Honeymoon of the Dead (25 page)

On the other side of the street stood another incongruous tree-stump-and-chainsaw creation. This one was a rather forlorn-looking woman in a simple peasant dress holding a water jar. Someone had placed a knitted, deep purple shawl around her shoulders—I guess to keep off the cold.

“Minnesota nice” was legendary, but who knew it extended to inanimate roadside sculpture?

“So where are we going, exactly?” I asked as we continued along the wide parkway. The median dividing the lanes was like a miniature park complete with lilac bushes and the occasional bench. The trees were well-established oaks and there were even some elms that had survived the great Dutch elm disease die-off in the seventies. The bare branches arched over the street like the roof of a cathedral. Adventurous gray squirrels leaped the gaps and built bushy leaf nests near the uppermost tips.

“A greasy spoon on Lake Street called Susan’s Cafe. You’ll like it.”

“Do they have vegetarian options?”

Dominguez took his eyes off the road long enough to lift his eyebrow. “Depends. How picky are you? If you can’t have your eggs cooked on the same grill as bacon, you’re out of luck.”

My stomach gave a hungry little rumble. “I’ll cope,” I said.

We crossed into Minneapolis on the Marshall Avenue Bridge. I always fondly thought of it as the “hippie bridge” because no matter which party was in office, sometime around rush hour, a small group of protesters would gather with hand-painted signs to yell about the various injustices in the world. When I saw a sign I liked, I reached over and beeped Dominguez’s horn. Powering down the window, I gave the woman a two- fingered peace sign. She and her colleagues returned it with much happy cheering.

“Knock it off—this is a government car,” Dominguez said snappishly.

“Sorry,” I said, though I couldn’t suppress a smile.

The street name changed to Lake, and with the switch came a whole “attitude” shift as well. Most of the time I tended to think of Minneapolis as the funkier, artier city, but here it became more gritty and ugly-urban.

I was happily surprised to see that the creepy old church that had perched on the Minneapolis side of the river with the proclamation “Prepare to Meet Thy God” had been replaced by a spiffy new condo building and a cool-looking restaurant.

But that was the end of the fancy stuff.

Gas stations and billboards proliferated. The traffic picked up, and it wasn’t long before someone in a dented old Cadillac cut in front of Dominguez, causing some choice Spanish curses to tumble easily out of Dominguez’s mouth.

“Evil ley line,” I explained. “Lake Street has bad energy.”

“Hmph,” he said. “I could almost buy that.”

From Mr. Normal Despite Being Psychic that was a ringing endorsement. I nodded.

When I lived in the Cities, a friend had proposed the idea to me, and I thought it made a lot of sense. There was a New Age belief that certain areas had a positive energy flow because they were once part of the routes the faeries used to walk. There was a whole theory out there about religious sites being built at the spots where ley lines crossed.

Lake was the opposite of that, a kind of negative energy draw. People drove crazy here, more garbage filled the street, and businesses had trouble staying afloat. There was even the husk of a burned-out building that had yet to be refurbished.

Dominguez seemed to have found the place we were looking for and pulled into an empty space next to a hole-in-the-wall cafe.

“Is our plan to eat . . . eggs? Is that the sort of thing that’s going to flush out the bad guys?” I asked. As we walked through the door, a bell jangled. No one looked up when we came in, but, even so, I felt acutely aware of the skull and crossbones on my jacket and the dried blood on my sweater. I wore black for a reason. It hid those kinds of stains well.

“I should have changed,” I said to Dominguez.

“You’re fine.”

Most of the crowd fell into the average- working-class-Joe variety, though there were a couple of women in pastel hospital scrubs chatting over coffee in a booth. Dominguez looked a little overdressed in his suit coat, but he always carried with him that air of “cop” that made him fit nicely into places like this.

Me, I just looked like a freak.

We took a seat in a narrow, vinyl-covered booth. The tablecloth was plastic and a bit stickier than I usually preferred. A metal ring on a stem held single- sheet menus. From the handwritten notes on the wall it appeared breakfast was the big draw, though we’d missed the early- bird special by several hours. I didn’t even know that people ate biscuits and gravy this far north, much less at 6 A.M.

