Arcanum (Tales from the Tarot)

39. Greyson

Chapter thirty-nine

Greyson

A lmost as soon as Chris and Luke entered the building, the sickness inside of me reached the point of retching. I pushed open the car door and dry-heaved against the building, but nothing came up.

“You ok?” a female asked.

I looked up and nodded to the blonde officer, scrolling through the mental list of names to go with her face. Stacey. She’d been in the store a couple of times, most recently to buy Christmas presents. I hadn’t realized she was a cop at the time.

“I’m fine,” I managed to say, straightening. “Not feeling well all of a sudden.”

“Looks like they’re wrapping up soon,” she said with a small smile. “Probably going to clear the basement and they’ll be right out after they turn off all the lights again.”

“The basement?” Where the building’s mechanicals were located… Things like the water heater, the furnace, the electrical panel. All things Don could tamper with.

A new wave of dread spilled in.

The nausea, the blurry vision, the dizziness. It wasn’t anxiety. They were symptoms of CO poisoning.

“Call them back,” I said quickly. “You have to get them out of there.”

Her eyes widened, reaching blindly for her radio. “What? Why?”

“Just trust me!” I pushed past her, running toward the backdoor. As I moved, I concentrated all of my energy on summoning Chris. I’d never manifested a human being before, but I hoped the rush of fear and adrenaline would be the energy boost I needed. At the very least, maybe I could push through some telepathic barrier and get him to come out on his own before it was too late.

I was two steps away from the back door of Arcanum when an explosion rocked the building, knocking me backward. The windows shattered. Black smoke poured out of the basement and orange glowed in the underbelly of the building. Something hard and heavy slammed through the back door, skidding across the icy pavement like a turtle on its shell.

“Chris!” I scrambled to my feet and ran to the body in the alley, rolling him over. The dim moonlight illuminated a face, but it wasn’t Chris. It was Luke.

Luke coughed and winced, holding the back of his head with a scraped hand.

Regardless of his injuries, I seized him by the vest and shook him. Rationality had gone out the proverbial window and I was operating on pure fear. “Where’s Chris?!”

Luke’s dark eyes darted around, trying to focus.

“He’s over here!” Stacey yelled.

Dropping my hold on Luke, I spun, staring at where she was crouched next to another splayed body struggling to sit up.

I sprinted through the slushy alley and dropped to my knees next to Chris, throwing my arms around him.

“Luke!” Stacey called out, essentially trading places with me and tending to her other coworker.

Pushing Chris out to arm’s length, I touched his face, his chest, his knee, anything I could reach as I scanned him from head to toe, looking for any obvious injuries. Finding none, I hugged him again, overwhelmed with relief and a wave of nauseated exhaustion. Just like the shooting at the Chili Cook-Off, the loss of adrenaline, combined with the sheer amount of energy I’d used, left me feeling even sicker than before. I didn’t care, though. Chris wasn’t hurt and that was all that mattered.

He managed to loop one arm around me, wincing as he did so. “I’m ok.”

“I thought I lost you.” I squeezed him tighter.

“I thought you did too.” Pulling away with another wince, he looked around slowly before his gaze settled on Arcanum. Orange fire licked up the old red brick, blackening it as much as the smoke rolling out of the shattered windows. “I was in the basement. I saw the explosion. But I’m… here.”

Here… right where I’d started my effort to manifest him, to call him to my side and out of harm’s way.

“It’s a miracle,” I said, nuzzling the side of his soot-stained face.

“I was thinking magic.” He closed his eyes and sighed, leaning his forehead against mine. His free hand patted his vest, the same pocket he touched earlier when joking about his lucky rock, and a renewed sense of wonder and relief enveloped him.

“Whatever you want to call it, I’m glad you’re safe.”

“Is Luke ok?” he asked, peering over my shoulder.

“Looks like he’ll be fine.” Stacey had already helped their coworker to his feet and had him sitting in her squad, a thick wool blanket wrapped around him for shock as much as for the cold. “Let’s get you off this cold ground, too.”

“Yeah. My ass is soaked.”

I chuckled, shifting his arm over my shoulder and standing slowly, making sure neither of us moved too fast.

Sirens wailed in the distance as Chris hobbled to my car. He dropped into the passenger seat with a grimace, cursing under his breath. Tucking a blanket around him, I turned the seat warmer on and cranked the heat as high as it would go while we waited for the fire department to arrive.

“I’m sorry about your store,” he said as the flames steadily worked their way through the interior, black smoke billowing into the night air and blotting out the moon.

I took his hand in mine, squeezing it gently. “That’s what insurance is for. Everything in there is replaceable. You’re not.”

The firemen rolled onto the scene, sirens blaring, and barked at us to move our cars out of their way. We relocated to Main Street, behind Luke’s squad, and waited for them to finish their work. Thankfully, it was the middle of the week and after one in the morning, so the police didn’t have to stand outside and freeze while directing traffic. Chris used the time to make a couple of phone calls from the warmth of his squad and get to work on his portion of the report, while I contacted the landlord and my insurance agent to let them know what had happened.

At last, a weary detective approached, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else than Arcanum at three in the morning.

“You the owner?” he asked as I exited my car.

I nodded. “Of the bookstore, not the building.”

