Conspiracy in Death (In Death #8)(76)

"I just want my badge." And because it was Mavis, Eve dropped onto the sofa and buried her face in her hands. "I've got nothing without it, Mavis."

"You'll get it back." Shaken, Mavis sat, draped an arm around Eve's shoulders. "You always make the right thing happen, Dallas."

"I'm locked out." Weary, Eve sat back, closed her eyes. "You can't make things happen when they're happening to you."

"You made them happen for me. When you collared me all those years ago, it changed my life."

It was an effort, but Eve worked up a ghost of a smile. "Which time?"

"The first time -- the other couple were just like, you know, slips. You made me wonder if I could be more than a grifter scamming marks, then you made me see I could. And last year when things were bad for me, when it looked like they were going to put me in a cage, you were there for me. You made the right things happen."

"I had the badge, I had control." Her eyes went bleak again. "I had the job."

"Well, now you've got me and you've got the iciest guy on or off planet. And that's not all. You know how many people called here last night? Roarke wanted to stay up here with you so I asked Summerset if I could, like, take the calls and stuff. They just kept coming in."

"How many from reporters wanting a story?"

Mavis sniffed, then got up to call up the menu on the AutoChef. Roarke had given her orders to see that Eve ate, and she intended to follow them. "I know how to ditch the media dogs. Let's have ice cream.".

"I'm not hungry."

"You don't need to be hungry for ice cream and -- oh yeah there's a God -- chocolate chip cookies. Mag squared."

"Mavis -- "

"You took care of me when I needed you," Mavis said quietly. "Don't make me feel like you don't need me."

Nothing could have worked more completely. Though she sent one longing look toward the bed, to the oblivion she might find there, Eve sighed. "What kind of ice cream?"

Eve drifted through the day, like someone wandering in and out of sweeps of fog. She avoided her office and Roarke's, used a headache as an excuse to crawl away for a few hours. She took no calls, refused to discuss the situation with Roarke, and finally closed herself in the library on the pretense of choosing reading material.

She turned on the search screen so anyone monitoring would think she was browsing through, then ordered curtains closed, lights off, and curled on the couch to escape into sleep.

She dreamed of coiled snakes slithering up a gold staff that dripped with blood. And the blood slipped and slid and beaded over paper flowers tucked into a brown glass bottle.

Someone called for help in a voice thin with age.

She stepped into the dream, into a landscape blinding white with snow, wind that stung the eyes and carried the voice away. She ran through it, her boots skidding, her breath puffing out in visible waves, but there was nothing but that wall of cold white.

"Cunt cop." A hiss in the ear.

"What are you up to, little girl?" Terror in the heart.

"Why'd somebody wanna put a hole in him that way?" A question still unanswered.

Then she saw them, the doomed and the damned, frozen in the snow, their bodies twisted, their faces caught in that shocked insult of death. Their eyes staring at her, asking the question still unanswered.

Behind her, behind that white curtain, came the crack and snick of ice breaking. Of something breaking free with sneaky, whispering sounds that were like quiet laughter.

The walls of white became the walls of a hospital corridor, stretched out like a tunnel with no end in sight, the curves slick as water. It came for her, its footsteps slow with the wet sound of flesh on tile. With her blood roaring in her head, she turned to face it, to fight it, reaching for her weapon. Her hand came up empty.

"What are you up to, little girl?"

The sob ripped at her throat, the fear swallowing her whole. So she ran, stumbling down the tunnel, her breath whistling out in panic. She could smell his breath behind her. Candy and whiskey.

The tunnel split, a sharp right or left. She stopped, too confused by fear to know which way to go. The shambling steps behind her had a scream bubbling in her throat. She leaped right, plunged into silence. Fresh sweat popped onto her skin, rolled down her face. Up ahead a light, dim, and the shadow of shape in it still and quiet.

She ran for it. Someone to help. God, someone help me.

When she reached the end, there was a table, and on the table her own body. The skin white, the eyes closed. And where her heart had been was a bloody hole.

She woke shuddering. On watery legs she got up, lurched toward the elevator. She braced herself against the wall as it took her down. Desperate for air, she stumbled off, hurried outside where the cold bit blood back into her face.

She stayed out for nearly an hour, walking off the horror of the dream, the sticky sweat, the inner shudders. A part of her seemed to stand back, staring in righteous disgust.

Get a hold of yourself, Dallas. You're pathetic. Where's your spine?

Just leave me alone, she thought miserably. Leave me the hell alone. She was allowed to have feelings, wasn't she? Weaknesses? And if she wanted to be left alone with them, it was no one's business.

Because nobody knew, no one could understand, no one could feel what she felt.