Of course, having established that as being out of the question, and what with me being a magickal pract.i.tioner, I had to admit that other forms of retaliation had crossed my mind. For instance, if a bag of coffin nails were in my possession at the moment, I'd be hard pressed not to go ahead and slip a handful of them into his coat pocket along with a few muttered words of disdain. Not to kill him as one might surmise but just to make him miserably ill for a while. Either way, it was an act that wouldn't exactly adhere to the generally accepted concept of "Harm None", but what the h.e.l.l. I had already thrown a punch in the physical realm; I might as well go for broke and take a swing in the ethereal.

All things considered, I suppose it was probably a good thing I didn't really have those nails handy.

Of course, whether I wanted to admit it or not, the situation was without a doubt one of those proverbial Gordian knots. If I took a moment and put myself in Ben's place, I'm sure that what I was calling "reason" certainly sounded like an outlandish fantasy. And, as usual, that pretty much seemed to be the way of things in my peculiar world. It was no wonder he used the term Twilight Zone in reference to me as often as he did. My life definitely played out like a marathon episode with no end in sight.

Still, I didn't make any secret of the fact that even I didn't consider the overabundance of ethereal happenings in Felicity's and my life to be normal. But, be they normal or not, that didn't make them any less real. I suppose it came down to the fact that I was just far more open-minded with regard to accepting that the events simply were what they were, and no amount of rationalizing or postulating on my part could change that. To paraphrase the worn out truism, magick happens. Much to our dismay, however, it just isn't always the magick we want.

Fortunately, as I sat there mutely pondering what items might be readily available that I could subst.i.tute for coffin nails, common sense got a much-needed boost from the insistent warble of my cell phone. Shadowy emotions were instantly shoved onto the back burner once again, and considering just exactly how dark they had been getting, that was a very good thing.

"Rowan Gant," I said into the mouthpiece as soon as I dug the device from my pocket, thumbed the answer b.u.t.ton, and tucked it up to my ear.

"Rowan, it's Jackie," my attorney's voice came back across the line. "Where are you?"

"At Forty, the diner right across the street. Do you want me to come over? Can I get in to see Felicity now?"

"Just stay right where you are," she replied, circ.u.mventing my second question. "I'll be there in just a few minutes and we can talk about that."

The line clicked off without so much as a goodbye, so I hung up and laid the phone on the table in front of me.

"Lawyer?" Ben asked with a thrust of his chin toward the device.

"Yeah, apparently she's on her way over here right now."

"Well, then I guess I'd better get outta here," he replied, gathering up his coat. "You're gonna wanna talk to 'er without me around."

I shot a quick glance to the side and then over my shoulder. In less than five seconds I counted three cops who were easily within earshot, and those were just the ones wearing uniforms. I looked back over to Ben and said, "Yeah, well, we'll probably want to go somewhere else to talk anyway."

"Yeah," he grunted as he slid out of the booth and stood up. "Prob'ly not a bad idea."

Ben slipped into his jacket, shrugged it up onto his shoulders, and then took a moment to adjust his holster rig beneath its folds. Even after he was finished, however, he continued to stand next to the table, staring out through the window at Clark Avenue and the half dozen or so squad cars diagonally parked against the curb in front of police headquarters. After a quiet moment, he looked down toward me with a thoughtful stare.

"Listen...Row...Are we gonna make it? I mean...Is this..."

"I'm still p.i.s.sed at you, Ben, if that's what you mean," I replied, meeting the clumsy question head on. "That's not going to go away overnight."

"Yeah..." he mumbled. "I pretty much figured that. But what I wanna know is are we gonna be able to make it right between you an' me?"

"I honestly don't know yet."

"Fair enough," he sighed. The heavy breath seemed to broadcast a sense of depression. He waited a second then added, "So, is there anything I can do ta' fix it?"

"Yes. You can help me clear my wife."

He shook his head slowly. "I dunno what I can do on that front, Row."

"I'm not sure either, but it might help if you'd just start believing she's innocent."

"Yeah." He let out what might have been a curious half-chuckle. "Well, I know you're not gonna believe this, but Constance told me the same thing a coupla' hours ago."

I had been wondering how she was doing. The last time I had seen her was at the funeral, and she had been just as distant as Ben. I a.s.sumed it had to do with the ongoing investigation, but considering her run in with "Felicity in Miranda's clothing," I couldn't help but worry that her forgiveness had worn off. Based on what Ben had just stated, obviously, it had not.

"So, she believes Felicity is innocent?" I asked.

"Yeah, actually, she does," he replied with a nod. "And she's been lettin' everyone who'll listen to 'er know it."

"Good to know we still have someone on our side."

He ignored the overtone of the comment and responded purely to its face value. "Yeah, well I gotta tell ya', the water she's swimmin' in is startin' ta' get real hot."

"Is she in a lot of trouble?"

"Not yet, but after the toes she stepped on ta' get Firehair released and make the a.s.sault charges disappear...well, put it this way, she's runnin' short on friends and long on enemies."

