ambulance—I’m going to find Alessande. Did you pass her?” he asked Brodie frantically.
Brodie shook his head. “No, but go. I’ve got this.”
Mark tore off in the direction he recalled seeing Digger take, hoping Alessande had followed the dealer.
He almost passed the alley, but some instinct told him not to.
He turned on a dime and raced into the alley.
Time seemed to stop when he saw her; his body was paralyzed, his heart in his throat. She was lying, blond hair tumbled all around her, on the dirty pavement of the alley near a Dumpster.
Digger was there, too, flat on the ground in a pool of blood.
He raced to Alessande’s side, falling to his knees. Even as fear numbed him, he reached for her, and she groaned softly.
“Alessande!”
Carefully, he cradled her in his arms. Her eyes opened to meet his, as blue-green, as large, as engulfing, as the sea. He felt life return to his limbs.
“Alessande,” he said again.
“Mark!” she cried. Then she turned and saw Digger, and a gasp of horror escaped her. “Oh, Mark, I failed... I was... I should have seen what was coming, I should have saved him. Oh, God, I should have—” She broke off, a soft choking sound escaping her.
“Alessande, stop, there was no saving Digger any more than I could stop Jimmy from taking that pill,” he said firmly.
“Jimmy?” She looked at him vaguely.
“Jimmy—the man who attacked Digger—was the Hildegards’ butler.”
She blinked. “The Hildegards’ butler?” she said hesitantly.
“Sit still. I need to call an ambulance.”
He heard the sound of sirens and realized Brodie had called in Jimmy’s death.
“No ambulance,” she said. “Please.”
“But you’re hurt.”
“I want to get out of here. Take me back to the House of the Rising Sun. I can heal myself. And I can’t bear to go to the police station again, trying to say what I need to say but holding back so anyone who’s not an Other won’t hear.”
She was right, he realized.
“You didn’t see who attacked you?” he asked.
She shook her head and looked over at Digger.
“Don’t,” he told her. “It was fast. Looks like they knocked you out of the way and killed him quickly.”
“I have to get out of here.”
“Can you teleport? Do you have the strength?” He could hear the ambulance and backup cop cars blaring their way down the street.
She nodded.
“Get to Castle House. Barrie and Mick should be there. Go quickly—and then lie down and heal.”
“I will,” she promised him.
She took his face in her hands and kissed him quickly, then disappeared.
And even there, in the presence of death, he felt her warmth, her touch, lingering on his lips.
* * *
Alessande materialized in the dining room of Castle House almost on top of Barrie. She and Mick had gone into research mode; they had old newspapers and spreadsheets fanned out on the table next to their laptop computers.
“Alessande!” Barrie cried. “Oh, no, look at you—you’re bleeding.”
“Just a little bang on the head,” Alessande said. “I’m fine, really.”
She wasn’t, though, and she knew it. She was shaking. She’d been afraid she would lose it in the middle of teleporting, that she would wind up in molecular pieces somewhere, or simply flat on her back in the middle of the freeway, a semi bearing down on her.
Mick walked over, took hold of her shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
She nodded and quickly explained what had happened, rubbing the knot at the back of her head and already feeling the pain subside.
“The butler,” Barrie mused. “Someone else for us to investigate. Now sit down. I’ll brew some tea and then tell you what Mick and I have discovered. The public record is full of information if you know where to look.”
“Yes, sit,” Mick told her, pulling out a chair. He lifted her hair to inspect the damage. “Glutton for punishment,” he told her.
“No, just so intent on trying to get information that I didn’t hear someone coming up behind me. I should have suspected that Digger’s attacker might not have come alone.”
Just then Barrie returned with a silver tea service and three cups. Mick repeated what Alessande had told him as Barrie poured the tea.
“Mark and Brodie are going to be hurting when they get back,” Barrie said.
“Why?” Alessande asked.
“Wolfie—sorry, that’s just my nickname for Lieutenant Edwards—is going to ream the two of them out. More deaths are not going to look good for the LAPD—especially when one of them’s connected to a family as prominent as the Hildegards.”
“But that’s not their fault,” Alessande said indignantly.
“Don’t worry,” Mick said reassuringly. “Brodie and Mark have both weathered worse. It’s no easy task, being an Other and a cop, but they’ve done it for a lot of years. They’ll be fine.”
“Drink some tea—that always helps any situation,” Barrie said. “Then take a hot shower. By the time you’re done, the rest of the crew should be back, and we can explain what we found out once, instead of five or six times.”
“But now I’m curious,” Alessande protested.
“We have a few more connections to make, so give us time, okay?” Barrie said.
Alessande had to admit that she did feel scraped up and filthy. As if she’d been rolling in an alley.
Well, she had been.
“All right—I’ll be back down in a little while.” She finished off her cup of tea in a swallow, feeling it fill her with strength as it always did.
Then she stood and headed for the stairs to the second level of Castle House and her comfortable guest room.
Stepping into a shower was wonderful.
She only wished that...
She wished that Mark was with her.
As the hot water washed over her, she marveled at how quickly things could change. But she also found herself thinking about her strange dream again, her dream of a wedding in which everything was beautiful...
...until the blood started to flow, as rich a crimson as the velvet runner that covered the aisle to the altar.
And the memory made her shiver, despite the hot water cascading over her.
* * *
Mark was grateful to work with a partner like Brodie.
While he stood there in the alley receiving a good reaming-out from Lieutenant Edwards, Brodie was at his side, even though Mark had made it plain that Brodie had arrived on the scene after Jimmy had offed himself and Digger had been murdered.
“Let me get this straight. You were waiting to see what Digger was going to do—where he was going to get more of the drug?” Edwards said.
“Yes,” Mark replied.
