The Legacy of Buchanan's Crossing (15 page)

Clint had begun rummaging through the clothes on the floor, so he wasn’t looking at her when he said, “It’s getting difficult to believe he’s just saying these things randomly.”

Or when she said, “He isn’t.”

He straightened then, his shorts in one hand. “Right.” He balanced on one foot then the other to pull his boxers on without sparing her a glance. “God, it’s bright. It was bad enough up there.”

“I don’t care much for the sun myself, but it’s good for the plants.”

“Working nights must be tough. When do you usually sleep?” He grabbed his jeans, still avoiding her eyes.

They had only been together one night. That he couldn’t bring himself to look at her shouldn’t hurt like it did. Why was he even bothering with conversation?

She forced a causal shrug. “Any time. I nap a lot. Noise and light don’t bother me. I can sleep almost anywhere, any time.”

“I think I hate you.” He pulled his jeans on. “But some coffee and scones might soften me. We never did get to those appetizers last night.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you. As you may recall, I don’t own a coffee maker. I brought my last batch of scones to Gran’s. I wasn’t expecting—” she coughed briefly “—company, this morning.”

“Right.” He pulled his T-shirt over his head.

His use of that word was seriously beginning to grate on her nerves. In an effort to test whether he was seeking escape, she said, “How about some tea?” Which reminded her. “Say, how is the headache blend working for you? I meant to ask last night.”

“I guess I’m not cut out for homeopathic remedies. Nasty-tasting stuff.” His scrunched-up face resembled a Mr. Yuck sticker. “It didn’t touch the headache, either.” He found his rolled up socks and sat down the on a stair to put them on.

“How many cups did you drink? Did you follow the directions?”

“Well, after the first one didn’t work, I couldn’t bring myself to drink another.”

“The directions were quite specific about drinking three cups in a twenty-four hour period before expecting results.”

He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry if you went to a lot of trouble.”

She knew how bad his headaches were. If he’d had an ounce of belief in her, he’d have given it more of a chance.

“It isn’t about the trouble. It’s about you not respecting my knowledge and abilities.”

“Right.” His glance was directed somewhere past her shoulder.

She honestly didn’t think she could stand to hear that word from his mouth again. He must have noticed the clenched fists at her hips. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to hide his flinch in a shrug.

“I don’t have a headache now, anyway.” He tried a smile. It failed, as far as she was concerned.

Okay, easy out it was. “That’s nice. You know, I really do have a lot to do today. Gran’s waiting for me. I’ve got class later. The place needs cleaning.” She looked pointedly at the shattered bell jar.

“So that’s what broke. It sounded like a window. I hope it wasn’t valuable.” He sat down to put his shoes on.

“Although the bell jar itself was hand blown a couple of hundred years ago, its monetary value was of no consequence to me. What it contained, however, was singular and priceless.”

He stood up. “What was in it? I can’t see anything on the floor besides the glass.”

Clint was obviously just a nice guy unable to handle morning-afters quickly and gracefully, even when offered one on a platter. She answered him anyway. “You might have been able to see the contents while it was intact.” He was of the blood. It was possible. “But with the container broken, it no longer exists.”

“Right.”

Wrong word. As she struggled to control her irritation in the face of his continued dismissal, her power surged dangerously. The texture of it had changed. She’d lit the candles last night with a mere wish. Being with Clint, intimately, had altered the flow, as if a valve had been opened. One she hadn’t even begun to master. There was no knowing what she was capable of.

Her voice wavered with strain when she said, “Why should you be sorry? The mistake was mine.”

“Hey, it almost sounds like you regret—”

“I do. Please leave.”

“Cayden—”

“Now.”
Before I slip and hurt you
.

Where the hell had he gone wrong? Clint shook his head, half-walking, half-feeling his way down the dim hall while he retraced the previous night.

His moves had never been so smooth. Truly inspired. By lust, sure, but something else too, a feeling he didn’t recognize. It hadn’t prevented him from acting like an out-of-control teenager, though. Good thing Cayden had been as hot—incredibly, outrageously, achingly, unforgettably hot—for him as he was for her. While his dreams of her had been wildly fantastic, he hadn’t been prepared for the mind-blowing reality. And she’d been with him the whole way, no doubt about that.

Her morning-after regrets didn’t make sense in a woman as confident and sexy as Cayden. Confident enough to have some guy tattoo a massive tree all over her luscious body. He could picture her spread out in front of him like the banquet she was. Remembering made him hard and pissed off at the same time because he had to give the asshole artist credit. The tat was so good that when he’d brushed the branches below her ribs, Clint could have sworn they moved. Cayden had been going on about the tree and their next date, but he’d been trying to figure out the trick the tat artist had used to make the movement so realistic. That, and fighting the impulse to find the guy and break his fingers. He’d stopped short of asking himself why it bothered him so much.

