Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

“Then I can at least get an answer that satisfies me.”

“The police say she died.”

“I don’t care. She came to me that night, Olivia! She came to me and we made love, and she was supposed to be dead already—” Shit. He was right. “But she was in my arms, warm, alive, and—”

“I saw her, Ben,” I finally said, hating to hurt him, but seeing no other way. “I saw her fall.”

He was silent for a long moment. “The papers said you couldn’t remember anything.”

Oops. “That’s the last thing I remember,” I said. “I’m sorry. She’s gone.”

His jaw clenched stubbornly. “Then I want to find out why. Why’d she return to your apartment, huh? Why didn’t she just go home? Why did she leave me at all?”

I turned away to pace, to try and think this whole thing through, though I hardly knew where to begin. I didn’t know how to act because this life as Olivia, as a crime-fighting heroine, was not yet fully mine. But there was one thing I did know. I glanced back at him. “You’re not working with the police on this, are you?”

“I told you,” he said, not meeting my eye, “I’ve taken a leave of absence.”

I shook my head. My God. He’d gone vigilante . The department said it was an open and shut case; I was sure Warren and Micah had worked hard to make it so. Now Ben, of all people, was opening that door again.

“No, Ben. This is not what she wanted,” I said, before correcting myself. “It’s not what she would have wanted.”

“Oh, Olivia.” He looked at me like I was hopelessly naive. For one moment I actually thought he was going to rumple my hair. “Vengeance is exactly what she wanted. And I’m going to get it for her.”

“Ben,” I said, my voice a sharp contrast to his overly solicitous one. “That wasn’t what she was doing. That wasn’t the goal.”

“Really? Did you ask her? Because I did. I asked what she’d do if she ever found the man who attacked her, who attacked you both. She said she’d kill him.”

I had said that.

“Joanna was often glib that way.” I swallowed hard, thinking fast. “But what she really wanted was to face that man down and let him know she’d survived it. That she’d survived him. She wanted to look that…that monster in the face and let him know not only didn’t he kill her, but he didn’t break her.”

Ben’s jaw set stubbornly. “‘It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.’”

Yeah, and thank you, Mahatma Gandhi, for that one.

I pretended I didn’t hear him, and put a gentle hand on his arm. “Don’t let this break you, Ben. Joanna wouldn’t want that.”

For a moment I thought I’d gotten through. His face cleared and he looked young and lost, but it was only for a moment. His expression hardened again, and shadows seized his eyes.

“Stop looking at me that way,” he said softly, jerking back from my touch. “Everyone’s looking at me like I’ve lost it…”

You mean like the way they used to look at me.

“…like I’m crazy, and I don’t know what I know. But I know what I saw, Olivia! Joanna was in my bed and in my arms at the time they’re saying she was already dead…” Shit. I was going to have to ask Warren how to clear up that one. “And I may be angry, sure, but I’ve never been clearer on what I need to do. In fact, I think I’m more in my right mind now that I’ve been in, oh, at least a decade.”

And I couldn’t help but notice his eyes did look clear. But his scent was that of futile regret, and his guilt had soured upon him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, catching my look. This time he was the one to lay a hand on my arm. Olivia’s arm, I reminded myself as his touch shot a tremor through me. “I shouldn’t have come to you with any of this but…you’re all that’s left of her.”

“I know.” And at least I could give him that comfort. I pulled him into a hug, resting my palms on the hard plane of his back, and for a moment—just one—I let myself go. I shut my eyes and hugged him like I was me and nothing had changed and there was still a storm brewing on the far horizon. I pretended we’d never left the restaurant that night, and wondered if Ben could feel the regret of that decision in my arms. I squeezed harder, because maybe through the force of that hug I could put him, us, back together.

Yet the reality was we had lost one another. Again. There was no fixing this, and I should have just said to him there were no answers to be found. Only the truth, which he could never know.

“I’m going to find him, Olivia,” he said, his promise warming my head, ruffling my hair. “I’m going to hunt him down, just as Joanna would have, and this time I’ll kill him. I’ll take away everything and everyone that means something to him. I’m going to annihilate his world so thoroughly he’ll never be able to piece it back together.”

“I have to go now,” I said, pulling away, hating his words. Hating who he reminded me of. Hating, I thought, the scent of rot seeping through each syllable.

“Okay, but you’ll call if you remember anything, anything at all?”

“I’ll call,” I said, practically tripping over myself to get away from him.

“Olivia!” I stopped, closed my eyes and turned back slowly. When I opened them he was standing just as before, but he didn’t look as angry from a distance. He just looked alone. “You know when I first ran into Joanna again I gave her this generic list of attributes, characteristics to tell her how well I knew her…or thought I knew her.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “I bet stubborn was on that list.”

At least he could smile at that. “Yeah, and so was restless. And impatient. But I forgot one.”

“Really? Which?”

“Mine,” he said, his fists bunching at his side. “She was mine.”

And he walked away, leaving me staring, wordlessly, behind.

Leave it to Cher to think a nice pick-me-up after a sister’s death would be a spray-on tan. I was ushered indoors, signed in, and naked in such short order that my head was actually spinning, and the sight of the spray gun had thoughts of comic books, construction workers, and even Ben Traina scuttling to the back of my mind. It looked like a machine from Ghostbusters .

“You want me to spread what?” I dubiously asked the technician for the third time. She was Russian, heavy on the makeup, light on patience, and obviously a great fan of her own product. She muttered something under her breath, sat back on her heels and glanced in Cher’s direction.

“Come on, Livvy,” Cher said. “You’re acting like you’ve never done this before. Now bend over and show Yulyia your talent.”

I grimaced as the two women hooted with laughter, but did as I was told, following Cher’s lead.

“Whoo! Olivia, are you getting dizzy yet?”

Inverted, I looked over at her. “No.”

Red-faced, she turned an accusing gaze upon me. “You’ve been eating again!”

The spray hit my ass before I could reply. Perhaps, I thought desperately, it would help to try and think of something else. Fortunately or not, I had a lot to think about. I wanted to tell Warren about my strange encounter in Master Comics, and ask him what Zane had meant about me being “the one.” I wanted to see if he thought it was all right for me to swing by my old house as Olivia, knowing even if he didn’t, I probably would anyway. I wasn’t the sort of person who took orders easily. Unless, I was discovering, there was a can of tanning solution pointed at my naked ass.

I also needed to figure out what to do about Ben. And how to do it as Olivia. I frowned, thinking of the time I’d spent studying her home. I’d been all over that apartment in the past two days; read every piece of paper, viewed every video diary, even every recipe she had written down in the place. It was possible she had a safety deposit box I didn’t know about, but I’d found no key, and no mention of one. There was also her beloved computer, but that was the one place I couldn’t access, not that I believed any of the above could help me solve this problem.