“I think Winnie has some sort of experience when you leave her like that. She sleeps, or passes out. It’s not normal.”
“Of course it’s normal. Dogs are closer to the other world. Winnie’s in touch with these things. She’s trying to guard me.”
Marley pulled the candy bag from his fingers and kept munching. “Where are your coffee beans?” she mumbled.
“That dollhouse had something to do with you leaving or traveling out of your body or whatever you call it,” he said.
Her eyes turned up toward him. A secretiveness veiled that look. She might be stuffing sweets, but she was too thin and pale.
“Now what?” he said.
Marley’s hands stilled in her lap, collapsing the crackling bag in her fingers.
“I saw colors on the ceiling over your workbench,” he told her, then wished he hadn’t. “Probably some sort of trick of the light.” Wishful thinking. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the ghost.
There couldn’t have been a ghost. There were no ghosts. “Those colors,” he muttered. “Trick of the light.”
“No,” she said quietly. Her engrossed study whetted his appetite for some enlightenment.
“Why ‘no’?” he said. “What else could it have been?”
“You mentioned it, I didn’t. Very few people would see those colors. You’re a latent sensitive and you’re just awakening.”
Maybe he didn’t want to be a sensitive of any kind. “Was what I saw a signal of some kind?”
“They were part of a summons to me. Calling me to enter…to follow instructions. My help…was needed…is needed.”
She blanched totally. Not a speck of pink showed in her cheeks and her mouth was the same color as the rest of her skin. Her hair was shockingly red against the pallor.
Marley erupted to her feet.
She walked into his arms and clutched his shoulders. The spark in her eyes let him know they shared an intense awareness. Her mouth worked and she looked away.
“Tell me,” he said and slid a hand behind her neck. “You’re wiped out. Let me do what you think you have to do.” So far he hadn’t grilled her about what had happened while she’d been away, but he doubted he could wait much longer.
“Nat,” she said. “We need him now.”
His stomach turned. “Are you seeing something I can’t see?”
“I already did that. The exhaustion saps my strength and my memory, but it’s all coming back. Terrible things have happened. I think I’m too late.”
Gray used his cell phone to call Nat who picked up on the first ring. “Archer,” he snapped.
“I think we’ve got something,” Gray said. “Marley has.” He stopped short of mentioning that she had left her body again.
“Where are you?”
He covered the speaker. “He wants to know where to meet us.”
Her eyes were wild. “Not here. You won’t talk about this shop or this place, will you, Gray?”
“No,” he said without hesitation. “What you share with me won’t go anywhere else. Tell me what to say.”
“Meet us in the Quarter. We’re going to walk, I don’t know where. It’s all I can think of. I don’t think I’m looking for a big place or a popular place. It’s a bar or club, I think. We could get together outside Fat Catz on Bourbon Street and fan out from there to search.”
“Fat Catz on Bourbon,” Gray said into his phone, and listened to Nat’s response. “He wants to know if he can bring officers with him.”
“No,” she said sharply. But then she rubbed her face and thought. “Can they come without looking like a cop convention?”
Nat heard her and said, “No problem. They don’t have to be where I can see them for me to communicate.”
Gray told Marley.
“Okay then. Tell him, I think…Tell him we’ve got to find someone, only I don’t know who it is.”
Gray winced and passed the message along.
“Let’s go,” Marley said. “Now.”
Gray bent to pick up Winnie and took a belt across the nose from her bone. Tears stung his eyes, but he stiffened his chin and led the way from the workroom.
In the shop, immobile as if frozen in the moment when Gray and Marley left him, Pascal Millet sat on the chair Anthony had provided. The trainer, his face expressionless, stood guard at his boss’s shoulder.
The one change was the presence of Willow, who was uncharacteristically quiet although she smiled at Gray.
“We’re going out for a…for a meal.” Marley stumbled over her words. “Be back later.”
She hovered in front of her uncle who studied her with both eyebrows raised. He gave Gray several glances.
Marley shook her head and Pascal frowned at her. “Don’t make me regret the trust I place in you,” he told her.
“You say that a lot these days,” she said.
He glared at Gray. “I’m trusting you, too. Not because I think I ought to but because—” A puzzled frown replaced the glare. “You should go with her.”
“Shall I take Winnie?” Willow asked. When Marley agreed and thanked her, she approached Gray, who put the dog in her arms.
Willow peered up into his face. She cleared her throat and frowned and the instant before she lowered her eyes, he saw a film of tears.
She disconcerted him utterly. This reaction, for the second time, felt more personal than it should. There was no reason for Willow to behave as if he upset her.
“Bless you, sis,” Marley said, squeezing Willow’s shoulders. “If it gets late I’ll leave her with you tonight.”
“Leave her with me anyway. She keeps me company.”
Gray and Marley made their parting remarks and left the shop. They headed directly for Bourbon Street.
“Can you tell me anything?” Gray said. “You’re worried, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Scared sick would be closer. Something weird happened.”
He wondered how weird something would have to be for Marley to call it that.
“I saw Liza.” She paused, squeezing her eyes shut. “It was so horrible, and it wasn’t now, it was right after she went missing. I went back in time. That’s never happened before. She…she…she got hurt badly and I couldn’t stop it.”
“But you’ve got an idea where she is now?”
“No. It was what happened after I left Liza that could help. I’ve got to find a place, a building.”
She ran along beside him and slipped her hand into his. He gritted his teeth before he smiled and felt the world lighten. Marley was letting him know she trusted him, and maybe even that she’d like to be closer to him.
Oh, yes, fate smiled on him. He wanted her more with every passing second. He wanted her, out-of-body experiences, whispering voices, colored lights, ghosts, weird family, pigheaded dog and all.
What he felt for her was new and irresistible to him.
And that was as deeply as he wanted to look at it right now.
The good-time seekers were out in force. Tourists sipping daiquiris from white plastic cups laughed and fell against each other. Nearby a guy leaned from a balcony swinging rows of bright beads over the heads below. He spied a buxom wench and sent a, “Hey gorgeous, want some bling?” in her direction.
The woman raised her cup to him and he jiggled the beads. He winked at her and made motions as if he had
