A Tale of Two Goblins

chapter Three



When the doorbell rang at seven pm the following evening, I didn’t even need to look through the peephole to know it was Knight. But, I did, anyway—you can never be too careful. Course, Blue was like an alarm system in his own right—howling and pawing at the door as if determined to take down whoever happened to be on the other side. I eyed Knight through the peephole for a second or two as he leaned against the wall and watched a car drive by.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to kill every last one of the butterflies in my stomach—to smash them into oblivion, shredding their gossamer wings while discouraging my feelings for Knight. Just as he was about to knock again, I opened the door and offered him a quick smile in greeting, grabbing Blue’s collar as he attempted to break free. I pushed Blue back into the house and shut the door behind us with my foot. Glancing at Knight, I noticed his hands were full with what looked like a foil-covered casserole dish topped with three manila folders.

“Dulce,” he said upon entering my humble abode. He headed for the kitchen, placing the manila folders on the kitchen table before he uncovered whatever was beneath the foil.

“What is that?” I asked, sounding less than thrilled.

“Lasagna,” he answered without facing me. Instead, he opened the oven door and plopped the concoction into the oven, slapping his hands together with satisfaction and faced me. “I made it.”

I raised a brow in skepticism. “You made it?”

“Yep, I’m a good cook.” He sounded…proud.

The idea of Knight as a chef seemed totally alien to me for some reason—like it was too casual an occurrence, too everyday in its simplicity. But, unsettling or not, it had to mean he’d found a long-term place to live in Splendor. He’d been looking for somewhere more permanent than the Marriott Hotel due to the fact that he’d be continuing his stint as head of the ANC division here in Splendor until the Netherworld found his replacement.

“So, you found an apartment then?” I asked.

Knight nodded and pulled out one of my kitchen chairs, straddling it backwards and leaned his big arms over the chair back. “I did.”

“And?”

“It’s nice. Over on Shamrock Street.”

Shamrock Street was the Beverly Hills of Splendor. “Well, good to see they pay you well,” I grumbled, thinking about the fact that I was about to be late on my rent.

“I’m worth it, Dulce,” he said with a smile, a smile that said his comment wasn’t just limited to his position as head of the ANC. Before I had the chance to respond, Blue casually trotted over to Knight and sniffed his feet curiously.

The visual of what happened next will forever live in my head in infamy. Blue simply jumped up onto Knight’s leg and with unbridled abandon, began humping his knee, thrusting back and forth with the expression of extreme concentration on his canine face.

“Blue!” I squealed and lurched for him.

Knight’s laugh was deep as he pushed the dog away. “Really, Dog, we only met yesterday.”

Blue apparently had it bad for Knight and resumed his straddled position, bracing Knight’s knee between his paws as my mouth dropped open again. As if doubly determined to let Knight’s knee know just how much affection he held for it, Blue started gyrating again.

“You get down right now, bad boy!” I yelled and yanked on his collar but he didn’t budge. He just tightened his grip on Knight’s leg and glanced back at me with an expression that said “mind your own business. This is between me and the Loki’s knee.”

Finally able to separate my dog from Knight’s pant leg, I forced him outside and tried to keep the flush from my cheeks, still in disbelief that my dog had just mounted him. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

“Don’t be,” Knight said with a grin. “That’s the most action I’ve gotten in months.”

I settled my attention on the three manila folders, trying not to think about Knight getting action at all and searched for a change of subject. “You want to review those now or after dinner?”

“Now is good,” he said, eyeing my flustered face all the while as he handed me the first folder.

Opening it, I immediately noted two pictures paper-clipped to the interior of the folder, one of a smiling brunette with round, twinkling eyes. She looked to be about my age, in her mid-twenties. The other picture was of a woman asleep in a hospital bed, probably in a coma given the context. The still figure on the hospital cot was nothing like the happy woman in the other photo. Her hair had lost its luster and her skin was pale—as if the Dreamstalker had blanched away the color in her cheeks as easily as he’d taken control of her life.

“Her name is Anna Murphy,” Knight said. “The next folder under hers is a woman named Heather Green.”

Anna Murphy…I rolled her name around on my tongue, thinking it sounded strangely familiar, though I wasn’t sure why. Course, it was a pretty common name so maybe it wasn’t anything at all. Heather Green didn’t ring any déjà-vu bells. “And the third person?”

