Chapter 13

Almost four hours later, Rogue took the last exit to Serenity, her destination, the Honey Depot, the Serenity restaurant that was her starting place for looking for the guy Rex wanted her to find. She would go there before she headed home, so she wouldn’t have to leave the house again that evening. Serenity was the only place she considered a real home. The only place she would keep if she had to leave Illinois. She hoped someday to retire in this town.

She’d had to stop to see Father Macleese, but that had gone quickly. He’d asked her to fix his toaster, which she’d happily and easily done. She’d been fixing stuff for him since she was young, a definite sinner on the streets of Chicago, hiding out from a controlling uncle and a doormat aunt, both of whom, when they could catch her, would demand things from her that she knew were wrong, but that she was good at. Picking pockets. Sneaking into houses. Hotwiring cars. She’d been doing that one since she was nine, what, like it was hard? Not. Just looking at the wires had told her which had done what and what simple twist would make the car run.

Father Macleese had fed her often, so she only had to go home once a day, if that, only had to deal with her ‘family’ when she had nowhere else to go. She’d never gone to school, but Father Macleese let her attend all the Sunday school services at St. Joseph’s, insisting the teachers help her learn to read but ask her no questions. He was old-school, Father Macleese, a man she’d watched grow more wrinkled and bent with every passing year, even as his heart had grown kinder. And now he was nervous that he was going to lose St. Joseph’s. She’d grown up in Chicago, moving all over the city when her uncle had decided they needed to go, but she’d always found her way to St. Joseph’s as often as possible. She hated the thought of Chicago without Father Macleese to make it a more livable place. The bishop wanted him to retire, the bishop thought his parish couldn’t support the shelter for women and children he wanted to build. The bishop this and the bishop that. The bishop could go fuck himself. Father Macleese did more to help people who needed it than the bishop had ever done in his life, and when Rogue’s life calmed down, she would figure out a way to help him.

She rolled onto the main drag of Serenity, heading left and out of town immediately. Her mind went to the pendants, left in Chicago, and for the twenty or thirtieth time since she’d left the city, she told herself she’d made the right decision. She wanted them with her. Wanted them at her house in Serenity. But Boe was at her house in Serenity. And he was a complete enigma. Something told her the pendants had a lot to do with the mystery that she didn’t understand but that she was smack-dab in the middle of.

She already knew Boe was part of the mystery, the one that she used to think she was on the outside of looking in, but now she was realizing that she might be a key player in it, with someone else pulling the strings. There wasn’t much more she hated than feeling like someone else was in control of her life. Maybe being ignored, but that was it.

As she drove, her mind ran over what she did know.

One. Almost six months ago, on her 25th birthday, she’d begun having… images come to her. Images and emotions and… knowings, that she didn’t understand. The mind-pictures had become more intense with each passing week, and the ones she’d had recently had made her do some sort of a blackout-drunk routine. She would think of cops, or wolves, and then lose herself completely. Sometimes for almost an hour. Once she’d “woken up” in her garage here in Serenity, painting a wolf onto a wooden sign she must have made herself. Another time she’d found herself standing in front of that stupid art sculpture in the park downtown, a can of yellow spray paint in her hand, graffiti scrawled on the metal thing that looked like a flag or a blanket in front of her. It had said, The wolves are guarding the sheep, wake up, sheep! What did that even mean?

Two. She’d realized that she’d started to believe in werewolves, and she wasn’t sure when or how. Like one day she was all, werewolves? Yeah, right, if she thought of them at all. And the next day she was all, werewolves? Where? What did they look like?

Three. Boe had come into her life. She’d been out on one of her excursions one evening, waking up in Sinissipi Park at almost four in the morning, graffiti all over the playground, but something else had drawn her attention, making her pocket the Sharpie she’d been using on the side of the building and whirl around in the dark, trying to pick out whoever was watching her do what she’d been doing.

He’d been hiding in the trees far enough away that she knew he couldn’t see her face, but still, he might be able to ID her well enough for a cop to arrest her for vandalism. Her heart had sunk at the thought of being arrested in Serenity, for the first time ever, her fingerprints finally on file, and for something so stupid! She didn’t understand the graffiti. Didn’t get her sudden compulsion, her inability to discipline her own mind like she’d done all her life. She’d stood there, hating the underground obsession that drove her to do it for whatever reason, wondering if it was some sort of guilt about her profession manifesting in this silly midnight need, maybe a desire to get caught so she would have the opportunity to admit all her other crimes.

But no, that didn’t make sense. She didn’t feel guilty about what she did. She only stole from people who had too much, only took jobs after researching them first. She’d already looked up the guy Rex wanted her to find and confirmed what he’d said was true. The target was a small-time drug dealer, liked to hook kids early and bleed them dry. Been arrested for a multitude of other equally nasty things. She had no problem feeding one criminal to another criminal, no problem hooking back property that had already been stolen once.

What about stealing the file from the cops? Rogue shrugged in her car, with no one there to see it. Soren had already known what was in that file, he’d said, and he just wanted it out of their hands. She’d peeked at it, and it was exactly as he’d said. Pictures of his place, speculation about whether or not his brother would go there, and some personal details that hadn’t seemed to make a lot of sense. Besides, the cops had to have copies of that shit, didn’t they? She knew that and she knew Soren knew that, so what she had finally decided was that the stealing of the file was for a message. A kind of ‘fuck you’ to Chief Lorenzo. A big slap in the face that said, you’re not as smart or as good as you think you are.

