Colder Than Ice (5 page)

“No, she's not teaching right—” He bit back the rest of the sentence, as his father's coaching and warnings came whispering through his brain. He was talking about Beth Slocum, the woman they were here to protect. A woman in hiding. “I mean, I don't really know what else she might do. I'm brand-new in town.”

“I only ask because I'm a teacher myself.” The man dug a card from his pocket and handed it to Bryan.

“You teach here in Blackberry?” Bryan asked.

“Well, it's not official yet, but I expect to be hired any day now. What subjects are you taking with this tutor? Maybe I can offer to cover the ones she doesn't?”

“No, thanks,” Bryan said, deciding to err on the side of
caution. “I don't want to take on too much at once. But, uh, I'll keep you in mind if I need another tutor.”

“You do that. And thank you again for your honesty. Your mother would be proud.”

Bryan had to swallow past the lump in his throat as he watched the man go. Then he looked at the card. Oliver Abercrombie. There was a telephone number, but no address. What an odd man.

 

Mordecai got into his car—a car far below his standards, but one that would stand out far less than his former one would have done. It was a nondescript brown sedan, five years old and nothing fancy. Nothing noticeable or memorable. He was dying to get back to searching for Lizzie.

No, not yet. You have to stay.

You have to watch the boy. We sent you into that shop for a reason, Mordecai. When will you learn to trust us?

“But Lizzie—”

She's not going anywhere, Mordecai. And finding the heir to your powers and your gifts is just as important as finding Lizzie.

He blinked. “The boy is the heir?”

He could be. Only you can decide that, Mordecai, and that is the primary mission right now.

Maybe it should be, he thought. It wasn't, though. To him, nothing was more important than finding Lizzie, reclaiming her, purifying and redeeming her. He supposed that was yet another symptom of his flawed human form. It was selfish. The will of Spirit must always come first.

That's right, Mordecai. You're a tool. A messenger. A servant. So stay and watch the boy.

He bowed his head. “I'm sorry. Forgive me my sins. I surren
der all, Father. Not my will, but thine, be done. I'm sorry. Forgive me.” His throat felt tight, and his eyes hot and damp.

Here he comes!

Mordecai looked up, brushing the moisture from his eyes so he could see as the boy came out of the shop. He went into a couple of others but didn't stay long anywhere, and finally, with a few bags in his hands, headed to a white pickup truck in the town parking lot. He started it up. Mordecai started his own vehicle, as well, and followed the boy home.

He lived, apparently, in a Victorian house two miles past Blackberry. The style of the place was similar to the one Mordecai was renting in Bonnie Brook, six miles in the other direction, except that it wasn't as well kept. It showed signs of neglect, needed paint, and the lawn was a weed patch.

Mordecai did everything he could to ensure he wouldn't lose track of the boy. He pulled over and memorized the address, the directions, the license plate number of the pickup truck. It was nearly noon. He whispered, “Can I go and search for Lizzie now?”

No.

He swallowed, lowering his head. “The school might have phoned for me. God knows Nancy Stillwater has to be quite ill by now.”

You have your cell phone.

“They may have left a message on the machine. If I don't return the call, they'll hire someone else.”

Your lack of faith will be punished, Mordecai!

Pain—splitting, racking, blinding pain—blazed through his skull. Mordecai slammed his palms to either side of his head, squeezed his eyes shut tight and grated his teeth. Pressure built inside his head as if it were being inflated, until finally it felt as if it would surely burst.

And then it was gone.

He lay limp against the seat of the car, panting, trembling, his cheeks damp with tears. “All right. All right. I'll stay.”'

Use the cell to check your messages, and keep your eyes on the boy.

“Yes, yes. I'll obey.”

Friday

“N
o, Bryan, you cannot stay home. I let you slide in the city, but that's over. You're going to school. You're going to register, and you're going to take classes. This is your senior year. It's important.”

Beth couldn't help but hear Joshua's raised voice as she stepped up onto the porch to join Maude for their morning tea. The front door was open. The screen door was closed, but sound traveled right through that. Maude looked up, shaking her head sadly. She was in the middle of her morning injection—one before every meal was the routine—and she pulled the hypodermic from her arm and set it on the tray table.

“Important to you, maybe,” Bryan said. He wasn't shouting, but he wasn't quiet, either.

“No, Bry, it's important to you. To your future. I told you
before we left Manhattan, you'd have to register at the high school here.”

“And I told you to forget about it.”

“If you keep letting school slide, Bryan, you'll never get into a good college.”

“I don't give a damn about college.”

“Since when?”

“Just leave me alone, okay?”

Beth went slowly to her chair as Maude poured their tea. “Doesn't sound like they're doing too well, Maude.”

“They aren't. But it will get better.”

“Maybe we should, uh, close the door. Give 'em a little privacy?” Beth suggested, with a nod toward the still-open front door.

