Night of the Raven (18 page)

As lightning raced through the sky, McVey stood, flexed a sore left shoulder—he probably didn’t want to know the source of that injury—and extended a hand. “I’m in the mood for some raven’s blood wine. If you have theories, and I’ll lay odds you do, we can talk about them downstairs.”

Instead of appearing rattled, she trailed a suggestive finger over his collarbone. “The wine part’s an excellent idea, and the prospect of talk’s intriguing, but I think I’d like something more stimulating between the first and second things.”

He allowed himself a brief smile when her hand clamped his half-zipped fly, and he felt his body’s instinctive reaction. “Having been trapped inside a girl’s body a few minutes ago, I’m more than happy to find myself back on form.” He ran his gaze over her face as the heat in his groin ramped up to painful proportions. “In fact...”

Eyes glittering, he lifted her off the floor by her hips. Her long legs twined automatically around him. With his mouth already locked on hers and need raging like thunder inside him, he found the nearest wall, pressed her to it and tossed the last of his nightmare into the storm where it belonged.

* * *

“
L
ET ME GET
this straight.” Inside Hannah’s cozy west wing living room, with a wood fire glowing in the hearth, Amara endeavored to sort through all that McVey had related. “In your dream—okay, nightmare—your name is Annalee. As Annalee, you saw Sarah give Hezekiah something black and icky, probably a magical root. After Hezekiah left, you heard her claim that brother was going to destroy brother. Meaning Hezekiah was going to destroy Ezekiel for raping and murdering Hezekiah’s wife, Nola. You’re saying it really was Sarah who gave Hezekiah the power to be...well, evil.”

“Sarah knew Ezekiel had betrayed her love. She knew he wanted Nola for himself.”

“That part’s in the original legend, the one written by the Blumes. But years ago a Bellam suggested the very thing you’re telling me now. That Sarah was actually the ‘evil’ spirit. That she caused Hezekiah to go on a killing spree. Except Nola wasn’t dead, only in a state of limbo. When Hezekiah’s spree ended, it was Nola who came to him as a ‘good’ spirit.”

McVey took a long drink of wine. “A good spirit in the form of a raven.”

“Raven Nola told human Hezekiah that the best she could do was transform him into a raven as well, a condition in which he would remain until someone who was fated to die succeeded in cheating death.”

“Told you it was a nightmare.”

“But with a slightly different twist tonight, one you sleepwalked through.”

His gaze swept across the high ceiling. “Could be the surroundings. Proximity to the place where the original nightmare unfolded.”

Thoughtful now, she poured him another glass of wine. “Still, McVey, everything you’ve said is just background information to the really fascinating part.”

“That I was a girl in a former life?”

“That you were Nola’s daughter in a former life. I had a dream, too, the night we stayed in the raven tamers’ camp. The name Annalee came up. I was sure I’d heard it before, and it turns out I had. Annalee was Nola’s daughter, born before she met Hezekiah. You were Annalee.”

“Only if you believe in reincarnation, Red. Which I don’t.”

“Which you don’t want to.” She curled her legs under his black T-shirt, then, unable to resist, leaned in to whisper an amused, “Makes you a Bellam, you know.”

He poured more of the wine into her glass. “I guess it also makes us kissing cousins.”

“Fifty or sixty times removed. Tell me, have you ever had the urge to cast a spell?”

“Or ride a broomstick?”

“No male Bellam ever rode a broomstick, McVey. I doubt if any of them even knew what one looked like.”

“Apparently, I’m more enlightened. I swept the floors in my father’s antiques shop as a kid.”

“I love antiques—” Her head came up as something slammed against the side of the house. “Well, wow. If that whatever-it-was was wind driven, Bellam Bridge might not even be in the state of Maine tomorrow. Which could be good or bad, depending on Willy Sparks’s present location—and why on earth did I bring that up?”

McVey shifted so they were both facing the fire. Resting an arm across her shoulders, he played with her hair. “Talk more about Sarah.”

“What? Oh.” She pushed fear aside and gave his leg a smiling pat. “That’s your story. You said Sarah said she wanted both Hezekiah and Ezekiel destroyed so she and her unborn child—Ezekiel’s child, obviously—could inherit Hezekiah’s vast estate. Money, land, homes, et cetera.”

He grinned. “Give the woman credit, it was an ambitious plan.”

