Читать книгу Melody Unchained - Christa Maurice - Страница 3

Chapter 1

Melody sat next to the bed where her elderly master lay dying. Occasionally, she mopped his brow, but otherwise she stared out the window, waiting. Her next master would probably be whoever came to clean out the apartment. Billy had no family so that duty would fall to the building super, Zubrowski, a greasy man who looked at her like she was naked even when she wasn’t. Being his servant would not be enjoyable, but she knew his type. He would squander his wishes quickly and pass her along to another who was much like him. It could be a century before she got away from his kind–who wanted lots of money, women and fame–and back to one like Billy. Sweet, gentle Billy who actually cared about her. They were few and far between. They always promised to free her and then, for whatever reason didn’t. Billy had held onto his last wish until now, but like so many others, he would die without making it.

Getting revenge on the chieftain who murdered her husband had been very sweet, but might not have been worth the price.

Billy stirred, reaching for her.

“What is it, habibi?” she asked, leaning over to hear his voice. His thick, dark hair had thinned and turned gray with the decades, but he was always handsome to her.

“I am dying,” he told her for at least the thirtieth time.

“Yes, Billy. You are dying.” She shifted to the bed and took his hand in both of hers. If she could cry, she would, but tears had been taken from her with a great many other things when she’d paid for her revenge. “Billy, you had promised to free me. Do you remember?”

“Free you?” The cataracts filming his eyes made it hard to know if he understood.

“Yes, Billy. Free me. Please. Just say the words.” How many times had she been here? Sitting beside a dying man, begging him to free her, only to have him die, leaving her in the possession of the next master. Disappointment shouldn’t surprise her, but she couldn’t not try.

“My Melody. So loyal.” Billy touched her face with his withered hand. “With me until the end.”

She clenched her teeth before she snapped that she’d had no choice. He was her master. She had to stay. But he had been so kind. For fifty years, he had been the best of masters. Treating her almost like a human. Never demanding anything horrible or demeaning. He had even helped her cook and keep the house when he could. “Yes, Billy, with you until the end. Now please free me before you die.”

“Poor child, saddled with such an old man.”

If she could cry, she would be sobbing now. That she should have spent so many years hoping again, only have him lose his mind and not free her as he had promised so long ago. “Billy, you must say the words. I wish you to be free. Just say the words.”

“Say the words?”

“Yes, Billy.” Melody clutched his hand between hers. “You want me to be free, don’t you? You don’t want me to have another master. You must say the words and believe them.”

Billy’s eyes fell closed. “Say the words and believe them.” He stilled, his breathing shallow and even.

Melody glanced at the dented brass lamp Billy had kept on the nightstand all these years. Her home. The moment Billy died, she would be sucked back into it and would stay there until some idiot who owned it uttered the fateful words “I wish I had a turkey sandwich.” Billy actually liked the thing. That was why he’d bought it in the first place.

He stiffened and Melody braced herself. Any second now. “Melody,” he said in a clearer voice than she had heard in years, “I wish you free.” He reached out with his other hand in what was no doubt meant to be a dramatic move to throw the lamp across the room, but he didn’t have the strength to do more than push it an inch.

Melody jerked backward, sucking a breath into her lungs. Her head buzzed with the flow of blood. “Billy!” she cried. She clapped her hands over her ears. It hurt. Had it always hurt? Had she forgotten even that? Her fingers ached at the joints and her stomach growled. Tears flooded her eyes so she couldn’t see. “Billy, help me!”

“Melody?” Billy’s voice was distant and weak. “I’m sorry, Melody. It was your wish.”

Melody slid onto the floor, clutching her chest. A terrible noise thumped from there. A hammering. “Billy!” She grabbed for the blankets, but her fingers wouldn’t close over the material. Then the room shrank to a pinpoint.

And flickered out.

* * * *

“Oh man,” Jerry grumbled to Barnes in the hallway outside the interview room at Arden’s police station. He traced a crack in the linoloeum with the toe of his shoe. The seven-story building hadn’t been updated since it was constructed in the sixties. The disappearing tax base required every man to do double duty but, damn, he’d much rather pretend he was a CSI on a robbery than a social worker with the traumatized victims. “Why do I always have to deal with the hysterical woman? Where’s Rogers?”

“Out sick.”

“Social services?”

“The on-call woman is tied up with a child abuse case.”

“Hospital?”

“Cleared her. They said physically she’s like a newborn. Not a scratch, not a scar, nothing. In perfect shape. Besides, you have a gift with the ladies.” Barnes clapped him on the shoulder and gestured to the interview room.

