Contact. Evelyn Vaughn

5

      F aith spun in her chair and stared at the red-carpeted lobby, where at least two people had just left the hotel. It had been him. She was sure it had been him!

      “And now I’m talking to myself,” muttered Roy, behind her.

      She didn’t bother stopping to explain. She slid off her bistro chair and took off out of the bar.

      “Hey!” Roy yelled. But Faith was busy racing across the oriental rug of the lobby, putting her shoulder into the revolving door, stepping out into the spattering rainfall that was New Orleans in August. She looked one way.

      Nothing.

      She looked the other.

      Nothing. Rather, there were plenty of people heading in both directions, umbrellas hiding their faces or heads bent against the rain. This was the French Quarter! Tourists wandered, enjoying the rain like they might a special effect in a theme park. Partygoers hustled, trying to keep their good clothes dry. A trumpet player on the corner ignored the rain to wail out a tune reminiscent of Al Hirt, with a hat by his feet for wet tips. The air was thick with the perfume of plopping raindrops on hot concrete, underscored by the scent of the nearby river, of ice cream and soft pretzels, of wisteria from a nearby courtyard. But whatever Faith had sensed inside had faded.

      It didn’t make any sense.

      She’d felt him going in this direction! It wasn’t like he could suddenly ditch his unique heartbeat, like someone pulling off a mask…was it?

      “What the hell was that?” The words, immediately behind her, didn’t startle her anywhere near the way Roy Chopin’s hands, catching her damp arms, did.

      Oh, God! Like an exposed power line.

      Faith stiffened, but not in time to escape the sudden burst of energy that sizzled through her, the emotions, the images. Someone fed him home cooking on a weekly basis. He liked beer. He spent too much time around the jail and the station and on the streets. His underlying edge of violence was a constant problem for him. He’d had sex sometime in the last month but that’s all it had been, sex, he didn’t love the woman—

      With a mew of protest, she wrenched away from him, spun to face him.

      Then she saw how his eyes widened, how he raised his spread hands and took a step back as if to show her he was unarmed despite the belt holster. She smelled his sudden guilt and confusion. That’s when she realized how she’d hunched down into herself at his touch. Like some kind of frightened victim.

      Deliberately she squared her shoulders, raised her chin, even if it felt like she’d snap something, forcing herself back into a posture she didn’t yet feel. So much for being normal.

      Roy Chopin kept his distance, lowering his hands slowly, clearly meaning to convey how harmless he thought he was. He squinted against raindrops in his eyes. “You okay there, Corbett?”

      But he was looking at her as if she wasn’t okay at all.

      “I…I don’t like being touched,” she said, blinking back against the wet. Her voice sounded only a little husky from sheer mortification. There was a statement that would win dates, for sure. “You startled me.”

      “I’m sorry.” The hands were by his sides again. He was starting to relax, to breathe again, hair dripping across his forehead. She’d scared him.

      “No, I’m sorry. I know it’s weird.”

      “I didn’t touch you till you were already out here,” he said. For a minute, she was confused. Then he said, “You just ran off. What’s up?”

      He wasn’t just confused about her reaction to his touch. He was confused about how she’d bolted.

      I sensed the killer. Then I didn’t.

      “I thought I heard something,” she said, which was at least true, if lame.

      He was feeding. The thought came to her again—but what had it meant?

      The fear, when it hit, hit hard. Absinthe! Moonsong!

      Evan!

      She spun for the hotel again—but luckily, before she could put the icing on her embarrassment cake, Butch Jefferson came through the revolving door. “Now what are you two doing out here in the wet?” he demanded, the seriousness in his gaze contradicting his friendly tone. “Son, I got something upstairs you should see.”

      Chopin gave her an after-you gesture, so they headed inside in detective-Faith-detective order.

      It was a handwritten note. Someone had found it at the empty table where Krystal would have “read.” Their shout of alarm had drawn the attention of others.

      Now too many bystanders clustered and whispered, while Butch and Roy studied the piece of Biltmore stationary without touching it.

      “‘She was delicious,’” read Roy, frowning. “‘The next one will be even tastier.’”

      The whispering of the psychics and guests and hotel staff became something closer to a group moan—a noise with too many words to retain any individuality, merely distress. But they were communicating the same fear, something Faith had already half guessed herself.

      Hadn’t she suggested the killer might come here to scope out more victims?

      “He’s a serial killer,” she whispered, giving voice to what the others were murmuring amongst themselves…kind of like she did with her informative calls as Cassandra.

      “No,” said Roy firmly, standing. “There’s no proof of that. He’s just trying to get as much mileage as he can off of the one killing we do know about.”

      “But—”

      “This is a note, not a body,” he insisted, while Butch used tweezers to lift the page into a Ziploc bag from his pocket. These detectives came prepared. “Don’t buy into his game, Corbett. It’s what he wants folks to do.”

      He was feeding, thought Faith again—and now it made sense. The killer had been high on the fear he’d created. That’s why he’d left the note—to create fear. That’s what she’d heard in his pulse, in his heartbeat.

      She shivered.

      Roy made a disgusted sound. “You’re wet. You want my jacket?”

      “No.” She managed to stop him before he could shrug it off. “I should probably get my roommates home. It looks like things are closing up early, after this.”

      “They were in the main ballroom the whole time, right? As long as they didn’t see anything suspicious, head ’em out.”

      “Thank you for the coffee.”

      Roy was frowning at the now-bagged note, holding it up to the light. He wasn’t even looking at her. But he said, “Seven okay?”

      That took Faith by surprise. “What?”

      He slid his gaze from the missive to her, mouth threatening again. “Tomorrow night. Date. Seven?”

      Despite her attack of the heebie-jeebies out front? The only thing more embarrassing than the idea that this was now a pity date was the idea of him knowing she knew it was a pity date. “Okay,” she said, as they both turned to their own particular duties.

      Butch looked immensely pleased with himself.

      Faith had never been to a funeral before. She had no family besides her mother—no grandparents, no great-aunts or uncles, nobody whose passing would have required she attend their services. Since she and her mother tended to move every few years, she rarely made friends long enough to see one of them die. So she wasn’t sure how Krystal’s memorial service compared to other funerals.

      But she knew she hated it.

      The grief was palpable—grief from Krystal’s parents, who’d come to collect