Chris got out of his squad and walked up beside us. “Dan.”

“Chris. How you feeling?”

Chris shrugged. “Like I got thrown through a window.” It was the only plausible explanation we’d been able to come up with for Stacey and Luke when they both questioned how Chris had appeared in the alley. Even though he was a tall, muscular man, loaded down with thirty extra pounds of equipment, and the basement windows weren’t that big, they’d all been blown out with the explosion, so no one could entirely disprove our lie. Besides, what was the alternative? That one second he was standing in the path of an explosion and the next he materialized in the alley? Who’d believe that?

“Jesus, man. You’re one lucky bastard,” the detective said.

“I know.” Chris squeezed the base of my neck affectionately, keeping his attention on his coworker. “Fire about done?”

“Yeah. We’re waiting for the coroner and the fire marshal now.”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “Coroner?”

The detective looked at Chris before facing me with a grim expression. “The firemen found a body in the basement. Do you know anyone who might have been down there?”

“Donald Nielsen,” I replied, even though my voice sounded strange. Hollow. “The landlord doesn’t live around here. No one else has access to the building. He’d be the only one.”

“The stalker,” the detective muttered, jotting something in his notepad. “We won’t know for sure until we get the lab results.”

“How long will that take?”

“Even with a rush on it, you’re still looking at a few weeks. Maybe more. Depends on if any high-priority cases come in and bump it down the list. There’s not too much urgency when it comes to a dead guy. The coroner will probably ID him with dental records before the labs confirm DNA.”

“Does he need to be here anymore?” Chris asked, nodding to me.

The detective shook his head. “Nah. I know where to find him.” He closed his notepad and tucked it inside his jacket. With a nod, he shuffled down the sidewalk to confer with one of the higher-ups from the fire department.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” another male voice boomed out behind us. I turned to see one of the firemen approaching, his arms spread wide and his gaze focused on Chris. “Why is it wherever you are, there’s a shit storm, Brandt?”

“Any excuse to see you, big guy,” Chris shot back with a grin. “Jace Mitchell, Greyson Darkholme.”

“I remember,” the fireman said, shaking my hand so enthusiastically I winced. “Glad to see you’re still here. But I gotta ask, what are you doing with this moron?”

“I like his dimples,” I said, smiling at Chris.

“Yeah, me too,” Jace said with a laugh.

“What can you tell us?” Chris asked, much less jovial than we were. He tossed his head toward the burned-out husk of a building, in case we needed a reminder of why were all standing around in the middle of the night.

Jace blew out a breath. “You and Luke better pray to whoever it is you pray to and make donations and shit because someone is looking out for you. This dude, or whoever, rigged one nasty ass bomb to go off as soon as the light switch turned on. The basement was filled with natural gas. One little spark and boom ! Unfortunately for him, you showed up before he could get out. Fell victim to his own plan.”

His own fire will consume him.

For months, I thought Nemo had been using a metaphor, like he had with Chris and me. For once, it turned out he’d been speaking in literal terms. With that realization, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was Don who had died and not some unfortunate transient or a stupid kid trying to vandalize the store again.

“I wish it worked out that way for all criminals,” Chris said.

“No shit. It would make our jobs a hell of a lot easier.”

“Chili!” one of the firemen called out from around the corner of the building. “Chief wants you.”

Jace and Chris shook hands, sharing a look of understanding. “Take it easy, man. And take a vacation! I’m sick of seeing you!”

Chris laughed. “That sounds like a good idea.”

The fireman laughed and strode away.

“Chili?” I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Yeah, it’s his nickname on the fire department.”

“Because he represents them for the chili cook-off or is there some joke about peppers?”

“I have no idea. You know hose pullers are all about food.”

“Kind of like cops.”

Chris gaped at me. “It might be my concussion, but I swear you just took a swipe at me and my brothers in blue. In defense of firemen !”

I shook my head with a laugh. “You all have the strangest rivalry. You’re both on the same side!”

“No, no, no. We put our lives on the line every day for this town. They sit on their asses and play X-box in recliners!”

“Then why didn’t you become a fireman?” I teased.

“You know what? I should have been a teacher. Those assholes never work! Holidays and planning days and summers off. Barely working seven hours a day as is.”

My jaw dropped a little lower in faux horror with every point that came out of his mouth. “Christopher Brandt! Your parents were teachers! Teachers are some of the hardest-working professionals in this country!”

“Yeah, sure. Right up there with hose pullers.” He made a scandalized face and headed for his squad.

“For having a near-death experience, I thought you’d be a little more gracious,” I yelled, returning to my car. “A little more—”

“Zen?”

“Yes!”

“Ha! Your intuition was wrong there. Chris one, Woo woo zero.”

“That ‘woo woo’ saved your life!”

He blew me a kiss and climbed into the Tahoe.

I shook my head and slid into the driver’s seat of the Camry. Glancing at Arcanum, I should have felt worn down or devastated over the loss of my bookstore. And part of me was. Mostly I was relieved. It was the same feeling I’d had in November when Don was arrested, only tenfold. He was dead. The nightmare was well and truly over. After two hellish years, balance had finally been restored in the universe. I was free to move on to the next phase of my life—with Chris at my side.