Florida Knight (28 page)

Cat had disappeared, of course. She was in back, helping the queen’s ladies. Alys was with her. With the assembly hall rapidly emptying out, Raven wasn’t sure why he was still standing by his seat. Probably because whatever had just happened seemed to be a prank. If what was in the box had been a snake, particularly a rattler, the knights’ reactions would have been more concentrated, the hunters all moving in one direction, focusing their efforts, not this mad scramble with weapons whanging down in a dozen different directions. Before Raven could do anything, he had to discover what was going on.

What the hell?

Something had just scuttled under the chair
in front of him. Something
black and moving so fast it had been little more than a blur. Cautiously, Michael bent down and peered under the chair where he’d seen movement. He was thinking
mouse
, or maybe
rat
. Cockroaches were too common in
Florida
to cause such an extreme reaction. Maybe wishful thinking, Raven acknowledged, as he stared at the thing which had paused, dead still, on the vinyl tile beneath the chair.

Oh, shit!
The creature was about as big as a saucer and had eight legs. It didn’t matter how many times he’d seen a hunter spider, it was always a shock. With a leg-spread wider than a tarantula, the hunter spider was not a web spinner. It could hunt, even jump, at a speed close to greased lightning. No matter that it ate only cockroaches and other insects, the sight of one was enough to turn almost anyone’s hair gray. How many had been in the damn box? Five, six . . . ten? No wonder everyone panicked.

“Okay, okay,” Raven shouted above the sobs of the women and the rebel yells of the fighter jocks. “Everybody out! This place will have to be fumigated. Just get the hell out and close the doors tight.” He looked around to find that King Corwyn and the Kingdom Herald were echoing his instructions. Only the knights, happily defending the kingdom from a genuine challenge, seemed reluctant to leave. But at last silence reigned. Raven, Corwyn, and the Herald grouped together just inside the door
, the last people in the building. The three
looked at each other, let out a mutual sigh of relief.

“There must have been a dozen of the damn things,” the Herald proclaimed, shaking his head.

“Somebody really worked hard on this one,” Corwyn agreed. “I’ve never seen so many of the blasted things in one place.”

“Shall we talk outside?” Raven said, not quite willing to admit he’d feel considerably more comfortable away from the roomful of giant spiders.

“Hell, yes!” said the King, and led the way out.

Raven hung back, took one last look around. Several of the spiders had made it to the walls, where they hung like great black blobs against the white paint. One clung to a rafter near the center of the room. The others were . . . where? He didn’t want to know. Raven left, carefully closing the door behind him.

“Corwyn, Corwyn!” A sobbing Baron von Wicksmar held out his hand in supplication to the King. “I didn’t . . . I could never . . . it was supposed to be a necklace!” he wailed.

Queen Eilis joined them. “We know you would never do that, Eifan,” she consoled. “It was a prank. A very nasty one, but we know it wasn’t your fault.”

“My wife wrapped it herself just last night,” Sir Eifan burbled. “I’m so sorry . . . I don’t know how it happened.”

“We don’t suspect you, Eifan,” the king declared. “You’re forgiven. Now go and comfort your wife.”

Dismissed, the baron backed away, his plump face still distorted by anguish.

Corwyn, scowling, turned back to the group clustered just outside the door of the Assembly Hall. “People could have been hurt in the stampede—”

“Or died of a heart attack,” Cat added as she joined the group.

Grimly, Corwyn looked at his Herald, at his Knight Champion who had been wielding the ceremonial sword in the
Battle
of the Spiders, then finally at Raven. “All right,” he challenged,“Is this the work of the person we’ve been hunting? Or
one of Brocc’s demented ideas?”

“I don’t think—” Cat jumped in, then paused. She’d fought Brocc in every tournament, except today. She’d sat around a campfire with him, been rejecting his personal advances for years. He might not be her favorite person, but she knew him rather well. “Brocc might have done cockroaches,” Cat declared. “Not spiders. Truthfully, I’ve seen him run from the darn things at that campground near
Lakeland
where they even hide out under the mattresses. In fact,” Cat added, “I bet that’s where these spiders came from. That’s the only place I know where you can find this many at once.”

