Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

“What do you think of Tekla?”

I couldn’t help but smile. He knew what I thought of her. I’d been spending nearly every waking hour with her since my return, listening to her rant about the “quacks” who read palms or tea leaves instead of looking to the skies. I tried to follow her astrological lectures on planets and houses, elements and polarities, meridians and angularity, but it wasn’t easy. She spoke in code more often than not, had a tendency to begin mumbling to herself in the middle of a conversation, and—most disturbing—mourned Stryker’s passing at the beginning of every hour. I also caught her studying me in the odd moment, worried eyes roving my face like she was reading something interesting and possibly disturbing there. Still, I found her fascinating. “She’s been telling me stories about my mother.”

Warren’s face took on a faraway cast, and one side of his mouth lifted in a bittersweet smile. “There’s a lot to tell.”

“Do you…” I had to stop, and try again. “Do you think I’ll ever find her?”

“In time. If it’s safe. And if Zoe wants to be found.” I caught his hesitation and lifted a brow. “For now, don’t you think it’s enough that you’ve found yourself?”

I nodded slowly. There were still things I didn’t know, still places I couldn’t go—like Olivia’s computer, her true mind—but there were other doors open to me now.

“Thank you,” I told him. “For that. And for…well, all of it.”

His reply was cut off by Gregor’s arrival. He appeared in the doorway and waved his lucky rabbit’s foot at me. “Anyone who wants to cross with me had better come now. My shift starts in an hour.”

Gregor had recovered more quickly than Warren, and was already back to driving cabs, fighting the evil in Sin City in his own superstitious way.

“I have to go,” I told Warren, and stood.

He waved me away, flicking his hand in the air like it was nothing to him. Like there hadn’t been tears in his eyes a moment before. “Good-bye, Olivia. Be careful.”

“Aren’t I always?” I said. I ignored his sudden coughing attack, and smiled as I looked back from the doorway. “See you on the other side.”

Las Vegas, my Vegas, has two faces. There’s the frenetic carnivalesque face of the Strip; pliable, garish, and bright, catering to forty million visitors a year, and striving to make each of their dreams come true…for a price. Then there’s the small-town desert face; dusty, lined with age, and artless, with no pretense or need for it…the one I grew up in. One is all glitz, while the other is barren, but I see both faces—the light side and the dark—as one big, blank slate, like the great baby blue swath of sky arching over the valley itself. You can scribble your own fate across that relentless skyline, and I love that about this city. I also understand why others come here, taking refuge among the glitz and gild, the noise and lights, the talking and screaming and singing and laughter, the smoke and the drink…and forgetting there’s anything at all beyond the garish casino walls.

Being a local, I’d always taken my refuge in my home. Being a loner by circumstance and profession, I also found it in my darkroom. But now my home was no longer mine, and my darkroom—where I spent as many hours lost in the smell of developers and toners as those tourists do in front of the green felt tables—was just a sad reminder of the person I could no longer be. So after I left Warren and the sanctuary, I decided to do what people had been doing in this valley for over a hundred years. I had to create a new refuge for myself. After all, anything’s possible in Vegas, right?

But first I had to say a proper good-bye to Olivia.

“Are you sure you want to do this, darlin’?” Cher looked at me over the top of her shades, blue eyes filled with concern above the mirrored rims. She was driving again, and I jerked my head at the road, swallowing hard, though that wasn’t the entire reason I was feeling shaky.

“I’ve already stayed away too long.”

We turned into the long gravel lane of the cemetery’s back entrance, bumping along in silence until we were dumped into the graveside lot. I looked out the window at the yawning stretch of lawn and let my eyes blur so the headstones didn’t hump out quite so much, and the flowers left by those still living weren’t as garish against the dying winter sky. I grasped my own bouquet tightly in my lap and wondered if my mother had been by yet to visit.

“Olivia?”

I jolted in my seat. Cher had been saying my name.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head to clear it. “I’m coming.”

I could do this, I told myself. I would do this. I would stand outside this car with my sister’s best friend, then I’d walk across the lawn in my sister’s shoes and bend over and place these flowers on my sister’s grave.

Which bore my name.

“Who’s that?” Cher asked when I’d finally found my legs.

I shielded my eyes, looked where she pointed, and sighed. I knew just who it was, even from that distance. “That’s Ben Traina.”

He was sitting cross-legged at the foot of a headstone, and he could have been a statue himself if the wind hadn’t betrayed him, rustling the dark curls that kissed the nape of his neck.

“Poor boy looks lonely,” Cher said, and he did. But he also looked self-contained, straight-spined, and resolute.

“You said before that he looked mentally unstable.”

She bit her lip, studying him, before shooting me a wavering smile. “Stability is overrated. Come on. Let’s go keep him company.”

He heard us coming and half turned, standing once he saw who it was. I made introductions, Cher and he shook hands, and then there was a long silence as we all stood, facing the grave.

“Back on the force yet?” I asked, just for something to say.

“You keep asking me that.” He sounded amused, at least, which was a step up from annoyed.

I shrugged. “You were a good cop.”

“Well, now I’m going to be a good P.I.”

I felt my brows winging up. “Really?”

He nodded. “I decided to go out on my own. Take only the cases I want, and concentrate on those until they’re solved.”

I clenched my jaw, determined not to speak. If I did I’d probably start a fight over my sister’s grave. But I was worried. I knew he’d loathed certain constraints as a cop, though he hadn’t crossed any moral lines yet, not even with my death. I knew this because I’d turned our fates around, and I’d been trailing him. He was still looking for Ajax, but it was with a sort of despondent hope, and not the fiery anger that had frightened me so much in those early weeks of my death.

But what kind of man would he be without his badge? What would he become without his “second pair of eyes” to filter the evils he saw? Sought? How would he keep his world bearable?

“Oh, a private investigator?” Cher said, breaking into my thoughts, just catching on. “Like Magnum, right? I loved that guy. Really hot. You’re a teeny bit shorter, sugar, but I guess there’s no height requirement. Do you have to pee in a cup on really long stakeouts? I wonder how I’d manage that?”

She went on and I would have been annoyed if I didn’t know her better now. Plus I could sense her nervousness. Her cell phone finally cut her off in mid-explanation of how great she thought it’d be to have a purse with a secret hidden camera, and did we think Gucci made one like that? Ben and I smiled at one another over her head as she turned to answer the call. She listened for a moment, nodded, then said to me, “Mama wants you to come for supper next week. Or lunch. She says she’s met a perfect man for you, so when’d be good for you?”