Ceremony in Death (In Death #5)(5)

“What?”

“The symbol here. It’s Celtic.”

Shaking her head, Eve eased closer to look again. “You know the strangest things.”

“Not so strange. I spring from the Celts, after all. The ancient labyrinth symbol is magical and sacred.”

“Well, it fits. She’s into witchcraft or something. Got herself the start of a top-flight education. Harvard. But she drops out to work in some West Village shop that sells crystals and magic herbs.”

Roarke traced the symbol with a fingertip. He’d seen it before, and others like it. During his childhood, the cults in Dublin had run the range between vicious gangs and pious pacifists. All, of course, had used religion as the excuse to kill. Or be killed.

“You have no idea why she wants to meet you?”

“None. I’d say she figures she read my aura or something. Mavis ran a mystic grift before I busted her for pinching wallets. She told me people will pay most anything if you tell them what they want to hear. More, if you tell them what they don’t want to hear.”

“Which is why cons and legitimate businesses are very much the same.” He smiled at her. “I take it you’re going, anyway.”

“Sure, I’ll follow through.”

Naturally she would. Roarke glanced at the note again, then set it aside. “I’m going with you.”

“She wants — “

“It’s a pity what she wants.” He sipped his wine, a man accustomed to getting precisely what he wanted. One way or another. “I’ll stay out of your way, but I’m going. The Aquarian Club is basically harmless, but there are always unsavory elements that leak through.”

“Unsavory elements are my life,” she said soberly, then cocked her head. “You don’t, like, own the Aquarian, do you?”

“No.” He smiled. “Would you like to?”

She laughed and took his hand. “Come on. Let’s drink this in bed.”

Relaxed by sex and wine, she fell peacefully asleep, draped around Roarke. That’s why she was baffled to find herself suddenly and fully awake only two hours later. It hadn’t been one of her nightmares. There was no terror, no pain, no cold, clammy sweat.

Yet she had snapped awake, and her heart wasn’t quite steady. She lay still, staring up through the wide sky window over the bed, listening to Roarke’s quiet, steady breathing beside her.

She shifted, glanced down at the foot of the bed, and nearly yelped when eyes glowed out of the dark. Then she registered the weight over her ankles. Galahad, she thought and rolled her eyes. The cat had come in and jumped onto the bed. That’s what had awakened her, she told herself. That’s all it was.

She settled again, turned onto her side, and felt Roarke’s arm slide around her in sleep. On a sigh, she closed her eyes, snuggled companionably against him.

Just the cat, she thought sleepily.

But she would have sworn she’d heard chanting.

CHAPTER TWO

By the time Eve was elbow deep in paperwork the next morning, the odd wakefulness in the night was forgotten. New York seemed to be content to bask in the balmy days of early autumn and behave itself. It seemed like a good time to take a few hours and organize her office.

Or rather to delegate Peabody to organize it.

“How can your files be this skewed?” Peabody demanded. Her earnest, square face expressed deep remorse and disappointment.

“I know where everything is,” Eve told her. “I want you to put everything where I’ll still know where it is, but where it also makes sense for it to be. Too tough an assignment, Officer?”

“I can handle it.” Peabody rolled her eyes behind Eve’s back. “Sir.”

“Fine. And don’t roll your eyes at me. If things are a bit skewed, as you put it, it’s because I’ve had a busy year. As we’re in the last quarter of this one and I’m training you, it falls to me to dump this on you.” Eve turned and smiled thinly. “With the hope, Peabody, that you will one day have an underling to dump shit assignments on.”

“Your faith in me is touching, Dallas. Chokes me up.” She hissed at the computer. “Or maybe it’s the fact that you’ve got yellow sheets in here from five years ago that’s choking me. These should have been downloaded to the main and cleared out of your unit after twenty-four months.”

“So download and clear now.” Eve’s smile widened as the machine hacked, then droned out a warning of system failure. “And good luck.”

“Technology can be our friend. And like any friendship, it requires regular maintenance and understanding.”

“I understand it fine.” Eve stepped over, pounded her fist twice on the drive. The unit hiccupped back into running mode. “See?”

“You have a real smooth touch, Lieutenant. That’s why the guys in Maintenance shoot air darts at your picture.”

“Still? Christ, they hold a grudge.” With a shrug, Eve sat on the corner of the desk. “What do you know about witchcraft?”

“If you want to cast a spell on your machine here, Dallas, it’s a little out of my field.” Teeth clenched, she juggled and compressed files.

“You’re a Free-Ager.”

“Lapsed. Come on, come on, you can do it,” she muttered at the computer. “Besides,” she added. “Free-Agers aren’t Wiccans. They’re both earth religions, and both are based on natural orders, but… son of a bitch, where’d it go?”