"Actually, yes I am. I'm just not telling you what you want to hear."

"Yeah. Okay. Fine. So what now?"

"Now, I need to ask you a question."

"What?"

"You aren't going to like it."

"Yeah, so why should my day suddenly start getting better?" I returned sarcastically. "What's the question?"

I heard her take in a deep breath, and a second later she hit me with the last thing I expected. "Is Felicity guilty? Did she kill those men?"

"h.e.l.l no! How can you ask me that?! What happened to being on my side?!"

"It's my job, Rowan. I have to know what I'm up against and whom I'm defending. You're absolutely certain she's innocent?"

"Yes," I returned harshly. "And don't ever ask me that again."

"I won't. Not you. But you need to understand that I'm going to have to ask Felicity the same thing."

"And you'll get the same answer."

Here we had a slight problem. And, that problem came in the form of the fact that I wasn't entirely sure I was telling the truth with that last comment. The night Felicity had been taken into custody at the East side motel, the suspicious fingers were already being pointed and the investigation underway. When I discussed it with her, she had told me that she wasn't even certain in her own mind that she hadn't committed the crimes. The Lwa possession had caused substantial blocks of time to be missing from her memory, and that frightened her. It didn't do much for me either, but I still knew she was innocent. Why, when the police apparently had evidence to the contrary, I couldn't say; but the fact remained that I knew it beyond any doubt in my mind.

Unfortunately, something else I knew was that my wife was still harboring distrust in her own sanity. And, because of her personal history within the bondage and D/S subculture, she was finding it easy to convince herself that perhaps she really was the killer. The truth was, when Jackie asked her the question, she was very likely to say, "I don't know." What was even more frightening was that it was going to be a bit before Jackie got there. Given Felicity's mental state, depending on what she was told by the police between now and then, her answer could well be "Yes. I think I'm guilty."

That single possibility, all by itself, scared me as much as anything ever could right now.

"Find a way to get her home, Jackie. I know that's asking a lot, but I need her home. I need her home NOW."

"I'll do what I can," she offered. "But, you need to be prepared for this."

"Prepared?" Incredulity filled my voice. "Okay, then why don't you tell me how I'm supposed to prepare myself for my wife spending time in jail on a bogus murder charge."

"I wish I knew, Ro..."

The end of her sentence was truncated by an annoying beep issuing from the earpiece of my phone. Lately, I had been ignoring the call-waiting when it chimed in, due to a recent resurgence of mysterious hang-ups that had been plaguing us off and on for the past few years. Under the circ.u.mstances, however, I thought it might be a good idea to answer it this time.

"I've got another call coming in. Can you hold for a sec?"

"Listen, I'm almost to my car," she replied. "Why don't you go ahead and answer the call. I'll get back to you when I get to the police station and have a handle on things."

"Don't you want me to meet you there?"

"Absolutely not. There's nothing you can do at this point, and emotionally you're a bomb looking for a place to explode. You'd do nothing but cause trouble and make things worse. Just stay right there while they're searching the house, and don't do anything stupid."

The insistent beep chimed in again.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean just stay there and don't do anything," she instructed, heavily emphasizing the last word. "I need to concentrate on your wife right now, so I don't need to be worrying about you too."

I answered in a clipped tone. "Yeah. Fine. Okay. Later."

I didn't wait for her to say goodbye. I reached out and stabbed the off-hook switch on the telephone's base with my finger, held it for a second, and then released it. A second later I heard the telltale click rattling in the earpiece as the call I had just been on was disconnected.

"h.e.l.lo?" I said into the mouthpiece.

"Rowan," a familiar voice floated into my ear. "How are you doing?"

I sighed, half from relief and half from frustration. It obviously wasn't a hang-up, but it also wasn't someone calling to tell me this had all been a terrible mistake either. Of course, logically I knew that wasn't going to happen, but under stress we tend to create fantastic resolutions for situations simply in order to maintain hope, and that was but one of the happy endings bouncing around inside my skull at the moment.

"I've been better, Helen," I replied, my tone flat.

"I know, Rowan. Benjamin just called and told me what happened."

"I suppose he wants you to find out if I'm still mad at him," I quipped.

I knew I shouldn't be taking my anger with her brother, and the situation, out on her; but I just couldn't help myself. The way I saw it, everyone in my path was a potential enemy at this point.

"Actually, Rowan, no, he does not. I believe he is fully expecting you to be angry with him for some time to come. He has resigned himself to that."

"Very astute observation on his part," I a.s.serted. "Mainly because he's right."

"He was forced to make an extremely hard decision."

"Well, I've got some bad news for him. He decided wrong. Felicity is innocent and he knows it."

"I am speaking of his decision to handle the arrest rather than allow someone else from the department to do so."

Apparently, Jackie had been correct. Still, it didn't change the fact that he had led my wife out of the house in handcuffs.

"Yeah, well, he just might have been wrong on that count too."

"Be that as it may, it really is not my point, Rowan."

"I'm listening."

"He is concerned."

"Yeah, well no offense, Helen, but I've got other things on my mind right now, so if he's looking for absolution tell him to try a confessional."

"He is not concerned about forgiveness. He is worried about you."

"Could've fooled me."

"Rowan," Helen's voice took on a stern quality I wasn't used to hearing when speaking with her. "Stop this. I know that you have a dire situation with which to cope. And, after our talk yesterday I think that I, better than anyone, know the stress you have been facing lately.

