to the end of the hair. I'd had hair down to my butt once upon a time when I was about fourteen. But Nathaniel's hair was knee length. If he'd been a woman, I'd have said his hair fell like a dress around him. The hair lay in a soft, silken pile beside his body so it wouldn't brush the wound. I lifted the hair in my arms, and it was like holding something alive. The hair poured through my hands with a sound like dry water, a rushing noise.

I had enough trouble taking care of shoulder-length hair. I couldn't imagine the amount of effort that just washing it must take. I was either going to have to divide the hair to either side and actually get up and move from side to side, or sweep the hair back behind his head so it spilled across the bed. I voted for that.

I pulled his hair behind his back and spilled it behind his head. He moved his head as if snuggling into the pillow, but other than that made no movement and said nothing.

"How you doing?" I asked.

"I'm fine," he said. His voice was soft, neutral, almost empty.

"Talk to me, Nathaniel," I said.

"You don't like it when I talk to you."

I leaned over him, smoothing the hair back so I had a clear view of his face. "That's not true."

He turned his face enough to look up at me. "Isn't it?"

I leaned back from that direct gaze. "It's not you talking I mind, Nathaniel. It's your choice of topics."

"Tell me what you want me to say, and I'll say it."

"I can tell you what not to say," I said.

"What?" he asked.

"Don't talk about pornographic movies, sadomasochism, sex in general." I thought about it for a second or two. "That hits the usual things you say to piss me off."

He laughed. "I don't know what else to talk about."

I started combing his hair across the bed. The stroke was firm and flowing, then I actually had to pick the hair up to finish the stroke. The fan hit me with an armful of hair, and the hair spilled around my face in a vanilla-scented cloud that tickled my face and neck.

"Talk about anything, Nathaniel. Talk about yourself."

"I don't like to talk about myself."

"Why not?" I asked.

He raised up enough to look at me. "You talk about yourself."

"Okay." Then I didn't know what to say. I just suddenly couldn't think of where to start. I smiled. "Good point, forget I said it."

The phone rang, and I gave a little yip. Nervous? Who me? It was Dolph. "Anita?"

"Yeah, it's me."

"Franklin Niley, unless it's a different guy with the same name, is an art dealer. He specializes in mystical artifacts. He's not picky about how he gets them, either."

"How not picky?" I asked.

"He's based out of Miami. The cops there would like to tie him to at least half a dozen homicides but don't have enough proof. Every town he visits on business, people disappear or turn up dead. Chicago P.D. nearly got him on the death of a wiccan high priestess last year, but the witness went into a mysterious coma and hasn't come out yet."

"Mysterious coma?" I made it a question.

"The doctors think it was magic of some kind, but you know how hard that is to prove."

"What do you have on his associates?"

"One hasn't been with him long, a psychic named Howard Grant, young, no criminal record. There's a black bodyguard, Milo Hart. He's got a second-degree black belt in karate and has been in the pen once for attempted murder. He's been beating people up for Niley since he got out of prison five years ago. The third is Linus Beck. He's been in twice. Once for assault with a deadly, second time for murder."

"Lovely," I said.

"It gets better," Dolph said.

"Better?" I asked. "How much better can it get?"

"Beck's murder conviction was a human sacrifice."

I let that sink in for a second or two. "How was the victim killed?"

"Knife wound," Dolph said.

I told him about the body I'd just finished seeing.

"Direct attack by demons went out with the middle ages, Anita."

"They wanted to make it look like a troll attack."

"You've talked to them," he said.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"They wanted to threaten me," I said.

I heard papers rustling on the other end. "Why did they want to threaten you?"

I told Dolph almost everything. I also told him I couldn't prove a damn thing.

"I talked to a cop in Miami. He said that Niley admitted two murders to him, told him details, but not under Miranda and not useable in court. He likes to taunt."

"He thinks he's untouchable," I said.

"But the spirits say you're going to kill him."

"So his pet psychic says."

