Page 2 of Dearly & Lovesick Lorraine (Dearly and The Departed #6)
Chapter One
Keir
Humming along with the music playing from the satellite radio station, I applied a little glue to the eyelids of my latest guest, Dr. Charles Randall. The lids kept popping open, which would scare the hell out of any mourners who came to pay their last respects.
Dr. Randall died from complications of pneumonia at ninety-five. He was a veterinarian by trade, and his son and daughter-in-law had described him as someone who’d never met a stranger. Based on the discussion I was having with his spirit, I knew it to be true.
“Can you make it look like I have more hair? I’ve always been a good-looking man, and I know some of the ladies from my assisted care facility will be here. I want to make a good-looking corpse.” He gave a hearty laugh, and it made me smile.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
After Dr. Randall’s funeral, Dash and I were headed to Lake Shasta to dig up the time capsule I’d dreamed of burying with my parents. I was ninety percent certain the bottom part of the black-magic-cursed scroll was in the cigar box, but what if it wasn’t? I’d run out of ideas about where it might be.
Dr. Carl Lopez, the hero of Stockton Boulevard who ran a healthcare facility and a soup kitchen, had speculated the bottom piece of the scroll would help us learn how to break the spell and fight Nyx. What would we do if he was wrong?
I’d been antsy to get Lake and Jamie back from their hiding place. Lake was eight months pregnant, and as far as I knew, Jamie was missing school. Of course, the girl could catch up with her studies easily, but dammit if I didn’t miss them a lot. And our unborn little girl. I wanted her where I could protect her.
“Keir?”
I covered Dr. Randall with a sheet and stepped away, peeling off my gloves before walking into the mortuary to see Lilith. “Hello.”
Her bright-red lips turned up in a smile as she gave me an air kiss on each cheek. “You have company?”
Dr. Randall stepped through the stainless door leading to the embalming suite. “How do you do, young lady?” He gave her a low bow.
Lilith chuckled and grinned at Dr. Randall. “I’m well, sir.” She turned to me and stuck out her arm. “Take two bags of blood and have them with you when you and Dash go to Lakehead. In fact, make sure he always has them close, just in case.”
“What will it do if he…? How should he consume it?” Knowing my husband would be consuming vampire blood had me worried. How the hell would we get it out of him? Would he be a vampire after drinking this?
“He’ll need to drink it, Keir. Both pints. Once he tastes it, he won’t be able to stop, so don’t be within arm’s length. I’m not sure how much control he’ll have, which is why I hope you’ll reach out to one of my kind for assistance. Actually, why don’t you take Adonis with you?”
I stared at her. “If Adonis is with us, why would we need your blood?”
“Mine has a little extra kick that Dash will find quite helpful.”
I collected the phlebotomy kit I’d purchased, arranging everything on the desk in front of me before situating Lilith in a chair next to the desk so she could prop her arm while I withdrew two pints of her blood. I sat on the rolling stool and tied the tourniquet around her arm.
“Where is Adonis, anyway? He hasn’t been around much lately, though I still see your other sons milling about. They can come say hi, you know?”
Lilith closed her eyes for a moment. “It’s better if the boys keep their distance so we don’t tip a hand that you’re being protected by members of the underworld. Adonis is in Mexico right now with the holy man. He’s carrying quite the torch for Dr. Carl. I’m not sure how I feel about it.”
I chuckled as I picked up an alcohol packet to swab the inside of her elbow. I was still uneasy about what would happen to Dash if he consumed her blood, but with the war looming, it was the least of my problems.
I picked up the vacutainer and attached the tubing and the bag to it before I tapped the vein that had plumped up quite nicely. It was easier to find a vein in a living human than a dead one, though Lilith wasn’t exactly alive in the conventional sense.
“A little pinch…” The needle slid in easily and the blood flowed freely. It was darker than human blood, but that made sense because blood from a deceased individual was darker as it was evacuated from the body.
“You’re good at that,” she said as I handed her a little stress ball from the desk to hurry the process along.