“Well now, if I close the door, how are we gonna know how to help those two?”

“What do you mean, ‘we'?”

Maude just shushed her as the voices rose again.

“Bryan, you had a ninety-eight average your junior year. You were talking about applying to Ivy League schools, for God's sake. What happened to that?”

“Gee, I don't know, Dad. I can't imagine what could have happened between then and now, can you?”

Beth winced. “Ouch. That was a bull's-eye.”

For a moment, Josh didn't reply. Probably reeling from the blow his son had just landed. Then, his tone gentler than before, he said, “All right, I know what happened. Your mom died. And that's the most horrible thing that could ever happen to a kid. But, Bryan, you can't die with her. She wouldn't want that, and you know it. If she were here right now, she'd be telling you to
knock it the hell off. You have to find a way to pick up the pieces and move on with your life.”

“Like you have, you mean?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

No reply.

“Bry, don't think for one minute that I didn't care about your mother. I loved her once. We created a son together.”

“You wouldn't know it to look at you, though. Her dying hasn't made one ripple in your life, has it, Dad?”

There was a loud bang, the slamming of a door, and it made Beth jerk in reaction. Moments later, footsteps came down the stairs. Through the open door, Beth saw Joshua stop at the bottom of the stairway, push a hand through his hair and close his eyes briefly. He looked haggard. She felt sorry for him. Not as much as she did for his son, though.

“Good morning, Josh,” Maude called.

Josh looked their way, his glance sliding from Maude to land on Beth. Sighing, he came out to join them on the porch.

“I'm sorry about all that,” he said. “Not a very pleasant way to start the day for you.”

“For you, either,” Maude said.

“Or for Bryan,” Beth said. Josh shot her a look, his lips thin.

“Join us for a cup of tea, Joshua. One of my homemade medicinals. Just the right blend to sooth your nerves.” Maude was pouring before she finished speaking, and Beth noticed for the first time that she had set three cups on the tray table, where there were usually only two. And there was a white plastic lawn chair against the wall.

Josh sank into it and accepted the cup Maude handed him. “If I can't even get the kid to go to school…” He sighed, sip
ping the tea, not finishing the thought. “This is good, Maude. How did you know I'd need my nerves soothed this morning?”

“Made it for Beth—chamomile and honey. I thought she seemed a little edgy yesterday.”

“I was not edgy.”

Maude shrugged. “You're always edgy when there's a male of the species within twenty feet of you, girl.” She winked at Josh. “Thinks you're all up to no good, I guess.”

“Most of us are.” He smiled a little, his eyes actually teasing her as he took another sip of his tea. “This is really hitting the spot.”

“Maude has a tea and a platitude for just about every imaginable occasion,” Beth said. “But I imagine you already knew that.”

“You'd be surprised how little I know about her,” he said.

“No, I wouldn't.” She dropped the statement, then let it hang there while he tried to figure out what it meant. Bryan's footsteps came tromping down the stairs, across the floor and into the kitchen. Joshua sighed, his eyes clouding with real worry, and Beth took pity. “I do some private tutoring, you know.”

“Do you?” He looked her in the eyes, and she got the feeling he had already known that. Probably Maude had filled him in. “If that's an offer, Beth, I accept. Assuming I can convince Bryan to go along with it.”

“He seemed willing enough yesterday, when I spoke to him about it.”

His brows bent together. “He talked to you about tutoring him?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Agreed to start at noon today.”

“Well, why the hell didn't he just say so, instead of arguing with me?”

Beth tipped her head to one side. “Maybe because you didn't ask.”

His face darkened. “So this is all my fault?”

“Not all, Joshua. But of the two of you, he's the one who just lost his mother. And you're the adult. The only one in the world who can swoop in and pick up the pieces of his broken life for him.”

“Don't you think that's what I've been trying to do?”

He stopped himself there, literally seemed to bite off the rest of his tirade before it could spill out, held up a hand, closed his eyes. “I'm sorry. It's stress, and I've got no business taking it out on you. Are you all right?”

He was searching her face now, his expression remorseful and almost…tender. As if he thought she were so fragile an angry word or two from him could reduce her to tears. “Of course I'm all right. Why wouldn't I be?”

“I don't know.” He dragged his gaze away from hers. “Listen, if you have suggestions, advice, I'd be more than happy to hear it.”

“I don't know a damn thing about being a parent.” She looked away, thinking of Dawny, the hole in her heart yawning wider. “But I know a little about teenagers. I taught in a public school for seven years.”

“I didn't know that,” he said.

She frowned at him. “Funny, I had the feeling you did.”

“No. I don't think Maude mentioned it. What did you teach?”

“English Eleven and Twelve, mostly. I offered to tutor Bryan in English Twelve, so he would only have History and Spanish to catch up on. He'll be fine, if he does the work.”