"When I put out the name and asked for info, police all over the country and out of it are willing to give me anything they got, if we can just nail this guy," Dolph said.

"A bad guy's, bad guy," I said.

"He's not above doing his own killing, Anita. At least two of the dead men down in Miami, they think were Frank's personal kills. You watch your ass like a son of a bitch. If you have anything that even looks like proof of a crime, call me."

"You don't have any jurisdiction here," I said.

"Trust me on this, Anita. You come up with some proof, and I can get you somebody down there with jurisdiction, ready and willing to put this guy away."

"He on the blue hit parade?"

"He's made a career out of breaking the law and has never seen the inside of a jail cell for more than twenty-four hours. A lot of people in a lot of states would like to see him gone."

"I'll see what I can do," I said.

"I don't mean dead, Anita. I mean arrested."

"I knew what you meant, Dolph."

He was quiet for a second. "I know you knew what I meant, but I thought I should say it, anyway. Don't kill anyone."

"Would I do something so illegal?"

"Don't start, Anita."

"Sorry. Thanks for all the info. It's more than I'd hoped for. After meeting him, I'm not exactly surprised by any of it. He is a very creepy guy."

"Creepy -¨C Anita, he's a hell of a lot more than creepy."

"You sound worried, Dolph."

"You're down there without a safety net, Anita. The cops are not your friends."

"That's an understatement," I said. "But the state cops are down here on the murder now."

"I can't come down there," Dolph said.

"I would never ask you to."

He was quiet so long that I said, "Dolph, you still there?"

"I'm here." He didn't sound happy. "You know how I told you not to kill anyone?"

"Yeah," I said.

"I'll deny this in court, but don't hesitate, Anita. If it comes down to him or you, make the right choice."

My mouth was hanging open. "Dolph, are you telling me to murder him if I get the chance?"

Dolph was quiet again. Finally, he said, "No, not murder, but I am saying don't let him get the drop on you. You do not want to be at this man's mercy, Anita. Some of the bodies they've found have been tortured. He's real creative about it."

"What's in that file that you haven't told me about, Dolph?"

"They found one man's head floating in his pool. There were no marks of a weapon, like the head had been pulled off. They never found the body. It all reads like that, Anita. Not just violent but weird shit."

"You going to post bail if I nail him and get caught?"

"You get caught, we never had this conversation."

"Mum's the word," I said.

"Watch your back, Anita. Niley doesn't have any limits. That's what all this paperwork means. He's a total fucking sociopath, Anita, and Beck and Hart are the same thing."

"I'll be careful, Dolph. I promise."

"Don't be careful, be ruthless. I don't want to be identifying what's left of your body after he gets through with it."

"You trying to scare me, Dolph?"

"Yeah," he said, then he hung up.

I hung the phone up and sat on the bed in the hot, hot room, and I was afraid. I was suddenly more afraid than I had been since we got here. Dolph didn't spook easily. I'd never heard him like that, not about anything or anybody.

Nathaniel touched my leg. "What's wrong?"

I shook my head. I couldn't shake the bad feeling. Dolph, Mr. Law and Order, had encouraged me to kill someone. Unprecedented. The police were telling me to break the law. Too weird. But underneath the wonderment of it was the fear, a fine, trembling sense of unease. Demons. I didn't like demons. They didn't give a shit about silver bullets or much of anything else. Richard felt strong in his faith. I envied him that. Iwas having a crisis of faith right now. I mean, I was sleeping with the undead and had cheated on one lover with another. I also had a few more kills to my credit than the last time I'd been touched by the demonic. I wasn't feeling particularly pure and holy right now. You needed that against demons. You needed surety.

Nathaniel laid his head on my thigh. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

I stared down at the naked man with his head in my lap. No, if I ran up against a demon now, my house was made of glass, and nothing throws stones like the demonic. They know just where to hit so that the whole damn thing comes crashing down around your ears. I was really not in the mood to find out how far from grace I'd actually fallen.