Demon's Hunger (10 page)

Whatever was wrong with her, it was getting worse. Time had melted away like an ice cube in the hot sun, and Vivien couldn't find a trace of it. She had huge holes in her day, chunks of time gone, missing. Hours that she knew had passed but that she couldn't remember. That terrified her.

She stared out at the lights of the CN Tower, bright against the dark night sky, and shivered. It was late. Past midnight.

Anxiety chewed at her. She couldn't remember what had happened in the past four or five hours. She'd lost those hours, and she had an ugly suspicion that she wouldn't like them if she found them.

Dain had taken off right after lunch, had hightailed it out of the loft so fast she'd had no doubt he was running from
her
, from the hot and heavy come-on she was laying on him.

Choices, choices.

Sex with her, or escape.

He'd picked escape.

Which was nothing new in the life of Vivien Cairn. People tended to desert her. Her dad. Nana, who'd taken care of her when she was little and then just up and disappeared one day, never to be heard from again. Her mom, who was so emotionally distant that she might as well have been completely absent. Pat, who'd left her in anger and died.

So she dedicated her life to finding answers. Not for herself, but maybe she could offer closure to others who'd been left behind. She couldn't figure out the puzzle of her own life, but she could figure out the riddles of other people's deaths. She could offer comfort to the families whose loved ones never came back.

Sighing, Vivien tried to stop the pity party. She rarely let herself get down in the dumps, but right now, she couldn't seem to stop. Her mood was probably triggered because she was terrified of her memory lapses. And by the events of the day, the losses, the stress.

God. Why was she thinking about all this now? Tonight?

Because of Dain. Because of the foreign emotions he roused in her. Because the fact that he had fled her less-than-subtle advances was humiliating, and the fact that she was so out of control that she'd pushed him to leave, doubly so.

Her cheeks actually heated with embarrassment as she recalled how, with a quick rundown of where the TV remote was stored, a password for the computer in the kitchen, and finally, a stern admonition that she stay put and keep the doors and windows locked, he'd left with an alacrity just shy of the speed of light, muttering some comments about wards and spells and being safe inside the penthouse.

So he
had
left. Just like she'd known he would. Just like everyone did.

She was honest enough to admit that if he'd stayed, she would have jumped him whether he wanted her or not.

Talk about conflicted.

What she'd done after that had started out mundane enough. Washed the lunch dishes. Used the time alone to take a nap and shower. She'd whispered a prayer of thanks when she discovered a couple of packaged toothbrushes in the medicine cabinet.

She'd also seen three rolls of gauze, three boxes of sterile gauze pads of varying sizes, a suture kit, and a scalpel. Odd things to keep in one's bathroom. Wariness trickling through her, she'd taken a toothbrush and ignored the surgical supplies, choosing not to dwell on them or the reasons Dain might keep such a stash in his medicine cabinet.

Heaving a sigh of relief at finding her purse on the couch—she vaguely recalled grabbing it as they left her burning house—she'd gone to the kitchen, called her financial adviser at her bank and her agent at her insurance company, and left messages for both of them. Her BlackBerry was nowhere to be found. Probably burned to a crisp along with the rest of her stuff. But she kept a small, handwritten address book for emergencies, and this definitely qualified as an emergency.

She remembered firing up the computer in Dain's kitchen, intending to create a file and document her observations of everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours. E-mail it to herself so she didn't store anything on his hard drive.

And that's where the mundane had slipped into the bizarre, because from that point on, she couldn't remember a thing.

Not a single blessed thing.

All she knew was that she'd come to herself about forty minutes ago and realized that she'd lost time again. At least it wasn't a full twelve hours like it had been before. How long? Five hours? Four?

The scariest part was that when she'd come to, her slippers were nowhere to be seen, and her feet had been ice cold. Like she'd gone out barefoot in the snow. Where? Where had she gone? What had she done?

Needing to focus on something, a task with a firmly defined outcome, she'd made a methodical search for the missing slippers and found them pretty quickly out in the hallway by the elevator.

The discovery had left her feeling frightened. Out of control.

In an effort to regain some semblance of control, she'd gone to Dain's kitchen, hauled out ingredients, and thrown together a quick dinner, one of those chicken-rice-pineapple-in-a-single-pot-ready-in-thirty-minutes meals. It was warming on the stove.

At a loss now, she turned from the window and looked around for something else to occupy her, something that would busy her hands and mind and keep her sane.

Her mom. She needed to call her mom, tell her what had happened. That definitely would
not
keep her sane, but she had to do it, anyway. Despite their lousy relationship, her mother needed to be told about the fire.

And maybe, maybe just this once, she'd come through for Vivien with a little support and comfort.

Picking up the phone, she dialed her mother's cell. She'd already put off the chore long enough, telling herself she needed to wait until evening because her mother was en route, flying back to the West Coast after her visit with Vivien. But the unfortunate truth was, she'd have called her mom last even if she lived on the same block.

Araminta answered on the third ring, her voice cool and cultured.

"Hi, Mom."

"Vivien? You're lucky you caught me. I just got in."

Yeah… only luck had nothing to do with it.

"How was the flight?" Vivien paced the length of the kitchen as she spoke.

"My flight? No, Vivien. I'm still in Toronto," Araminta said. "I am at the Royal York. I spent the day at an anti-aging show. Amazing the things people can do to hold on to their youth."