“I’d have thought it would have been harder to get the needle to pierce the skin. Do you feel pain?”
“Now, Gatekeeper, don’t believe everything you see in movies. Are you close to being prepared for the new baby? It’s only a couple of months, right?”
A big grin overtook my face as she cunningly changed the subject. “We’re thinking of house hunting. I was raised here, but I don’t know if I want to raise my kids in a funeral home.”
I thought back to my dream of Dash and me at Lake Shasta with a brunette girl and a blond boy. I had no doubt those were our children, and I would do everything I could to ensure they had a wonderful childhood.
“That might be a good idea. Tell me, after this is all over, and if we all make it out in one piece, what do you and Dash want your lives to be?”
That was an odd question. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Lilith rolled her eyes, which I fully expected. “Let’s say you and Dash could be anywhere you want to be and have any kind of life you’d like. What and where would that be?”
“Well, I would gladly give up my job as the Gatekeeper, but I’d want to stay here in Reardon. I’d want to keep my profession because I enjoy what I do by providing a service few people are game to provide. I’m not sure what Dash would want for himself, but I want to raise our family like every other family in the world.”
That was probably a pipe dream, but it was my dream for our future. What the reality ended up being for all of us was a crap shoot.
“Let’s all hope we get to see the future. Where is your mother and her dreamy new husband?”
I chuckled. “What would Quinn say if he heard that?”
Lilith’s laughter filled the mortuary. “He’d probably be jealous and fuck my brains out, which I’d welcome. Then I’d fuck his brains out.”
That had me laughing with her. “So, have you two taken that step? Have you topped Quinn yet?”
“That’s a little personal, Keir, but hell yes. Many times.”
We both laughed as I changed the bag. It was going much faster than I’d anticipated, but who knew? Maybe it was normal for a vampire to bleed faster? Yet another thing I didn’t want the answer to.
I pushed Dr. Randall into the walk-in, checked the compressor screen to see that it was normal, and then left him to his rest. His spirit was reclined on the same table as his body, and he seemed content.
I quickly cleaned up the mess and put everything away. I was taking Lilith’s blood upstairs to put into the refrigerator’s vegetable bin until we left on Wednesday morning. I’d already bought a small cooler and ice packs to take with us to the lake.
We were staying at a cabin in the recreation area for one night, and I had searched through some of Dad’s stuff I had in the attic, finally finding the paper map we’d used when we buried the cigar box, along with Dad’s old compass. I hoped there was some way he could guide me because if the bottom of the scroll was in the box, I had to get it back to someone to translate it.
Lilith had gone, and I was alone in the mortuary since Dr. Randall was tucked in for the night. It was a little too quiet, so I went to my computer to turn on a satellite radio station to listen to one of my favorite chat shows for some noise.
“In climate news, an international group of scientists studying the effects of climate change around the world have announced ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November that the Darvaza gas crater in Turkmenistan has extinguished.”
I stopped what I was doing and rushed to my computer. If the gas crater went out, Nyx and her legions could no longer hide there. As I went to the cable news channels and scrolled through their headlines to find only one cable news station mentioning the story, though they referred to the gas field as the Shining of Karakum.
A picture of the now extinguished field flashed on the screen. The field burned off poisonous gases, but the picture showed it wasn’t very big—two hundred to three hundred feet in circumference and ninety-eight feet deep. How could Nyx and her alleged multitudes fit in such a small place?
After hearing scientists had speculated that perhaps the natural gas reserve in the Karakum Desert was running out and had called for more research into the matter, I had a gut feeling Jo had sealed the portal, which meant ours at the mortuary and the one outside of Sacramento might be the only two left open in the world.
That led to the worst possible conclusion I could come to—the fight was coming to Dearly & Son as Jo had inferred before. I released a heavy sigh, not sure if I was ready for the battle. The sand in the hourglass of time was winding down to its last few grains.
Suddenly, I had thirty things to do at once, but the first thing was to ensure Dr. Randall’s funeral wouldn’t be interrupted. I hurried up to the office where Amelie was busy with paperwork.