“Yes, and only two Blumes and a Bellam had to die for her to achieve it. Oh, and I forgot, all the townspeople who followed Ezekiel into the woods and helped him ‘murder’ Nola.”

“Ambition isn’t always pretty, Red.”

“Jimmy Sparks is an ambitious man.”

“So was I once, in what I thought at the time was a more positive way.” McVey took a drink of the bloodred wine. “Life can screw you. Lines are irrelevant. Good, bad, pick a side, stand back and watch the mighty fall.”

She regarded his profile. “I’d call that an extremely cryptic remark. I hope you’re going to elaborate and not force me to draw my own conclusions.”

He linked the fingers of his left hand with her right. “Let’s just say my last bust as a city cop proved to me that once in a while the so-called good guys go bad. Unfortunately, if their connections within the department are important enough and reach high enough, Internal Affairs will turn a blind eye and the dirty deeds will get shunted to the investigative morgue.”

“Causing at least one good cop to go looking for something better. Somewhere better. In this case, a spooky little town on the coast of Maine.”

McVey examined the wine bottle. “We’re down to the dregs, Red, and I’m not feeling a single adverse effect. You?”

“No, but then I hit my head when we made love in the shower, so I can attribute any dizziness I might be experiencing to that.”

“I’m the one who got whacked by the showerhead.” When Amara laughed, he set the bottle aside and pulled her onto his lap. “If you’re dizzy, what you need is exercise.”

“From a medical standpoint, I have to tell you, that’s really bad advice. However...” Eyes dancing, she hooked her arms around his neck and wriggled until he went hard. “Seeing as I know what you’re doing and what you want, all I can say is—”

The rest of the sentence stuck in her throat as lightning flickered and her eyes, now facing the living room window, picked up a movement. For a split second she saw someone in the driveway.

Someone wearing rain gear and carrying a rifle.

Chapter Fifteen

“You coulda shouted, McVey.” Clearly annoyed, Brigham stripped off his muddy raincoat and dumped it on the porch. “Come at me like a battering ram and I’m gonna batter right back.”

McVey took the bag of frozen garden peas Amara handed him and pressed it to the side of the knee Brigham had injured during their brief skirmish. She plunked a similar bag of lima beans on Brigham’s head and told herself this ridiculous comedy of errors wasn’t funny. It could have been Willy Sparks or even Hannah’s killer sneaking around the perimeter of the manor instead of her raven tamer cousin.

“You helped Rune,” Brigham grumbled, “so I figured I’d help you.”

“Next time, mention it,” McVey said through his teeth. “I’m too young to be thinking about having reconstructive surgery on my knee.”

As she rooted through the cupboards, Amara shook her head. “You’re never too young, McVey. I’ve reconstructed feet, ankles, knees, hips—the list goes on and up—for people a lot younger than you.” She located a bottle of amber liquid and held it up for Brigham to see. “Is this raven tamer whiskey?”

“I don’t know. My head hurts worse when I open my eyes. If there’s no label, it’s ours, and gimme.”

She placed it in the middle of the kitchen table within easy reach of both men. “You can share the bottle or wait until I wash some of the glasses Hannah left piled in the sink. I’ll go out on a limb here and speculate that dish washing wasn’t one of her favorite chores.”

Brigham shot McVey a glare. “I can handle a dirty glass.”

“As a medical practitioner, I’m forced to say, yuck.”

McVey worked up a faint smile. “Is that doctor talk for ‘it’s an unhealthy practice’?”

“No, it’s woman talk for ‘it’s gross.’ There’s black gunk hardened on the bottom of every mug, it’ll take a week’s worth of soaking to soften whatever she burned onto this casserole dish and the red stains in the wineglasses are probably permanent by now.... Why didn’t you tell us you planned to stick around, Brigham?”

The big man shrugged. “Didn’t know it myself until we started moving out. Then it came to me. Too many people are dead who shouldn’t be. Would a hit man leave a trail of bodies like this?”

McVey reached for the bottle, took a long drink and shot it across the table. “Depends on the hit man. In Willy Sparks’s case, I’d say it’s unlikely.”

The lights, which had held to this point, began to wink out as Amara filled the sink with hot water. “I still can’t think why anyone would want Hannah dead. We assume Westor witnessed something in the alley at the Red Eye. Possibly ditto for Mina, but...”

“Is she the tourist I heard about?” Brigham asked.

