Touch the Dark (12 page)

“
Mia stella
, be calm, be calm!” Rafe pushed the Frenchman away and drew me against his chest. I ran my hands under the cashmere of his sweater, pulling him as close as I could, and buried my face in the soft silk of his shirt. I breathed deeply of the familiar scent of Rafe's cologne, but it didn't drive out the smell of the urine-soaked prison and the cooking flesh of what had once been a woman little older than me.

After a minute, I looked up and met Louis-César's eyes. “Tell me she was already dead, that she didn't know!” My voice was desperate, and my face in the mirror over the fireplace had wide, haunted eyes. They looked like the woman's, only hers had seen far worse things than had mine.

“
Mademoiselle
, I assure you; I am willing to do all in my power to assist you, but I do not understand what it is you ask.”

Rafe was stroking my hair and rubbing soothing circles on my back. “It was a vision,
mia stella
, only a vision,” he whispered. “You have had them before; you know that the images, they will fade in time.”

I shook my head and shivered in his arms until he drew me closer. I hugged him so tightly that, if he'd been human, he would have been in pain. “Not like this. Never like this. They tortured her and then they burned her alive, and I couldn't . . . I just stood there . . .” My teeth wanted to chatter, but I bit down on my lip and wouldn't let them. It would make me remember the terrible cold of that place, and then I might think of the only source of heat. I wouldn't think of it; I wouldn't, and it would go away. But even as I echoed Rafe's words, I knew I lied.

I had had thousands of visions in my life, some of the past, some of the future, and none very pleasant. I'd Seen all kinds of terrible things, but nothing had ever affected me like this. With time and practice, I'd learned to let go of what I Saw, to treat it the way other people do disturbing news reports on television — as distant and not quite real. But then, I'd never before been part of the action, smelled the smells and tasted the fear of someone who had lived the events. It was the difference between driving by a brutal car accident and being in one. I didn't think I would forget that woman's stare anytime soon.

“
Mon Dieu
, you saw Françoise?” Louis-César stepped towards us, looking stricken, and I cringed away.

“Don't touch me!” Before he had smelled vaguely like some expensive cologne, but now he seemed to reek of the woman's cooking flesh. Not only did I not want him to touch me; I didn't even want him in the same room.

He backed off and his frown deepened. “My sincere apologies,
mademoiselle
. I would not have wished you to witness that, not for any cause.”

Rafe looked at him over my head. “Are you satisfied,
signore
? I told you we should not use the Tears yet, that when she is already upset or ill, the visions, they are not pleasant. But no one listens. Maybe now you understand.” He paused when Mircea appeared at my elbow and handed him a short crystal glass.

“Let her drink this,” he commanded, and Rafe immediately obeyed.

“But I did not,” Louis-César protested. “I do not even have them with me.”

Rafe ignored him. “Drink it,
mia stella
; it will do you good.” He settled alongside me in the large armchair, and I sipped the whiskey for a few minutes until my breathing returned to normal. It was so strong that it felt like it etched my throat on the way down, but the sensation was welcome. Anything that pushed away the memories would have been. I realized that I had knotted a fist in Rafe's once pristine cashmere sweater, reducing it to a sodden, wadded mess. I let go and he smiled. “I have others, Cassie. You are well and I am here. Think on that, not whatever it was you Saw.”

It was good advice, but I was having trouble following it. Every time I glanced at Louis-César, the images threatened to overcome me again. Why had the Senate wanted me to See something tonight, especially something like that? What had he done to me, to make the vision so different?

“I need a bath,” I announced abruptly. It was mainly a way to get away from Louis-César, but there was no doubt I could use one.

Mircea took my hand and walked me to a door opposite the entryway. “There is a bathroom in there, and it should have a robe. I will have food brought while you bathe, and we will talk when you are ready. If you require anything, do not hesitate to ask.” I nodded, gave the almost-empty glass back to him, and escaped into the cool, blue-tiled oasis of the bathroom.

