“Who are you?” Marley felt mortally sick. The perpetrator of the wave of disappearances and killings, that’s who this one spoke of. Now he wanted Marley. Why hadn’t he taken her at the warehouse, or earlier, at Myrtle Wood?
Drops fell on her face.
The woman faded.
Marley wiped at her cheeks, wiped away tears shed by the other.
“Pearl Brite,” Gray said beside her.
Stunned, she shook her head. “You saw her, too,” Marley whispered, trying to turn toward him. “How?”
“I don’t know, but I did. And I’ve seen her pictures. Nat showed me.” He lifted the blankets and climbed into the bed beside Marley, took her in his arms and held her tightly. “Do we need help from someone with greater… with more of whatever we need to deal with this?”
She sighed and pressed her face against his neck. “Each of us—those of us with parapsychological gifts, must carry our own burdens. That’s a law we live by. I was given a task to perform and I must do it. There are people in my family who are stronger than I am, but this isn’t their task to deal with and in trying to protect me, they could do something I couldn’t bear. They could seal off any chance I have to get to the ones who need me.”
“You mean you must try to save Liza and Amber, and now Pearl, on your own?”
“Yes.”
“But I’ve heard and seen things, Marley. Just as you said, I have powers, too, and they’re getting stronger. There were voices that came out of a whispering mass that told me I must protect you. They said I must be prepared to fight for you. And I am. I’ll do anything to keep you safe.”
She heard the slow, hard beat of her heart. “The Bonding,” she said. “I had forgotten all its parts.”
“Explain.”
“We are bonded, you and I. By a physical, sexual dynamic that was preordained. You have felt the pain and the strangeness and so have I. We will never touch without total awareness of each other. There is more, but I’m too tired now. Because we have a Bonding, we are responsible for each other. The Ushers must have sensed what has occurred between us.”
“Ushers—”
“The voices you heard. They are my guides. To a degree, my protectors, although they tend to panic when they worry about me.”
“I know how they feel,” Gray said. “Tell me more about this Bonding.”
The thought intimidated her. “In time, Gray. I have an unusual heritage, more unusual than you’ve guessed.”
“I doubt it, sweet cakes.”
“Sweet cakes?” The words exploded from her. “I’ve never been called—”
“Well, you have now. And I never called anyone that before, so you’re special.” He sounded smug. “What the hell do we do next? I’d better bring Nat up to speed.”
“He can’t help,” Marley said. “It will be up to me.”
“Who is the other one?” Gray asked. “The man on his own?”
She let her eyes close. “What man?”
“The one I saw. Tall with long hair that’s turning gray. His face is young.”
Marley held her breath. “Where?”
“In your workroom. Then at Myrtle Wood. He said he was your mentor.”
“Mentor?”
“I think…I think he’s a ghost.”
He held her tighter. Her eyes were wide-open now and she stared at his dark shape. “Are you sure?”
“How would I know? I never saw a ghost—”
“No. Are you sure he said he was the Mentor?”
For an instant he was quiet, then he said, “Yes, that’s it. The Mentor. He told me…he warned me to be watchful for you.”
“Are you okay?” he said.
“I will be. I’ll know when it’s time to go for Pearl. The Ushers will agitate.” She looked at the gleam of his eyes and wrestled with the notion that he could well develop a mirror image of her skills. How would he deal with that? Or not deal with it? “I need to eat first.”
Gray leaped from the bed and said, “I hope to hell there’s chocolate in this place.”
Chapter 39
“Two things,” Nat said in Gray’s ear and much too loudly for Gray’s liking this morning. “The woman with Danny Summit last night was Sidney Fournier. She must have gone right from digging the dirt on him with you to his bed. How about that?”
Gray looked at his phone and turned down the volume.
Marley sat in the corner of Gus’s comfortable chintz couch, eating her way through a box of chocolates and not seeming to take any notice of Gray’s conversation. But Gus’s thin face showed the animation it always did when he sniffed police business. His eyes were bright as he pretended to look anywhere but at Gray.
“Why would she do that?” he said. “Scratch the question. Just seems strange after she tried to blow the whistle on him. At least, I think that’s what she was doing. She seemed scared of him.”
“She left his place after four this morning. Does that sound like she’s scared of him?”
“Maybe she was trying to get more information from him,” Gray said. He wanted to get in the shower and think. “It doesn’t have to mean she was sleeping with him.”
He caught a motion from Gus, who sent him a frown and nodded at Marley. So the old man had decided she was something special and her ears shouldn’t be subjected to less than pure comments.
Marley didn’t miss a beat between chocolates.
Smiling at Gus, he said, “Say again, Nat.”
“I said they kissed at the door—for a long time. And a car was waiting for her—the one that takes her everywhere.”
“Are you going to question her?”
“Not yet.”
“Good,” Gray said. “You’ll stand to get more if you give her longer to show what she’s up to.”
“Glad you approve.”
Gray smiled. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Sure,” Nat said. “You might like to know there’s an unmarked car across the street. It’ll be there as long as Marley is.”
Gray opened his mouth to protest but Nat hung up.
“Well, hell,” he muttered.
“What?” Marley said.
“He didn’t say anything,” Gus told her. “He’s always been a mumbler. Every teacher-parent conference I had to listen to how he was so hard to understand.”
Marley enjoyed that little piece of fiction far too much. “I’ll leave you two to entertain each other,” Gray said. “Try to find something more interesting to talk about than me.”
“You gonna turn your human-interest article into a crime piece?” Gus said.
“What?” Gray ran a hand behind his neck and stared at his dad.
“That editor of yours called late yesterday. Seems you’re behind on your deadline,” Gus said with a grin. “I told him he’d better back off or you’ll sell the hottest story ever to come out of New Orleans to the highest