“So it’s our bad guy.” Corwyn sighed.

“Looks like it,” Raven agreed.

“I’ve got a crew working on the registration slips,” Princess Kiriana spoke up. “We’re eliminating everyone who wasn’t at all the events where trouble occurred.”

“Which gives us a list of suspects that includes all our most dedicated members,” Corwyn said with a groan. He flicked a glance at Raven, moving away from his retinue into the shade of a huge live oak. Raven, answering the summons, followed. The king’s shrewd blue eyes met Raven’s squarely.  “You’re pretty good at giving orders,” he challenged.

“Uh–sorry,” Raven tossed back, clamping his lips over any explanation. So far the King hadn’t asked awkward questions. He hoped to keep it that way. In the background Raven could see Cat hovering, looking apprehensive. He couldn’t tell if she was afraid he was about to completely blow his cover or if she was worried he might insult the king.

Corwyn continued his steady stare. “You’re some kind of cop, aren’t you? Investigating this whole business?”

“You got it. But I’d like to keep it quiet.”

“Guess you’re going to have to stop being a hero then.” The king’s blue eyes had taken on a decided spark, which suddenly dissolved into a twinkle. “I hope the romance isn’t a fake,” he added kindly. “We’re damned fond of Lady Catriona.” King Corwyn’s momentary humor faded. “We’ll do all we can to help. Just let me know what you need. I’m damned tired of this.” For the benefit of the crowd observing him, the king executed a wave of his hand, a dismissive nod of his head. Raising his voice, he declared for the benefit of the crowd, “Thanks for your help, Raven. You, too, Catriona. It’s getting late, you’d better set up for Feast before you end up sitting at opposite ends of the room.”

Raven was proud of himself. He actually remembered to bow, then back away, before turning on his heel, grabbing Cat by the arm and walking toward the Feast Hall.

“Never mind,” Cat whispered in his ear. “You might as well wear a billboard proclaiming, ‘I’m a cop.’ Undercover just isn’t you.”

“
Alligator soup!
” Raven groaned as he lowered the basket of Feast gear into a corner of their tent and sank into one of the camp chairs.

“Dragon Tail,” Cat corrected.

“It was alligator.”

“Well, of course, silly, but you’re playing a game, remember?”

“How could I
forget?”

Cat was silent so long Raven realized he’d made another mistake. Did she have to be so damned sensitive? A LALOC knight wasn’t supposed to have such thin skin. Grimly, Raven forced himself back to neutral. “The rabbit with noodles wasn’t bad,” he conceded.

“Roger is an outstanding chef!” Evidently, it was Cat’s night to be belligerent.

“Okay,” Raven snapped back, “the chicken was superb, the rabbit heavenly, the alligator a rare treat, the cheesecake a culinary miracle. There. Does that do justice to the pride of LALOC?”

“Obviously, you made one too many trips to the cooler,” Cat retorted. “Go to bed and sleep it off.”

Startled by a powerful urge to grab Cat up and spank her, Raven glued himself to the nylon chair.
Don’t move. Don’t even twitch!
Had
he drunk more beer than he should? He supposed he might have been matching bottles with Bubba. A foolish move. And Cat . . . she was no teetotaler herself. Men she rejected; beer, no. He had to admit the general partying after Feast had been fun. Never boisterous, as the campground was ostensibly dry, but a genuine feeling of camaraderie abounded. Ancient songs and stories, talk of tournaments past and those yet to come. Of a world totally disassociated from the frenetic activity of the twenty-first century which hovered less than a half mile beyond their campfire.

