Beguiled

by Darynda Jones

  She lifted her delicate chin, as though refusing to let the incident hamper her life—her second life—any more than it already had. She patted my hand. “You two will find them. I’d bet my very existence on it.”

  I hated to state the obvious, but that was exactly what she was doing. Betting her existence on what she believed Annette and I were capable of. Because we’d led so many murder investigations throughout our careers, what with me being a washed-up restaurateur and Annette being an out-of-work office manager-slash-barista. Thank God we had the chief on our side.

  The chief and Roane sat at the table.

  “I’ll have to dispose of that,” Roane said, gesturing toward the canister, “but first you need to know it wasn’t there earlier this evening.”

  “The canister?” I asked.

  “The nitroglycerine.”

  I rested my elbows on the table. “What do you mean?”

  He looked at Annette. “I found the belladonna and the mushrooms. But just in case, I checked out everything in the entire kitchen, including all of the canisters. Two hours ago, there was no nitroglycerin.”

  Annette straightened. “What are you saying?”

  “There was no nitroglycerin in the flour,” he repeated.

  Was he accusing my BFF of something? “Roane, maybe you missed it. I mean, you were searching for—”

  “Anything,” he interrupted. “Anything out of the ordinary. I wouldn’t have missed it. I have a lot of experience with nitroglycerin.”

  “Okay, then maybe… wait.” I tossed him a wary frown. “Why do you have a lot of experience with nitroglycerin?”

  “And no,” he said, ignoring my question and glancing at Annette again, “I am not accusing you of anything. I’m just wondering if you saw anything out of the ordinary. Was the canister already out on the counter? Was the lid open? Anything unusual.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I found it in the cabinet between the canisters of sugar and coffee.”

  He nodded in thought, but I had questions. “Then how did it get there?” I asked him. When he didn’t answer, I looked at the chief.

  He was studying the table, deep in thought as well. “For now,” he said, his voice grave, “everyone in this room eats only takeout. Nothing from the house until further notice.”

  “I agree,” Roane said.

  My heart sank in my chest. “But coffee.”

  “Not even coffee,” he said, and the edges of my vision darkened.

  The stark reality of the situation hit Annette then, too. “You can’t mean it.”

  “How long will it take you?” the chief asked Roane.

  “Tell me you don’t mean it.” She was beginning to hyperventilate.

  Roane pressed his full mouth into a straight line. “Not long. I’ll be back before morning.”

  “How are we going to survive?”

  “Wait, what?” I asked as Roane stood. “You’ll be back from where by morning?”

  He winked at me, lifted his shirt over his head, and all seemed right with the world again. Gigi agreed. She perked up, and an adoring smile settled on her face. The chief covered her eyes, knowing what was coming next when Roane toed out of his boots. He walked to the mudroom off the kitchen and dropped the kilt to the floor, and I sat mesmerized. That ass.

  Gigi tried to see past the chief’s hand, but Roane stole out the back door before she got a good look if her disappointed expression was any indication. I scrambled to my feet, wanting nothing more than to see Roane shift into the red wolf, but by the time I reached the back door, all I saw was a patch of fur being swallowed by the darkness.

  “God, I love when he does that,” Ruthie said from behind me.

  I stood there mourning the loss of witnessing Roane’s shift and the majority of his assets—mostly the majority of his assets—when Annette yelled, “There are laws against such cruelty!”

  Four

  A good night’s rest can make you feel energized,

  motivated, and ready to take on the world.

  Oh, sorry, that’s coffee.

  Coffee does that.

  —Meme

  It took me a solid ten minutes to pry open my lids. When I slept, I slept hard, but this was ridiculous. For some reason, I’d dreamed of salt and ships, of wood cracking and bodies sinking as seawater swallowed men whole. They were helpless against the currents and the cold and the crashing waves, but when it came time for me to surface—out of the bone-chilling water and the soul-crushing dream—I couldn’t quite manage it. I fought and fought to shake off the gremlins of sleep, but they kept pulling me back into the frigid oblivion of slumber, even with someone knocking on my door.

