"That you're the last one. I know. But are you certain? I have cousins I've never met. You could, too, you know."

Maris dropped the spoon into the container. She looked at him over her shoulder. "My father had two brothers. One died at sea before he'd ever married. The other one was killed in an auto accident quite a long time ago. His wife remarried, but I have no idea where she is. She and my uncle didn't have children."

"Who told you all of this?"

"My mother. After my father pa.s.sed away. I was curious why only friends came to his funeral and no family." Dan's fingers moved on her neck, soothing a knot away. She closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

Rub, rub, rub. "No."

Liar.

Easing away from his ministrations, she held up the soup container. "Sure you don't want any?"

"Positive." His hand dropped to his lap.

Maris surprised herself by finishing it off. Once again, she dropped the plastic spoon into the bottom of the container and slipped the lid back on. Dan took it from her and set it on the nightstand on the folded bag.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

A minute pa.s.sed. She wished there was a television in the room. She would have turned it on, if only to listen to with her eyes shut. "Is this supposed to be so awkward?"

"I think it's because we are...undefined? And because you insisted on sleeping in the d.a.m.ned guestroom."

Maris giggled. She turned and settled herself on his chest, her arm around his waist. He slid downward until they were both nearly reclining on the mattress, then circled both arms around her. She whipped the blanket up and around until it covered his legs.

"Now isn't this cozy?" he whispered against her crown. His left arm lifted for a moment. The light went out.

After several more minutes of silence, Maris made a decision. "Dan, I'd like you to tell me a story."

He grunted. "What, like a fairy tale?"

"No. Not a fairy tale. I'd like you to tell me the story of how the Priestess card came to be in your desk drawer."

His respiration stilled beneath her ear.

"I wasn't being nosy. The day Jamie was here I b.u.mped the desk and the drawer opened. Tell me that story, Dan, please, because I can't figure it out."

He slid down farther, stroking back her hair until he contacted the bandage and the fuzz beneath. He rested his fingers against the side of her neck. For a few minutes, he remained silent, but then she heard the first rumblings of his voice in his chest as he began to speak into the darkness above her head.

"Once upon a time-that's the proper start to a fairy tale, right? Once upon a time, there was a boy who was afraid of the world. To counter his fears, he worked for and took the job of a brave man, a police officer. And he was good at it. One day, though, he met something dark and evil which changed his view of everything, but he did his best to deny it had ever happened."

Maris closed her eyes, moved by the manner in which he'd chosen to reveal his story to her...and the fact he had at all. She curled her fingers around a handful of his shirt.

"He worked harder at being a police officer, and after completing the tasks presented to him by the...king, he was crowned detective along with another man who became his junior. And all was right with the world again. The dark places didn't exist. He decided to live in the light of his new position.

"But one night an old, um, seer pa.s.sed away, and while he was in the home where she practiced her craft, he forgot his teachings in the blink of an eye and came home to discover he had taken one of her possessions with him."

"Really? That's what you're going with?"

He pressed a finger to her mouth. "Yes. Are you going to let me finish?"

She nodded against his chest.

"He didn't even remember doing it. But before he knew it, it was too late to return the object to the place where it belonged because he feared his folly would condemn him, and he...he was a bit of a coward, I guess."

"Dan..."

"Quiet. Were you this much of a pain in the a.s.s when you were a kid?"

"Sorry."

"Then the detective made a second mistake when he met the Priestess in the flesh and was blinded by so many things that he didn't want to believe about her. He took her to the seer's house in direct opposition to what he knew was right, and to make matters worse, they lay together-isn't that the term used in old books?"

Maris nodded on his chest.

"The detective was transformed and lost and guilt-ridden all at the same time. But the one thing that saved him was the fact he'd found someone he could share the unknown world with and maybe, one day, understand."

"Dan, I-"

"Hush. I'm almost done. If you interrupt me, I don't think I'll be able to finish. This isn't my forte."

"Storytelling?"

"No. Honesty. Not this kind of honesty."

Maris swallowed, hard, but the lump refused to budge.

"An evil, uh..."

"Chariot driver?"