“Jennifer Garrity…but she went by Jenny.”

Jennifer Garrity. A bolt of realization jolted through me. I did know that name. I knew that name well because Jenny Garrity had been my nanny when I was a child. I almost dropped Anna’s file onto the floor. “I knew…I know her,” I said in a small voice, my hands shaking.

“How?” Knight demanded, eyeing me with extreme interest.

“She was my nanny from the time I was born until I went to Kindergarten.” She’d been loving and wonderful.

Knight nodded and opened the third file, Jenny Garrity’s I presumed, and jotted down a note. “And Anna Murphy or Heather Green?” he asked.

“Anna Murphy sounds familiar but not Heather Green.”

“Well, they both should sound familiar,” he said and observing my dumbfounded expression, continued. “They were in your second grade class.”

I swallowed hard and felt like I needed to sit down. So, I did. I took the chair next to Knight and grabbed the file on top, opening it to see Heather’s name. What I presumed was her senior year photo smiled out at me, revealing a woman with platinum blond hair and full lips. There was no hospital photo. I gulped.

“Did she die?” I asked in a strained voice.

“Yes,” Knight responded.

I closed the file and reached for the third one, for Jenny’s. Relief washed through me when I deduced that Jenny was still alive. According to Knight, there had only been one death. I opened the folder and saw the same Jenny I remembered from my childhood, only she was older now—a few crow’s feet defined her eyes, and some laugh lines etched her mouth.

“What do you suppose this means?” I asked, glancing up at Knight who just stared at me. “Is it a coincidence that I know all three of them?” I wanted nothing more than him to agree, and say, “Yes, it’s definitely coincidence”—that there was nothing to the fact that all three of them were somehow linked to me.

He shrugged. “Could mean something or could mean nothing at all.”

I frowned. “Thanks, that was incredibly insightful.”

He chuckled. “It could merely be coincidence, Dulcie. Don’t you know most of the people in Splendor?”

Yes, I did. I felt relief course through me as I thought about it. How many times had a crime been perpetrated against someone with whom I was personally acquainted? Well, it hadn’t been everyday, but it had definitely happened. Splendor was a small town. “Were all three in Splendor?” I asked.

It was his turn to nod. “Yep. That’s why I wasn’t jumping to any conclusions.”

“So, that means you’d already made the connection between them and me?”

“Of course,” he said as he stood up and headed to the oven, where he opened the door and pulled out his lasagna. Hmm, it actually looked good. “Fork?” he asked, over his shoulder.

“Top drawer on the right.”

He retrieved the fork, tested his lasagna and apparently not satisfied, pushed it back in the oven. Then he turned around to face me, leaning his incredibly shapely ass against the oven as he crossed his arms against his expansive chest. He was wearing dark jeans and a navy blue tee-shirt that made his blue eyes pop. “Did you doubt I’d do my homework regarding the victims?”

I shook my head. “No, just thought I’d double check.”

He cleared his throat and dropped his attention to the ground before bringing it back up to me. “There were two other victims, one in Estuary and one in Moon.”

“Names?” I asked, suddenly feeling a weight in my stomach again.

“Travis Decker from Estuary and…”

And the weight in my stomach suddenly made sense. Now it couldn’t really be described as a “weight” but more a boulder that had settled right in my gut. “Wait just a minute, Travis?”

Knight’s eyes narrowed. “You know him?”

“Yeah, I dated him,” I said and felt the air escape my lungs. I glanced back at Knight. “So much for coincidence?”

He shrugged. “I’m still not convinced though starting to warm up to it.”

“And the fifth victim?”

“An elderly woman, Shirley Mickelson.”

Shirley Mickelson—I tried the name on for size and couldn’t say I recognized it. “Doesn’t sound familiar. Background on her?” I glanced at the file folders, noticing two were missing and faced him with annoyance. “Why didn’t you bring all the folders?”

“Travis and Shirley just happened, and Elsie didn’t have time to put the folders together.” Elsie was the receptionist at the ANC. Nice to know that Knight wasn’t able to do anything himself…

“What do you mean by just happened?”

“Travis was last night and Shirley was this morning.”

