Eternal by V. Forrest (new reading TXT) 📗

She took notes on the possible psychological reasons for removing and carrying off body parts and played with the idea of giving Special Agent Duncan a call, just to let him know what she learned, which was really very little. The human psyche was complicated and became even more complicated when murder was a factor.

She thought about Glen. Wondered if he was on his laptop, sifting through the hundreds of pages of data available to agents or if he was out having a mai tai with his fiancée. It would be silly to call him at home. Inappropriate.

When the phone rang at eight she saw her parents’ number on the caller ID screen and, against her better judgment, she answered. It was her mother, of course. To her recollection, her father had never called her, not since Alexander Bell’s invention of the telephone.

“You’re home?”

“I’m home, Ma. That’s why I answered my home phone.” Fia switched screens, closing the FBI file on a 1967 beheading in Louisiana—voo doo related—and opened her e-mail account.

“You missed Bobby’s funeral. Your father said you wouldn’t come.”

“I told you Thursday before I left I couldn’t come. I had cases on my desk; I worked all weekend.”

“It was nice.”

“Ma, how nice could it have been? You buried him without his head. His soul is burning in everlasting limbo, caught between this world and the next.”

“I made soda bread to take to the wake. Tavia said it was the best I’d ever made. You didn’t find out who did it yet, did you? Killed Bobby? Your da says a drug-crazed teenager; the big cities are full of them.”

It was her mother’s way of reminding Fia that she did not approve of her daughter living in the big city, even after all these years. It was Mary Kay Kahill’s belief that all of her children should live within the safety of the Clare Point city limits.

Relative safety.

Fia deleted e-mails on her computer screen offering financial independence and extended erections. “We haven’t found the killer yet. It’s only been a week. Forensics haven’t come back. How are the Marys?”

“Taking it hard, especially Mary McCathal.” Her mother took a tone of arrogance. “She was always weak, Mary McCathal. Taken easily to spells.”

Fia wanted to suggest to her mother that she, too, might be “taken to spells,” should her husband, the father of her nine living children, be beheaded and his body burned, his soul condemned to eternal unrest, but she thought better of leading the conversation down that path. Then she’d never get off the phone with her mother. “Heard from Fin and Regan?” she asked, thinking the subject safer.

“Not since Belfast a week ago.” Her mother’s Irish accent was generally faint, but her pronunciation of the capital city was thick, weighted by a mixture of hatred and longing. It had been three centuries since she had seen the meadows of her birthplace.

“But you’re expecting them home soon?” Fia asked. “Last time I talked to Fin, he said the investigation wouldn’t take more than two to three weeks.”

Her brothers were following a lead on a pedophile Scotland Yard had been unable to see convicted. It was the council’s practice to fully examine a case before a name could even be brought to the Watch list. Young, adventurous, and ambitious, though with different motivations, Fin and Regan were competing to take the next opening on the council’s kill team. Fia and Fin were close, had been since the beginning. It was different with Regan, the baby of the family and her father’s favorite, but Fia tried to keep the peace with him, mostly for Fin’s sake. The two brothers were more than brothers, they were best friends.

“They’ll be home when they’re home,” her mother said, rather philosophically. “Regan said something about Romania.”

“Anyone talk with them? From the council, I mean.” Fia set her laptop aside and Sam jumped down off the back of the couch and climbed into her lap. He kneaded her inner thigh with his broad paws. “Do they know about Bobby?”

“You know I’m not privy to the council’s whims.” Her mother made no attempt to keep her resentment out of her voice. The seats on the council changed periodically. Upon death and rebirth of a member, he or she was replaced. Mary Kay had been replaced and though it had happened fifty years ago, her daughter being appointed had just added fuel to the flames of her indignation.

“Ma, I should go. I’ve still got work to do.”

“You work too hard. Arlan was asking for you at the wake. You like Arlan don’t you?”

“Ma.”

Her mother was silent on the other end of the phone for a moment and Fia raised her guard. Her mother’s psychic abilities had never been particularly strong, and they were even less effective with her daughter, but Fia could feel her probing.

“What’s wrong, Fee?” her mother pressed.

“I’m just tired.” With the next exhalation of breath, Fia let her guard down. “And Bobby. Ma, I know I see this kind of thing more often than most, but it still scares me. Scares me more because it’s one of us.”

“That’s it?” She didn’t sound as if she believed her. “Nothing else going on?”

And just like that, Fia raised the bars she had carefully constructed around her years ago to protect herself. “That’s not enough?” Fia pushed the cat off her lap and got up from the couch. “Tell Dad I said good night. I’ll call you in a couple days.”

“Promise?” It was as close as her mother ever got to tenderness.

“Promise.”

“You should have called me right away,” Dr. Kettleman said.

Fia shrugged, shifting on the edge of the couch. “I already had the appointment. I didn’t think a day or so would matter.”

Kettleman didn’t reply, forcing Fia to eventually look up at her across the coffee table. They were sitting in the lounge, as the psychiatrist referred to the area of her office set in an alcove away from her desk and bookshelves. It was supposed