The Cougar's Wish (Desert Guards) (32 page)

“Go to class,” he told Jameel. “If you have questions or need help, call me. Otherwise, I don’t want to see you again unless you’re buying barbecue.”

Jameel pocketed the card and nodded. He stood, backed away from the two of them, and walked in reverse for a while, as if he doubted that was
it
—that he was done.

About twenty yards down the tracks, he turned and jogged toward his car.

Steven headed toward an alley—probably the legal route back to the restaurant—but definitely longer and a notable distance from the cemetery.

“Steven?”

He shook his head and kept walking. With his long stride and motivated gait, she almost had to jog to keep up.

“Steven, I—”

“Not now,” he snapped. “Can’t be here.”

Can’t be around the spirit
. It was following. Maybe she wasn’t a medium like Claude who could communicate with the dead, but Belle didn’t think it was hostile. Just curious.

She stopped walking and let him go—let him run. “Stop following him, please,” she said to the spirit and hoped it heard.

It must have, because her skin prickled as it swirled around her once like a dance partner she’d spun.

When it started to merge into her, she didn’t fight it.

She didn’t know how much time she’d lost to the possession, but when she opened her eyes again, she was in front of a computer terminal. Glancing around at the bookcases and the row of tables nearby, she guessed she was in a library.

She turned to the computer screen in front of her, and she realized quickly that she wasn’t looking at a news article, but a lovingly written obituary of a woman who’d died at fifty-eight. Gladys Harkness lived near the barbecue joint and was a teacher who’d probably taught at the school nearby.

In her picture, Gladys had the same soulful eyes and tight smile as the boy Belle had just met, and she’d died, leaving two sons—Jason and Jameel—and an elderly mother behind.

“Damn,” Belle whispered and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Gladys hadn’t followed them because she wanted to make trouble with the living, but rather because she had an investment in it. She’d seen her kid streaking through that cemetery, and perhaps he did it often. Perhaps she waited for it. She probably didn’t expect to see a Cougar and a cop running after him.

Not
that
boy of hers.

In front of the keyboard was a scrap of paper and a little pencil folks probably used to write down book call numbers, but on it wasn’t printed the title of a book and a Dewey decimal code, but instead, in Belle’s own handwriting, the words, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Gladys.” Sniffling, Belle pulled her phone out of her pocket as she stood.

It was gratifying to know there was some good of being easily possessed, and she could probably put that to use somehow back in New Mexico. Claude could help her figure out how, but that wouldn’t matter if the person she needed to help her navigate that portal wouldn’t go near it. She had his back, but she needed him to have hers, too.

She made her way out of the library and took a moment to look around and orient herself. She didn’t know Raleigh well, but she had a cat’s sense of direction and also a few new memories to draw on to help her navigate back to Steven’s. She hadn’t been able to access those memories gathered during possessions before. Maybe the fact she’d welcomed the guest for once instead of locking the doors and closing the window blinds made a difference. Something else to tell Steven—to convince him that perhaps it wasn’t all bad.

But first, she needed to have a chat with Hannah about Ralphie Sheehan.

She started toward Steven’s house, and let out a relieved breath when the glaring’s avenger answered on the second ring.

“I think Ralphie deserves another chance,” Belle said. “Hear me out and I’ll tell you why.”

If it weren’t for the fact that Steven had to have his phone on for the folks at the police department to get in touch with him, he would have kept it turned off. That way, he could have been blissfully unaware of calls from Hannah, Claude, and even one from Lola.

He answered Hannah’s call—which came in on the tail end of a text from her private number reading

“Can’t talk right now,” he told her and disconnected. Usually, that was their code for him being on the job and unable to speak freely. Smart as she was, he knew she wouldn’t believe it for long.

Claude’s calls, he ignored.

Lola’s call, he took accidentally. He didn’t recognize the number, and he couldn’t afford not to answer those calls because they could have been from people who wanted to speak to him about police matters.

He crossed his legs at the ankles atop the coffee table and forced a breath through his lips, pondering if it’d be rude of him to disconnect on a goddess when Belle walked into the house with a greasy white paper bag.