"Sure, that works. An evil chariot driver tried to take the Priestess from him, and in the days of her healing, the detective who had fallen from grace realized he hadn't. Not really. Because deep inside him something had been reborn, something he didn't think to know again. And that's the end of the story. Or maybe the beginning. I guess we'll see where it goes from here."

Maris burrowed her face against his shirt, tears dampening the cloth.

"Are you crying?"

"No. There's no crying in fairy tales."

"Bulls.h.i.t. I seem to remember plenty of weeping and gnashing of teeth in those stories when I was a kid." He kissed the top of her head. "I'm glad you came into my life, Maris. I just wish I knew what the future would bring. But that's your territory."

"I don't know what the future holds for us either, Dan." She caressed his chest beside her cheek. "I do know this, though. Don't touch that card again."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure, but I think you have to take my word for it."

"I'm taking your word for a lot of things, my dear. I only hope I don't live to regret it."

He lapsed into silence then. After several minutes, his breathing grew deep and even. She smelled the faint, yeasty scent of beer on his breath and an uncertain spice. Far from offensive, the evidence of a taken meal was comforting.

She knew Dan found her care with words a frustration at times, but she wished he had spoken his last sentence differently. He should have left out the words "live to." Fate could so easily turn against his hope as he'd expressed it.

Chapter 17.

"Ow."

Dan's arm had fallen asleep, and moving it brought tingling pain to the extremity. He shifted again, trying to ease himself out from beneath Maris's sleeping form. She slipped off his chest. He caught her before her head bounced on the mattress and slid a pillow into place. After pressing his mouth to the side of her head, he left the room and went into his own.

He stripped out of his clothes and into a pair of sleep pants, then went to the bathroom to brush his teeth, lingering before the mirror in a frowning study of his face. Where had that fairy tale come from? It had been easier to confess his story in that way rather than tell her outright. He wondered what she'd meant afterward about not touching the card. He a.s.sumed she meant physically, although he couldn't imagine why. Perhaps there was a certain Tarot reader's taboo involved. Either way, he couldn't ignore the fact of his misappropriation of evidence. If not evidence, then a woman's property. Perhaps Maris's property now.

G.o.d, he hoped not. He needed to speak with her in more detail about an accounting of her time the night her aunt died, although such questioning might be construed as a.s.sisting her to create an alibi. After all, he had no official reason for the discussion. One thing he knew for sure-there was no longer any point in denying his involvement with her. He wouldn't add to her burden with a lie of that magnitude. It certainly wouldn't help either one of them.

Dan went to his desk and opened the drawer. He studied the card that had so fascinated him. He honestly couldn't recall putting the thing in his pocket. Was there some significance to that? Maris would think so. To him, it was a mistake. A stupid mistake that might end up with consequences he hadn't foreseen at the time. Certainly the scale of his error in judgment had been intensified by everything that followed.

The lamp shimmered over the varnished colors of the High Priestess with her jet-black hair and enigmatic expression. The blue of her attire was very like the predominant color in the skirt Maris had been wearing that first night. He remembered thinking she'd known he'd taken the card. Nothing more than a reaction of guilty conscience, that one, as her question tonight indicated she'd had no idea. How many other reactions of his were based on his own suspicions and culpability rather than some special insight of hers?

He slammed the drawer shut. He couldn't begin doubting her again. The vicious circle he would create for himself would suck him down like a whirlpool. He trusted her. He had just proven how much with that silly little tale.

Turning around, he studied his empty bed, neatly made and sterile. Had it ever truly appealed to him, this semi-bachelor existence?

The door squeaked open behind him. "I'm sorry. I should have knocked."

"Did I wake you up?"

"Not deliberately. It was your absence." She stood in the doorway dressed in flannel pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, holding the soup bag from the nightstand. At least she hadn't suffered any broken bones, but the blue bruising beneath the shaved portion of her head was more evident in the light of the desk lamp than it had been in the hospital. Her gray eyes looked huge.

"You remind me of a picture my grandmother used to have hanging in her hallway," he said. "They were popular back in the nineteen-sixties. Big eyes. Very waif-like."

Her lips curved into a crooked smile. "I'm going to bring this down to the kitchen for the trash and get a gla.s.s of water. Do you want anything?"

"I'll do it. I'd rather you stayed away from the stairs for a while."

