Unbroken Vows

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Will held back an ungodly curse as he glared at the line of cars in front of him. Usually, the drive from All Saints Church in Old Town Pasadena to his house in the Bungalow Heaven section of town took him fifteen minutes at the most. This afternoon, though, there had been an accident on Orange Grove Avenue, his usual route home. And although he knew the area well and had decided to drop down to Villa Avenue to head east that way, apparently all the other Thursday afternoon commuters had decided to do the same thing, and traffic on the residential street was bumper-to-bumper, probably no better than the traffic on the eastbound 210 Freeway less than half a mile away.

Even though he’d only told Rosemary that he’d be home somewhere a little after five and therefore didn’t have a hard-and-fast deadline for his arrival, he hated the thought of being late with no explanation. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and pressed her entry on his contacts list. Her cell phone rang and rang, and then went to voicemail.

Hey, it’s Rosemary. I really want to talk, but something else has me tied up right now. Leave me a message, and I’ll call you as soon as I can.

It felt a little foolish for him to leave a voicemail when he’d probably be home in about ten minutes or so, but he went ahead and did it anyway.

“Hi, Rosemary. I’m stuck in traffic, but I should be home by five-thirty…I hope. Just wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t worry. Love you.”

He ended the call there and slipped the phone back in his pocket. It still felt new and a little strange to be declaring his love so openly, but they’d both said “I love you” several times to each other by that point, so he didn’t see why he should dance around the issue. After all, he did love her, more than he’d ever thought he could love someone. She was bright and strong and lovely, and something that had been sorely missing from his life.

As to why she hadn’t answered her phone, well, he supposed there were any number of reasons for that. She could have gone out to collect the mail — it was delivered very late in the afternoon in his neighborhood — or she could have been in the bathroom, or next door at his neighbor Lucille’s. The two women had hit it off right away, even though more than forty years separated their ages. Will suspected some of the attraction could have been Lucille’s dogs, a pair of lively little terrier mixes, but he was glad of the women’s acquaintance nonetheless. It made Rosemary feel even more connected to his life, to the world he’d built around himself over the past decade. He was profoundly grateful that she’d chosen to be a part of it.

He finally pulled into the driveway and saw Rosemary’s little pale green Fiat parked up close to the garage. Clearly, she hadn’t run out to the grocery store or gone on some other errand. Then again, he didn’t see why she would have, since they’d already discussed going grocery shopping together, as the cupboards were starting to look a little bare.

Well, he supposed he’d figure it out soon enough. He parked behind her Fiat, then got out of the vintage Dodge Challenger that was his daily ride and locked it behind him. Satchel with his work papers slung over one shoulder, he went to the front door and let himself in.

“Rosemary!” he called out, figuring she must be back in the kitchen, or maybe in the small bedroom he used as an office.

Only silence met his greeting, however, and he found himself frowning. He supposed she could also be out in the backyard, although it was getting on toward dusk, and the day had been just cool enough that it wouldn’t have been all that comfortable to sit outside for any length of time.

Even so, he set his satchel down on the dining room table and went through the kitchen and out the back door, then paused on the stoop to take a quick look around. The backyard was as empty as the house, though, and he found his frown deepening. There was no point in calling her name again; the yard wasn’t big enough that she could have been out of eyeshot somewhere.

He went back inside and glanced at the refrigerator, thinking that maybe she’d attached a note with one of the magnets on the door. However, he didn’t see anything, so he went back through the house, checking all the likely places where she might have also left a note — the dining room table, the little table by the door, even his desk back in the office. Every surface was bare, or at least, bare of notes, since the usual pleasant clutter of books and magazines kept things from being completely tidy.

Even though he had a feeling it would be a wasted effort, he got out his phone again and tried making another call. Just like the time before, it went straight to voicemail. Wherever Rosemary was, either the reception wasn’t good, or she’d turned off her phone altogether. That didn’t sound like her, though. With everything they’d been through together, she’d made a point of keeping her phone on and fully charged so there wouldn’t be any issue with getting through to her. And although Southern California had pockets of bad reception just like every other region of the world, Pasadena certainly didn’t have many of them.

Unease began to tighten the muscles in his shoulders and neck, although Will tried to tell himself there had to be a perfectly logical reason why Rosemary was currently unreachable. He pushed aside his worry as best he could, and decided to go next door and ask Lucille if she’d seen Rosemary anywhere. For all he knew, she was there with Lucille now, and hadn’t heard her phone because they were playing with the dogs in the backyard.