I couldn’t help the guilt that suffused me as I thought about the fact that while I’d been not exactly enjoying myself at Bram’s party, poor Travis Decker, the sweet boy I’d dated for all of a month during my junior year in high school, had succumbed to a Dreamstalker. “What do you know about this Shirley person?”

He shrugged. “Not much. She was a librarian at Rio High School in Moon.”

Hmm, I definitely knew nothing about Rio High, and my dealings with anything in Moon had always been limited because it was two hours from Splendor. “I still think it’s weird that two girls who were in second grade with me, my nanny and old boyfriend were all victims.”

Knight sighed, long and deep. “I think it’s weird too.”

I faced him in annoyance. “But not weird enough that it extends out of the circumference of coincidence.”

“Could be coincidence but could be something more threatening.” He paused for a moment before bringing his eyes back to mine. “I want you to stay with me.”

“What?!” I retorted, laughing in disbelief. “Are you kidding?”

“You’ll be safer if I can keep an eye on you.”

The sudden memory of Knight invading my dreams silenced an acid response that was perched on my tongue. My first introduction to Knight hadn’t truly been an introduction at all. He’d tried to reach me when I’d been dreaming about Quillan who had just happened to be dressed up as a pirate. As if the dream weren’t embarrassing enough, the fact that Knight had witnessed it had been enough to forever humiliate me. But, what concerned me most at the moment was the fact that Knight had been able to influence my dreams—maybe he could protect against a Dreamstalker?

“You first contacted me when I was asleep,” I started. “Does that mean you can…”

Knight shook his head with a heartfelt sigh. “Unfortunately not. I’m able to interrupt someone’s slumber to communicate with them but I don’t have the ability to protect them. But, that doesn’t change the fact that you’d be safer with me.”

So, as to living with him—there was no point. Besides, I wasn’t a stranger to living with Knight. During our first and most recent case together, we’d been shacked up in my little apartment for over a week, and it hadn’t been pretty. Knight was demanding, difficult, self-centered….ah, the list went on. “No way in hell.”

“If there is more to this situation than coincidence...”

“What part of ‘no way in hell’ don’t you get?” I demanded. “It was bad enough that I had to deal with you in my own apartment.”

He didn’t seem offended, maybe more amused. “I quite enjoyed myself.”

“I bet you did,” I said, when a bolt of jealousy ricocheted through me as I considered the fact that Angela wouldn’t exactly like it if I were living under Knight’s roof. “And what would you tell Angela?”

He shrugged, and a look of surprise pasted itself on his handsome face. “Why would Angela need to know?”

“You’re impossible.” I shook my head as anger wound its way up my throat, bypassing the boulder that was still resident in my gut. “I like Angela and if you play her and hurt her…”

“Who said I was playing her or going to hurt her?” He looked amused, entirely too amused.

I stood up and wasn’t sure why. It was like my body went into auto pilot and wanted to get as far away from him as possible. But, I didn’t retreat, I wouldn’t allow myself. “Remember when I said ‘mean what you say and say what you mean’?”

He nodded as I continued. “You aren’t doing a good job.”

Knight lumbered toward me, a smile on his mouth. He reached out to grasp my shoulders. “Your jealousy is very…becoming.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not jealous. I’m merely concerned for…Angela.”

“Angela’s a big girl.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means she can make her own decisions. She knows I’m not in the market for a relationship.”

I snaked out of his hold and backed away. “You are a pig.”

He chuckled but his laugh was laced with derision. “Why? Because I’m honest?”

“Because you want your cake and eat it too. Haven’t you considered that people have feelings, Knight? That you can’t just play a woman and expect her to accept it submissively?”

He studied me for a moment. “Where is this coming from, and why are you so upset?”

I felt a fiery flow of anger bubble up within me. Knight represented everything I disliked and distrusted about the opposite sex. He was another Jack, a clone of the a*shole I’d dated two years ago, who had cheated on me and basically destroyed my drive to ever get involved with a man again. Someone who was only out for himself, for whatever he deemed his prize and then he was on to the next kill as pretty as he pleased. “I detest men like you.”

Knight’s eyes went wide, as if he hadn’t been expecting such rancor from me. He grabbed my arm, and I shrugged out of his hold. “Whoa, Dulcie, if you’re going to detest me, I at least deserve to know why.”

“I don’t like players.”