"I want you to understand that I am certainly not begging sympathy for my brother. However, as both a therapist and as your friend, I am telling you that you simply must let go of some of this anger."

"I can't, Helen. It's all that's keeping me afloat right now."

"In the short run, I would say that is a good thing. However, I know you, Rowan. You will not let this subside, and you will continue feeding it. If you do that, then it is no longer a good thing. It becomes unhealthy."

"Well, we all have our addictions, don't we?" I replied, making a veiled reference to her chain smoking. "I guess this one will be mine for the time being."

I was sorry I made the stab as soon as it came out of my mouth, but what was done was done. I'm certain she caught my meaning, she was too smart and far too quick not to. Still, she graciously ignored it. I suppose she was used to people lashing out when under stress.

"If so, then I suspect you will again be needing my services when you finally sink," she told me in an almost purely clinical voice. "Because trust me, you are going to be hitting the bottom very fast and very hard. I am serious, Rowan. Very hard."

"Then I suppose I'll just have to hope you can dredge me up and put me back together when the time comes."

"I believe we will both be hoping for that," she offered and then paused. I could hear her let out a small sigh before continuing, "You are a very stubborn man, Rowan. I hope you realize that I did not call to argue with you."

I closed my eyes and shook my head. For the first time in the past few hours, the motion didn't cause me excruciating pain. My headache had mellowed down to a dull thud for the moment, but I wasn't expecting it to stay that way for long.

"I know, Helen," I told her. "I'm just not in a very good place right now."

"I know. And trust me, Benjamin is truly concerned for your well being right now. As am I."

"Join the club. That seems to be the order of the day."

"Did you have the nightmare again?" she asked, momentarily switching the subject.

"Yeah. Three times last night."

"And, how did you feel?"

"Scared."

"Yes, but what about the other issue. The one involving your wife."

"It's a non-issue."

"Good. Your faith in Felicity is going to be monumentally important in the coming days, Rowan."

"Yeah," I grunted. "Tell me about it."

I happened to look up toward the stairs as I made the comment and noticed a crime scene technician on his way down, arms filled with books.

He called past me to another tech in the living room, "Looks like we've got something here."

I could see that the "something here" he had in hand was every text on Voodoo and Afro-Caribbean Mysticism I had purchased, or checked out from the library, in the past week.

"Those are mine," I called out to him.

He continued down the stairs, ignoring me completely.

"I said, those are mine," I stressed. "I just bought them."

Helen was calling to me from the earpiece, "Rowan? Rowan, what is wrong?"

The technician finally shot me a glance and shook his head. "Sorry sir. Now they're evidence."

My hand was already moving to hang up the phone even as I spoke. "Helen, I've got to go."

CHAPTER 6:.

"Exactly which part of 'I just bought those' are you having trouble understanding?" I barked. "And, if you'll look closely you'll see I got a few of them from the library as well."

My objections had gone unheeded for the most part, and me simply being angry was starting to become me being flat-out, livid p.i.s.sed. Even as I spoke, the stack of books was being placed in a paper evidence bag.

"Dammit! You aren't taking those!" I almost shouted.

"Calm down, Mister Gant." The lead crime scene technician tried to soothe me as his subordinate continued the process of securing the evidence, tagging it, and adding a description to the log.

"Calm down? My wife's been arrested, you're tearing my house apart, and now you're going to take something that belongs to me and has nothing to do with this, all so you can use it against her? Calm down my a.s.s!"

I would have simply pushed the man aside and gone after the technician who was actually bagging the books, but the situation had recently taken on a new layer of complexity. That layer came in the form of two uniformed Briarwood police officers who were presently standing in very close proximity to our heated disagreement. They had arrived at the house within a scant few minutes of the evidence technicians and had been quietly surveying the goings on from the middle of the dining room ever since. Until now, that is.

When they originally showed up, I a.s.sumed it had something to do with cooperation between jurisdictions. Keeping each other in the loop, professional courtesy, that sort of thing. While that was probably true to a large extent, they were now quite obviously providing security for the team that was legally ransacking my home.

"Mister Gant, I'm sorry but the books clearly fit the description of items listed on the warrant."

"Listen to what I'm telling you," I stated once again then exaggerated the enunciation of my following sentences as if speaking to a small child. "They. Do. Not. Be-long. To. Her... They. Be-long. To. Me."

"I'm sorry." He ignored my patronizing comment and splayed out his hands in surrender to some higher power as he made the apology one more time. "But, we have to take them."

"No. You don't."

His tone became harder and he shot back, "Look, the warrant has been served, and it's my job to execute it per the instructions of the court. The books fit the description on the list, so the books go with us. It's that simple and there's nothing I can do about it."

"Sure there is. You can stop spouting this Nuremberg nonsense about following orders, engage your brain, and give them back to me."

"Okay, now listen to what I'm telling you," he instructed. "Because this is the last time I'm going to say it. You aren't getting the books back. As of this moment they are evidence. Now, up till a few minutes ago, you've been cooperative and we definitely appreciate that. But, if you're going to start interfering, I'm going to have to ask you to step outside."

I shook my head and stared back at him as if he'd lost his mind. "Bulls.h.i.t. I have the right to be present during the search."

"As long as you aren't obstructing the search, that's true. But, you're getting very close to crossing that line."

"So, just because you and your crew can't use a little common sense, you're going to kick me out of my own house?"