Vivien shook her head as the reality of the situation hit her. Araminta hadn't flown home to the West Coast. She was still in Toronto, attending a show. When she'd left Vivien standing in the road—was it only last night?—she hadn't even mentioned that she was staying in town.

Clenching her fist, Vivien wondered why the realization hurt. Why she let it hurt.

"Listen, Mom," she said, her voice cracking. "I've had a really eventful day."

After hearing a concise version of the tale, her mother was silent for so long that Vivien was tempted to ask if she was still there.

"Are you hurt?" Araminta asked, and there was just enough emotion in her tone to shock the heck out of Vivien.

"No, I'm fine. I'm with a"—what was she supposed to call him?—"a friend."

"Amy?"

Vivien couldn't help but smile at the approval in Araminta's voice. For some reason, her mother liked Amy. "No, not Amy. Someone else."

Araminta heaved one of her impending-nuclear-destruction sighs, pointed out that Vivien had best notify her bank and credit card companies, and wondered with preternatural calm whether the damage would be covered by Vivien's home insurance.

"Yes, Mom. I'll call the bank and the insurance again in the morning. And, yes, my policy will cover this."

The conversation petered out pretty quickly after that. Vivien gave her mother Dain's telephone number in case she needed to reach her and completely ran out of things to say after that.

"I'm at the Royal York. Ask for me at the desk. I'll come down," Araminta said, and Vivien had the odd notion that her mother was offering her a place to stay.

She murmured a noncommittal reply.

"Well, you have lost only
things
. Nothing that can't be replaced," her mother said, matter-of-fact as always. "Good night, dear."

Nothing that can't be replaced
. Vivien shook her head as she put the receiver back in the cradle. Her photos of her whole life. The huge stuffed teddy she and Amy had won together at Wonderland the year they first met; she could still remember the sense of euphoria as she'd been handed her prize. All her clothes and shoes. Her furniture. God, the list was enormous.

She closed her eyes, and a memory of the demon in her basement came to her.

Oh, yeah, she hadn't lost anything that couldn't be replaced—except her naive belief that the world's worst monsters were human and that her work and testimony had helped to convict some of them and see justice done.

Vivien slowly exhaled as a shudder came over her. And along with everything else, she'd lost another chunk of time today. What had she done all afternoon? Where had she been?

And what about last night after her mother had left? There was a full twelve hours missing there, a whole night up until the point that Dain had appeared on her front porch, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't recover even a flicker of memory.

She'd made notes on her previous episodes. Jotted down conjectures. Started a file filled with articles on any possible cause for what was happening to her. That was all gone now, incinerated. She'd have to start over.

Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she sighed. The episodes hadn't come so close together before, and she felt like she wasn't just losing time; she was losing herself. Turning, she splayed her fingers on the cold glass of the window.

The oil on her skin would leave a handprint, she realized, but she didn't pull away.

I
was here. I'm alive. I'm still me, despite everything
.

I'll find that lost time, I'll find it. And I'll find out where I was, what I did.

She couldn't say how long she stood there, her mind spinning through a whole slew of terrible possibilities and conjectures, stirring them and stirring them until they melded into a dark and frightening sludge.

Suddenly, an odd awareness skittered through her, and she shivered. The air seemed to shift and bend, a warm stroke against her skin that sent every nerve into tingling sensitivity.

She knew even before he spoke or made a sound.

Dain Hawkins was back.

His footsteps sounded against the hardwood floor, drawing closer, until she sensed him right behind her.

Luscious, hard-bodied, irresistible Dain.

That was okay. She'd resist. She was a little more in control of herself now than she had been at lunch… she hoped.

"Vivien." Oh, God, the way he said her name, so low and sexy, like he was tasting it. She didn't turn, didn't dare look at him. Instead, she stared out at the distant lights.

He'd come back. He hadn't deserted her. He'd come back.

She almost snorted in derision, caught it at the last second. Of course he'd come back. It was
his
penthouse.

Angry at herself, she shoved little-girl-lost back into the shadowy corner she belonged in.

"Did you go out?" he asked. "The front door was unlocked." He definitely didn't sound happy about that.

Had she gone out? She had no idea. The realization made her sick.

Glancing down, she noticed a long, red scratch on the inside of her right forearm. How had she gotten it? Where? She had no idea about that, either.

She sighed, said nothing, wishing she had an answer to give him. To give herself. Finally, she just shook her head and was immensely grateful when he didn't press.

"It appears that your mother is a lady of restraint," Dain said from behind her, his tone wry.

So he'd heard at least part of that conversation. Vivien sucked in a breath, kept her gaze locked on the window and the view.

"That's my mother. As restrained as they come." As distant as they come. As far away from her daughter in both body and emotion as she could be. "It isn't as though she heard about the fire from a third party and then spent hours worrying about where I was or if I was hurt. She said she's been in workshops all day and hadn't seen the news."

And the truth was that, whatever their differences, Vivien believed that Araminta
would
have worried. They weren't estranged, just strangers who happened to be mother and daughter.

She still didn't look at him. Wanted so badly to look at him. Touch him. His absence throughout the afternoon hadn't changed a thing. She was still so hot for him she was about to go up in flames.

"So, yeah, not much cause for her to worry." She turned toward him at last.

"Perhaps she does worry. Perhaps she's just… guarded with her emotions," he offered.

She thought he knew a whole lot about being guarded, that he locked his own emotions away behind a wall.

There was just something about the way he seemed so controlled, so… alone. And she had no idea why she thought that.

"Speaking with the voice of experience?" she asked.