A buzz in my pocket had me palming my phone. I meandered back into the office and switched it on speaker. “Hello?”
“Hey.” An awkward pause filled the line when there had never been one between us. “How are you?”
“Neely.” I sank into my chair and clutched the phone like he might feel the embrace. “Cruz wouldn’t let me in your room at the hospital, and he wouldn’t let me visit when you got released.” All the words I had bottled up for the last month poured over my lips. “I’m sorry I got you tangled up in this mess. I’m glad you’re okay. I was so worried.”
“Sweetie, what happened to me wasn’t your fault. You have to let go of that guilt.” Forgiveness gentled his voice, but he hadn’t called once since his release. That I blamed on his husband. Grier approval ratings were at an all-time low on that front, so Neely must have a powerful reason for acting against Cruz’s wishes. “You still didn’t answer my question.”
“I…” I’m fine. That was the safe line, the one I ought to use, but I owed him more than that. “Why are you asking?”
“One of the girls called me tonight,” he admitted. “She said you stepped out on the balcony with some beefcake and missed your cue. Marit found your ripped skirt, and there was blood smeared on the first deck railing. It looks…bad.”
A lump formed in my throat when it hit me he hadn’t sounded panicked when he answered, only expectant. As if I got into these scrapes all the time. Truthfully, lately, I did.
“It’s hard to explain,” I started.
“I figured.” He laughed softly. “I just had to know.” He hesitated. “I’m not sure what the story will be this time. I don’t know how you plan on making this go away.” A second pause lapsed, a record for us. “I don’t care, Grier. I’m your friend, and you need friends right now.”
Tears welled, turning my vision glassy, and they spilled over my cheeks. “Thanks.”
“Don’t cut me out,” he warned. “I will hunt you down if that’s what it takes.”
“You know where I live.” Regret washed through me for dragging him into my world, for wanting to extend him an invitation to stay, for hoping our friendship might survive. “I wouldn’t be that hard to find.”
“Remember that.” A masculine voice rang out in the background, and he breathed, “Cruz is home.”
This time I spared us the awkwardness. “I’ll let you go.”
“No,” he snapped, “you damn well won’t.”
He ended the call before I could find a comforting lie to tell him.
“Neely might be a problem,” I informed the old house. “He wants to stay friends.” And I wanted that too, so much. “He called from an Atlanta area code. He must be staying with Cruz in the city.”
Woolly’s floorboards groaned in sympathy.
“We’ll figure it out.” Bored with lessons, I drifted through the empty house, hating the silence. Growing used to laughter and chatter and the presence of others required less time than adjusting to the lack. Linus was a more subdued guest than Amelie had been. He walked on eggshells around Woolly, but I was the one cracking. At the door leading down into the basement, I palmed the knob. “What happened here?”
The antique knob was blown glass, crackled and discolored with age, but not chipped as it was now.
A curtain flipped in dismissal on my periphery, but I wasn’t letting this go. “Who did this?”
Shame crashed into me when my first thought zinged toward Linus, who had proven himself the most dependable of all my friends. But I still recalled the oily blackness left from the night Cletus broke into Woolly and stole Keet, how it clung to this doorframe, to its knob.
Amelie ought to have won first prize, but fresh wards kept her trapped in the carriage house and narrowed my suspect pool to two possibilities.
The same trio of images flashed in my mind: a black rubber cord, a dented brass button, a blue-lipped smile.
“Oscar did this?” The coil of tension in my gut unwound at her reluctant admission. “How?”
The jumble of pictures she dumped in my head made no sense unless…
“He tried to open the door?” I smoothed my thumb over the sharp edge. “From the outside?”
The overhead light brightened with her confession.
“Why would he do that?” I tested the knob, but the lock held, and she wasn’t forthcoming. “The basement is not a playground, Woolly. Keep him out of there, okay? He could get hurt.”
The floor registers ticked with annoyance, but if she acted like a child, then she got scolded like one too.
“I’m going to shower.” I shoved off the wood and angled toward the stairs. “I smell like the river.”
Her presence followed me up to my room. I was stripping off my ruined clothes when the water cut on.