McVey shifted the frozen peas to the other side of his knee. “One more piece of our ever-expanding puzzle.”

Amara glanced up as the lights fluttered again. “It crossed my mind that Mina and Westor were...you know, together.”

McVey nodded. “You could be right. Jake said he found sleeping bags—plural—in an empty apartment in Yolanda’s building. I’ll check it out when we get back.”

“If we get back.” Twitching off a chill, Amara plunged her hands into the hot, soapy water.

Westor’s and Mina’s deaths disturbed her, but Hannah’s completely baffled her. She’d been a harmless eccentric—a hermit with a bad leg and really nothing a thief might want.

Amara wondered if her mental state had been deteriorating without anyone realizing it. She could have had too much to drink, wandered into the manor’s central core and bumped into a homicidal hobo.

“Right,” she said under her breath. “A hobo who took the murder weapon with him when he left, because...” Like the question, her theory sputtered out.

Behind her, McVey and Brigham continued to bait each other while the overhead lights surged and faded. They winked off completely, but popped on again as she put the last glass in the drain rack.

Still wearing his frozen vegetable hat, Brigham took a swig of whiskey and fished an iPod out of his shirt pocket. “I’ll take first watch, Amara, if you and McVey have something you’d rather be doing upstairs.”

She regarded him through mistrustful eyes. “You weren’t spying on us earlier, were you?”

“Only in my lurid imagination.” He made a sideways motion. “I’ll camp out in the living room.”

She watched him lumber away, grunting out an old Johnny Cash song.

McVey went to take stock of the yard through the kitchen window. “I don’t see Sparks braving a storm like this on the off chance he might be able to get to you. Not sure about our mysterious other.”

From spectacular sex to abject terror—she’d run the gamut tonight, Amara decided. And dawn was still several hours away.

“You missed a spot, Red.” McVey surprised her by coming up from behind and tugging on her hair. “Don’t get tangled up in all the loose threads. You’ll only freak yourself out.”

She rubbed at a smear on the rim of a wineglass. “I’ve been freaked out since I walked onto a hotel balcony in the Vieux Carré and watched Jimmy Sparks put a bullet in a woman’s chest. She took one step, McVey, and dropped like a stone. It happened in a back alley on a night almost exactly like this. Sparks didn’t check to see if there might be witnesses. He just stormed into the alley and shot her.”

“Jimmy Sparks is famous for his volatile temper.”

“His lawyers claimed it was a drug-induced homicide. He takes a number of meds, all of which are strong, but none of which, even in combination, would drive a rational man to commit murder. The victim was a call girl. She tried to roll him. He took exception. That’s not good when the John in question is known to fly into violent rages without warning.”

“What were you doing on a hotel balcony in the Vieux Carré?”

“I was visiting a patient, doing a follow-up to a surgery I’d performed. She wasn’t a friend exactly, but I liked her and I wanted to make sure she was happy with the results.”

“She being Georgia Arnault, former registered nurse and mother of six. Lives in a small town in the bayou. Her cousin works at the same hospital as you.”

“You’ve done your homework.” Amara arched a brow. “Should I be impressed or flattered?”

“Fact-finding’s easy when you’re a cop. In this case, the deeper I dug, the more I learned.”

“And didn’t like.”

“It’s hard to like a police officer who’d abuse his badge the way your patient’s boyfriend did over—what was it?—a ten-year period.”

“Twelve. Every cop on the force in the town where they lived knew he was beating her. That’s five men who refused to see or act. Georgia said it was a solidarity thing, good old boys sticking together. I say all of them, and her so-called boyfriend most especially, should be subject to the removal of certain body parts.”

“I wouldn’t argue with that.” McVey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You reconstructed Georgia’s face—nose, cheekbones, chin—and erased as much of the damage as you could.”

“She’d been working on the emotional side of things, seeing a psychologist in New Orleans, which was why she was in a hotel the night of the murder. We were both on the balcony at one point. But Georgia’s afraid of thunderstorms, and the storm that night was wild.... What are you doing?” Amusement swam up into her eyes when he scooped her off her feet. “I saw that knee of yours, McVey. You can’t possibly carry me all the way upstairs and down the hall without experiencing tremendous pain.”

Hiking her higher, he caught her mouth for a mind-numbing kiss that stripped away her breath and her mild protest. “I won’t be experiencing any pain, Amara. Not until tomorrow anyway.”