Fire Within

Page 5

Whatever his reservations, he didn’t voice them. Instead he said, “Well, then, Miss Calin, I look forward to hearing from you.” He turned one last time toward his client. “I’ll call to see how you’re doing. Believe me, my dear, it will get better.”
Ari eyed him thoughtfully. Why did people say that? The losses in her life—her parents, her Great-Gran, her mentor, Yana—were still with her. It didn’t get better; it just got different.
Once Shale was gone and Mrs. West had busied herself in the kitchen, Ari gave Lorraine the standard line. “I’m sorry for your loss,” which Lorraine accepted with a brief nod. It wasn’t that Ari didn’t mean it. She did. But nothing sounded right at a time like this. “I know my timing’s bad.”
“No, please sit down. It’s all right.” Lorraine dabbed at her cheeks with the tissue. “I’ll answer anything I can.”
“I saw Eddie this morning,” Ari said, taking the upholstered chair directly across from the woman.
“How is he?” Lorraine showed the first sign of interest in the conversation. “Is he all right? I’ve been so worried. He shouldn’t be locked up in jail.”
Ari knew Eddie and his sister were close. Still, she was a little surprised he’d been forgiven so quickly. “He’s fine. A little scared, I think. He won’t talk about what happened, and I’m struggling to figure this out. I was hoping you could help me.”
“But I don’t know anything.” Lorraine’s voice was reedy from distress. “Why is Eddie saying these crazy things? They’re not true. Can’t be. He’d never do this.” When Ari waited for her to go on, Lorraine said, “I can only tell you what happened to me. I was here, at home. Ju…Jules was coming over. I was wishing he’d hurry and had just checked the clock. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain.” Lorraine touched a hand to her chest, and her lashes closed for a moment. “All across here. It was terrible. Like a heart attack, I suppose. I didn’t know what was happening. Now I’ve been told it was the bond breaking. The exact moment…he died.” Her voice broke as a sob escaped. She stopped, pressing her fingers against her mouth.
“Take your time.” Ari fidgeted. “Can I get you a glass of water or something?”
“No, I’m fine, really, but thanks. I must have fainted afterward, because I woke on the floor, knowing something horrible had happened. At first, I thought I was ill. I reached my cell phone on the coffee table and called Jules for help, but all I heard was voice mail. Since I thought he was on his way, I just waited. It seemed forever. Then the police officers came.” She twisted the tissue around her fingers in agitation.
“And they told you what happened?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I called Eddie, but he didn’t answer. Guess they wouldn’t let him.”
Ari kept her voice matter-of-fact. “Your brother was upset about the bonding. Did he talk to you about that?”
Lorraine was slow in responding, a haunted look pinching her face. “Eddie’s protective. Has been ever since we were kids. He thought this was a passing thing, didn’t understand my feelings were real. But he would have accepted Jules in time.” Her voice sharpened. “He wouldn’t kill anyone. The police have made a terrible mistake.” She trailed off, as if this protest in her brother’s defense had sapped the last of her energy.
“Why would he confess?”
Lorraine shook her head. “I don’t know. But it's a lie. My brother would never do anything to hurt me.” She slowly shredded the tissue in her hands; small pieces escaped her lap and fell on the floor.
“Can you talk about Jules? Tell me a little about him.”
The question brought a smile, a slight curving of the lips. For the next ten minutes, Lorraine put the grief aside and shared their casual meeting at a movie theater, the subsequent romantic period of getting to know one another, the flowers, the little gifts, and eventually their decision to enter a bond. Her face took on a far-away expression as she walked back in time reliving those memories. The vampiric strengths and abilities that made others steer away from Jules only made her feel safe and secure.
Ari shifted in her seat. A vampire had once made her feel the same, when her defenses had been down. At least Jules hadn’t lived to make Lorraine regret it.
“My family hoped I’d get over him. I guess that’s why the bonding upset them so much.” When Lorraine looked at Ari again, the dreamy look was gone. “I will never get over him. He was everything I wanted.” Her voice grew firmer. “I know what you’re thinking. He was a vampire, and, yes, I knew he had a dark side, a scary past. I didn’t think about it much. I accepted what he was, because I loved him. It was that simple for me.”
The two women stared at each other for a moment. Ari was the one who looked away. Such acceptance wasn’t easy for everyone, she thought. Not so simple at all.
“You know, the fact he was a vampire makes it harder to deal with his death,” Lorraine confided. “I’d gotten used to the reality of his long life. He had so much, so many years, ahead of him. He…no, we…should have had them all.”
