Blood Pact

first piece. She threw her weight against it and it lifted with a moist, sucking sound, exposing a line of gray-blonde curls and perhaps a bit of shoulder.

    How could she have forgotten where she'd left her mother?

    Begging for forgiveness, she clawed at the remaining boards. . . .

    "Vicki! Vicki, wake up, it's only a dream.”

    She couldn't stop the first cry, but she grabbed at the second and wrestled it back where it came from. Her conscious mind clung to the reassurances murmured over and over against her hair. Her subconscious waited for the next board to be removed. Her hands clung of their own volition, fingers digging deep into the shoulder and arm curved protectively around her.

    "It's all right, Vicki. It's all right. I'm here. It was only a dream. I'm here. I've got you . . ." The words, Henry knew, were less important than the tone and as he spoke he drew the cadence around the fierce pounding of her heart and convinced it to calm.

    "Henry?”

    "I'm here.”

    She fought the terror for control of her breathing and won at last. A long breath in. A longer breath out. And then again.

    Henry almost heard the barriers snap back into place as she pushed away, chin rising defiantly.

    "I'm okay." It was only a dream. You're acting like a child. "Really, I'm okay." The darkness shifted things, moved furniture that hadn't been moved in fifteen years. Where the hell is the bedside table? "Turn on the light," she commanded, struggling to keep new panic from touching her voice. "I need my glasses.”

    A cool touch against her hand and her fingers closed gratefully around the heavy plastic frames. A second touch helped her settle them on her nose just as the room flooded with light. Squinting against the glare, she turned to face the switch and Michael Celluci's worried frown.

    "Jesus. Both of you.”

    "I'm afraid so." Henry shifted his weight on the edge of the bed and asked, without much hope of success, "Do you want to talk about it?”

    Her lip curled. "Not likely." Talking about it would mean thinking about it. Thinking about what she'd have found, what she'd have seen, if she'd managed to tear up just one more piece of floor. . . .

    "Celluci? Fergusson. Med school's got three Chens. One of them's even a Tom Chen, Thomas Albert Chen. And guess what, the kid's got an airtight alibi not only for that night but for the whole two and a half weeks our boy was at the body parlour. Rough luck, eh?”

    Celluci, receiver pinned between shoulder and ear, washed down a forkful of scrambled eggs with a mouthful of bitter coffee. He hadn't thought Fergusson a subtle enough man for sarcasm. Obviously, he'd been wrong. "Yeah, rough. You take his picture around to Hutchinson's just in case?”

    "Give it up, Celluci, and stop wasting my fucking time. You and I both know that we're not looking for any Tom Chen."
    Fergusson sighed at Celluci's noncommittal grunt, the sound eloquently saying give me a break. "Tell Ms. ex-Detective Nelson that I'm sorry about her mother, but I know what the fuck I'm doing. I'll get back to you if we get any real information in.”

    Celluci managed to hang up and shovel another pile of eggs into his mouth before he succumbed to Vicki's glare and repeated the conversation. She might have dropped off, reassured by Fitzroy's supernatural protection but he'd spent a restless night stretched out in the next room, straining to hear any sound that might make its way through the wall, wondering why he'd so easily surrendered the field. You've got the day, he reminded himself, reaching for another piece of toast. Which was really no answer at all. Goddamn Fitzroy anyway. Hopefully, massive quantities of food would make up for lost sleep.

    Vicki pushed her plate away. She knew she had to eat, but there was a limit to how much she could choke past the knots. "I want you to check that alibi.”

    Oh, God, not again. He'd really thought that she'd shaken her obsession that Tom Chen could be the actual name of their suspect.
    The profiling she'd done had been good solid police work and he'd taken it, prematurely as it turns out, as an indication that she was beginning to function. Hiding concern she wouldn't appreciate, he reached across the table and covered one of her hands with his.
    There was no point in restating the obvious when she refused to hear him, so he tried a different angle. "Vicki, Detective Fergusson knows his job.”

    "Either you check it or I do." Pulling her hand free, she