The tub was large enough to count as a sauna, and I climbed in gratefully after peeling away my ruined outfit. I turned the water up as hot as it would go and leaned back, so tired that I simply stared at the soap for a minute, vaguely wishing for someone to wash my back. My emotions, thankfully, had fled somewhere, leaving me feeling blank. I had been exhausted physically and now my mental state wasn't much better.

I finally got down to the process of cleaning the dried blood off my body and out of my hair. I told myself that what I Saw had nothing to do with the modern world, that that poor woman had suffered and died centuries before I was even born. As horrible as it had been, it wasn't a warning of an impending disaster or anything else I could do something about. I tried to believe that it was only a more intense version of one of the psychic hiccups I sometimes got when touching very old things that had been in traumatic circumstances, but it hadn't felt like that.

I'd learned early to be careful of negative psychic vibrations. Alphonse collected old weapons of all kinds, and once as a child I accidentally brushed against a tommy gun he had recently acquired and was in the process of cleaning. I immediately flashed on the mob slaying in which it had been used, and what I Saw gave me nightmares for weeks. Usually I could tell if an item was likely to cause trouble before I touched it, almost as if it gave off a warning I could feel if I was paying attention. But few people triggered the reaction — even ones centuries old, like Louis-César, who had undoubtedly seen their share of tragedy. Still, I'd made it a habit to avoid shaking hands with strangers so I wouldn't accidentally learn who was cheating on his wife or was about to commit a crime. And I never, ever touched Tony, not even in passing. I decided that a new name had just made the avoid-at-all-costs list.

I rinsed off, let out the bloody bathwater, and started over. I wanted to feel clean, and something told me that that was going to take a very long time. I put in enough bubble bath that the foam puffed over the sides of the tub and ran onto the floor. I didn't care. My only thought was to wonder whether I could hang out in the bath until daybreak and postpone hearing whatever the Senate had planned for me. I was grateful they were protecting me but doubted the help would come without a heavy price tag. Not that it mattered. I didn't know where I was and, even if I escaped, I'd just be running straight back into the mess with Tony. Whatever the Senate wanted, I'd probably have to pay up.

The problem was that I'd promised myself, other than where Tony and his goons were concerned, never to let my abilities be used to hurt anyone again. I had no idea — a fact for which I was really grateful — how many people I'd indirectly harmed or killed while working for the slime king, but I knew it wasn't a small number. I hadn't known at the time what some of my visions were being used for, but that didn't make me feel a hell of a lot better. The people who make nuclear bombs don't set the policies that decide when to use them, but I wonder if that helps them sleep at night. I hadn't been sleeping well for a long time. If what the Senate wanted would result in harm to others, which seemed a safe bet, I was about to find out exactly what my principles were worth to me.

I decided that my left wrist was sprained but not broken, and that the scrape on my cheek was not as bad as I'd initially thought, although my butt hadn't fared as well. Falling on top of my gun back in the storeroom had left me with a bruise the size of my palm, and it had turned an unappealing purple. Great. It matched the finger marks around my neck, so at least I was coordinated.

I'd just finished the inspection when Billy Joe drifted in the window. I glanced at the door, really wanting to tell him off but not liking the idea of an audience. Billy was my ace in the hole and best chance of getting out of here. I didn't want anybody to know he was around.

He saw my expression and grinned. “Don't worry. Somebody put one doozy of a silencing spell on these rooms. Whatever they're planning, they're serious about not being overheard.”

“Well, in that case: where the hell have you been?” My emotions came flooding back at the sight of him trying to look casual, as if he hadn't left me out to dry earlier.

Billy Joe, a hard-drinking, cigar-smoking card shark in life, was one of my only friends now that he was many years dead. But he'd screwed up on this one and he knew it. The big, tough gambler fiddled with his little string tie and looked embarrassed. I knew his reaction was the real deal and not another of his put-ons because he hadn't yet made a lecherous comment about my lack of clothing.

“I ran into Portia and she told me what happened. I went to the club looking for you, but you'd left already.” He pushed up his Stetson with a nearly transparent finger, then solidified a bit more. “Did you do all that? The back room was a mess, and there were police crawling all over the place.”