“Thank you,” I called to her then stooped to pick Linus’s shirt off the pile. I rubbed the fabric between my fingers, the impulse to lift the material to my nose surprising me. Any trace of him would be gone. All I would smell was dampness, sweat and blood. “I should get this dry cleaned for him.” A laugh sneaked up on me. “I wonder if he ever wears the same shirt twice.”
Men like Linus owned closets that made grown women weep with envy.
The old house sighed like she had never given menswear much thought, and why would she care about the opposite sex when Woolworth House had remained a bastion of estrogen until I invited Linus to move in.
After dumping my clothes in the hamper, I hung his on the back of the chair at my small desk then padded into the bathroom. The shower felt divine, and I stood under the spray until my neck ached from hanging my head forward.
A frigid gust of air swirled around me about the time a small hand the exact temperature of ice cubes touched my shoulder.
I yelped and slammed my back against the cold tiles, which shocked another scream out of me.
Oscar materialized in front of me, his expression pinched with hurt, his bottom lip on the verge of trembling. “You left me.” Fat tears brimmed in his black eyes. “You left me.”
Slapping a hand over my heart, I did my best to keep it from catapulting up my throat. “I’m sorry.” I folded my arms over my chest then crossed my legs. “Can we talk about this after I have clothes on?”
A faint glow limned his blue cheeks, and he grumbled, “Fine.”
“I heard you scream,” Linus called from the bedroom. “Oscar?”
“Oscar,” I agreed, a flush heating my skin. “Be out in a minute.”
“We’ll meet you downstairs.”
I rushed through the rest of the shower and climbed into pajamas appropriate for mixed company. Towel in hand, I took the stairs. The guys weren’t on the couch, so I checked the hall. I found them standing in front of the door leading down into the basement.
“What’s going on?” I kept drying until I made a bird nest of my hair. “Why aren’t we in the living room?”
“Oscar has a confession to make,” Linus prompted, but the ghost boy maintained his mulish silence. “He was concerned you left him aboard the Cora Ann on purpose.”
The towel slipped from my fingers. “You didn’t really believe that, did you?”
“You told me not to play in the basement.” He stuck out his chin. “I did it anyway.”
“Get over here.” I opened my arms, and he hurled himself against me. “I would never do that to you. You’re family, kid. That means you’re stuck with Woolly and Keet and me.”
His narrowed eyes cut to Linus. “Mr. Linus too?”
“Yep.” I rolled in my lips to keep from laughing. The kid really didn’t like teachers. “Mr. Linus too.”
“Okay,” he mumbled against my shirt. “Will you tuck me in?”
The kid didn’t sleep as far as I could tell, but I let him pick out a room anyway, and he was developing his own bedtime routine. “Try and stop me.” I tweaked his nose. “First you’ve got to make me a promise you won’t go in the basement again.”
Oscar might be six, but that didn’t stop him from thinking he was the man of the house. “I promise.”
“We’re off to bed.” I tousled Oscar’s hair then smiled at Linus. “See you tomorrow?”
“Sleep well.” Linus slid his gaze from mine to the door. “We’ll discuss your new schedule then.”
I sawed my teeth over my much-abused bottom lip. “Aren’t you turning in?”
“Not yet.” He held his ground, and I did too. “There’s something I must do before dawn.”
An exhausted ghost child tugged my arm nearly from its socket, dragging me away, inch by inch.
As much as I wanted to believe I didn’t question Linus’s motives, that I had enough faith left in me to place in one person, in him, I was trying a new thing in not lying to myself, and I had been burned by people I loved better for far longer.
Smile brittle, I left him to his errand and put the rest in the goddess’s hands.
Three
A scream ripped me from sleep, and I woke tucked in the same corner as always. Sweat plastered my hair to my head, and blood wept from crescent-shaped wounds in my palms. I swallowed past a sore throat and grimaced at the sour tang in my mouth.
Pretty much business as usual.
The clatter of dishes in the kitchen perked me up better than the promise of a hot shower to wash off the salty residue on my skin, but Woolly cranked on the water before I could blow off personal hygiene in favor of carbs.
Unhappy at being thwarted, I rushed through my nightly routine then took the stairs at a gallop.
A beefy arm marked by crosshatched scars barred the landing, almost clotheslining me before I ducked and whirled toward the heartbreakingly beautiful man who had taken over my self-defense training. His eyes, a rich aquamarine, held an edge of sorrow as likely to slit his throat as yours.