“But what pissed me off was… feeling bullied. By the one person who I trust more than anyone. By the one person I know would never hurt me like that. Being told what I can and can’t do… it felt way too much like the first twentysomething years of my life.”
“I don’t—”
“I could get hit by a taxi tomorrow, fall through a set of broken cellar doors—”
“Baby, please stop. My heart can’t take this.”
“—contract some unidentified microbe from a bad roast beef sandwich that proceeds to eat my intestines and my death is written into medical textbooks for future med students to study.”
“You had me until the flesh-eating bacteria.”
I laughed under my breath, and I caught a weak smile on Calvin’s face too. “My point is, nothing in life is promised, including waking up tomorrow, so we need to live to the fullest. And I know you get that. But maybe you get it a little too much. Because if you’re going to keep me locked in a bunker during this case, then you’d have to protect me from all of these other mundane ways to get hurt too, and that’s not fair.”
“You can live your life just fine without consulting or politely inquiring into Sandra Habel’s murder.”
I leaned forward and flicked my finger against Calvin’s forehead. “You werekidnappedwhile on the job. I didn’t ask you to quit for your own safety, did I?”
Calvin hesitated. “No, you didn’t.”
I slowly sat back and put my hands on my knees. “Because I know that this is whatyoudo—you’re a hero. I can’t erase that from your DNA. But in the same respect, this is whatIdo—track down provenance of a wacky little gizmo called the spiritoscope—if it exists—to help people like you do an even better job. Yes,maybeI should have told you who I wanted to talk to about the spiritoscope beforehand, but it doesn’t change the fact that I was doing exactly what Ferguson hired me to do. Think of me as your Neil—no, wait, that’s not what I mean.”
Calvin laughed. It was so low, almost like a breath with a hint of amusement, but I’d take it.
“What I mean is, I’m your backup. Your support.”
“The questions you’re asking need to be asked by the police, Sebastian.”
“No, look… be it the arts and antique community or the spiritual and mediumship community, they’re both small, closed off to outsiders, and tend to handle their own problems internally. But if you’ve got an in, if you’re not law enforcement and can manage to have a conversation with someone, you can pick up some good, even great, gossip. Sometimes that’s how artifacts get hunted down—a good old, he-said, she-said.”
Calvin seemed to finally be mulling my words over.
“I told you this morning that we make a good team. What’d you say to me?”
“I said, we made the best team.”
“So let’s start acting like one,” I concluded.
Calvin blew out a breath and stroked the bristle on his face. “I’m going to regret this.”
I raised my left hand to show off my wedding ring as I said, “No takebacks.”
He wrapped his big hand around mine, pulled me close, and kissed me. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
“Make everything better after a fight. I nearly threw up the entire time I was in Inwood. And to hear that you felt I’d bullied you….”
I pressed my forehead to Calvin’s. “But I understand what stoked those flames now, you see?”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“It’s behind us,” I clarified. And it was. PTSD wasn’t an excuse, but it went a hell of a long way to ratifying a wrong when Calvin made himself as vulnerable as he just had. “I’m glad you told me,” I said once more. And before he had a chance to spiral, to obsess, to beat himself up even more, when I did know he was sorry to the very depth of his soul, I said the only thing I could think of that would snap him to attention: “Radcliff propositioned me.”
He pulled back. “What?”
Bingo.
I smirked, jumped to my feet, and got out of the tub. I heard Calvin swear as he stumbled out of the bathroom behind me. I’d barely reached the foot of the bed when his arms wrapped around my waist from behind and Calvin tossed me onto the mattress. I fell, bounced and laughed, then made a sort of cartoonwooshsound when he dropped on top of me.