  Then a knock registered in my unconscious mind. A slow, persistent thing. One tap after another. Not meant to rouse me so much as make me aware of its presence. Its insistence that I take note.

  After an eternity of fighting the lids that had somehow morphed into anvils as I slept, I managed to lift them just enough to reveal my surroundings. Darkness enveloped me, so it was still night, but that was hardly unusual. What was unusual was the wood beneath my feet.

  Alarm shot through me, and my lids flew open, but I stayed motionless as my mind clawed desperately for my bearings. Salt and brine assaulted my nostrils, the scent so strong it made my eyes water. The floor was as cold as the seawater I’d dreamed about, and my bones ached from it as icy tendrils crept up my ankles and curled around my calves.

  I stood there afraid to move. Mostly because, again, I was standing. I’d been sound asleep seconds earlier, and now I was standing in a frigid, suffocating darkness like a black ocean at night.

  And the knocking continued. Not hard. Not soft. Just… there, barely two feet in front of my face, as though I were standing in front of a wall or a door.

  After realizing my eyes would not adjust, the darkness was so complete, I lifted my hand and drew an illumination spell on the air. The room burst bright around me, light bathing every nook and cranny.

  Blinking against the brilliance, I glanced around in surprise. I was in the attic, a hexagon-shaped room, completely empty save a few spiderwebs floating down from a single fixture on the ceiling. Six small doors surrounded me, like they’d been created for a child’s playhouse. Each door should have led to a small cathedral room, hence the six gables that formed Percy’s circular roof. But when I first found the attic a few days ago, I’d sent my magics inside to find a vast, dark chasm that went on for what seemed like miles. I’d also found something that grabbed hold of my light. Sunk its teeth in. Wouldn’t let go.

  I stood in front of the door I’d tried to open earlier. The one in which I felt a presence, dark and angry, though admittedly, I hadn’t tried the others. No one knew what the rooms held. No one knew why I’d created them when I was a child, including me. Ruthie had told me they’d just appeared one day, and when she asked me about them, I’d said they were for someone, or something, called Bead-uh.

  I was three.

  To this day, I had no idea how I did it, why I did it, or who Bead-uh was, though I couldn’t help but wonder if it was Bead-uh knocking on the door now.

  The knocking continued at the same pace, but it was slowly growing louder and louder. Last time, the entity inside almost broke down the door, it hit it so hard. This time it was being less aggressive but more persistent. I longed to know what was inside. Even more so now. Had it somehow summoned me here? In my sleep?

  Even if it had, the doors could not be opened. Roane had told me they’d tried everything to open them over the years. They’d even bought some kind of explosive. One of the doors, scarred with black burn marks, held the evidence of their efforts. The fragile-looking things were simply impenetrable, so whatever lurked inside was SOL.

  “Sorry,” I said to the being, stepping away, and the knocking stopped.

  I turned back, wondering again how I’d gotten here. The only way into the attic was via a secret passageway, one that even Percy couldn’t infiltrate due to the
salt-soaked shiplap the walls had been created from.

  And here I stood. I hadn’t sleepwalked in years. Decades, according to my dads. So why now?

  When I gave up and started toward the stairs, the knocking started again. Harder this time. And much faster.

  Whatever Bead-uh was would just have to deal. It had apparently been locked in that room for over forty years. It could take another forty to get it out. Then again, I’d obvs put it in there for a reason. I wasn’t terribly keen on trying to get it out, and that fact seemed to upset it.

  The knocking grew several decibels as I descended the narrow staircase. It was going to wake everyone in the house. Or demolish it trying.

  I turned back and yelled, “Stop!”

  The pounding ceased instantly.

  I waited a moment, then continued down the stairs. The knocking started back up. Louder this time. Harder. Faster. A rapid succession so close together they made a continuous sound, like a boxer’s punching bag.