“Who said I’m a player?” His asked and he clutched my arm as if to say he wouldn’t release me until I’d given him a damn good reason as to why I detested him. Well, he was about to get it.

“The way you flirt with Angela and me and well, really, every woman alive, and pretend to be totally interested but then say you aren’t looking for a relationship…” I tried to pull out of his grip but he wouldn’t release me. His fingers were beginning to hurt.

He chuckled harder this time and grabbed both my arms. When I attempted to wiggle away from him, he clamped down…hard. “Allow me to defend myself. I am not what you term a ‘player’. I’ve never lied to Angela. On our first date…”

“Oh, there was a first date?” I snapped and suddenly felt a spire of embarrassment course through me. I hadn’t wanted to sound so freaking concerned.

“Yes,” he hissed. “I told her exactly what my intentions were.”

“And what were they?”

“That I’m not planning on sticking around Splendor for a long time, and I’m not looking for a relationship.”

I swallowed my pride. Hot Hades, why did I give such a damn about this hulking man? What was it about him that just set me off? He made me feel things I hadn’t felt in years. And what did it say about me that I had to fight feelings for someone who was such an…

“And Angela just blindly agreed to your stipulations?” I demanded, anger in every crevice of my voice. “Agreed to just have sex with you? Yeah, I really believe that.” And if she had agreed, Angela went way down in my estimation.

“Sex? Whoever said anything about sex?” Knight insisted, and his grip on my arms tightened, as if just the word sex had released the latent animal within him. I wondered if his eyes would start glowing again. Before they had the chance, he looked away for maybe two seconds before glancing back at me, apparently now more in control of himself. His strangle hold on my arms softened.

“Angela and I are friends,” he said softly.

I tried to break free of his grasp again and was surprised when he released me. I rubbed the soreness out of my arms and glared up at him again. “How stupid do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid at all, Dulcie,” he said firmly. “But, you won’t let me defend myself.”

I wouldn’t allow him to defend himself because there was nothing to defend. His alibi wasn’t exactly water tight. “So, if you and Angela are just friends as you claim, why was she all over you at Bram’s party?”

He shrugged. “She’d had a lot to drink.”

“And why were you all over her?” That wasn’t a fair question—he hadn’t exactly been all over her. In fact, any initiation of closeness had really been on her part. But, the words were out so no use in taking them back.

“I don’t recall that I was.” He was silent a moment before a smile captured his lips. “And any…attentions I might have paid Angela were merely to make a certain beautiful fairy jealous.”

I swallowed hard and if I’d had a baseball bat, I would have beaten down the ray of pleasure that visited me at his words. “You wanted to make me jealous?” I asked dubiously. “Why?”

Knight’s lips were tight and his jaw even tighter. He took a step closer to me, and I took one back. “Because in case you haven’t been paying attention,” he paused. “I like you.”

“But you aren’t looking for a relationship,” I spat back in his face.

“With Angela.”

I had to beat down another feeling of happiness. Was I really buying this crap? Was I, Dulcie O’Neil, known for being tough as nails, really succumbing to this trite shit? What the hell was wrong with me? “Oh, so you aren’t looking for a relationship in general, but you want one with me?” Good, my voice had sounded angry and laced with sarcasm.

He shrugged casually before offering me the sexiest smile I’d ever seen. “I wouldn’t be opposed to it.”

I dropped my eyes, trying to wipe away the visual of his smile and how it lit his entire face. “This whole conversation is stupid.”

“You brought it up,” he started, and there was something in his tone—something reserved and angry. “I was just defending myself against your accusation of me being a player. Regardless of what you think, I’m honest and I always have been.”

“This is becoming way too personal for me. Let’s shelve it and move on.”

Knight’s jaw was tight. “Let’s not. How about you tell me why you were with Bram last night?”

If his jaw was tight, mine was suddenly tighter. Who the hell did he think he was, questioning me? Granted I’d just questioned him but…so what? “That’s none of your business.”

“You made it your business to snoop into my affairs with Angela so I’m making it my business.”

I took two steps closer to him until we were nose to nose. I was fuming, irate. “You chose to answer my questions. That doesn’t mean I have to answer yours.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Dulcie.” He eradicated any distance between us until we were so close, I could feel his breath against my neck. A tremor started deep down in my belly and worked its way up into my gut.

