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

until I notice that Special Agent Hillerman is sitting at the table in the kitchen, staring down at her hands.

Aaaaaand…now we’re alone.

I’ve never been so intensely focused on making coffee. I rinse a mug in the sink. The faucet handle is squeaky and the water is loud. The cupboards are loud. Everything’s loud. I can hear the gurgling bubbles from the coffee maker as I stare at it impatiently. Two long minutes crawl by. I’m just starting to feel sure that this moment will pass uneventfully, when I hear her shift in her seat. My back is to her, but somehow I can just feel that she is now looking at me.

The brewing cycle should be up any second. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, I urge it silently.

“Why haven’t they tried to kill us again?” she asks. “It’s been twenty-four hours of quiet. Nobody following us. No El Camino. We know they haven’t given up—demons don’t quit, literally forever. Which means we’ve only been put on hold. If we’re not the priority anymore, there must be some bigger target out there.”

“Maybe we’ll find out tonight.”

“Shayne, I think we need to be prepared for the possibility that this whole thing will lead to people you’d rather not look at.”

“What do you mean? What people?”

“There’s a black hole at the center of all this. You know about black holes?”

“Like, in outer space?”

“They’re invisible. Black holes can’t be seen, not directly. The only reason we know where they are is because we can see their influence on everything else, all the stuff swirling around them. This necromancer, we can’t see her, but her influence is everywhere. She’s got her finger on the pulse of the Detroit underworld. She’s got to be respected, especially by sorcerers. We know she must be powerful, and she must be well connected. Powerful enough and well-connected enough to win the loyalties of men like Arael Moaz and Henry Stadther.”

“If you’re talking about Madison West, then this conversation is over.”

“Who goes way back with Henry Stadther? Who kept the truth from Nora Jacobs about the vamps who killed her mom? Who warned you to stay away from King Paul? Who took you off the necromancy case and insisted on handling it herself?”

“Maybe so.”

“Not saying her name doesn’t make it any less true than not seeing a black hole. Madison West is at the center of too many things.”

“Maybe so, but you know what else? You’ve won too many times in a row, so this time I have to play the odds. The simple truth is that you can’t be right all the time.”

“That’s just stupid.”

She’s right about that. It’s very stupid, but what she’s saying about Madison West scares the shit out of me, and I’m sure as hell not going to let her see that.

After a long silence, she sighs. “But I hope you’re right.”

I squeeze the mug tightly. This conversation was exhausting before it even began. I swear coffee has never in the history of the world taken this long to brew.

“I don’t know why I brought that up. That’s not even…it’s not what we need to talk about.”

By the quaver in her voice, I can guess exactly what she thinks we need to talk about. Thankfully, she seems to lose her nerve and changes the subject. “What’s the most money you’ve ever gotten at once?”

“I don’t know. Couldn’t be much.”

“Poker winnings? A tournament?”

“Five thousand.”

“First place?”

“Third.” The coffee’s ready. I fill my mug.

“Five thousand doesn’t go very far. Buy a used car, maybe. But fifty thousand is something else.”

“Psh. In my dreams.” I turn to face her, sipping carefully from the mug. Too hot.

“Let’s say you enter that tournament—the one for 50K. And you want it badly, so you bust your ass. And guess what?”

“I win.”

“50K. How’s that feel?”

“Dancing in the street.”

After a pause, she sighs and says, “Matt’s telling me to say ‘Great song.’”

A laugh surges up my throat, but I cut it off just before it can escape. I didn’t want the ice to break between us, but dammit if Matt hasn’t accomplished it. I lean back against the counter, resigned to hear her out. Hear them out, rather.

“But here’s the thing. When you go home to check your bank account, you discover that the prize money they deposited wasn’t fifty thousand. It was ten million.”

The mug stops just short of my lips. My brows fly up.

“You’re screwed,” she says.

“How do you figure?”

“Fifty thousand, that’s all you wanted, and more than you needed. Fifty thousand advances your life, lets you move forward. And if you screw up and lose it all? That’s a bummer, but not the end of the world.”

“If you say so.”

“It was a luxury, after all. And not so much that you couldn’t save up to that number again. It’s not unreachable.”

“I guess.”

“But ten million?” She shakes her head. “Ten million doesn’t change your life, it changes you. It doesn’t just let you move forward in life, it makes it so you can never go back. Ten million, you don’t just appreciate, you worship. You lie awake at night, terrified by the question…”

She looks at me, and I’m surprised to know exactly what that terrifying question is, because we’re not talking about money at all. “What if I lose him?”

“Sometimes maybe you wonder if you’d have been better off not winning that tournament.”

“Is that what you wish?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Coffee?”

“Sure.”

I pour her a mug and sit at the table. As she sips, I build up the nerve to say, “He can feel it, Charlotte. Matt feels everything you feel when you look at Russo.”

She turns her face away, embarrassed to hear it said out loud. “It’s nothing. And I’ll do nothing. It will pass.”

“I don’t doubt it. But that’s…”

She glances at me with tears in her eyes. “What?”

“That’s…” I can’t spit it out. Honestly, I’m worried she’ll throw scalding coffee in my face. I brace myself for the worst. “That’s not what Matt wants.”

She takes her mug, but only to move it further away. Also