The mental image was reassuring enough that he felt himself relax slightly. He slipped his phone back into his pocket and went outside, although he didn’t bother to lock up the house since he was only going next door. The evening breeze was cool and ever so slightly damp, a sign that the winds had shifted and were once again coming in from the ocean. If the weather held like this, they’d have a cool Halloween.

Lucille Atkinson’s house wasn’t so very different from his, a smallish Craftsman-style home built around the turn of the last century. Unlike his home’s more sedate paint scheme of cream and dark green, though, her place was a cheerful pink with accents of burgundy and white and deep blue. The flowers that bordered the front walk were also pink and burgundy and white, echoing the colors of the house. Usually, he found himself smiling whenever he looked at that pink house, but right then, he couldn’t quite summon a smile. Yes, it was probably likely that Rosemary was over here…but what if she wasn’t?

Will mounted the steps to the front porch and then rang the doorbell. At once, dogs began barking inside, sharp little yelps that were borderline yappy but not quite. A moment later, the door opened, and Lucille blinked up at him. She was in her middle seventies, with some of the thickest, snowiest-white hair he’d seen outside an actress playing Mrs. Claus. Her features were still delicate and pretty. Actually, the person she reminded him most of was that old silent movie actress, Lillian Gish.

“Will!” Lucille exclaimed, looking a bit startled. “What can I do for you?”

“Is Rosemary here?” he asked, and did his best not to peer past her into the depths of the house to see if he could catch a glimpse of the woman in question.

“‘Rosemary’?” Lucille repeated, clearly surprised. At her feet, her two terrier mixes, Daisy and Rosie, milled about, tails wagging, their barks silenced now that they knew who was at the door. “No, I haven’t seen her at all today.”

Damn it. If she wasn’t here, then where in the world could she be?

“Is there anything wrong?” Lucille asked then. Obviously, she’d seen some kind of shift in his expression, something that told her he was worried by her reply.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “It’s just — Rosemary isn’t home, which I suppose wouldn’t be that strange, except I know she wasn’t working today, and she didn’t tell me about any plans to go anywhere. Besides, her car is still parked in the driveway.”

Lucille craned her head out the doorway, as if by doing so, she could somehow catch a glimpse of the car in question, even though Will’s driveway was on the other side of his house and couldn’t be seen at all from the porch where they stood. “That is odd. Do you think she went for a walk?”

“That’s the most likely explanation,” he said. “I don’t know why she didn’t leave me a note, though.”

“Maybe she did, and you just didn’t see it,” Lucille suggested, and he gave a slow nod.

“I suppose that’s possible. I’ll go back and take a look around.”

His neighbor offered him an encouraging smile. “I’m sure that’s what happened. But I’ll keep an eye out for her as well.”

“Thanks, Lucille.” Will did his best to smile in reply, although he knew his expression probably looked a little forced. Still, there wasn’t much else he could do at the moment, and he certainly didn’t want to say anything that might alarm his neighbor. So far, she had absolutely no clue about all the strange doings he and Rosemary had been involved in lately, and he wanted to keep things that way. Dealing with the Greencastle demons was bad enough without dragging his neighbors into the whole mess.

He gave Lucille a wave as he went back down the steps and headed over to his own house. Before he turned down the front walk, he paused on the sidewalk for a moment, hoping against hope that he’d see Rosemary come around the corner at the end of the street and walk toward him, blissfully unaware of the worry she’d caused.

But there was still no sign of her, and after a moment, Will made himself go back inside the house. Once again, he scanned his surroundings, thinking that he’d see a note dropped on the floor, maybe sent there by a wayward breeze, since the side windows in the living room were still partway open. However, he didn’t see anything that looked like a note, not even when he got down on his hands and knees and peered behind the couch, although he had to admit that was a very strange place for one to have fallen.

He got up and brushed at the knees of his trousers, wondering what to do next. If their circumstances had been at all different, he would have told himself to calm down and wait. But since they’d recently fled the home of a powerful half-demon with the stolen footage in their possession, this wasn’t exactly a normal situation. True, there hadn’t been any sign of Daniel Lockwood or any of the other cambions who’d made that small Indiana town their home, but what did that mean? Had they really given Lockwood the slip, or had he and his demon fellows merely been waiting for an opportunity to descend and spirit Rosemary away?

Stop getting yourself all worked up over what’s probably nothing, he scolded himself, but that inner rebuke rang hollow. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d manufactured their enemies out of thin air. They really did exist…and they probably had revenge on their minds.

However, Rosemary wasn’t exactly defenseless. The house was warded, and so far there’d been no signs of any marauding demons, or even any attempts by the demons to come around the property at all. Also, her own innate angelic powers had proven that she was more than a match for Daniel Lockwood, even if he somehow had managed to defeat the wards she’d set.