Shutting out the sight of Cat standing, hands on hips, waiting for him to move, Raven pictured the party scene, so typical of LALOC’s efforts to re-create the past while accepting the restrictions of modern times. The campfire had been carefully controlled within an old hod bucket someone had decorated with punched-out
fleurs de lis
. But the smell of the wood fire, the snap and crackle of resin in the pine logs, had been exactly as he remembered it from long-ago Boy Scout days. Barring the incident in the Assembly Hall, it had been a day of nostalgia. Families, children, new friends, all the so-called “old-fashioned” values. Enough to set a man of thirty-six wondering what he was going to do with the remainder of his life.

They’d gone from Feast Hall to campfire revelry, somehow keeping in medieval character even as they passed the exterminator’s van backed up to the Assembly Hall. It had been a good party, an almost gentle, if amply liquid, camaraderie of a kind Raven had thought extinct. They were good people, these LALOC members who tried so hard to follow a Dream.

Cat had not turned on the lantern. She was a dark silhouette, outlined against the tent’s screening by one of the campground’s spotlights. Raven shoved the small nylon table out of the way, pulled the second camp chair close to his own. “Hey, Cat,” he coaxed, patting the empty chair, “come over here and sit down. I think we both need to cool off before we hit the sack.”

Cat knew she shouldn’t have had that last beer. Bubba had handed it to her, and she’d accepted. Rene, the troubadour, had reached the point of the evening when he was offering a particularly naughty ballad. Cat listened, sipped her beer, and never thought about the consequences. Now, here she was, alone with Raven, when they’d both overindulged. Admittedly, just a trifle, but she was afraid that might be enough. Between the emotional turbulence that constantly enveloped them and stress of the job they were trying to do, control hung on a hair’s breadth.

Yet sitting next to Raven in a camp chair was a lot less dangerous than going into the tent’s bedroom, lying down beside him. As if
four
feet were any less dangerous than
four
inches!

Slowly, Cat stepped forward, lowered herself into the chair, carefully arranging the folds of the blue-green silk gown she’d worn for Feast. She turned her face outward, toward the now-deserted campground. Raven’s physical presence seemed to reach out and grab her, hug her to him. His male scent surrounded her, choked her breathing. Panicked, Cat gripped her hands together in her lap. If Raven made the slightest movement, she was going to scream and run.

As if she would.

She might try to take him down, but she was as likely to reveal her personal problems to the entire campground as she was to rise up and fly home. She had far, far too much pride.

“You’re going to have to tell me about it sometime,” Raven said. “What better time than now?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“So there
is
something to tell,”

“Nothing you’d want to know.”

“Yes, I would.” Raven hesitated, then added, “And I think you need to tell it.”

“I don’t tell anybody.”

“Then it’s time you did.” Determined. Inexorable.

The panic was so bad, Cat’s throat was closing up. Pain stabbed through her neck and chest like hot knives. “
I can’t!
” was all she could get past the obstruction that was cutting off her breathing.

Now wasn’t the time for him to turn back into a cop, but that was the voice which came at her out of the darkness. Impersonal, professional. The dispassionate tones of a man who would never touch her. Not even when she needed it. Like now.

“This is the time and place, Kate. We’re both a little reckless tonight. Better to talk than . . . well, hell, you know what I mean. Secrets are easier to tell in the dark. We’ve got a cool night to clear our heads, plus the magic of being far away from the world we live in. Come on, woman, what better time than now?”

“
Michael
. . . could you get me some water?” Better. Only a whisper, but she’d managed a few words. No, not so good. They’d both let the Dream that was LALOC slip, dissipated by thoughts of the outside world. They had reverted to being Kate and Michael, with all the problems that went with their mundane lives. She heard him rummaging in the cooler against the back wall, the pop of the seal on the cap, felt the plastic bottle laid gently into her hand. “Thanks,” she murmured.

Kate gulped several swallows as if her life depended on it. Was
he
right? Was this the time to face her demons? Was her terror merely habit? Or did she, perhaps, fear discovering her demons weren’t all that awful? That other people had endured far worse without abdicating from their lives? That she, the
Florida
Kingdom
’s Lady Knight, was hiding when she should have been brave enough to embrace the new life she had made for herself without fear?