When he woke up alone, her absence had left him inexplicably bereft. After the sun had driven him down the stairs, the damn crow had whistled and called him a keeper. If she believed the bird knew what it was saying enough to be cranky when it called her a “bad girl,” why not buy the “keeper” part, too? Instead, she’d tossed him out on his ass.

The sight of his truck when he pushed through the heavy door into the sunlight stunned his brain to silence. His beautiful truck, the symbol of all that was good and right in his world, was covered, front bumper to tailgate, with bird shit. On the driver’s side windshield was a tell-tale pink signature. It was the only pink one. The rest…dear God. How many birds would it take to rain down that much shit?

He’d been careful not to park under anything for them to roost on. They would have had to gather here with the express purpose of trashing his truck. It just wasn’t—

“Clint MacAllen, clueless bastard keeper.”

The bird squawked. He flipped it off while shouting, “Keep this!” as it circled once over his head and flew away.

Whatever the logical explanation was—and there had to be one, had to be—he wasn’t going to come up with it standing here watching the acid in the bird shit eat away the paint on his truck.

If the car wash had charged him extra last time, they’d ask for the title this morning. After they were done laughing. He needed caffeine and something to eat to face that. He was starving.

The coffee joint around the corner was a no-go because the power was out. The entire block, the barista said. The one he found four blocks away gave him the same story. Even the HandiMart had been dark. He ended up having to drive over a mile from Cayden’s apartment to find a place with functioning electricity. No doubt the city had been too cheap to beef up the infrastructure when the area had been gentrified, going from the low electric use of a warehouse district to one of apartments and shops.

That loud boom during last night’s festivities must have been an overload. Probably a basement band with too much equipment. That’s all it would take with a jerry-rigged setup.

Finally, a perfectly logical explanation for an element in the teeming cloud of strangeness surrounding Cayden Sinclair.

Chapter Nine

T
he week had been a long, debilitating one. Which was why, Cayden told herself later, she’d been taken by surprise. She’d always been careful to be aware of her surroundings, be prepared, take the steps—in her case, extra steps—a woman living in a big bad city needed to.

Gran was finally feeling better. Most of the week had been spent coaxing her to move around the cottage. Today’s excursion to the backyard garden had been a welcome reprieve. She’d studiously avoided even glancing up at the grove while pulling the weeds Gran pointed out.

The idea of confessing the debacle with Clint horrified her. She wouldn’t be able to put it off much longer, though, and she still maintained the hope of an alternative to the Joining. Highlighting the spontaneous candle combustion event wouldn’t hurt. Gran’s take would be appreciated, too, because Cayden hadn’t experienced a single manifestation of power since Clint had left Saturday morning.

On top of everything, adding insult to injury, she couldn’t get him out of her mind—or even off her sheets. His scent mingling with hers lingered cruelly. She’d washed them, twice, to no avail. Nevermore complained about it, too.

Cayden had been skating along at a good rate, twirling her closed parasol by its hooked handle, mulling it all over while trying not to, ever since she’d hopped off the last train from Gran’s. Right after she crossed the bridge that passed over the finger of Watershops Pond on the edge of Stebbins Park, a shadow darker than the other shadows of the cloudy night snagged the corner of her left eye.

Swerving right, she would have rolled over a second shadow if it hadn’t turned out to be solid. She swung her parasol wildly to regain her balance. A third shadow grunted and swore.

Fear curdled the tea in belly, bringing the bile of resentment to her mouth. Come after her, would they? She flipped the spring that added a twelve-inch ice-pick-thin blade of steel to the tip of her lovely black lace parasol, transforming it into a deadly sort of foil. Her lips, teeth, and fury fueled a piercing whistle for Nevermore. Then she spun, wielding the parasol like a staff, forcing her attackers back.

Thankfully, years of training had honed her moves to mindless instinct. Where, in all the heavens, was her magic? She lamented not taking more of those figure-skating lessons her mother had insisted on. Shadow Number Three’s swearing helped keep her oriented, though, holding off dizziness, along with panic she couldn’t afford. What would Gran do if something happened to her?

“Christ. I think the fat little bitch broke my nose. I’m gonna make her pay for that before we shoot her.”

Shoot her?

“Shut it fool. No talkin’ out of skool.”

Another voice said, “But as long as we make it look like—”

No
. A sudden brake, lunge, and low thrust met the meager resistance of cloth and flesh. An agonized shriek followed by incoherent groans gave her something new to orient on: Shadow Number Two, she guessed.