Lorraine’s face appeared to be an open book. Either she was an accomplished liar, or she would never have killed her vampire lover. She had loved unconditionally.
Ari frowned. She couldn’t let herself get caught up in this romantic stuff. “If everything was so great, why the counseling with Mr. Shale?”
“It wasn’t us. It was the people around us. Every couple has issues. Family, in my case. And Jules’s old girlfriend, Rayden. Harold provided a place for us to talk it over and maybe come up with solutions.”
Ari pounced on the information. “This ex-girlfriend, what kind of trouble did she cause?”
“She wanted Jules. Rayden’s a vampire, and they’d been together off and on since the 1940’s. She thought they’d get back together, until Jules met me.”
“So, what did she do?”
“Broke into my apartment. We came home from a late movie and found ‘Die, Bitch’ written in blood on the bedroom mirror. I was terrified, and I’ve never seen Jules so upset. The next night the same message was left on my phone. Jules recognized her voice. He talked to her, and she stopped.”
Hmm. Ari would like to have heard that conversation. “You’re sure it was blood?”
“Yes, that’s what Jules said.” Her lips puckered. “She must have pricked a finger or something.”
The doorbell rang, and Mrs. West escorted two young women into the room. Since that signaled the end of any private conversation, Ari said her goodbyes and left.
Lorraine’s name moved to the bottom of the list of suspects, Rayden went to the top. At the very least, the vampiress should be able to name Jules’s enemies. And, it was possible Rayden was one of them. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman scorned had killed a lover.
Ari stood on the sidewalk outside Lorraine’s apartment and considered her next stop. She couldn’t talk with Jules’s ex until dark. That left her with time to stop at her office, re-schedule her appointments for the next three or four days, or at least until she had a better handle on this investigation. With Eddie sitting in jail, she needed to free up as much time as possible. With that plan in mind, she started toward her car.
Her cell rang. Caller ID indicated it was Claris. “Hi! What’s up?”
Claris had been her best friend since second grade, when the blonde witch and the full-blooded human girl in pigtails formed a sister-like friendship that had survived the last seventeen years.
“What time are you going to be here?” Claris asked.
“Ah-h, was I coming over?”
“Ari, don’t you remember? Tonight’s the Charity Auction. You and I and Brando and Steffan. You forgot, didn’t you?”
Oops. It was probably a case of selective memory. Ari hadn’t been eager to go. She didn’t have much time for dress-up social events and often found excuses, but this was different, she’d promised. She kind of owed Claris. Her best friend had put up with a lot from her in the last year. Ari had grieved her mentor’s death, been shot in a fight with an Uzi-wielding werewolf…and then there was the whole mess with Andreas. Ari stifled a sigh. No excuses. Not even a murder investigation.
“Of course, I didn’t forget,” she said. “Aren’t the guys coming at 8:00? So, I should be at your place by what? 7:00?”
“Ari! We can’t get ready in an hour. I’ll expect you at 5:30.”
“Sure.” Resigned to the inevitable, Ari agreed. “I’ll be there.” While she liked to shop and buy cool things as well as the next female, primping for hours was another thing. Claris enjoyed it, so occasionally they turned Claris’s residence at the rear of Basil & Sage, her herbal shop, into a private salon. Makeup, hair, nails and selecting the right outfit. It wasn’t so very different than playing guinea pig for Claris’s childhood herbal mixtures when they were ten. Except, Claris was really good with the girlie stuff.
Ari sighed as they disconnected. Maybe she should have told Claris about Eddie, begged off due to her job. She wasn’t sure how good a companion she’d be with the murder on her mind. But she didn’t want to disappoint her friends, even if this had every sign of being a long, long evening.
Chapter Three
Steffan whistled softly when Ari answered the pounding on Claris’s back door. Thanks mostly to Claris’s efforts, the women were ready. The men looked slightly awkward, and Ari grinned to see them so formally dressed in suits, Brando in dark blue, Steffan in ivory. Hernando, Claris’s adopted white Siamese cat, didn’t seem to recognize them. He twitched his tail and hid under a table of rosemary plants.
Realizing Steffan was still staring at her, Ari blushed under his open approval of her green cocktail dress, bare on one shoulder and cut low in back. Claris had chosen the outfit because she said it added curves to Ari’s boyish figure and the color matched Ari’s eyes. Her honey-blonde hair was fastened high in a mass of trailing curls, a style she would never have chosen on her own but Claris seemed to think suited her. From Steffan’s reaction, Claris had done a good job.