Gift with the ladies. All he did was never hit on them. Jerry pushed open the interview room door. The woman...uh, girl, sat on the chair on the other side of the gunmetal gray table with her knees pulled up to her chin. Her glossy black hair hung around her face and her dark eyes were huge. Under normal circumstances she probably had dark skin, but shock had sucked all the blood out of her skin and made her sort of yellow. She was wearing a man’s shirt, white with blue pinstripes and–jeez–nothing else. Jerry trained his eyes on the file Barnes had shoved into his hands.

The girl had been found in the apartment of William Welsh. Welsh had been dead for about four days. Eighty-eight years old, William had died of natural causes. The girl had been hiding in a closet wearing– Jerry studied the photo. Wearing nothing but the shirt. Which begged the question: Why did an old coot like Welsh have a half-naked, possibly foreign, probably underage girl stuffed in a closet in his apartment?

“Hi, I’m Jerry Howland.” He held out his hand. “Can you tell me your name?”

The girl stared up at him with her huge eyes. Her face was streaked with tear tracks. “Billy’s dead,” she whispered.

Not foreign. Her voice had a faint accent, but not strong enough to pinpoint its origin. He lowered his hand and sat down in the chair across from her. “I’m sorry. Billy was your grandfather?”

“He was my master.”

Jerry set the file on the table. Master. That sounded bad. What would an eighty-eight-year-old man want with a nubile little...serving girl? He scanned the coroner’s initial report. According to it, the old man had had a really weak heart. No way was he having sex with this girl. “Do you have a name?”

The girl shivered, hugging her knees tighter. “Billy called me Melody.”

Jerry made a note on the file then made the mistake of meeting her eyes. This was why men screwed up when dealing with victims. They got sucked in by the eyes and bang, they turned into big puddles of Anything I can to do make you feel better. “Do you have a last name, Miss Melody?”

“Last name?” She blinked. “My father’s name was Sallah.”

“Okay.” Jerry made another note, fighting the urge to gather her in his arms and swear to protect her against all comers. “Can you tell me how old you are?”

“I don’t know.”

How long had Welsh been keeping this girl in his closet?

“About three thousand years.”

Too long. “Okay. You need some coffee? Something to eat?” He stood. “I’ll get you some coffee and a doughnut.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Jerry walked out of the room. In the hall, he stopped and took a deep breath. Most of the time he could handle the victims. Raped girls. Abused girls. Girls who had been through crap that would bring a grown man to his knees. He could look into their wounded eyes, promise to do everything he could and accept that he had tried, no matter what happened.

This girl? Something about this girl snagged his guts like fishhooks.

Stretching his neck, he walked down the hall to the station coffee room. The box of doughnuts had been decimated, but there were a couple of glazed and half a jelly left. He loaded them onto a napkin and turned to the coffee maker. Only it wasn’t just a coffee maker, it was one of those super fabulous special coffee makers that required a degree to operate. “Can somebody get in here and make me some coffee?” he yelled.

Barnes strolled in. “How’s the interview going?” He started fiddling with the machine.

“Great. Her name’s Melody, her father’s name is Sallah and she’s three thousand years old.”

“She looks great for her age.”

“Stop fuckin’ around,” Jerry snarled. The sharp scent of coffee should be clearing his head by now. Not really happening. Not yet. Maybe once he got to drink some. Or maybe he should consider pouring it over his head.

Barnes cocked an eyebrow at him. “Didn’t take long for her to get to you.”

“Look, you shoved this off on me. Don’t give me shit about how I handle it.”

“I’m not, but I think you’re getting personally involved really fast.” Barnes set one cup of coffee on the counter and started fooling with the other one. “It’s a year today, isn’t it?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“You can’t save everyone, Jerry.”

“I don’t need to.” He gritted his teeth. Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“How could it have been my fault, Tom? Tell me. She had cancer.”

Barnes handed him the two cups of coffee. “The first step to recovery is recognizing that you have a problem.”

Gripping the handles of the cups in one hand, Jerry grabbed the doughnuts and stalked out of the coffee room. Barnes was out of his mind. Melody, daughter of Sallah, wasn’t getting to him because of Amanda. She was getting to him because it was four in the morning and she’d been stuffed in the closet of a dead man for four days for no apparent reason. Outside the interview room he realized he didn’t have a free hand to open the door. He set the coffee on the hall table and opened the door.

Melody sat in the same pose. Maybe her arms weren’t hugging her knees quite as tight. Maybe her face wasn’t as pale. Same pose though, same heart-stopping fear in her eyes. Time to be professional about this. He put the coffee and doughnuts on the table in front of her.

“Sorry, this time of night pickin’s are pretty slim.” He slid one of the cups toward her. “So Melody, do you have any family you’d like me to call? Friends? Anyone who can come get you?”