She braked again, changing directions to her favored counter-clockwise, spinning more slowly, feinting and thrusting at rhythmic intervals, still crouched. They were keeping their distance now, trying to circle her, two of them giving her more space than the third—likely the one she hadn’t hurt. Yet.

“I don’t have any money to donate to the Bad Poets’ Society. The only thing you’re going to find here is pain.”

“You wrong, honey. We’re talkin’ a whole lotta money.”

A whole lotta money. This wasn’t random. Someone had paid these men to kill her. This time when she braked, she aimed dead center. The resultant howl could probably be heard in Forest Park.

“Care to rhyme that?”

The howl was repeated in a scratchy raucous caw, echoed in various, even more strident, less-cultured tones. The cavalry had arrived.

“Nevermore! I wasn’t sure you heard my whistle.”

“We late. Fun all done.”

Cayden looked around. Bad Poet was rolling on the ground, moaning. Shadow Number Two was doubled over, clutching his thigh with both hands. Not bad for a blind shot. Talking Fool, aka Shadow Number Three, the one she’d caught by accident, was holding his nose with one hand. His other was reaching in his pocket.

She launched the parasol like a javelin. It caught his right shoulder, drove him back, and pinned him to the ground.

“I don’t know, Nevermore. I think the party’s just getting started.”

A siren wailed in the distance. By the time a squad car arrived, Nevermore and company had departed. The three men were sobbing like babies, covering their heads with shredded sleeves, babbling about the end of the world.

The police couldn’t decide whom to arrest until Cayden suggested checking Talking Fool’s pocket for a gun before removing her parasol/javelin from his shoulder.

While everyone was waiting for more transportation to arrive, one of the officers said, “You should be grateful, Ms. Sinclair, that they were stoned to the gills when they stumbled onto you. Otherwise, you might not have been so lucky, even with your unusual weapon.” He eyed her speculatively when she didn’t say anything. “Any idea what could have shredded their clothes and inflicted the smaller wounds? They keep raving about a flock of crows.”

“Murder.”

The officer straightened. “Excuse me?”

“Murder. The collective term is a ‘murder of crows’ rather than a ‘flock,’ though they rarely gather in groups larger than a few.”

Bad Poet screamed, swiping at empty air.

In compensation for her clarification, she received her tenth eye-roll of the evening. “Ms. Sinclair, about the birds…”

Cayden shivered in the adrenaline’s aftermath. She’d expected the police to be less condescending under the circumstances. If they were going to treat her like a freak, she’d have preferred to give them a reason to. Even a discreet display of power would’ve satisfied her. Since it hadn’t manifested in the emotional turmoil of the last half hour, it certainly wouldn’t now. She wondered if it ever would again. Another layer of disillusion settled over her.

She finally said, “Perhaps they were watching the Alfred Hitchcock classic before they got high.”

He nodded and directed one of the officers in a newly arrived car to give her a ride home. After he turned away, she heard him mutter to himself, “Damn full moons bring out
all
the crazies. It’s going to be a helluva long night.”

In spite of being mistaken in regard to either her or her attackers being crazy and the full moon actually being tomorrow night, the statement did contain truth. The full moon’s magic began three days before, and it did intensify longings. As if on cue, the memory of being safely wrapped in a heated Clint pierced her.

Yes, it was going to be a long night.

He shouldn’t be here, his throbbing head reminded him. All week long, every time he’d thought about Cayden,
something
had throbbed. Everything else was going great. Work on the mall was proceeding without a hitch; meeting Dean’s deadline wouldn’t be a problem. The new contract was better than he could have hoped for. Both his private and Green Man’s outstanding bills had been paid off. He should be on top of the world.

The awful dream he’d had Saturday night should’ve made it easier to stay away. The vivid image of Dean’s expression when he’d driven up to a party at the developer’s mansion, hopped out of a bird-shit-covered truck, and introduced a fully-gothed Cayden had kept Clint awake hours after it had faded.

Monday, Bill had asked how the date went. Clint told him about the permanent damage to the paint on his truck and the nightmare. Clint had told Bill he thought they were a sign, that Cayden was like cigars, lavish but unhealthy. Bill had told him he was an idiot. It was Friday night, and he was beginning to think Bill was right. Miserable, sleepless, and tortured by erotic visions of a mystifyingly frustrating woman was not how he’d pictured his glowing future.

So much for the top of the world.

Instead, he was standing outside Cayden’s apartment, knowing full well it represented the gates of delirium. This awareness hadn’t lessened the dull twist in his gut when she hadn’t answered her gonging doorbell this late on a Friday night. He should go now. Wondering where she was, whom she was with, was killing him.