I hadn't had much room to house any compa.s.sion for others over the past few hours, but Constance truly had gone out of her way to make some potentially damaging charges against my wife vanish into thin air. I was aware she had called in some favors, but at the time, I had been so wrapped up in the situation that I had no idea she might be seriously jeopardizing her career in the process.

"Is it really that bad?" I asked.

"Let's just say if she ain't careful she might end up dustin' off 'er law degree for use in the private sector."

"I didn't know..."

"And you still don't. I wasn't s'posed to say anything to ya', so just...ya'know...keep it to yourself."

"Yeah...Okay..." I agreed.

Ben snorted and shook his head before saying, "Just a feelin'."

"What?"

"That's what Constance said... The reason why she doesn't think Felicity is the killer. It's just a feelin'."

"Sounds familiar."

"Yeah, well she's probably just gone shoe shoppin' with Firehair too many times. Some of that spooky a.s.s s.h.i.t musta rubbed off on 'er."

"You say that like it's a problem."

He harrumphed. "I got enough a' your Twilight Zone stuff in my life as it is, Row. Don't need ta' be datin' one of ya' on top of it."

"I seem to recall you telling me awhile back that cops get feelings about things too...inexplicable hunches. 'Hinky feelings' I think is what you said."

"Uh-huh, yeah. Guess I shoulda known tellin' ya' that would come back ta' haunt me."

"Are you saying you don't really believe it?"

"You know better'n that."

"So maybe you need to listen to your gut, just like she is."

"My gut ain't talkin' right now."

"But Constance's is, and she believes Felicity is innocent even after everything that happened." I offered the words more as an admonishment than a question.

"Yeah, Row, I get it. If Mandalay thinks she's clean, why can't I?"

I didn't reply. I didn't really feel the need to because he had said almost verbatim what I had been thinking.

Ben turned his face back to the window and stared into the growing darkness of the evening as he let out a long sigh. "Like I said, white man. My gut's not talkin'. I'm just not gettin' a feelin' on it, either way."

"Then give her the benefit of the doubt."

"I'm tryin'..." He shook his head. "Believe me, I'm tryin'..."

"Maybe it's just that you're too close."

"Yeah, maybe."

After a long pause I offered, "Felicity once said something about you that you might like to know. She told me she felt that when it came to your friends you were loyal to a fault."

"I try."

"Well, I've never had a reason to disagree with that a.s.sessment...until now."

"Ya'think I'm not feelin' guilty enough about it on my own, Row?"

"Maybe you are," I replied. "But I think we both know I'm not in a terribly forgiving mood right now."

"Yeah," he grunted. "No s.h.i.t."

The bell on the diner's door jangled, and I glanced back over my shoulder to see Jackie coming through the opening.

"Well, your mouthpiece is here," Ben offered as he scooped the still-wrapped burgers from the table and cradled them in one large hand. "Guess I'd better go so you two can talk."

"Don't give up on Felicity, Ben," I returned. "Just...just believe."

Without looking back down, he spoke in a low voice that sounded almost like a plea. "Gimme somethin', Row. Dammit, just gimme a reason I should believe."

"You don't need a reason from me, Ben," I replied. "You already know in your heart that she's innocent. You just have to stop being blinded by the evidence."

"I'm a cop, Row. We live and die by the evidence."

"Then stop being a cop for a minute. Stop looking at what someone else is calling evidence and take a long, hard look at the truth."

Sat.u.r.day, November 19 10:05 A.M.

Saint Louis, Missouri

CHAPTER 13:.

I gave up and simply stopped paying attention to the angry voice that was currently bellowing from the speaker of the answering machine in the living room. Given that it was my father-in-law, calling yet again to place blame and scream epithets at me, I didn't feel that his diatribe warranted very close consideration on my part. It wasn't as if I hadn't already heard everything he had to say more than once. I'd even made the unfortunate mistake of blindly picking up on the initial ring the first two times he'd called, so I'd twice been on the receiving end of every name and insult he could think of-and, some that I suspected he'd just made up. Of course, my grasp of Gaelic extended only as far as my wife's commonly used phrases, so I couldn't be positive about anything other than the fact that he'd repeatedly d.a.m.ned me to h.e.l.l for all eternity.

I'd already told him once that as far as I was concerned, I was already there, and the past twenty-four hours had definitely seemed endless. I didn't bother to repeat it.

After that second round, I'd learned my lesson and just started screening the calls, allowing the machine to handle his ongoing tirades. There was nothing I could tell him that he didn't already know, and I was just as frustrated as he could ever be. Probably more so when you considered that last evening Jackie hadn't even waited to get out of the diner before breaking the news to me that I wasn't going to be able to see Felicity until today; and that would only happen if she could call in a favor or two and get a judge to sign off on it. Needless to say, I hadn't taken the news well at all. Of course, I'm sure she had expected that fact, and it probably had quite a bit to do with her decision to tell me while standing in a diner full of cops. Still, even then I made a scene, but in the end there was nothing I could do to change the harsh reality, and all that I accomplished was to get us kicked out.

