“But you did catch him!” he shot back, almost accusing. “You caught him. That’s what you felt. You locked hands with pure evil, and it almost dragged you under.”
“And you dragged me back,” she said quietly, like he was the brave hero, and all was well. He rose, unable to sit with his disquiet and her beatific confidence. He paced, five steps one way, five steps the next, and Dani watched him, her eyes gentle. The gold from her hair seeped out around her, limning her, and he rubbed at his temples, though he knew it wouldn’t help. Her light was impossible to ignore.
He was weary. She was weary. He should let her sleep.
Terror rose in his breast once more. He didn’t want her to sleep. He didn’t want her to be still and quiet.
“I have never been so afraid in my whole life,” he ground out. “Not when I went to France, not when my wife told me to leave, not even when my Mary died. I was too naive to be afraid, and I expected all to be well. But she died, and I realized all is not well. All is never well. I’ve been a fatalist ever since. But tonight, I was afraid.”
“Oh, my darling. Forgive me,” she begged softly.
He gazed at her, dumbfounded. She’d called him “darling.”
“I know it is hard to understand. What I see. And what I feel. It is even harder to explain,” she said, rueful. “Tonight was a new experience for both of us. But I don’t think I was in any real danger. Not from the Butcher. He was not there . . . not physically. I was just taken by surprise, sent into shock, I suppose, and I . . . fainted. It’s embarrassing, really. I feel silly. I was quite the damsel in distress, wasn’t I?”
“You scared me,” he repeated.
“But you’re not scared of me?” she clarified.
“No, Dani. I’m not scared of you.” Not in the way she meant. The simplicity and frankness with which she described her abilities, and herself, was what had made him believe her on that train a decade and a half ago. It was what made him believe her now.
In many ways, she was the most remarkably untangled human being he’d ever encountered. Complex but not complicated. Deep but not dark. It was as if she stood with her arms wide open and said, Here I am, and the world nodded and said, Yes, you are, and gave her a wide berth, not out of fear, but out of reverence.
To not believe in her would be like not believing in the sun. The sun simply was—it shined, it set, it rose, it waned—and it had no need to please or persuade. That was Dani. And he suspected he was in love with her. So no, he was not afraid.
He was terrified.
“Will you let me hold on to you for a minute?” he asked, voice strained, echoing her request from the previous evening. “Just for a while. I’ll be gone when you wake.”
Her throat moved and then she nodded.
She rolled to the other side of the bed and he turned off the lamp, stretching out beside her. When he pulled her into his arms, her back to his chest, she came willingly, and sleep found them both.
19
Dani stayed in bed all Sunday. The last time she could remember doing such a thing was when she’d contracted the chicken pox at twelve and been covered with pink blisters. Different-colored eyes, orange hair, and spots were too much for the public, and she’d been relegated to her room, though she’d felt just fine, beyond the intolerable itch.
She didn’t feel “just fine” today. She couldn’t bear the thimble on her thumb or thread a needle with her sore fingers, but worse than that was the bone-deep weariness and the throbbing in her head. So she slept, and no one complained. Michael checked on her, the aunts too, but then the aunts went to Mass—it was Palm Sunday after all—and Michael went back to his old ways.
In the days that followed, he was watchful and grim and careful not to get too close. She’d seen something in his face when he’d asked to hold on to her, the way she’d asked to hold on to him. But the next morning the look was gone. Or shuttered. He was good at setting aside his feelings. He boxed them up tight and labeled them neatly, the way he made his lists and organized his details.
She’d tried to catch his scent on her sheets and see his thoughts by pressing her palm into the indentation of his head on her pillow, but the longing she felt was inseparable from her own.
The Easter rush continued at the shop, and Michael accompanied her to the morgue twice, but he was stiff and short on conversation, and when she pressed him again about seeing the evidence, he avoided setting a firm date.
“I have a few other ideas we will try first,” he hedged. “I need Eliot’s help to get into the evidence room at headquarters, and he’s being hounded at the moment. I thought we might visit the rooms Flo Polillo and Rose Wallace rented and see if their landlords still have any of their things. Clothing and the like. You could go through that, see if you catch a hint of something. Though . . . you are forbidden from touching the drapes.”
She’d smiled at his attempt to jest, but the quirk of his lips didn’t reach his eyes.
“And maybe something more will be found of the woman—Victim Number Ten—and there will be something new for you to examine,” he added. “Something that hasn’t been combed over and handled and mislabeled. I don’t have much confidence that you’ll learn anything we can use from old evidence.”
“Are you sure? Because I think that’s exactly what you’re afraid of,” she broached gently. “I will be fine, Malone. You must believe me.”
He’d simply grunted and turned back to his morning newspaper, and she let it go.