The sound of her voice coming up the stairwell thrilled him more than it should have. The sound of the man’s voice angered him a lot more than it should have. His feet remained rooted to the floor despite him telling them to hurry to the back stairs, as though they understood it was too late, that those perilous gates had already closed behind him.

The voices became clearer, not so much because they were coming quickly but because they were raised.

“What do you mean I can’t have my parasol back?”

“Even if it wasn’t evidence, your umbrella has been illegally modified.”

“Illegally modified? That’s reaching a bit, don’t you think, Officer?”

Officer? Evidence?
What?

“Confiscating an umbrella with a spring-loaded twelve-inch spike on the end that maimed three men can hardly be called reaching, Ms. Sinclair.”

Spring-loaded Clint could believe, and after seeing her fence, maimed wasn’t hard to imagine, either.

“Three armed assassins, you mean. Four guns and two combat knives were found between them, you’ll recall.”

“Assassins? In that neighborhood? Come on, they’re just drugged out gangbangers. Their kids carry guns, for God’s sake.”

“They’re not gang members. Their clothes and colors weren’t right, and I heard them say—” She was still half way down the hall. “Clint?”

“I take it you know this man, Ms. Sinclair? He’s not another assassin?”

She leveled a glare at the cop that made the man take a step back. Clint knew that one. He was glad someone else was on the receiving end for a change.

“I’m her boyfriend, Clint MacAllen.”

Cayden stared at him, open-mouthed. He took the opportunity to move into the space the cop had left and put his arm around her.

“Are you okay, honey? What happened? Oh my God, you’re bleeding.”

“With that makeup, I don’t know how you could tell,” the cop said.

Clint turned on him. “Is this the way you people treat victims?”

The cop held up his palm. “There happens to be some question as to who the actual victims in the altercation were. Ms. Sinclair has assured us the blood isn’t hers.” The words did little to soothe the unfamiliar protective instinct raging through Clint’s body.

“For Christ’s sake man, look at her. Without the boots, she’s what, all of five feet? Did I hear you say there were three of them? Do you truly possess the balls, or the stupidity, to stand here and try to tell me they were the victims?”

“With all due respect, Mr. MacAllen, you didn’t see what was left of those guys.”

“Well then, you should be commending her on her ability to defend herself. If you people did your jobs…”

The cop issued a long-suffering sigh. “We can’t be everywhere. It doesn’t help us when women, er, people—” he corrected himself when Cayden drilled him with another glare “—dress in ways that attract attention and
roller skate
through dangerous areas in the middle of the night after doing God knows what with who knows who. Since you’re her boyfriend, I might ask where you were this evening.”

Cayden jumped in before he had a chance to cheerfully misplace a chunk of his guilt by punching the cop. “As I’ve been trying to tell you, this wasn’t a random attack. Ten o’clock is hardly the middle of the night. I was on my way home from the train station after visiting my grandmother. And what I choose to wear has no bearing on this situation whatsoever.”

A menacing roll of thunder shook the brick building. The few remaining hall lights flickered. Shitty electrical job. Cayden stared at the lights, then at him, cocking her head like her damn bird. He picked her up by the waist and set her down a ninety-degree turn away from the cop.

“Cayden, honey, why don’t you go on inside and get cleaned up? I’ll be right behind you.”

“What gives you the idea—?”

He squeezed her shoulder lightly to silence her. No way was he leaving her alone tonight. “You’re upset. Which you have every right to be. I’m merely suggesting this isn’t the time—” he scanned the hall “—or the place for this kind of discussion.”

The cop cleared his throat. “We will be expecting you at the precinct station tomorrow to go over your statement, Ms. Sinclair.”

Cayden had her hands on her hips. “Is that really necessary?”

“We’ll be there.” And he really did mean the “we” part.

He plucked the key from her hand, unlocked the door, and nudged her inside, then closed it and turned on the cop.

The man was eyeing his fresh dress shirt and high-buck jeans. “Mr. MacAllen, you seem like a pretty regular guy.”

“I’m a regular pissed off guy, right about now.” He fisted his hands to keep from shaking the man by his uniform’s collar. The little prick wasn’t a whole lot taller than Cayden.

“It’s just that… Well, you might want to think twice before remaining involved with this kind of girl. You don’t actually believe she was visiting her grandmother, do you?”

“Why don’t I tell you, Officer, what kind of person she is.” He had to restrain himself from crowding too close, from growling. “Cayden Sinclair is the kindest most generous woman I’ve ever met. She also happens to have more talent in her baby finger than my best engineer. Does she have her quirks? Yeah, most brilliant people do. Oh, by the way, she’s devoted to her grandmother. I bet you didn’t even ask her for a train stub from East Granby, did you? Too busy checking for a record she doesn’t have.”
Right?