He shook his head. “For your sake I hope like hell you’re right. But I gotta be honest, I sure as hell wouldn’t put money on it.”
“Remember I just said you aren’t helping?” I grumbled. “Well, you still aren’t.”
“Sorry, white man.” He grunted. “Just callin’ it like I see it, and from where I sit there’s a signpost up ahead…”
CHAPTER 6:
By the time I arrived home, the pain was screwing itself into my neck with a vengeance. It had gradually escalated from sharp discomfort to a tortured sting that rose and fell in intensity with each beat of my heart. Fortunately, although my stomach was still off-kilter, the acidic queasiness that plagued me earlier had subsided a bit, which was at least some small consolation. Of course, my appetite certainly hadn’t made haste to return, so the still untouched breakfast was in a Styrofoam to-go box resting in the passenger seat of my truck.
I had no doubt that I was dealing with the earthly manifestations of someone else’s ethereal torment. That much was a given in my mind. In fact, despite my initial objections, I was also more than willing to believe the victim in Ben’s current investigation was the one assaulting me across the veil between the worlds of the living and dead. Nonetheless, I was clinging to my resolve and remained set on ignoring her no matter how much it hurt. There was just one small problem. Everything my friend had said about me earlier at the diner rang truer than I cared to admit. Whenever the dead came to me for help, I always ended up in trouble. Always. While I couldn’t really blame him for pointing it out, just thinking about it made my mood as sour as my stomach.
After parking my vehicle in the garage next to Felicity’s Jeep, I let myself in the back door of the house. As I came into the kitchen from the sunroom, both of our dogs met me and began snuffling about before finally sitting and looking at me expectantly. They immediately jumped up and followed along as I skirted around the island then pulled open the refrigerator door and started to make room on one of the shelves for the takeout container I was carrying. After a moment our English setter snorted a low sigh followed by something that wasn’t quite a bark but was definitely meant to convey a message. I looked over and found both of the canines sitting a few feet away, staring at me with imploring eyes as they quivered in excited expectation.
“You ate this morning,” I told them. “It isn’t dinnertime yet.”
The Australian cattle dog perked his ears and let out a short yip. The English setter followed with a repeat of his non-barking dog speak. I stared back at them and sighed.
All I really wanted to do at the moment was put the carton away then down a couple of painkillers and relax for a bit. But, I knew if I was going to insist on ignoring the ethereal pokes and prods, then I was going to need to learn to function around them as well. That meant, very simply, I couldn’t use unexplainable aches and pains as an excuse to eschew my responsibilities, even though I may want to do exactly that.
“Yeah, okay…” I mumbled in a tired drone, abandoning my task and swinging the refrigerator door shut.
A minute or so later I had the canine’s dishes up on the island and was still in the middle of dividing the contents of the container between them when I was verbally admonished from behind. This time, however, there was no need to interpret because the scolding was spoken in perfectly understandable English.
“You’re spoiling them, you know,” Felicity said.
“And you don’t?” I replied without looking up from my task.
“That’s not my point,” she returned, a smile in her voice.
“Of course it isn’t,” I returned, trying not to let my foul mood creep into my tone, which was no easy task since physically I seemed to be entering a steep, downward spiral. “Besides, Hon, they’re getting old. They’ve earned a few between meal snacks.”
She was next to me now and inspecting the contents of the bowls. “Snack? That looks more like a whole meal to me.”
“It kind of is…” I replied. “I wasn’t hungry.”
“You aren’t coming down with something, are you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied with a weak sigh.
The blatant lie might have worked had it not been for the fact that I winced as I said it-not to mention the fact that my free hand automatically went up to my neck.
“You sure aren’t acting like it, then,” she said. “What’s wrong with your neck?”
“Nothing,” I told her. “I think I just slept on it the wrong way or something.”
“Do you want me to give you a massage?” she asked, reaching up to move my hand. Before she could pull my fingers away, however, she let out a small gasp. “Rowan, you’re ice cold!”
I could feel her pressing the back of her hand against my neck and then my cheek as her maternal instincts took over and she slipped into nurturing mode.
“I just came in a few minutes ago,” I told her. “I haven’t warmed up yet.”
“Nice try, but it’s not that cold outside.”
Given how truly awful I was beginning to feel, I decided not to prolong the inevitable and simply conceded. “Okay, then maybe you’re right and I’m coming down with something.”
“You aren’t running a fever,” she countered. “You’re freezing.”
“So maybe it’s a cold,” I quipped, managing to squeeze out the last drop of sarcastic humor I had left in me.
“Not funny,” she replied sternly. “You’re helping Ben with another murder investigation, aren’t you? You’re channeling someone. Damn your eyes, Rowan Linden Gant, you promised!”
At this point the dogs had grown impatient, and the English setter was doing a halting dance nearby while the Aussie was letting out a nasal whine as an accompaniment.
“No,” I told her, giving my head an animated shake then picking up the food dishes from the island and stooping to set them on the floor. The canines were on them immediately, gobbling up the breakfast as if it was their one and only meal for the week.
“Don’t lie to me, Rowan,” she snapped.
“I’m not!” I barked in return as I stood. “I’m not helping him. But the victim apparently doesn’t seem interested in hearing that, okay?”
“You aren’t…”
“No,” I interrupted before she could finish the question. “I’m not letting her in. I’m doing just the opposite, but it isn’t working.”
“Are you grounding then?” she asked, referring to the conscious connection most any Witch makes with the earth in order to avoid mishaps with magickal energies.
Even though the question annoyed me on the surface, I knew she was right to ask. Grounding was a basic skill right out of WitchCraft 101 and moreover, the first step in protecting oneself from a psychic influence. However, following the first experience with my curse a few years back, I had been left unbalanced; therefore, it was also an important ability where I had fallen woefully short for quite some time now, no matter how hard I tried.
In recent months I had been much better at maintaining my focus-or at least I thought I had.
I took hold of my wife’s hand and said, “You tell me. Do I feel grounded to you?”
She twined her fingers into mine, pressing our palms tightly together. I knew she really didn’t need to have the physical contact to know one way or the other if I was truly grounded, but I wanted there to be no mistake. She looked into my face, and what had been a rising flash of anger in her green eyes now turned to concern.
“ Damnu,” she mumbled. “You are grounded… That fekking doiteacht , I’ll kill him.”
“Who?”
“Ben,” she snipped. “Who else? Come on then…”
She began dragging me by the hand toward the living room, and I had no recourse but to follow.
“You can’t blame him for this, Felicity,” I said as I lumbered along behind her, an overwhelming weakness starting to permeate my body. “This all started before I even met up with him this morning.”
“But he talked about a case, didn’t he?”
