“It was lovely to meet you two,” Yelena sighed in a resigned fashion.
The closer they walked to the steel-sided trailer, and the rift by extension, the harder that pressure pushed at her head. Brendan placed his thumb on a scanner plate and after a few seconds of beeping, the door popped open. She’d expected some dark claustrophobic space inside, but it was brightly lit with LED panels on the countertops and walls. Even the worktable in the middle of the room was backlit, shining up through the thick, clear box surrounding the casket. A black digital panel under a large clock was labeled “vital signs,” and suddenly lit up with green numbers estimating Cordelia’s heart rate and blood pressure—which was a neat trick, without a blood pressure cuff. The walls were lined with white laminate cabinets and there was a desk with a rather fancy computer set-up off to the left.
“So, this gift of yours,” Brendan said, trying far too hard to sound casual. She didn’t need her talent to see he was nervous. Given the way he was looking from her to the table and back again, he seemed to be nervous for her. And she found that she was oddly touched by that. She couldn’t remember the last time someone put concern for her ahead of what they wanted. “Couldn’t you have made more of it if you’re the real deal? Private consultations? Helping police solve murders? Doing talk shows?”
“My grandmother tried that sort of thing, the private consultations, I mean,” Cordelia said. “The problem with long-term clients is that you have time to build up expectations and inevitably disappoint the client. No matter how hard you try, you’re going to miss something. There will be something you didn’t spot, an affair that wasn’t reflected in a memory, a tragedy no one could see coming. And when you stay in one place for a long time, you give people a place to find you when they’re disappointed, which can get really ugly. It wasn’t the retirement she’d hoped for.”
Cordelia stepped forward to squint at the artifact through the clear storage box. The casket was…oddly beautiful. She’d expected an artifact that had been buried in a swamp for centuries to be covered in muck, but its surface was just as shiny as if it had been carved the day before. The glassy black surface seemed to reflect a rainbow of colors over its sharp lines, like oil across a puddle, slick and unnatural. The symbols etched into the ancient rock seemed to form patterns, but the moment her brain started to recognize them, they faded out of focus. She felt called forward, putting her hands on the surface of the Plexiglas. A cold pulse throbbed through her skin, making her shiver. To her surprise, no images accompanied these sensations, just a pulsating ripple of excitement along her nerves.
“You all right?” he asked.
She nodded and hit the large red button near the door marked Record. “Can you take it out for me?”
Brendan pressed his thumb to the scan panel that kept the box locked. The lid swung open and Cordelia swallowed thickly at the drop in room temperature. She lowered her shield just enough to get a taste of what they were dealing with. Want. A wave of unadulterated desire washed over her, sucking the air from her lungs as surely as if she was drowning. But it wasn’t a sexual urge; no, it was hungrier than that. It was loneliness, despair for the lack of connection with someone, anyone willing to reach out. Cordelia’s eyes were hot and wet with this dejection.
Brendan slipped on a pair of latex gloves and after a moment’s hesitation, he reached inside and picked it up.
“Does it hurt or anything?” she asked.
“No, it’s just cold,” he said, setting the casket down on the light table.
It was so strange that such a fuss was being made over something no bigger than a boot box. She’d received Amazon packages bigger than something that could potentially rip the universe apart.
“How are you doing?” Brendan asked.
She shook her head, hoping to flick away the white noise filling her ears. Why wasn’t she seeing anything? She could only feel and what she felt was so awful she could hardly bear the weight of it. Want.
As if through water, Cordelia heard an automated voice in the ceiling warn that her heart rate was increasing at an abnormal rate.
Cordelia’s hands stayed poised over the casket. The stone itself vibrated with the deep desire to be seen and touched and worshipped. Cordelia realized she wasn’t feeling the emotions of the person who had handled the casket, she was feeling the emotions of the casket itself…how?
“Cordelia, your blood pressure is spiking,” Brendan warned her. “The numbers on the wall are orange. That can’t be good.”
Cordelia ignored him, taking a deep breath and cupping her hands inches over the casket’s surface. She dropped her shield just a little bit more. The heavy wave became a tide made of knives and she was pulled under with a shriek. The floor rose up to meet her and the last thing she saw before everything went dark was Brendan’s panicked face and his arms reaching for her.
For once, she didn’t think she’d mind.
4
Brendan
If he had a heartbeat, it would be pounding in his ears to the rhythm of that bloody monitor.
He knew he barely knew Cordelia Canton, but everything he’d seen so far painted her as a rational, prudent woman, one to listen to instructions like, “Don’t drive while putting in contact lenses” or, “When several people tell you to step away from something the minute you start feeling unwell, step the fuck away from said article.”
He felt like a pure idiot, watching her hurting herself like that. He hadn’t felt anything extraordinary from the rift or the casket, so he assumed that she was all right. Sure, she’d been pale and shaken, but he’d thought perhaps that was from the effort of holding up that shield she’d spoken of in Jillian’s office. But then she’d hovered her hands over that nightmare box and froze. He’d barely had time to reach for her before her eyes rolled up and she collapsed. He’d managed to catch her before she hit the floor, but he could only imagine how that tape from the surveillance camera was going to look—him pressing her against his chest as he hauled her up, sniffing her damned hair like some sort of pervert. It was just that she’d smelled so good, a mix of raspberries and crisp, sugary biscuits his ma used to bake. To his relief, when her face was pressed into the curve of his throat, he hadn’t felt anything from her death-wise. Just the sweet weight of the woman in his arms.
He’d gently laid her in an office chair while he put the casket back in its clear storage unit. He scooped her into a fireman’s carry and walked out of the trailer. He was careful to make sure the box and the trailer were secured because he certainly wasn’t marching his arse back to lock up.
He had to commend Sonja. She hadn’t panicked or even raised her voice when she saw Brendan carrying an unconscious Cordelia to the road. She’d simply turned to Yelena and told her to get home, then drove like a bat out of hell to get Cordelia to the community clinic. She’d barely spared a moment to kiss the town doctor, Will Carmody, before neatly summarizing the situation for him and commanding him to “fix it now, please.”
When the shite hit the fan, he was going to call Sonja.
Dr. Carmody was equally calm and competent, ushering Brendan out of the room while simultaneously positioning Cordelia on the hospital bed and checking her vitals. His orders were the only thing that had kept both Jillian and Sonja from camping out in Cordelia’s room. His official medical opinion was that she was fine, just knackered, and needed quiet and rest—neither of which she was likely to get with them beside her. Brendan had persuaded the good doctor that Cordelia would feel better if she woke up to someone she trusted.