“No again, silly boy,” she said, sighing. “I was just playing with you. Nope, this old broad has a sweet woman waiting for her when she gets home, and that’s worth it all.”
“I’m glad.”
“How’s your sweet woman?”
“One of the EMTs said she got a wound on her forehead, maybe a ricochet from a shotgun pellet.”
“You take care of her.”
“Always.”
We sat there in silence for a few minutes; Diane’s breathing slowed down, and then there was gentle snoring. She had fallen asleep. What to do?
Nothing.
I closed my eyes and joined her.
I woke up a while later to a voice saying, “You naughty man, you seduced me into staying here.”
Eyes open, and there Diane was, standing in front of me, gathering her gear. “What can I say,” I said. “We macho men, sometimes our pheromones do their own bidding.”
“Hah.” She leaned over, gave me a quick and sweet kiss on the lips. “You need help getting upstairs?”
I stood up, with Felix’s uncle’s sword cane still stuck. “Nope, I’ll be fine.”
My oldest and dearest friend smiled. “Tell you a secret?”
“You don’t have natural brown hair?”
“I’m all natural,” she said. “And intend to remain so. I’m not applying for the deputy chief’s job.”
“Good for you.”
“Why good for me?” she asked. “I didn’t even tell you why.”
“Doesn’t matter. You made the decision, it was the right one. That’s all I need to know.”
She smiled. “I decided it was more important for me and Kara for me to … remain who I am. What I do. And where I go. We’re getting married in two months. We’ll make it work.”
“You sure will.”
“Now,” Diane said. “Upstairs you go, and you make it work, too.”
Before any more time passed, I called the Exonia Hospital to check in on Paula Quinn’s condition. Because I wasn’t her relative, in any format currently fashionable, all they would tell me was that she was a patient and resting comfortably.
I hung up and clomped upstairs, wondering what I was going to tell Felix later about the not-so-deadly cane. I know what he would tell me, that in life and in sword canes, you have to practice, practice, practice. In my bathroom I slowly went about emptying the plastic bladders and measuring the output.
I paused, reading the numbers carefully. Even though I was late, even though it was practically the start of a new day, the output from both tubes had been cut in half.
It was finally time for the two drains to be removed.
“How about that,” I said, and I went to bed.
I woke up to the sensation of someone in bed with me. I moved around, and in the dim light there she was.
Cissy Manning.
Smiling as before, her thick red hair over the pillow, lacy straps of something black on her shoulders, sweet white skin and rust-colored freckles.
I tried to speak but I couldn’t.
All I could do was stare, and that I did, staring and trying to remember everything I was seeing and even smelling, for her old scent was there, tickling my nose and memories.
“Let it go,” she whispered.
And it was dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The next morning I did my best to push back the memories of the previous day and night—save for one special dream—and I checked the drain output and it was even less than before. After a quick breakfast in my disturbed kitchen, Felix called and I told him what was going on, including the good news about my drains.
“What’s the name of your doctor again?” he asked.
I told him and he said, “Hold on,” and there was that funny click-click as he made another call. I was thinking of telling him not to waste his time, that even now, scheduling something could take a few hours, but then he came back on and said, “Get dressed. I’ll be picking you up in thirty minutes.”
“But I’ve already eaten.”
“So have I,” he said, “but you’ve got a doctor’s appointment in an hour.”
“How the hell did you manage that?”
“Trade secrets,” he said. “Always trade secrets—just like you.”
“What?”
“Man, all of this excitement must be getting to your memory,” Felix said. “You told me you had something for me from the home country, and that I should stop picking on Rudy Gennaro. Or was that your evil twin, Skippy?”
“Skippy’s out raising hell,” I said. “Come on over.”
True to his word, an hour later we were on the outskirts of Exonia in an office park dedicated to medical professionals. Felix sat in the waiting room and read Glamour with his precious silver serving set next to him—“This thing isn’t leaving my sight for a while”—while I was brought into a back office and weighed, poked, and prodded. I changed into hospital scrubs and a licensed nurse practitioner named Molly Samuels started her work.
Her hair was as dark as a raven and her voice had a delightful lilt to it. “Ireland?” I asked her.
“Northern Ireland,” she said. “County Armagh.”
“Same here,” I said. “Long time ago. How do you like it here?”
She laughed. “Not as much rain, which is a delight. All right, Mr. Cole, if you please.”
I was up on an examining table, the kind with the endless roll of white thin paper, I flopped around on my side, and I felt her gentle fingers poking and probing. “Ah,” she said. “Here we go, then. You’re gonna feel a slight pinch there, Mr. Cole.”
I sighed. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
She stopped. “Why’s that?”
“Why’s what?”
“Are you expecting something else?”
“Sorry, it’s just I know from experience that when a medical professional says ‘a slight pinch,’ my toes usually curl from the pain.”
“Ah, don’t you worry none,” she said, her hands again moving softly along my back and my shoulder. “We of the Irish blood, we need to stick together, for as my grannie told me once, we sometimes have the power of the fairies with us. Here we go.”
By God, there was just a slight pinch, and then there was—it was hard to describe. A slippery sensation like a worm or thin snake was