After that, things took a turn for the worse, which was something I hadn't really thought possible. As if the first piece of painful information wasn't enough, Jackie was now completely unwilling to discuss any further details of the case with me. My own wife, it seems, had requested that everything remain under the umbrella of attorney client privilege for the time being, and since I was neither attorney nor client, I was completely removed from the loop. Had she dropped that bomb on me prior to us getting kicked out of the diner, my explosive response probably would have ended up getting me arrested.

The insult topping it all was that I wasn't even privy to her reasoning behind subjecting me to the information blackout. Each of these things, in turn, had dumped their own load of distress onto my already strained emotional state. Adding all of them together was just about to put me over the edge, and I still honestly don't know how I managed to avoid having a bigger meltdown than I actually did.

I was momentarily snapped out of my introspective haze by an angry click popping loudly from the speaker in the front room. Shamus had once again ended his call by slamming down the phone. If I was lucky, maybe this time he had broken it and wouldn't be able to call back for a while.

Of course, that wouldn't necessarily bode well either. At this point, I had lost track of how many times the man had phoned just this morning. He had pretty much reached critical ma.s.s, and I had a bad feeling he actually might be ceasing the relentless calls very soon anyway. I say a bad feeling because I figured once he stopped, it wouldn't be long before he replaced phone calls with a face-to-face attack. I feared he would soon be knocking on my door, and a physical confrontation with my wife's hot-tempered father was something I really didn't want to deal with right now.

I didn't actually fear him; it was the situation itself I wanted to avoid. He was nowhere near as big as Ben, so I could pretty much guarantee that we would both end up going to the hospital, and that wasn't going to help anyone, least of all, Felicity. Don't get me wrong, I certainly wasn't looking for another fight, but if it came in search of me, I wasn't about to turn and run from it either.

The thought prompted me to look down at the back of my right hand. It was slightly swollen and had already started taking on a reddish-purple cast. I ran the fingers of my left hand over the bruised knuckles and noticed that it was definitely sore. Still, I suspected I would be able to ignore that if the need presented itself.

I sighed and bent to the bathroom basin then cupped my hands beneath the running faucet. Once they started to overflow, I pressed the handfuls of cold water against my face. Of course, most of it either ran between my fingers or dribbled along my arms to turn my shirtsleeves into a soggy mess, but I didn't care. Wet clothing was the least of my worries right now.

Looking back up, I stared into the mirror at the dampened, haggard visage now living in the silvery, reflected world. Its eyes were sunken and bloodshot, stubble shadowed its cheeks and neck, and its face sagged with exhaustion. I kept telling myself that all of those properties applied only to it and not to me, because I simply didn't have time to feel like it looked. Of course, I had learned long ago that denial would only get you so far; but, that wasn't going to stop me from riding it all the way to the last stop.

The peal of the pendulum clock in the dining room had died away several minutes ago, but using the memory of the evenly s.p.a.ced tones as reference, I did some quick math. The product of the equation was a number which told me I hadn't slept in better than twenty-four hours, a fact that readily explained at least part of my current state of being.

It wasn't that I hadn't tried, mind you. I knew I needed rest, and I had actually set out to get some. The problem was, every time I closed my eyes I saw Felicity. While that was something I would normally consider a pleasant thought, the countenance that filled my waking nightmare was the one that had been burned into my mind when last I saw her being led out of the house.

What painted the inside of my eyelids was her face contorted into a mask of fear, paler than her ivory skin could possibly be. Her eyes were wide and imploring. Her lips were trembling as she called to me. As an added bonus, the visions came complete with an endlessly looping soundtrack of handcuffs snapping tight around her dainty wrists.

I could still hear her voice echoing in my ears as she pled for me to stop this from happening. And now...well, now for some reason, she was shutting me out, and that certainly didn't help the pain at all.

I let out another sigh as I felt the emotion well deep inside me once again. The sadness was so overwhelming, I felt like sitting down on the floor right where I was and crying until I couldn't cry anymore. But, that simply wasn't going to happen. I knew it wouldn't do any good because sometime around midnight I had given it a try, and now, I just didn't have any tears left to give.

An even hiss filled my ears, beckoning me once again into the land of lucidity. I looked down and noticed the water was still running, so I twisted the handle to shut it off then reached for something to dry my face. Exiting the bathroom, I trudged through the bedroom while blotting my damp skin with a hand towel. I had to pick my way around various obstacles, as I hadn't yet cleaned up the mess left in the wake of the search. That is, other than to push the pile of clothing on the bed off to the side when I tried to lie down and sleep. I was just stepping into the hallway when the telephone began to ring once again.

Only a few minutes had pa.s.sed since Shamus' last screaming fit, but he'd had a tendency to deliver them in cl.u.s.ters, so I was sure it was probably him for the who-knows-how-manyeth time today. I was so sure, in fact, that I didn't even bother to head for the bookshelves to look at the caller ID box, electing instead to finish drying my face and then simply stand at the end of the hallway surveying the carnage that still graced my living room.

Following the third ring, the answering machine kicked on, burping its greeting into the room once again.

"You have reached the Gant and O'Brien household, please leave a message..." The voice was followed by a shrill tone then a staticky pause.

Finally, in the wake of the beep, an authoritative voice issued from the speaker. This time, however, it was distinctly feminine and possessed of a heavy Southern accent.