Dominguez displayed a grumpy look—it seemed to be his sort of stock expression so I didn’t take it personally. “At first I thought being visible in the right places might do it, but now I’m convinced you need to be”—he waved his hand in an abracadabra motion—“you know, magic.”

I looked around at the customers wearing ball caps. “Here?”

“Well, I thought we’d eat first. Then you can do your thing.”

“What about my
thing
is so attractive to these guys, anyway?”

“Heh,” he said, looking me up and down. “Don’t get me started.

A blush crept into my cheeks. “It’s not what I meant, and you know it,” I admonished, trying to hide my reaction. “I meant, if these guys are all anti-New World Order or whatever, why don’t they like magic? Larkin is a witch, or at least a pagan, or was when I knew him, anyway.”

Dominguez dropped his voice and, leaning on his elbows, said, “I suspect the Illuminati Watch stuff is just a cover. Like Smythe said, they’re vampire hunters.”

A strong odor of frying steak filled the tiny restaurant. I nearly choked on the smell. “But . . . but . . .” I sputtered. “Vampires aren’t supposed to be real.”

Okay, that sounded rich coming from me, but I spent much of my life worrying about whether the Vatican witch hunters would catch up to me again. It never occurred to me that there might be an organization of people bent on killing vampires. People just weren’t supposed to know.

“You heard Smythe. He thinks he’s some modern-day Van Helsing.”

“Smythe totally denied being part of a group.”

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

The grill sizzled. Condensation dripped in wide rivulets on the window. I fiddled with the menu ring, making it spring and wobble. “Well,” I said, “you’re the mind reader. I suppose you’d know.”

Dominguez grimaced. “I didn’t . . . I don’t make a habit . . . Look, I don’t want to talk about that. I’m just saying that it makes a certain kind of
logical
sense,” he accented the word
logical
with a meaningful frown in my direction, as though daring me to bring up his abilities again. When I didn’t, Dominguez continued. “Sebastian was the target all along. They kidnapped you to use as bait. I couldn’t be certain until Smythe went on his little rant about demons. Their organization uses Marxism and the Illuminati bull as a front to hide their real mission. I only started to suspect—”

“When you read his mind?”

“Before that,” Dominguez continued, for once letting one of my references to his psychic abilities slide. “I started to suspect their real focus when I noticed that their website was running a huge campaign to keep certain anti-occult laws on the books in Australia. Knowing what I do about you and your friends, it got me thinking.”

“See, all that secret stuff came in handy for once.”

He leaned his chin against his knuckles dejectedly. “Yeah, although the funny part is the conspiracy theory stuff plays better at headquarters.”

“Even with your partner, the faerie queen? Where is your partner, by the way?”

“My partner the what?”

“Stop acting like you can’t hear me. I asked where Francine, Queen of the Faerie Folk, is.”

“What? I know she’s a tough woman, but she’s not gay.”

I gave up trying to make him accept the truth.

He removed a fork and a knife from a pebbled plastic cupful of utensils. He lined them up neatly on the table, and he glanced at the grill hopefully. “I’m off the clock. A friend of mine on the force told me you’d been kidnapped, and I promised to always look after you.”

It was true, though he’d said so, I’d thought, under the influence of a love spell. Too bad Larkin didn’t feel similarly protective. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I’d managed to break the one with Dominguez, while Larkin’s had been festering on for years.

While thinking, I’d been arranging the little plastic containers of jam in their four-slot holder. I looked up to see Dominguez watching me with a thoughtful expression.

“I’d never hold you to a promise like that,” I said.

“I know,” he replied, but he was still looking at me like he’d take a bullet for me.

Looking into his puppy-dog eyes, I made a solemn vow that I’d never cast another love spell again. And I still had to make right one other mistake. “You know, I should probably tell you that I cast a spell on Larkin. A love spell . . .” I reorganized the jellies again, not willing to meet his eyes. “I think, you know, maybe more than the vampire thing or the Illuminati, maybe he’s motivated by a kind of romantic revenge.”

“Revenge?” Dominguez gave a little smile. “That’s not what I was feeling.”

