“You loved her,” I said. “She loved you.”
“It’s why the laws exist. So that it won’t happen again.” Patrick shook his head and peered up at me again, eyes pellucid and untroubled behind the half-glasses. “I want her back, you see. She’s half my soul. I want Sara to live.”
He was trying to tell me something, I just couldn’t figure out what it was. But the orange juice was curdling in my stomach. “Patrick…”
“I don’t think you’re going to make it,” he said, almost kindly. “I wish there was a way I could help you, Joanne, but the truth is that like me, you should have died as a human. There’s no way for him to save you except the way Sara saved me, and the cost is too high.”
I felt myself frowning. “Hey, nice pep talk. Aren’t you supposed to teach me how to get through this? Preferably alive?”
“Yes. I know.” The perfume vial clinked as he put it down on the table between us. I watched it roll unevenly back and forth. It fetched up against my Hello Kitty mug with a musical little chime. “I wish I had some magic answer. Truth is, the only answer I know is going to hurt you. Maybe kill you. Are you prepared for that?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Probably not, but what choice do I have?”
“Too true. Well then. On with the show. A friend of yours is here to see you.”
“I don’t have any friends.” Depressing, but it had the iron ring of truth.
“Look behind you.” I put my fork down and swiveled in the wooden kitchen chair, thinking, Crap, here we go with the fighting again, but I was dead wrong.
It was Lewis Levander Orwell, who was pretty much the last person I’d expected to see. He looked a lot more casual now than he’d been at my funeral, dressed in faded jeans the color of a storm-ready sky, a loose untucked yellow shirt, and that trademark ironic half-smile that felt as familiar to me as a hug. Funny, because although our relationship had always been intense, it had never been what you might call close, in terms of frequency of sharing personal space. He still never really left my mind for long, and never had.
“Hey,” he said. His low, slightly rough voice had a gentleness to it that I hadn’t heard before. “How are you?”
I stood up and walked into his embrace. A full-body hug, lots of male upper body strength carefully controlled. He smelled of leather and wood smoke, and I wondered if he’d been camping somewhere. Lewis is the outdoorsy type. His hiking boots certainly had the chapped, bunged-up look of having tramped through half the real estate of the world.
I’m not a short woman, and he still had some height on me. Lean, tall, with gorgeous dark-cinnamon eyes… yeah, he could make women’s hearts skip and dance, if they came close enough to actually notice him. Lewis tended to camouflage himself. Always had. Probably a good thing, considering the kind of power he wielded.
I remembered he’d asked me something. “Mmmm. I’m doing good, for a dead chick.”
He kissed the top of my head and didn’t let me go. I was okay with that. I had the total hots for David, was more than 80 percent of the way to total head-over-heels in love, but I could still enjoy a strong man pressed against me, yes lawdy.
“You scared me,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to drop off the edge of the planet like that. Don’t do it again.”
He loosened his grip and stepped away, and I felt noticeably colder outside and warmer in. Which maybe made me fickle, and more than maybe a complete slut. But I was prepared to accept that.
“You were supposed to come find me,” he said. He had a small frown engraved between his brows, and I noticed that he had acquired some fine lines at the corners of his eyes. He had one of those faces that lines made look distinguished, not run-down.
“Yeah, sorry… got busy.” I flipped a hand around to indicate Patrick’s incredibly tasteless pad. “Um, Djinn stuff. You know.”
“Not really, but I’ll take your word for it.” His gaze moved to Patrick, and they exchanged guy nods, the ones that indicated acquaintance but no actual fondness, because that would be less than manly. “Thanks for letting me talk to her.”
Patrick shrugged, which made the things that Mickey and Minnie—and Mickey and Pluto—were doing on the fabric look even more unmentionable. “No problem. As it happens, it fits with what I’m trying to teach her.”
“Which is?” Lewis wanted to know.
“Survival.”
Nice to know that it was possible to surprise Lewis, once in a while, although I wished it could be for a less urgent and personal cause; he looked as blank as if somebody had taken an eraser to his face. “Survival? Jo, anything wrong?”