Heart and Soul by Jackie May (reading list .TXT) 📗

the roar of the crowd. Throwing the mic over his shoulder, Russo places both hands on Hillerman’s hips, tosses her up onto the bar, then jumps off a stool to join her.

My eyes bug out. “Elle, no! That’s Terrance’s new bar! It’s his pride and joy. It’s his baby.”

“It’s his fault for letting us in!” Elle squeals, rummaging through her purse. She throws me her credit card.

“No, Elle!”

“Too late! We’re doing this.”

The music builds to a crescendo. The crowd is out of their minds—barking, howling, cheering, kissing, raving mad. As Russo and Hillerman dance along the length of the bar, the sea of liquor bottles on the wall ripple like baseball fans doing the wave.

My mouth drops open. “Elle!”

Now at the inescapable climax of it all, Russo spins Hillerman into his arm and dips her way back, her hair falling onto the bar just as every bottle—hundreds, maybe thousands!—pop their corks and explode neon booze across the fanatical crowd. I cover my ears against a thunderous cheer that rumbles the floor.

“Elvira Jane Harrington!”

“Too late, Shayne! It’s done!”

“No, I mean look at her!”

Lying back in Russo’s arm, breathless and bathed in glowing liquor, Agent Hillerman is smiling. On a night that will move Underworld into the realm of legend, this is the detail I will remember as the most incredible.

Russo leans down to kiss her, but at the last instant, Hillerman raises a finger to his lips. Her smile dims as they stare into each other’s eyes. Russo, the consummate gentleman, doesn’t press his luck. He lifts her to her feet, and she immediately steps down from the bar, making a beeline for the exit.

“I’d say our welcome is worn,” she says as she passes me.

“Always leave them wanting more, right?” Turning to follow her, I smash right into a wall of Terrance, frowning down at me.

“Oh, I definitely want more,” he growls.

“Here!” I toss Elle’s credit card at him and grab Jay’s hand. He’s still staring down at the floor, the beautiful dope.

“Did I miss something?”

“Just run!”

We claw our way through the horde to meet Hillerman and Elle out at the curb, where the Rolls Royce SUV awaits. Russo is the last to escape, fending off his fans like a rock star after a concert. We pile into the SUV. Elle takes the wheel and speeds us away.

“We lost those two demons,” Hillerman fumes. “We blew it. Dammit! We came here to get our hands on an invitation, not do the twist!”

“Oh, you mean this invitation?” Russo displays a business card between two fingers. The card is black, with a logo of a white neoclassical building.

Hillerman is speechless, so I do the talking. “Where’d you get that?”

“From the vampire host outside. When the line out front crushed through the doors, he slipped this into my jacket pocket.”

“Wait, before we even went inside? You knew you had that card this whole time? Before any of the dancing?”

Russo beams proudly. Elle swerves all over the road with laughter. I snatch the card and turn it over. On the back is one word: ELMWOOD.

My heart skips a beat. “Elmwood! We’re idiots. This isn’t a government building at all. It’s one of those things. A fancy burial place in a cemetery.”

“A mausoleum,” Hillerman says.

“Right. Elmwood is a cemetery on Lafayette Street.”

“There’s a museum inside a cemetery?”

“Not a museum, Jay, a mausoleum. It’s just a fancy tomb that rich people build. We need to find one that looks like this.”

“And do what?”

“What do you think? Go inside. Some of these things are huge. I would guess it needs to be between three and four a.m. That’s the witching hour.”

Jay sighs. “Right. Just go inside a tomb at an old cemetery during witching hour. That’s all.”

Russo rubs his hands together. “Excellent.”

“We’ll go tonight,” Hillerman declares.

“You guys, you guys!” Elle clutches at her stomach, aching from so much laughter. “Guys, c’mon, are we not even going to discuss how balls out that was? What are you all doing tomorrow night?”

We all answer at once, Russo with “Hell, yeah,” but the rest of us with a definitive “No!”

Jay’s house is like an antique patchwork quilt—it’s huge and old and worn paper thin. It’s also literally a patchwork, since we have stretched blankets and sheets across many of the gaping holes in the walls. The floors are bare concrete. Some of the ceilings sag so low, I can reach up and touch my palm to them. Still, for me it’s the most like a traditional house I’ve ever lived in, after growing up in a trailer and then moving into my Pontiac Crap-pile.

His Pontiac Crap-pile, I remind myself, and then I quickly move my thoughts elsewhere.

The boys are asleep in their typical fashions: Jay sprawled sideways across our bed, where he fell face-first, like a tree cut down; Russo on a downstairs couch, with his feet crossed and fingers interlaced over his chest, like cowboys who lie on the ground and pull their hats down over their eyes. I’ve heard that about cops—that they can sleep anywhere, at any time, just by closing their eyes. And now I’m in a house with three of them.

It’s nearly three o’clock in the morning, and I’m wide awake. If I shifted, I could sleep, but there’s no sense in that now. Alarms will be going off soon for witching hour. I should put coffee on.

My flannel pajamas and fuzzy socks are no match for January cold. Jay’s laid out on top of our comforter, so I have to pull the blanket down from a hole in the wall. When I do, I see through that hole to the hallway, where there’s a hole in the floor, and through that hole I can see into the dining room downstairs, where Hillerman stands at the sliding glass door, staring out at darkness in the backyard.

“Do you ever sleep?” I ask, padding down the stairs.

“No,” she says quietly. “I don’t need it. But Charlotte does, so I try to be as still