I glanced up only long enough to see that he had a very wicked smile on his face.

“Yeah, well, I’m a better person now than I was with Larkin.” Better now since I had Lilith? Huh, that was an interesting thought. “Oh!” That reminded me. “I need to call William. I promised.”

Dominguez didn’t seem concerned one way or the other, so I took out my phone. William answered right away. After exchanging the usual hellos and pleasantries, I put my hand over the mouthpiece and asked, “Can they join us here?” At his deep, scowling frown, I quickly added, “They could help with the whole magic thing.”

“What magic?” William asked on the line.

“Fine,” Dominguez said with a tone that implied he actually thought little of the idea but couldn’t think of a good reason to deny me.

“Great!” I said cheerfully, and then explained to William that he and Mátyás could meet Dominguez and me at the cafe.

“No Sebastian?” William asked.

“Not yet,” I said, trying to sound chipper. “He’ll be okay. He’s got people coming.”

When I hung up, a waiter had finally appeared. He was college aged and sandy haired. Tall and athletic, he wore baggy pants and an unbuttoned lumberjack plaid shirt that opened to show off a clean, white undershirt. He smiled at me in a way that made me think he found me kind of cute. “What’s your order, hon?”

“Uh, eggs? Over easy and some toast.”

“Good choice,” he said, showing off deep dimples.

Was he flirting with me? I twiddled my ring finger a bit, hoping the gold band would catch his eye.

Dominguez sensed the flirting too. In fact, he sounded angry about his choice when he said, “I’m having the number six.”

I watched the waiter head off to turn in our order. “He’s sweet,” I told Dominguez.

Leaning in conspiratorially, Dominguez whispered, “And probably sympathetic to your kidnappers. There’s a reason we came here.”

Were all the vampire hunters/Illuminati/kidnappers vaguely sweet looking? I sighed. When I returned my attention to the table, Dominguez was holding back a smirk. “You don’t have to be so pleased about bursting my bubble, you know.”

“I do, actually,” he said. “It’s karma for the love potion.”

I blushed all over again, remembering Dominguez half naked in his car, desperate to have sex with me while under the spell. He even asked me to marry him. “Have I apologized for that?”

“Not nearly enough,” he said with a sly smile that one could interpret as flirtatious.

“Anything I can do to make up for it?” I said, batting my eyes in mock innocence.

He coughed a bit in discomfort and then said, “Catching the kidnappers would be a good start.”

I nodded in agreement. The hospital bracelet caught on the edge of my sleeve when I shifted my arm. As I tried to slip it over my hand, the plastic stretched tightly but refused to break. Dominguez cleared his throat. When I glanced up, he deposited a bright red Swiss Army knife on the table in front of me. It was the deluxe model with the toothpick.

“Somehow I knew you’d have one of these.” I found the scissors and used my fingernail to pry it out. One snip and I was free of the plastic. My full name was printed on the band: Garnet Lynn Lacey. “They had to check to see if I’d been raped,” I said quietly, turning the plastic over and over in my hand. “It was really scary. How could someone you thought you knew be so different?”

“I’m not sure you can ever really know someone,” Dominguez said after a moment. “Everybody has a dark side. Some just keep theirs better hidden.”

My first impulse was to deny it, but not only had Larkin’s willingness to drug and abduct me gone against my desire to want to think the best of everyone, I’d also been made aware of all the skeletons in my
own
closet.

The big one, of course, was the Vatican witch hunters I’d had Lilith kill in self-defense. Just being in this town brought back that horrible night, and its ghosts lingered in every familiar landmark.

But in a strange way, I felt much, much worse about how I’d treated Larkin. I stole him from his longtime girlfriend, and then, when he didn’t turn out to be all I’d hoped for, I kicked him to the curb without so much as a backward glance.

Then I didn’t even remember to release him from the love spell. Or the name of my boyfriend at the time.

At least with the witch hunters, if I did enough mental gymnastics, I could see how my actions had been justified. It was kill or be killed. But Larkin? I had no excuse for that behavior.

And, at the time, it didn’t even faze me, you know? Until I saw him again, he probably wouldn’t have even crossed my mind.