“I have you.” Her thin hand crept across the table and she picked up one of the glazed and bit into it. “I haven’t eaten a doughnut in years. These are good. Billy had diabetes so we couldn’t have these kinds of things in the house.”

He frowned. “Melody, can you tell me why you were in that closet?”

“I was afraid. Billy wished me free before he died so I didn’t go back in the lamp and I didn’t know what to do. I’ve never been there after my master died before. I always went back in the lamp.”

“Back in the lamp?”

“My lamp.” Melody shoved the last three bites of her doughnut in her mouth and reached for the other one.

“Watch out, you don’t want to–”

Melody opened her mouth like she was trying to puke, but nothing came out.

“Shit.” Jerry leaped around the table, pulled her out of the chair, positioned his fist right under her breastbone and jerked.

Melody hacked a glob of half-chewed doughnut onto the table. Then she sucked in a huge breath and started coughing. Jerry held onto her as she recovered, the shock of the choking episode fading away as something else took its place. He liked the way her body fit against his and was a little creeped out by the fact that it was turning him on. She had some nice curves going on under that shirt. The kind that probably sang desert songs when she walked.

This was wrong. So wrong. So very, very wrong. What kind of a monster was he? She was a victim of some as-yet-undetermined crime who had just nearly bought it, thanks to a doughnut he’d given her, and he was turned on?

“You okay?” Jerry let her go and backed up before his body betrayed him.

Melody spun around and threw her arms around his neck. She smelled like spice and some dense, dark perfume. “You saved me.”

“It’s my job.” Jerry put his hands on her hips, intending to push her away, and liked it too much to do it right away. Her flesh was soft without being sloppy. She fit in his hands like a dream. When he did summon the willpower, he found that she had a stranglehold on him. “Melody, you need to let me go.”

“I don’t want to. Please, I don’t have anywhere to go.” She started sobbing.

Oh crap. Jerry patted her back. “There, there. There, there.” He always felt like a tool when women started crying. She needed a hot meal, a warm bed and a psych evaluation. None of those were things he could provide. “Go ahead and cry. You’ll feel better.” One of them should feel better. He was just going to keep feeling like a heel for thinking about her soft body under that shirt.

* * * *

Melody peered through the glass in the door of the interview room. Jerry had left her alone a long time ago. He’d held her for a quite a while when she’d cried. Then he’d put her back in her chair and left her alone with the coffee and the doughnuts.

He’d been aroused. That pleased her. Even though she wasn’t a genie anymore, she could still make a man want her. Jerry was nice. He was very strong and kind. Young too. He would live a long time. Attractive, even. Tall and lean, the way she liked them. Blond hair and blue eyes. Being in his arms had felt good but being under him would feel better. He would be a good master.

Except she didn’t need to accept whatever master she got. Melody frowned. She wasn’t a genie anymore, and things had changed since she was a human woman last. Even if her mother wasn’t long dead, she wouldn’t be choosing Melody’s next master or husband and neither would Fate by dropping her lamp into someone’s path. Freedom meant she could pick her own master. Billy had freed her just like he always promised. Was it wise to choose the first one who came along?

But she liked Jerry. He was kind and gentle. He brought doughnuts. Her stomach growled.

Doughnuts. The doughnuts and coffee Jerry brought her were tasty, but not very satisfying. Especially after all that time in the closet. She peered out the door again. If Jerry would just come back, he could take her home and she could cook him a nice meal and then satisfy him.

Melody paced around the room, wondering what it would feel like to make love as a mortal. She still hadn’t quite gotten used to her breathing and pulse. Those times with her husband had been so long ago that she barely remembered. Thousands of years serving men gave her an excellent sense of what kind of lover a man would be, and Jerry would be very gentle, even a little anxious about pleasing her.

The door opened behind her. Jerry! Finally he could take her home. Melody spun around.

Not Jerry. A small black woman with a mustard colored blouse and a pissed off expression stood before her. “Good morning, Miss– Melody. My name is Stella Jackson and I’m from Social Services. I understand you’ve had a difficult few days. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Where is Jerry?” Melody frowned as a cold snake coiled in her chest.

Stella Jackson stopped in the process of dropping a file folder on the table. “Jerry?”

“Yes, Jerry. He was here earlier. He needs to take me home with him.”

“He does?”

“Yes.” Melody folded her arms. “Where is Jerry? I don’t want to talk to anybody else.”

“Well, Jerry isn’t here anymore. His shift ended and he went home. I need to ask you some questions.” She finished putting the folder down and sat.

“I don’t want to talk to you. I only want to talk to Jerry.”

