“To what?”
I took the medallion from his hand. “You can’t fight Darius with this. The Order can’t help you. You have to accept what he’s capable of so you can be on guard. So you can find a way to protect yourself.”
“And just what do you think he’s capable of?”
“I have no idea,” I said with a shudder. “But I have a feeling we’re about to find out.”
Isabel drove me home a little while later. Clementine had already left, and Devlin was still of the mind that it would be best if we weren’t seen together. I could only shake my head at his stubbornness. Darius already knew about me. He’d come to me in a dream. He’d trapped that beetle in Gerrity’s office so that I would find it, and he’d been there tonight at Isabel’s. He would come to me again. Of that I was certain. I just didn’t know when or how. Or what he ultimately wanted.
So I had accepted Isabel’s offer of a ride because it seemed easier to acquiesce than to come up with a suitable excuse.
We rode in silence for a few minutes until I finally got up enough nerve to broach the subject of Devlin.
“How long have you known John?”
She gave me an enigmatic glance. “We go back a long way.”
“Really?” I wished that I could relax in her company, but she was so much more reserved than Clementine. I wondered if her cordial facade masked some resentment toward me, but she was probably a far better person than I. “He’s lucky he could come to you for help tonight.”
“I’m just glad all those years of med school could be put to some use.”
“Why did you leave medicine?”
She shrugged. “I like helping people, but being a doctor wasn’t for me. It may sound strange, but I found it limiting. So I decided to follow my grandmother into chiromancy.”
“That’s quite a leap.”
“It was the right decision for me. I would have been miserable otherwise, and I’m good at what I do.”
She turned back to the road, and I covertly studied her profile. She was a gorgeous woman, but hers was a cool, remote beauty whereas Mariama’s had been fiery and exotic. Comparatively speaking, I felt a bit of a mouse. I had always thought of myself as a quiet pretty. A blue-eyed blonde with a clear complexion and a nice smile. Thin and fit from my years of working in cemeteries, but there was nothing extraordinary about me at all. Except that I saw ghosts.
“How did you meet?” I asked.
She took a moment to answer. “I killed someone. John was assigned the case.”
I stared at her in astonishment, my mind conjuring an image. Her hands, covered in blood, clutching a dripping knife. I felt my own fingers curl around the armrest. “That’s…quite a meeting.”
“Hardly the stuff of fantasies,” she agreed. “It was a very difficult time for my family. John was a saint. I hate to think what would have happened if another detective had shown up at our house that night.”
“What did happen? Or should I not ask?”
“I don’t mind you knowing. I would be curious, too, if I were in your place.”
My place?
“The victim—if one could call him that—was Clementine’s husband. It was a matter of me killing him before he killed her.”
“He was abusive?”
“We didn’t know for a long time. She hid it well. She married young against all our wishes and when things got bad, she was ashamed to come to us. It finally escalated to the point where she had to leave him. But he wouldn’t let her go. They never do. At first it was phone calls and emails. Then he started showing up at her work and at home, leaving little notes for her to find, all scented with her perfume.”
“That’s why she doesn’t wear it anymore,” I said.
“Despite all the precautions we took, he was able to get inside the house, into her bedroom. The police were useless because he was very careful about not getting caught. He knew our habits, our schedules, how to deactivate the alarm system. The love notes turned into threats. We were all terrified that it would end badly. And, of course, it did.”
I was thinking about something else Clementine had said. She hated to think that anyone could come back from the dead. No wonder the notion of ghosts terrified her.
“We were both living with Grandmother at the time,” Isabel said. “I came home one night to find him in the house. He’d cornered my sister with a knife, still insisting that he loved her, that he would do anything to win her back. All he wanted was another chance. On and on like that. When I saw how helpless she was—how helpless she’d been during that whole relationship—something snapped. I could have called 911 or even a neighbor for help. But I knew that, even if we managed to stop him that time, he would be back. He would keep coming back until one or both of them ended up dead. So I got my grandfather’s gun and I shot him.”
“But surely that would be considered justifiable homicide,” I said.
“I wasn’t the only one who shot him, you see.”
“What do you mean?”
“Clementine took the gun from my hand and emptied the chamber in him. I believe the term is overkill,” Isabel murmured.
I couldn’t quite reconcile that harsh description with the soft loveliness of Clementine Perilloux. “I thought you said you killed him.”
“I guess that depends on whether or not he died from the first bullet,” she said.
I was still gripping the armrest. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because there’s a bond between John and my family…between John and me that is never going away.”
“I…see.”
Her glance, I thought, was defiant. “He took care of us. He made everything go away, and my sister was able to get the help she needed. It took years of therapy and confinement, but she’s finally ready to move on with her life.”
“Confinement?”
“In a psychiatric hospital.”
“I see.” I remembered my breakfast with Clementine—the trembling hands, those odd hesitations, her determination to stand on her own two feet. It all made sense now. “How did John make everything go away?”
“The D.A. never brought charges even though he was under considerable pressure to do so. That was John’s doing.”
I was shivering a little because I didn’t like where this conversation had been or where it was likely headed.
“It’s important for you to understand how close we are,” she said, and I wondered if there might not be a hint of madness in
I said nothing, lest I set her off.
She sent me another bold look, and then her expression softened unexpectedly. “But it is just friendship. Nothing more. And that’s what I wanted you to know.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her entirely, but I also thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie. “Did you know Mariama?”
She inhaled sharply. “She was a very powerful, very beautiful woman, but she was evil through and through.”
“Evil is a strong word.”
“I don’t use it lightly. She could be utterly charming when she wanted or needed to be, but she wasn’t above using a young woman’s mental frailty to her advantage.”
“What do you mean?”
“She drew Clementine into her mind games. My sister was very vulnerable as you can imagine and she adored Shani. She had no idea she was being used. I don’t want to go into detail, but suffice to say, Mariama made John’s life a living hell.”
