uncertain terms by a sharp twinge that drove inward and then hung a quick right to shoot down my arm, ending with momentary numbness in my fingers. I decided then and there that I was going to need something to take it down a few notches if I was going to make it through the rest of the night.
Something else I’d forgotten was that Ben was already in the house making a phone call. He had apparently just finished as we all filtered into the living room and began hanging up our coats. I heard the door to our bedroom open as everyone was heading back into the kitchen and dining room to help get everything set out for dinner. I hung back a moment and waited.
“Hey, Tonto,” I greeted my friend as he came around the corner and up the short hallway. “You missed all the fun.”
“What? Oh, yeah, sorry ‘bout that,” he answered me, voice thick and betraying a noticeable sense of distance to his thoughts. He looked pale, which considering his dusky complexion was alarming in and of itself.
“Something wrong?” I queried, feeling the hairs on my neck snap to attention once again.
“No. Nothin’. No big deal.” He shook his head.
I was unconvinced. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” He shook his head a little too vigorously. “It’s nothin’.”
“Ben…”
He shot me a hard look and half whispered, “Not right now, Row. Drop it. It’s nothin’”
“Okay.” I shrugged and held up a hand to let him know I got the message. “No problem. Sorry.”
I stood looking at him for a moment and could almost visibly see the wheels turning. Something was up, but for some unknown reason he was going to keep me in the dark about it. I didn’t like this situation at all because something deep down told me that whatever it was that Ben was laboring over, it definitely had something to do with me.
The earlier rampant fear that I had perhaps killed Paige Lawson myself now returned to the forefront with extreme prejudice. Everything Helen had said to convince me otherwise went instantly out the window, and I became my own prime suspect once again.
I couldn’t take it.
“Am I a suspect?” I blurted.
“Do what?” Ben shook his head as if he’d misheard the question and stared back at me with a look of incredulity.
“You heard me, Ben,” I rushed the words out before my brain could convince me to shut up. “Am I a suspect in Paige Lawson’s death?”
“Hell no.” He stared at me and screwed up his face in confusion. “Where the fuck’d’ya get that idea?”
“I don’t know,” I shook my head as I sighed. “I was there… All the stuff that’s been happening… Now you’ve obviously got something bothering you-presumably because of that phone call-and you’re keeping whatever it is from me…”
“Gimme a break, white man,” he said. “Hell, I don’t even tell my wife everything about work, okay?”
“Yeah, maybe so, but I’ve got a feeling that whatever that phone call was about, my name got mentioned in there somewhere.”
“Listen…” he sent a hand up to massage his neck and gestured at me with the other. “You’re just gonna hafta trust me on this. That call is prob’ly gonna turn out to be nothin’, but even if it doesn’t, I just can’t discuss it with ya’ right now. Okay?”
“Probably going to turn out to be nothing,” I repeated his words. “So it does have something to do with me then?”
“I told ya’, I’m not goin’ there.”
“But if it has something to do with me…”
“Row, drop it.”
“Ben…”
“Now, Row.”
I wasn’t going to get anywhere with him, that much was obvious. I was also breaking the cardinal rule of not pushing Ben Storm into a corner, and I knew better. I decided I’d better heed his advice.
“Yeah. Okay. Sorry. You know how I am…”
“Yeah,” he harrumphed. “No shit.”
I cocked my head in the direction of the dining room and changed the subject. “So everyone’s getting ready to eat.”
“Great,” he nodded. “I’m starvin’. You gonna tell me what we’re having yet? It smells good.”
“I think you’ll like it.”
“Okay, but what is it?”
“Food, Ben. Trust me, you’ll like it.”
“Well, if I don’t, at least I’m covered.”
“You didn’t really bring a sack of belly-bombers, did you?” I asked.
“No, but I got a coupl’a frozen pizzas out in the van. All I gotta do is borrow your oven and I’m good ta’ go.”
I shook my head and grinned at him, “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Hey, a man’s gotta eat.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the back of the house. “By the way, did you say your deal was over with out there?”
“We’ll officially cast circle a bit later, but that’s not for a while yet. So except for tending the fire through the night and clearing the towers later, yeah, it’s pretty much done. Why?”
“So it’s all clear for alcohol?”
“In moderation, yeah, sure. Since you aren’t participating, you’ve pretty much been clear all along.”
“Shit, wish I’d known that, ‘cause I need a Scotch like right now.”
“Yeah, me too. Do me a favor and pour me one while you’re at it,” I said as I stepped past him. “I’ve just got to hit the restroom first.”
“You sure you wanna drink? I thought ya’ said alcohol wasn’t allowed in the circle thing, and if y’a still gotta do that later…”
“I’ve got awhile yet. Besides, in this particular case I don’t think the God will mind if I relax a little bit.”
“Okay. You’re the Witch.”
“Yeah. Don’t remind me.”
The hairs along the back of my neck were still on end by the time I returned to the dining room. It was becoming more obvious by the second that something very bad was waiting in the wings for its chance to overturn my world.
And I hated not knowing what it was.
CHAPTER 17
The sun was riding a southern arc in the cloudless sky, casting its brightness across the cityscape as I hooked my truck onto Clark Avenue and then a couple of blocks later found myself a parking space directly in front of City Police Headquarters. After easing between the diagonal lines, I levered the vehicle into park and paused a moment. Finally, I took off my sunglasses and tucked them between the headliner and passenger side visor then switched off the engine.
December 24 ^ th had stealthily arrived as a follow-up to our celebration of the winter’s solstice; sneaking into the fold as it always did each year, no matter how prepared you thought yourself to be. Two entire days had passed since the party, each of them an almost indiscernible fraction of time longer in lighted hours than was the day before. The Sun God had been reborn, but the new solar year had still brought with it the issues left unresolved during the previous turn of the wheel.
However, as if in honor of a secretly declared cease-fire, the 48 hours had passed with nothing blatantly out of the ordinary happening to me. No dreams, no uninvited visions, no sleepwalking. Not even the barest twinge of a waking nightmare. In Felicity’s estimation, and that of others around me, this all appeared to be a display of my