“Where’s Trent today?” My mind was racing, and I couldn’t finish a complete thought.
“He’s at The Mystical Palm. Why? What’s wrong?” She stood from the desk chair and walked to where I was staring out of the window while holding two bags of blood.
“Are those from Lilith?” I could only nod.
“How’s his radar working these days?” Trent, Amelie’s fiancé, was a psychic and medium, though our Amelie was the one who always said she was psychic.
I’d come to think of her as my quirky little sister, and the last thing I wanted was for her to be harmed in the upcoming battle for the Human Realm. She’d helped us conceive our daughter by donating her eggs, and I would never forgive myself if I couldn’t protect her... all of those I loved.
“Trent’s been fine as far as I can tell. Clearly, you’re on the brink of a panic attack. Let me call Dash to come home. He said he was going to the shop to finish his bike. I’ll get him back here.”
I took a few calming breaths to snap out of my impending stupor and turned to her. “No. Let him finish the bike. It means a lot to him, and we’re going to ride it to the lake with a little trailer behind it for our stuff. I’m probably overreacting. I’m going to call Trent and talk to him.”
“I’ll leave you to it. I’ll take these upstairs.”
Amelie relieved me of the bags of blood and hurried out of the office, closing the door behind her. She was very important to me, and I had to ensure nothing happened to her or her future husband.
I picked up the landline and dialed Trent. “The Mystical Palm.”
“Hey, it’s me, Keir. How’s your psychic connection to the other side?”
I glanced at the clock on my laptop to see it was just two in the afternoon. Amelie and I’d had salads for lunch because she’d just had her final fitting for her wedding dress. The wedding was this upcoming Saturday in San Francisco at the Palace Hotel.
Dash and I were two of Trent’s six groomsmen, which was why we were going to Lake Shasta on Wednesday and returning to Reardon on Thursday, so we could drive to San Francisco on Friday morning for the festivities.
Amelie’s parents had scrapped the winery for the wedding, going in favor of the Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco. It was shaping up to be a fancy affair, and I was looking forward to it.
“My connection is wonky. I’ve been getting visions of some crazy woman storming into the store and wrecking my displays while she yells for some man named Claude. She’s dressed in clothes that look like they’re from the sixteen or seventeen hundreds, and she’s able to set things on fire with electrical currents that come through her fingers.”
“Can you tell if she’s real or a spirit?” It sounded very strange to me.
“I honestly don’t know. I don’t want Amelie coming here because I’m afraid of what the woman might do. She’s started calling me Claude, even though I insist that’s not my name.” Trent sounded distraught.
“You want me to come by? I have a funeral tomorrow, but my guest just needs to be dressed, and since Lake’s not here, I can do his makeup in the morning. I’ve got some time.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, Keir, I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll change and be on my way.”
I hurried upstairs and changed into jeans and a sweater before I went down to the funeral home to tell Amelie I was leaving. “I’m going to Trent’s store. I’ll be back.”
“Please see if you can put his mind at ease. I’m not sure what’s wrong with him, but he’s been agitated and freaking out. He told me not to come to the store. Is he having an affair? Is he getting cold feet?”
I pulled her into my arms. “Honey, he loves you. He can’t wait to marry you. Whatever’s going on, it’s not that he wants to back out of the marriage.”
She cried for a few minutes, and I smiled as she calmed. Maybe my dear friend was having a case of nerves herself?
Amelie backed away and grabbed a tissue from the ever-present box on my desk, dabbing her eyes. I hated to see her cry. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes. Just see if you can help him, and you don’t have to tell me what’s going on unless you feel like I should know.”
That was Amelie-speak for “tell me what’s going on.” I laughed. “Yes, ma’am. Have you heard from Lake?”
“No, but I’m sure she’ll reach out if there’s any reason to worry.”
I kissed her cheek and headed out the front door to the garage. I hopped into my SUV and drove to Sacramento to The Mystical Palm, hoping I could help my friend figure out his visions.
When did life get so complicated?