Guilty Pleasures - Laurell K. Hamilton [62]
“What do you think you’re doing, Phillip!”
“What’s wrong?” He breathed along my neck. “Isn’t this aggressive enough for you?”
I laughed; I couldn’t help it. He stiffened beside me. “I didn’t mean to insult you, Phillip. I just didn’t picture fishnet and leather for tonight.”
He stayed too close to me, pressing, warm, his voice still strange and rough. “What do you like then?”
I glanced at him, but he was too close. I was suddenly staring into his eyes from two inches away. His nearness ran through me like an electric shock. I turned back to the road. “Get on your side of the car, Phillip.”
“What turns you,” he whispered in my ear, “on?”
I’d had enough. “How old were you the first time Valentine attacked you?”
His whole body jerked, and he scooted away from me. “Damn you!” He sounded like he meant it.
“I’ll make you a deal, Phillip. You don’t have to answer my question, and I won’t answer yours.”
His voice came out choked and breathy. “When did you see Valentine? Is he going to be here tonight? They promised me he wouldn’t be here tonight.” His voice held a thick edge of panic. I had never heard such instant terror.
I didn’t want to see Phillip afraid. I might start feeling sorry for him, and I couldn’t afford that. Anita Blake, hard as nails, sure of herself, unaffected by crying men. Riiight. “I did not talk to Valentine about you, Phillip, I swear.”
“Then how . . .” He stopped, and I glanced at him. He’d slid the sunglasses back in place. His face looked very tight and still behind his dark glasses. Fragile. Sort of ruined the image.
I couldn’t stand it. “How did I find out what he did to you?”
He nodded.
“I paid money to find out about your background. It came up. I needed to know if I could trust you.”
“Can you?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
He took several deep breaths. The first two trembled, but each breath was a little more solid, until finally he had it under control, for now. I thought of Rebecca Miles and her small, starved-looking hands.
“You can trust me, Anita. I won’t betray you. I won’t.” His voice sounded lost, a little boy with all his illusions stripped away.
I couldn’t stomp all over that lost child voice. But I knew and he knew that he would do anything the vampires wanted, anything, including betraying me. A bridge was rising over the highway, a tall latticework of grey metal. Trees hugged the road on either side. The summer sky was pale watery blue, washed out by the heat and the bright summer sun. The car bumped up on the bridge, and the Missouri River stretched away on either side. The air seemed open and distant over the rolling water. A pigeon fluttered onto the bridge, settling beside maybe a dozen others, all strutting and burring over the bridge.
I had actually seen seagulls on the river before, but you never saw one near the bridge, just pigeons. Maybe seagulls didn’t like cars.
“Where are we going, Phillip?”
“What?”
I wanted to say, “Question too hard for you?” but I resisted. It would have been like picking on him. “We’re across the river. What is our destination?”
“Take the Zumbehl exit and turn right.”
I did what he said. Zumbehl veers to the right and spills you automatically to a turn lane. I sat at the light and turned on red when it was clear. There is a small gathering of stores to the left, then an apartment complex, then trees, almost a woods, houses tucked back in them. A nursing home is next and then a rather large cemetery. I always wondered what the people in the nursing home thought of living next door to a cemetery. Was it a ghoulish reminder, no pun intended? A convenience, just in case?
The cemetery had been there a lot longer than the nursing home. Some of the stones went back to the early 1800s. I always thought the developer must have been a closet sadist to put the windows staring out over the rolling tombstoned hills. Old age is enough of a reminder of what comes next. No visual aids are needed.
Zumbehl is lined with other things—video store, kids clothing boutique, a place that sold stained glass, gas stations, and a huge apartment