“I’m not sure why you’re calling me,” he said to Lola and cut his gaze to Belle.

He didn’t know where she’d gone after he’d left her at the railroad tracks, but figured she’d be okay. She didn’t need him following her around anymore.

Lola sighed on her end and muttered something in no language Steven could discern. Sure as hell wasn’t Spanish. “I suppose I’m asking you for a favor,” she said.

“Why?”

Belle set the bag on the corner of the coffee table and walked to the kitchen, saying nothing. If her sense of hearing was anything like her brothers’, she could probably hear every word Lola was saying.

“Because you are capable,” Lola said.

“Must be an easy favor.”

“No, I won’t tell that lie.”

“What do you want, then?”

“I’m sure my Cougar has already stated it in her own terms.”

Steven scoffed and worked his thumb over a rip in his pants he must have gotten while wrestling that idiot with the gun. He’d probably brushed up against the chip on the guy’s shoulder or something. It was certainly big enough. “Are you really calling to advocate for Belle? I don’t think she needs your help.”

“That’s true. She is as a Cougar should be. She’s industrious, and I’m certain she’ll determine a course of action even when none seems clear at a given time. But this isn’t about you and Belle, although I’d be lying to say I don’t have a concern in that matter.”

“A procreative one, I’m sure.” As much as he liked the idea of having a few reddish-haired little cats of his own, he couldn’t let himself want that. Wanting things was a surefire way to court disappointment.

“Naturally,” Lola said, “but that’s not all. Certainly, you haven’t forgotten what I do for a living.”

“You mean when you’re not masquerading as a hunched-over old lady with a chili sauce fetish and a car with a trunk large enough to hide six or seven bodies? You’re a professional meddler who needs to have her license yanked for questionable ethics.”

Lola had once been Hannah’s therapist. Of course, Hannah hadn’t known it was Lola at the time. It was before Hannah went on that ill-fated camping trip. Lola was the reason she and the girls had taken it in the first place. She wanted them for her Cougars.

“I’m trying to give you resources,
mijo
.”

“Why?”

“So that you’re functional.”

“Why? What concern is it of yours?”

“Shall I speak frankly?”

Belle stepped into the room carrying two plates and a pile of napkins. She set them atop the coffee table and then knocked Steven’s feet off of it.

He sat up to make room for the food she was dumping out of the bag, and then he waited for her to leave the room again.

She didn’t. She leaned her forearms onto it and stared at him.

He pressed his thumb to the phone’s mic. “So, you’re just gonna listen, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Should I put it on speaker to save you the strain?”

“No. Continue as you are so you’ll at least have the pretense of discreetness.” She cleared the food bag away and started pulling lids from containers. Slaw. Beans. Barbecue.

That barbecue he’d wanted for lunch and hadn’t been able to get. His stomach gave an insistent lurch, and he remembered then that he hadn’t had much besides coffee since breakfast. He’d been keeping his belly full of fear and anxiety all day long. There hadn’t been much room for solid food.

He dropped his hand from the phone. “Go on and say what you have to say so I can eat.”

“You’re not eating until she’s done,” Belle said. She tucked meat into a roll and plopped coleslaw on top of it.

“I thought you were compelled to take care of me. From where I’m sitting, seems like you’re doing the opposite.”

She pulled her legs beneath her and reached for the remote control. “I’m giving you exactly what you need right now.”

“Sounds like something Hannah would say.” He turned his attention back to the phone. “Go on, sneaky goddess lady. Get it off your chest.”

“I appreciate the permission, but I don’t need it. Did you make that list?”

“What list?”

“When you were in New Mexico, I clearly instructed you to make a list to help you make sense of the things that scare you.”

“I’ve been a little busy.”

“Wallowing.”

“Working.”

“Well,
this
doesn’t work unless you want to try.”

“What exactly is it that I’m supposed to be achieving here?”

“The answer to that question probably overlaps quite tidily with the responses you’d give to the question
what do you want
? I think I know what you want.”