“Yeah, I'm in the habit of knocking off five vamps, then leaving the bodies for the police to have a fit over.” Standard policy among the supernatural community was to clean up your own mess. In some circumstances, you could get in more trouble for leaving bodies lying around that might give a pathologist heart palpitations than for the actual killings. That didn't used to be the case, which was how a lot of those old legends got started, I imagine, but the more the human population expanded, the more the policy became vital. The Senate didn't care for the idea of seeing vamps chopped up in laboratories while some human scientist tried to figure out the secret to eternal life, or having freaked-out governments start a modern version of the Inquisition.

“What bodies?” Billy Joe solidified to the point that I could see a hint of red in his fashionable ruffled shirt — fashionable for 1858 anyway, the year the cowboys had given him an up-close-and-personal tour of the bottom of the Mississippi. “Blood was everywhere and it looked like a cyclone blew through, but there weren't any bodies.”

I shrugged. I wasn't real interested in knowing that Tomas had a partner who'd called in a cleanup crew. If any of the other people I'd trusted had been lying to me, I didn't want to know about it. “Great, so make up for letting me almost get killed. What do you know about my problem here?”

Billy Joe spat a wad of ghostly chewing tobacco against the bathroom wall. It left a slimy trail of ectoplasm as it slid down, and I frowned at him. “Don't do that.”

“Hey, are you nekkid under there?” He sat on the side of the tub and batted ineffectually at my bubbles. If he concentrated, he could move things, but he was only playing, so his hand passed through. I made him turn around while I got out and dried off. I know it's stupid, but Billy Joe hasn't been with a woman in 150 years and sometimes he gets distracted. It's best not to let his mind wander.

“Talk to me. What do you know?”

“Not a lot. I had trouble finding you. Do you know you're in Nevada?”

“How could I . . . wait a minute. Why did you have trouble finding me?” Most ghosts are tied to a single location — usually a house or a crypt — but Billy Joe haunts the necklace I bought at a junk store when I was seventeen, so he's more mobile. I'd purchased it because I thought it was only a piece of Victorian pastiche that might work for Eugenie's birthday. If I had known what came with it, I'm not sure I wouldn't have left it in the case. Since I hadn't, though, and since I was wearing it as usual, he shouldn't have had any problem locating me. As for travel time, well, let's just say he takes a more direct route than most.

“What have you been doing instead of checking things out around here?” Billy Joe looked guilty, a fact that did not keep him from trying to look down my towel. “Stop that.” I had an epiphany. “Hang on. We're somewhere near Vegas, aren't we?”

“Yeah, about thirty miles out. This place looks like a ranch, 'cept there're no horses, no tourists and the ranch hands dress a little funny. 'Course, it don't matter, since all any humans ever see is a big, bare canyon with a lot of keep out signs.”

“Thirty miles?” Billy could draw energy from the stored reserves in his necklace for up to fifty. “Don't tell me that while I've been bespelled, moved halfway across the country, threatened and imprisoned, you've been at the casinos!”

“Now, Cassie darlin' . . .”

“I can't believe this!” I don't get angry with him often, since it's mostly a waste of time — he is the definition of incorrigible — but this was the last straw. “I was almost killed! Twice! If you don't care about that, think about what happens to your precious necklace if somebody guns me down or rips my throat open. Let me spell it out for you: it ends up in some old lady's jewelry box in Podunk, USA, a hundred miles from nowhere!”

Billy Joe looked chastened, but I doubted it was guilt over what might have happened to me. He is unable to stay away from his home base for too long or his power runs dry — which was why I knew he'd be along sooner or later. The farther from the source he gets, the faster his strength bottoms out. His nightmare is getting stuck in a rural, one-horse town with no honky-tonks, strip clubs or gambling dens within reach. For him, it would be the equivalent of Hell. With me he had a guaranteed urban environment, since it's hard to hide in a small town. He also had something even more important.