And there was certainly no sign of a struggle. The house looked basically the same as it had when he’d left that morning. If the demons had come for Rosemary — if they’d somehow managed to overpower her — there would have been some evidence left behind.

Unless they cleaned up after themselves, he thought glumly. It’s not as though they would have left the equivalent of a big neon sign proclaiming what they’d done.

That seemed plausible, although if they really had taken her away, Will didn’t know what he could do to help her. He was just an ordinary man, not anyone who possessed otherworldly powers. Against a full-blood demon, his faith and his Bible — and some strategically deployed bottles of holy water — might be enough for him to prevail, but in a way, these part-demon men were a far more frightening adversary. Their human blood allowed them to treat holy water as a nuisance, not the acid equivalent it was for full demons.

Will’s fingers brushed against the phone in his pocket, and for a moment, he wondered whether he should call Michael and ask for advice. Unfortunately, with his friend five hundred miles away in Tucson, there probably wasn’t a lot he could do to help.

But maybe another kind of psychic….

Rosemary’s gifts hadn’t come to her solely from her father. Her mother was also very gifted, and had already proven herself to be the sort of person who wouldn’t hesitate to offer assistance. Although Michael certainly didn’t want to cause Glynis McGuire any alarm, he also couldn’t think of who else to contact. If nothing else, she might have some suggestions for where Rosemary might have gone. While he didn’t like to admit such a thing to himself, it was only the truth that there was still a great deal he didn’t know about the woman he loved. This lack hadn’t bothered him too much, since he’d thought they’d be able to learn about one another as time passed, but at the moment, he could only think that Glynis might be able to fill in a few gaps.

Her contact information was already in his phone, along with the numbers for Rosemary’s sisters Celeste and Isabel, just as he’d given Rosemary the phone numbers of a few people at the church, in case she ever had trouble getting hold of him for some reason. Will hesitated for a moment more, then pulled the phone out of his pocket and swiped his finger over the entry for Glynis McGuire.

Her phone rang several times, and he found himself tensing, wondering if she was also going to be unreachable. It was now a little past six — maybe she’d gone out for an early dinner, or had a meeting or something else occupying her time. He vaguely remembered Rosemary saying something about a book club; maybe that was where she’d gone, why she wasn’t picking up her phone.

But then the fourth ring abruptly ended, and a woman’s voice came through the speaker, sounding uncertain. “Hello?”

“Glynis?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Who’s calling?”

“It’s Will Gordon.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding relieved. “I didn’t recognize the number, so I almost didn’t answer. But then something told me I had better pick up.”

Her psychic gifts at work, telling her this was no ordinary phone call? Maybe; he’d seen Rosemary’s talents in action, and therefore knew it wasn’t wise to ignore a McGuire woman’s little impulses. “I’m glad you did,” he said. “Have you heard anything from Rosemary?”

“No,” Glynis replied, a note of caution entering her voice. “Why?”

Briefly, he explained the situation, although he did his best to downplay his concerns, despite the worry that seemed to thrum louder and louder along his nerve endings. It didn’t seem as though he did a very good job of hiding his unease, because when he was done, Glynis sounded more troubled than before.

“Maybe I should come over,” she said.

“I’m not sure that’s necessary — ” he began, but she cut in, overriding his protest.

“I think it might be,” she told him, her tone firm. “If I’m there, I might be able to sense something of what happened to her.”

“There’s a very good chance that nothing has happened, and I’m blowing this out of proportion.”

“Well,” Glynis said, “if that turns out to be the case — if Rosemary shows up while I’m over there — then the three of us can all go out to dinner and have a laugh about it. But if not….” The words trailed off into silence, followed by a long pause. When she spoke again, the worry was clear in her voice. “If not, then it’s better I know about it, don’t you think? And I think I probably have a better chance of learning something, unless you have some psychic powers you haven’t told me about.”

“No psychic powers,” Will replied, thinking this probably would have been easier if he did. At the very least, he’d have a little more to offer Rosemary than his very modest salary at All Saints and a house not much bigger than her own small two-bedroom home in Glendora. “Unfortunately.”

“They can be a blessing and a curse,” Glynis said. “Anyway, I’ll be over in about fifteen minutes. With any luck, Rosemary will have shown up by then, and we can forget about all this and go out to eat.”

“I’ll hope that’s exactly what happens,” he said. “Drive safe.”

“I will.”

They ended the call there. This time, Will didn’t put the phone back in his pocket, but instead placed it on the coffee table, thinking he didn’t want to waste the few seconds it would take to fish the thing out if he did get a call from Rosemary.

As he sat down to wait for Glynis, however, he had a feeling that call would never come.