“I sure wish you’d tell me.” He reached forward to grab a hush puppy that had spilled out of the bag, but Belle knocked his hand away without even pulling her gaze from the television.

Damn it.
“That’s not love, cupcake.”

“It’s tough love. Get past that, and maybe you’ll get to see the other kind.”

“All I want is a hush puppy.”

Belle cut him a withering side-eye that made him back the hell away from the food. He hadn’t been truthful. He wanted a hell of a lot more than a hush puppy, and they all knew it. He was just the coward who would neither admit it nor do what he had to do to get it.

“What do you want, Steven?” Lola asked.

“You’re gonna squeeze the words out of me, huh? Won’t let me keep anything to myself or to come around in my own time?”

“Lacking impetus, you won’t come around. I’d curse you, but you haven’t invited such action yet. This would be easier for me if you were one of my Cougars.”

“I’m not a Ken doll you get to put wherever you’d like and do whatever you want to.”

“No, but what you’re avoiding is something you’re capable of doing. You’re keeping yourself from getting something you want by refusing to explore what you are.”

“What exactly do you think I am?”

“I don’t know if there’s a word in any language for it, but there have always been people who act as beacons for the things most humans can’t see or even sense.”

He guffawed and sank lower in his seat, rubbing his eyes. “Come the hell on, now. You’re telling me that I’m a lighthouse for the dead.”

“Not just the dead.”

“Right, right. Demons and all sorts of random malevolent spirits, too. I got ya.”

“Do you? Because you’re hostile about it instead of seeing it as a gift.”

“I don’t see how anyone could call it a gift.”

“Because you could do good with it. They may bother you, Steven, but they can’t
affect
you. Not really. They can’t enter you. They can’t compel you to move or act. You can’t be possessed.”

“And that’s supposed to make it better? You say they can’t affect me, but they can. You weren’t there in that desert when one of them tried to choke the life out of me every night—when some thing I couldn’t even see tried to kill me.”

“I don’t believe that was its goal.”

“It doesn’t matter. Nobody in his right mind would voluntarily put himself in the midst of those kinds of things knowing they’re going to be hostile. I do crazy-ass shit sometimes and take a lot of risks to get the adrenaline highs sometimes, but this is taking it too far.”

“I volunteered for that,” Belle said quietly.

Steven pulled the phone away from his face. “And you
shouldn’t
have. You were the last person who should have.”

“I was the best person for it, so why would I leave the job to someone else?”

“You’re so sure about that.”

She let out a ragged breath and turned her sandwich around in her hands. “I’ve got to be sure about some things when so many others are up in the air.” She glanced up at him quickly and then away.

Him, she meant.

He didn’t want it to be like that. He wanted to be easy for her, but being easy meant he had to do some hard things that in thirty-one years of life, he simply wasn’t equipped to do. He’d been raised to fear the things he was supposed to be engaging with. They were horror movie stuff or things that the Bible warned that only the unrighteous fell prey to.

Lord knew there was nothing righteous about Steven Welch, but he was one of the good guys. He’d always tried to be.

Everyone he worked with thought he was so fucking rational, but where was logic when he needed it? When it came to Belle and what came with her, there was a mental hurdle he just couldn’t get over.

Maybe I need a hand.

He’d both needed them and given them when scaling obstacle course walls. Everyone got over them faster if the person who went ahead gave a hand to the one behind him, and the one behind a guy gave him a boost.

Belle was straddling the top of that wall holding out a hand, and Lola was pushing him up from the ground. He just needed to grab the top and climb over. He didn’t really need to know what was on the other side, because Belle could see it. She wasn’t afraid of it, and so he shouldn’t have been, either.

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and scooted lower on the sofa. Into the phone, he said, “Okay. I’ll tell you what I want, Lola.”

“I’m listening.”

“I want all the puzzle pieces in my life to fit together, you hear me? I want to be able to get paid for a job I’m good at. I need to be near my sister so I can make up for all the crap my family put her through, because someone has to.”