“Why?”

“Because he is going to take me home with him.”

Stella Jackson raised one eyebrow. “Did he promise to take you home with him?”

Melody cocked her head. When he left, he’d been flustered and told her to wait, but he hadn’t said he would be back for her. But why wouldn’t he be? He had been aroused. No man had ever walked away from her. He would want her in his bed, and when he tasted her cooking, he would want her in his kitchen too. “No, but I’m sure he will take me home. Men always take me home.”

“Men always take you home?” Stella Jackson repeated.

This was not going right. She needed to get out of this room so she could find Jerry. In his younger days, Billy had been something of a hellion. He had told her stories about his scrapes with the law. In his infirmity, he had liked to watch crime shows, which had given her more information about how the police worked. She’d never realized how handy that could be. “Are you charging me with something?”

“No.”

“Then I demand that you release me. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“No, but you were found living as a prisoner in the apartment of a dead man.”

“I wasn’t a prisoner.”

“You were locked in a closet and you had been there for some time.” Stella stood and gestured to the chair across from her. “Please, have a seat so we can talk.”

Melody straightened. This being free was a little more complicated than she’d thought. Stella Jackson would not allow her to leave unless she spun the proper story. Melody settled in the chair, trying to remember the hundreds of television shows she had watched with Billy. One of them had to have something useful in it. “I was not locked in the closet. I shut myself in there.”

“Why?”

Good question. “Because I was upset. Billy, my grandfather, was very dear to me. I was devastated by his loss.” She sniffled, but Stella Jackson wasn’t buying it so she stopped. “Please, I’m upset and tired and hungry. I would like to go home. I need to make arrangements for my grandfather Billy.”

“When we’re done here.”

“You cannot hold me.”

Stella Jackson pursed her lips. “You will not be released until we are certain you aren’t a danger to yourself or others.”

“I am not a danger to anyone.” Melody sighed, hoping that made her look a little more pathetic. “I loved my grandfather. I moved in with him a few–” Years ago? Months ago? Days ago? Billy had been sick for a long time, but how much or little time would they believe, considering her state? “Months ago to care for him in his old age.”

“From where?”

From where? “Las Vegas.” Billy had loved CSI. She could lie convincingly about that city. According to Burn Notice the trick to lying effectively was to sell it with confidence.

Stella made a note. “What did you do in Las Vegas?”

“Do?”

“For a living.”

So many questions. There were never this many questions on the television shows. “I was a stripper.”

Stella sighed. Melody didn’t think she meant to reveal it but a flicker of irritation showed in the woman’s eyes. According to Billy, strippers earned a lot of untraceable income and if television was correct, untraceable income meant the police wouldn’t be surprised when they couldn’t find any records of her. She’d have rather said nurse, but that required licenses and records. Maybe now that she was free Jerry could help her become a nurse.

“So you were a stripper in Las Vegas until a few months ago when you moved here to take care of your grandfather.”

“Yes.”

“And you were in that closet because…”

She was in that closet because after she came to, Billy was dead and she hadn’t known what to do so she’d fallen back on experience. Climb into a small space and wait until someone came to get her. Stella Jackson wasn’t going to accept that answer. Or rather she would, as she was signing Melody’s papers for the loony bin. What would be a good reason for hiding in a closet for four days? On that episode of CSI where all those girls got killed in the house, the one hid under the bed before she died completely in Sara Sidle’s arms. But Billy died of being old so she couldn’t have been hiding from a murderer. She had to have a better reason. “I wasn’t home the whole time.”

“You weren’t?”

“No. I went out. I was gone for a couple of days.” Oooh, this was good. It explained why there wasn’t anywhere made up for her to sleep. “I went out partying.”

“Partying?”

“Yes, and while I was gone Billy died. I felt terrible and in my grief I did what I used to do as a child when I was upset. I hid in the closet and cried.”

“After taking off your clothes and putting on a men’s dress shirt.”

They were lucky she’d been wearing the shirt. Most of the time she walked around naked. Most of her masters preferred it that way. She was lucky too. Naked would have been much harder to explain. “I had already gotten ready for bed before I found Billy. I wasn’t paying attention to him the way I should have been. I’m a terrible person.” Melody bit her lip. She was also a terrible actress. Billy made fun of people on television who delivered lines that way.

Stella Jackson let out a gusty breath. “Fine. I’ve had a real bad night so I’m going to take that answer. Do you need grief counseling or anything?”

“No. I just need a ride back to Billy’s house.”

“Fine. I’ll send someone in.” Stella Jackson grabbed her file and walked out.

Melody folded her hands on the table. Now she could find Jerry Howland, her new master.