“What is Bram to you?” Knight whispered, and I could feel hardness emanating between his legs and brushing against my thigh.

I didn’t drop my gaze but glared at him full bore. “He’s my lover,” I lied.

Knight laughed but it was an ugly sound. He grabbed the back of my neck, holding me immobile and returned my glare. “Liar.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Let go of me.”

“Tell me Bram is not your lover.”

“Why, are you jealous?” I asked.

“Yes,” he growled, and his eyes warned me not to play with him, not to incite him when he was this close to the edge. I was quiet as I watched him, watched that bizarre glow overtake his eyes and this time he didn’t avert his gaze to hide it. No, he wanted me to see what I was doing to him, that there was something in him he couldn’t control. I’d never been so turned on in my life.

“Bram isn’t my lover,” I said in a soft voice and nearly fell over when Knight released me. He grabbed my arm to stabilize me and immediately let go as if I’d burned him. Suddenly the smell of cheese was thick in my nose. “Smells like your lasagna is burning.”

#

I knew I was sleeping but my dreams had never been quite so lucid, images so vibrant and crisp, I felt as if I could reach out and touch them. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, finding the velvet blackness of night was still in full effect. There was something I needed to do, something that was on the brink of happening. Something bad. It was one of those gut feelings.

I stood up and was seized by a pain reverberating through my head. It felt as if my brain was being torn apart, all my memories and thoughts being dissected by a sharp blade. I fell to my knees and grabbed my throbbing head, willing the pain to go away.

And, just like that, it did. I was suddenly free of pain but I was somewhere I couldn’t comprehend—somewhere unknown to me. It was like I’d been plucked from my bedroom and deposited on a street I didn’t recognize. A cold wind whipped around my shoulders, and I glanced down at my white lace singlet and baby blue pajama shorts. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to ward off the cold and glanced up at the front of a townhouse—a modern structure that glared down at me in an array of hard angles and bleak whiteness. The numbers 3467 delineated the corner of the door, and somehow I knew those numbers were important, that I had to remember them.

Before I had the chance to think, something flashed by me. I couldn’t see it but I could feel the death imprint it carried—something powerful, something evil. In an amorphous blur of darkness, it vaporized into the door before me, and I had no choice but to follow. It wanted me to follow—I could feel the distinct urge to continue after it, as if it were beckoning me. I reached for the doorknob, and my hand went through it. Shrugging, I took a hesitant step forward and found myself merging with the door, entering the room beyond it.

The sounds of crashing and fighting snapped me out of my initial trepidation and I forced myself forward, following the noises down a dark hallway and into a bedroom where my eyes settled on the shadows of two men. One was in a huge bed that dominated the room and the other was atop him, pummeling him with fists full of hatred. The man in the bed didn’t resist his attacker. He merely lay there in quiet repose while the entity pounded him repeatedly. I had the sudden desire, the sheer need to protect the man in the bed.

I started forward and suddenly came up against an invisible barrier, something stopping me from reaching the bed. I shook my hand, waiting for the telltale sign of fairy dust to emerge in my palm so I could blow the dust toward the barrier and simply eliminate it but my fairy dust never materialized.

The man in the bed continued to lie there, immobile, amidst his blood-stained sheets. The thing atop him shifted to the side, pulling itself away from the bed and allowed me to gaze at the man. My heart about stopped.

“Knight!” I screamed and beat my ineffectual palms against the invisible wall. My voice just bounced off the unseen barrier and died in the air.

Knight’s attacker was no longer an amorphous shadow. He’d taken an outline of a man and was now facing me. I couldn’t make out his features, I couldn’t even see his face. He was just etched in darkness, outlined by night. But I didn’t have to see his face to realize what and who he was. I knew it deep down in my gut because he wanted me to know it. The Dreamstalker. I felt a smile radiating outward from him. A smile coming from that dark shade of his face.

He leaned over Knight while I held my breath.

I woke with a start, my heart pounding.

I couldn’t shake the nightmare from my mind. And the main reason was that I was convinced it hadn’t been a nightmare at all but an omen from my own subconscious. It had been a warning. A warning from the Dreamstalker.

I leapt out of my bed and glanced at the clock. It was two a.m. Reaching for the phone on my side table, I speed dialed Knight. It just rang.

I dialed again. It just rang.

I dialed again.

It just rang.