He grabbed the paper sack from her hand as he pa.s.sed and trotted down the steps. On sock feet, he skated into the dark kitchen. Although the rain had stopped some time ago, the night remained overcast, confining the light of the streetlamp outside to a small and feeble circle. Fine hairs lifting on his nape, Dan leaned over the sink and looked out, expecting to see again the translucent figure. The sidewalk, the patch of gra.s.s, the street were all empty. With a small laugh of relief, he reached for a tumbler from the drain board. A gloved hand slammed down across his wrist.

Adrenaline exploded through Dan's heart. He acted without conscious thought, stepping into the attack and tossing the man to the floor. The intruder rolled upright to his feet before Dan fully regained his.

The intruder lunged at him again in a feint, but turned instead and darted toward the front door. He managed to yank it open and run out into the night before Dan reached him. Dan gave chase but lost him quickly when the man disappeared behind the next row of townhouses. Dan pursued anyway on the chance his attacker hadn't vanished entirely but was lurking beneath a deck or behind a screen of bushes. By the time Dan returned home, socks soaked and limping from a bruised arch, sirens wailed in the near distance.

Charging up the stairs despite his injury, he shouted Maris's name before he burst through the unlocked bedroom door. He circled around the room in a wide arc, trying to rid himself of the picture in his head of Maris and the stranger in confrontation. But except for Maris, the room was empty. No one had doubled back and gone after her. "You're all right?"

She nodded. Only then did he notice what she held in her two hands. Seeing where his gaze had gone, she lowered the gla.s.s quart bottle filled with coins to the floor.

"You could have done some damage with that."

"I meant to," she said.

Dan sat abruptly on the bed. He whipped off his sodden socks. Maris took them to the bathroom and returned. "I called the police. Two cars are outside. What do you want me to do? Where do you want me to go?"

Dan shook his head. "Sit here. You're not supposed to be stressed. I'm not hiding you, Maris. f.u.c.k the department."

"Dan..."

"I know. I don't mean that. I just-" Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Dan rose to meet the officer coming in the door. He stopped at sight of Maris. Dan issued instructions for an immediate search of the area and turned to slip his damp feet into a pair of sneakers. He looked back at Maris. "You're sure you're okay?"

"Yes. Why did someone break into your house? They must have known you were here."

Dan paused in the doorway beside the officer issuing commands through the radio on his shoulder. He took a deep breath. "I don't think he broke in, Maris. I think he's been here since before I came home tonight."

"Why would you think that?" Jamie asked when Dan expressed the same suspicion to him.

"He had to unlock the door to get out. Almost didn't do it with his gloves on, but he managed. Besides, these guys have checked every inch of the house. No sign of a break-in."

"So what are you saying? You think that girlfriend of yours let him in?"

Dan's chest tightened. "I do not. What the f.u.c.k is wrong with you?"

"Sorry for the confusion. Just seemed to me you were leading up to that. I mean, she was here, you weren't, some guy ends up in your house without forced entry...Have you actually asked her?"

"Why would I? You ask her. For all I know, I might have left to come to the station without locking up, and he walked right in." Dan could barely get the words out. d.a.m.n Jamie and his insinuation.

"To what purpose? Why would some random guy walk in? Is anything missing?"

"Not that I've noticed." Dan glanced around the living room, anger seething behind his eyes and making it difficult to see. And yet he knew Jamie was right to ask these questions. It was too coincidental for somebody to show up at the hospital and then here in Dan's house. But that didn't mean Maris had invited him in or had any knowledge of the intruder whatsoever. She'd been sound asleep when Dan went into the guestroom after his dinner with Jamie. There'd been no faking that.

But how long had he been in his room getting ready for bed before she came to the door? Had there been enough time for her to go downstairs and-?

"Enough."

Jamie frowned beside him. "I'm only asking the type of questions you'd ask yourself if your head wasn't locked in a rather uncomfortable position inside your own anatomy."

"f.u.c.k. I know. I know."

"It seems too d.a.m.ned fluky to me. Maybe...maybe Maris isn't involved. But if it's that guy from the hospital, the one you believe ran into her with his car, why would he come here into your home? Isn't it more likely she knows your attacker personally?"

Dan said nothing.