Free Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation by M. R. Sellars Page A

forward, and the back of my hand raked
against the jangling key ring that hung from the ignition
switch.
    It was then that I realized the panic had
taken over long before I’d ever noticed its icy fingers clawing at
my stomach. A brief but welcome stab of lucidity hit me, and the
logic it brought along set off a chain reaction in my brain. I
reached for the keys and gave them a hard twist, switching off the
engine. That done, I quickly wrenched the gear shift into first
with a hard shove, doing little good for the transmission but
bringing us to a lurching halt.
    The dark music was pounding inside my skull
as I scrambled from my seat amid the dulled blare of horns. Angry
motorists were pulling around our stalled vehicle and speeding off,
narrowly missing me in the process. The commotion began to die down
only after I could be seen pulling my wife’s still-seizing body
from the driver’s seat.
    It was official. I was no longer in a good
mood.
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 8:
     
     
    “L emme get this straight…”
Ben’s voice came at me over the cell phone. “Firehair went
all Twilight Zone this time
instead of you?”
    Firehair was just one of the nicknames he had
for my wife, but it was by far his favorite.
    “Yeah, kind of,” I answered. “Or maybe in
addition to.”
    Felicity and I were parked diagonally across
from one another in a booth at Seamus O’Donnell’s. She had pressed
herself as far into the shadows of the corner as she could get, and
I was keeping a close eye on her.
    The pub wasn’t my first choice of places to
be given the situation, but it was the closest for what she needed.
Fortunately, the evening rush had not yet started, so I was able to
carry on the phone conversation without yelling over the noise of a
crowd or stepping outside.
    “What?” he chirped, a note of concern leaping
into his tone. “You were both all zoned out in a moving
vehicle?”
    “No, not exactly,” I explained, still trying
to get a handle on what had happened myself. “I had some ethereal
background noise in my head, but I never stepped over the line. I
did that this morning before you came by.”
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Do what?” he barked again.
“So you did the la-la land thing this mornin’, and you’re just now
tellin’ me?”
    “I didn’t have anything to connect it with at
the time, Ben,” I replied. “Then the whole thing with the
kidnapping happened… I mean, give me a break.”
    “So you think it all has something to do with
the Brittany Larson abduction?”
    “Maybe. I don’t know.”
    “Don’t be so goddamned overconfident, Rowan,”
he chided.
    “Cut me some slack, Ben,” I replied stiffly.
“I’m still a bit rattled. This kind of thing has never happened to
Felicity before. I’m not real happy about it, in case you haven’t
noticed.”
    “Yeah… Sorry. You’re right,” he apologized.
“So listen, where are you two right now? Home?”
    “No.” I shook my head out of reflex as I
spoke. “We’re in a bar down on Oakland called Seamus
O’Donnell’s.”
    “What’d ya’ go to a bar for?” he asked, a
note of confusion in his voice.
    “It was the closest place where I could get
her out of the heat and let her rest up,” I told him. “Besides,
it’s actually where we were headed for dinner anyway.”
    “She doin’ okay?”
    “Seems to be.” I looked across at Felicity.
She was still at the far end of the booth but had leaned forward
now, elbows on the table, eyes closed, and fingers slowly massaging
her temples. “But judging from the looks of her and speaking from
experience, she’s got a killer headache at the moment.”
    “What about you?” he pressed. “You gonna go
all loopy or anything?”
    “Like I actually know when that’s going to
happen, Ben?”
    “Yeah, forget I asked.” He huffed out a heavy
sigh then muttered, “Jeezus fuck, white man. What am I gonna do
with you two?”
    “Wish I could help you there, Chief,” I told
him. “I’m wondering