Josh settled back into his chair, seeming to relax a little. “So
you think I should let him take the semester off, so long as he sticks with the tutoring?”

“I think you should consider agreeing to that, yes.” She sipped her tea. “But don't count on it lasting. Once he meets some of the local kids, makes a few friends and has time to get bored out of his mind, he's going to decide to go back to school. If you let me tutor him until then, he won't be behind when he does.”

He nodded slowly. “For someone who doesn't know much about parenting, you're pretty good.” She shrugged, and he went on. “Seriously, you're light-years ahead of me. Okay. Let's do it—the tutoring thing, I mean.”

“Okay.”

The screen door creaked open, and Bryan stepped out onto the porch with a toaster pastry in one hand and a glass of chocolate milk in the other. Both had to have been in the pickup, because neither would have been within a mile of Maude's kitchen.

“Good morning, Bryan,” Maude called, sounding as cheerful as if she hadn't noticed a thing out of the ordinary this morning, much less overheard his fight with his father. “Did you sleep well?”

He offered her a halfhearted smile, his dark hair falling over his forehead before he pushed it back. It was so much like the way Josh had pushed his hand through his hair earlier that Beth almost smiled.

Bryan avoided his father's eyes. “Slept better than I do in the city, that's for sure.”

“Well, now that you're up, I'll get your breakfast out of the oven.”

“Oh, that's okay, I made my own.”

Maude looked at his pastry and rolled her eyes. “
That
is not a breakfast. It's a future health crisis. Now, I've had a real meal staying warm in the oven for you for the past hour.” She glanced at Beth. “Join us, dear?”

“No way, Maude. I eat one of your meals, I'll be crawling home instead of running.”

“Oh…you're going home?” Bryan asked. He sounded a little…off.

“That's the plan, Bry.”

He shot his father a look, and Beth got the feeling their earlier argument was suddenly the furthest thing from the young man's mind. “Well, why don't you stay? You can, uh, talk to my dad about that tutoring thing.”

Something had certainly snapped Bryan out of his petulant state. “I already did that,” she said. “Was kind of surprised you hadn't done it yourself by now.”

He nodded, all but admitting he probably should have clued his old man in.

“I gotta go. See you at noon, Bryan?” She reached for her tea to finish the cup.

“Uh, yeah, about that…” Bryan began. He sent his father another quick look, as if uncertain whether to speak.

“What is it, Bry?” Josh asked.

“It's probably nothing. I mean, one summer in the city and all of the sudden, I'm paranoid, you know?” He offered a half smile and shrugged. “Can't help it, though.”

Beth frowned at him. “Paranoid about what?”

“It's just…there's been a car parked up the road a little ways for a while now. I can just see it from my bedroom window.”

Beth's hand jerked, and the still-hot tea sloshed onto her
bare legs. She sucked air through her teeth and wiped it away with her hand.

Maude handed her a napkin. “Oh, it's probably someone bird-watching or checking on the progress of the foliage,” she said. “We have a lot of nature lovers living in these parts, and this time of year every leaf-peeper in the country seems to show up. Was it a red Blazer, Bryan? That would be my nearest neighbor Frankie Parker. Loves to watch the birds, that one.”

“No, it's a brown sedan. Chrysler, I think.”

“Brown Chrysler,” Maude repeated to herself. “Maybe I should give Frankie a call.”

When they all looked at her oddly, Beth clarified for them. “Frankie's the police chief.”

“Oh.” Bryan nodded. “Right next door, that's handy.”

“Well, right next door is a half mile, but still…” Maude said.

Beth dabbed the tea from her thighs and tried not to notice Josh's scrutiny, until he forced it. “Call me a paranoid city slicker, if you want, but, um…why don't you let me take you home, Beth? Just to be on the safe side.”

She looked up at him, crushed the damp napkin in her hand and shook her head. “I may not look like much, Joshua, but trust me, I can handle myself.” She glanced at Bryan. “Oh, and I almost forgot.” She dug into her shorts pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “You'll need these books for our session today. You can pick them up at Books Ink, in town.”

“Cool. I can pick them up right now and drop you off on my way,” Bryan said.

What was with these two? You'd think she was made of glass, the way they were acting. “And miss out on the great breakfast your grandmother made you?” Beth asked. “No, I don't think so. Besides, I live in the opposite direction. And I
run for a reason. I'm not messing up my daily routine by taking the lazy way home.”

Bryan looked at his father. Joshua sighed and glanced at Maude.

Maude frowned. Then she lifted her chin. “Joshua, go change your clothes. She won't let you drive her, so you can run with her. And, Beth, don't even begin to argue with me. I'll worry myself sick if you go off alone.”

“Since when is there anything in Blackberry scary enough to worry
you,
Maude Bickham?”

“Since you got so scared you spilled tea on yourself at the mention of a strange car, young lady. Now, my word is law, and I have spoken. Finish your tea while Josh changes his clothes.”