Fuck.Davy bolted for the door. A bullet hissed by his ear and chipped a chunk of the door jamb. Splinters caught the side of Davy’s face as he half-fell, half-jumped down the stairs. Habit made him throw out a tentacle to catch himself with. It didn’t work, and he fell down the last two steps. He skinned his knees on the pavement, cursed under his breath, and scrambled back to his feet.
Behind him, Fraser threw his front door open. He wasn’t the only one. As doors opened and witnesses appeared along the street, he grimaced and tucked his gun behind his leg. Davy cut over the road, vaulted a fence, and dodged the side of a house—ignoring the startled protest from the owner—to cut through the back yard.
A dog bolted up out of its sleep to snarl groggily at him as he ran past. It would have been more threatening if it weren’t for the festive red velvet and gold bells collar that jangled around its neck. Before it could do more than grumble at him, Davy hauled himself up onto the roof of the kennel and over the fence.
As he dropped down on the other side, knees bent to absorb the impact, he slowed to a walk. A quick yank unzipped his hoodie and stripped it off. He lifted the lid of a bin as he passed and tossed it in on top of bags of rubbish and a chicken carcass.
He’d dropped back to a relaxed saunter as he stepped out onto the road. No one headed to see what was going on around the corner bothered to give him a second look.
The few hours sleep that Davy had grabbed should have been more than enough, but apparently Hill’s body expected more from his shut-eye. Davy sat in the pew and tried to keep from yawning too widely as the sermon dragged on.
“ For as John says in his gospel, ‘light (that) shines in the darkness, and the darkness overcomes it not,’” the tall, stocky priest said from the pulpit. He shuffled through his notes to check something, and then shuffled back to the place he’d marked with his finger. “That is the message and measure we should take from the solstice…”
Davy sat on the hard wooden bench next to his murderer and the boy whose body he’d stolen’s mother and tried to look like he was paying attention. His tentacles, uncomfortable on hallowed ground, squirmed sheepishly around his feet as they tried to stay out of sight. He tried to discreetly check the time to see how much longer this was likely to last.
Fraser reached over and put a hand on Davy’s forearm to push it down. He tugged Hill’s sleeve down over the watch. It took everything Davy had not to react by slapping his baby brother across the back of the head.
“Pay attention,” Fraser murmured to him. “You might learn something.”
Davy glanced sidelong at him. He couldn’t really picture how Hill, who hated his stepfather and yet wanted to redeem him, would interact with Fraser. He could have looked to Hill for answers, but Hill had shied away from the family pew and lingered at the back of the Church.
“Like what?” he went with.
“That’s up to you, isn’t it,” Fraser said mildly. He picked up the hymn sheet and flicked idly through the cheaply printed pages. It was Trudy’s turn to take that off him and tuck it under her leg for safekeeping.
Davy smirked to himself as he leaned back against the hardwood pew and folded his arms.
It looked like they werebothgoing to be paying attention to the rest of the sermon.
It would have been useful if Hill had been a smoker. Since he wasn’t, Davy pretended to be occupied with the gravestones. Hestood, hands in pockets, on the narrow path and studied the names etched on the snow-topped granite.
“I thought he might at least have a sleepless night,” Hill said bitterly. He leaned on Marie De Luca’s memorial, hands loosely crossed, and watched his family over Davy’s shoulder. “Do you think he gets visited by the spirit of his wronged dead every year?”
Davy shook his head. “He’d have moved the breakables,” he said. “Besides, you’re wrong. He’s off balance.”
“Really?” Hill asked. “He looks like it’s business as usual.”
Davy turned to look. In fairness, Fraser didn’t look like he was under spiritual—and financial—attack. He stood, his arm around his wife’s waist, as he spoke to the priest and a few of the other well-heeled parishioners.
“He was fidgeting,” Davy said. “He only fidgets when he’s pissed off.”
Hill snorted. “Yeah, well, he’s pissed off at the wrong person,” he said. “I hope Mark appreciates us doing his haunting for him.”
That part actually wasn’t ideal. “We could still work with it if we knew who Mark was,” Davy said.
“And we could work with Tannenbaum if we knew what he’d done,” Hill pointed out. “But we don’t have time to find out.”
True.
“It’s not like we can ask for an extension,” Davy pointed out. “We’ll just have to hope that Mark would have wanted Fraser to better himself, too. Come on.”
He offered Hill a tentacle.
Hill glared at it for a second and then grabbed it as he stepped over the low wall around the grave.
“What happens if we fail?” he asked. “If we don’t get through to Fraser by tomorrow.”
Nothing good.