Rogue didn’t mind being part of something like that at all. As much as she loved cops, she hated them, too. She loved them for their big bodies, their I’m-the-shit attitudes, and their total lack of a problem with knocking someone on their ass if that someone was asking for it. She hated them because you couldn’t be in her business and not hate someone who had the authority and the balls to take everything away from you with one arrest.

But the only man she’d ever gotten off with had been a cop. Most men she slept with knew her as someone she wasn’t, like Bradford, who thought she was a sweet, shy librarian and so he had sweet, shy librarian sex with her. Always missionary position with 42 pumps per minute, and 52.2 seconds of cuddling afterwards. She liked the closeness, didn’t mind the sex, but always had to finish herself in the bathroom after. Except for that one guy…

He’d been a cop, a big one, he’d had no idea that she was a criminal, and he probably wouldn’t have cared. He saw her free-climbing in Yosemite, on her own, and had broken off from his group of friends to spot her. He’d never once told her she shouldn’t be out there alone and she could see his admiration for her every time she looked down at him. He’d been digging her hard. He hadn’t spoken much, but the one time she had fallen not-on-purpose, she’d been glad he was there to lead her to the pad. That evening, as the sun had been setting, she’d dropped to the ground, exhausted, and said three words to him. “You a cop?” His haircut and clothes telling her it was that or military, his cocksure attitude and the shit on his belt leaning toward cop.

He’d nodded, and she’d flashed him a slow, predatory smile, one that said, good for you, if you’re gonna do it, do it now. I’m waiting.

He’d done it, pushing her against the rock she’d been climbing, taking her hard and fast and standing up, and she’d screamed out her pleasure with the light of the setting sun in her eyes.

If he’d said no, he was military, she might have gotten his name and number. Instead, they’d walked out in silence and gone their separate ways, but she always remembered him when she thought about her werewolf problem, as she liked to call it. In fact, it was sometimes his face that flashed in her head just before the images began to play. His handsome, rough-hewn face and cocky smile that turned on the mind-movie, frequently spitting her into a darkness she couldn’t control.

She shook her head in her sedan. Fuck! What had she been thinking about before she’d gone on the world’s longest trip down memory lane. Her mind was shot and she hated it, but she never lingered on shit like that. Get up, brush yourself off, rail and bail and leave no trail. In other words, action, not words.

But still, she had to drag herself back to reality. There was no action to be done, which was her strong point, but plenty of thinking to be done, which she didn’t enjoy near as much. But no one else would take over the job. She was the only one available to try to worry the mystery she was wrapped up in into the light of day.

Oh yeah, she’d been thinking of Boe and the night she’d found him.

Ok, starting over. Three. She’d been doing her own version of the dirty in the park, felt someone watching her, but instead of taking off, she’d sought him out. Found a grown man of about sixty, thin skin, bruises everywhere, terrified expression and mannerisms, cowering in the woods, his clothes drenched through. She could see the outline of his ribs under the ratty t-shirt he wore. He’d had no shoes on his feet.

Rogue walked silently into the forest on the path, her ability leading her right to the man who was watching her every move. He was no threat, every sense in her body told her that. She stepped off the trail and found him cowering at the bottom of a large evergreen, pushed up against the trunk. He’d been trying to gather leaves to use as a blanket for his bare feet and the dirt was showing through in large circular patches. Snow hadn’t flown yet, but the chill in the air said it could be any night. Tonight, even.

“Hey,” Rogue said, softly, not wanting to startle him. “There’s a homeless shelter about two miles from here.”

His eyes flew from the ground to her face, like he’d been hoping she wouldn’t talk to him, but when she did, everything had changed for him. “Homeless… shelter?” he’d said, like he had no idea what such a thing would even be.

“Yeah, you can warm up there, they’ll feed you. Maybe even let you sleep there. Give you some shoes.”

He looked from her face to his bare feet, then back again. “Will there be, ah, lawmen at the establishment?”

His voice was as small as his body, and he spoke with rigidness and an accent she couldn’t place. “Lawmen?”

The small man cleared his throat, looking around furtively, and Rogue’s heart went out to him. No one should have to sleep in the woods on a cold night.

“Yes, well, that is to say, a Sheriff. Will there be a sheriff at the establishment?”

Ah, so he’d broken some law and didn’t want to get caught. She took him in from head to toe, unable to decide what exactly he might have done. He looked weak as a kitten and half-starved. “No, probably not, unless there’s a fight or something.”

He’d tried to smile then, and bow at the waist, even though he was sitting down. “Thank you, Mistress, for your kindness. I shall go directly.”

Rogue pursed her lips. He was lying to her. And she was about to do something stupid. But she would never forgive herself if she didn’t. Besides, something about the man called to her, spoke directly to her, like a voice of a trusted friend whispering in her ear. Her need to know his story eclipsed anything else. “Look, I’ve got a change of clothes that will fit you at my place. And some leftover pizza. Why don’t you come home with me? It’s just gonna get colder tonight.”

“Oh no, Mistress. That is perfectly alright. I’ll be fine.” But his voice broke when he said it, and when she looked closer, the bottoms of his feet were torn up, the skin curled and weeping around open sores, like he’d been walking over sharp rocks for hours.

She bent and hoisted him under his elbow. “Sorry, Pops, but I’m not leaving you out here to get turned into a pops-icle. Let’s go, alley-oop. All I’ve got is cold deep-dish and Pepsi, but the place is warm and you’ll be off your feet.”

He’d cried then, but she hadn’t let it sway her. He’d cried again after she fed him and clothed him, but she could understand that, especially if he’d been homeless as long as he looked like he had.

Things hadn’t gotten too weird for a few weeks.