  I picked up the pace, almost falling down the stairs to get away from whatever lurked behind that door. Whatever I’d locked inside. It was clearly none too happy about its circumstances.

  Once I hit the second floor and entered the passageway, the sound grew muffled, but apprehension prickled along my skin. Adrenaline rushed through me in tidal wave after tidal wave. I hurried to the secret entrance to my room and pushed on the shelves that opened into my bathroom, only then noticing the black ash along the threshold.

  Concern quickened my pulse even more. Percy was waiting for me when I stepped inside. He’d filled my entire room with vines. I couldn’t have walked from one end to another without getting a face full of razor wire, his thorns were so sharp.

  Once across the threshold, he guided several vines around my back and urged me farther inside before closing the shelves behind me. Then he slid around me in what I could only perceive as a hug.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and hugged the supple, thornless vines to me. “I’m sorry, Percy. I don’t know what happened. I was asleep.” I looked at the closed shelves and remembered what happened the last time I’d dragged part of him into the passageway. The vines had been turned to ash, just like the black powder on the floor. “Percy, did you try to stop me?”

  I opened my palm. He curled into it and produced a black rose, meaning yes.

  Dread filled my chest. “Did I… did I hurt you?”

  He closed the rose and squeezed my hand, but I didn’t believe him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly, hugging him to me again.

  His hold tightened briefly, then he let go and shrank back into the walls. Guilt assailed me. Did it hurt when that happened? Did he feel pain?

  I walked into my now vine-free room. Judging by the dim light, it was still early morning. The sun was just making an appearance, cresting over a sparkling ocean in the distance.

  Three hours of sleep would just have to do. I hit the showers, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and went downstairs, ready to work. Working would at least take my mind off Roane for, like, five minutes. Seven if I was lucky.

  The kitchen would need a thorough cleaning, possibly new paint as well, and then we’d have to see about getting a new oven. As a former restaurateur, I knew exactly how much an industrial oven cost. That knowledge caused an alarmingly sharp pain in my temporal lobe.

  The citrus scent of cleaning supplies hit me when I stepped onto the first floor. I walked into the kitchen to find Minerva wrapped in a blanket and draped over the table, sound asleep, and Annette on her hands and knees in front of the oven in the same clothes she’d changed into the night before. Tufts of curly brown hair had fallen from her bear-eared buns, and she wore latex gloves, too big and bright yellow, with a sponge in one hand and a toothbrush in the other.

  “Have you been up all night?” I asked, my voice rising an octave.

  She looked up at me, the dark smudges on her cheek and above her right brow bringing out the gray in her eyes. They sparkled a deep, cool pewter, like a storm over a misty ocean. That, combined with her long, thick lashes, captivated anyone who happened to look her way. The effect was fascinating. “No.” She rubbed her brow with the back of a yellow glove, smearing the smudge a bit further. “I slept a couple of hours.”

  “There’s no need to clean the oven, hon. We’ll have to get a new one either way.”

  “I’m not. I’m just trying to clean the floor.” She sat back on her heels. The white tile did seem a little worse for wear. “Unless the insurance people need to see it all as is.” Suddenly alarmed, she glanced around at all the work she’d put in.

  I followed her panicked gaze.

  She’d cleaned almost the entire kitchen. Even the white cabinets had a fresh glint to them. “Maybe I should have left it for the adjuster to see. Crap, I didn’t think of that.” She rubbed her brow again, creating two new smudges over her other brow.

  “Do we even have insurance?” She’d been conscious a lot longer than I had these last few months. She knew much more about the estate than I did.

  She beamed at me. “As a matter of fact, we do.”

  “Do they cover mysterious explosions?”

  “That, I don’t know.” She pointed to a small box of takeout coffee on the island. “Coffee and breakfast sandwiches.”

  “You went out?”

  “I did.”

  “May the Goddess bless you with a dozen children,” I said, reaching out a hand to her.

  “Bite your tongue.” She took it and struggled to her feet. “That used to be so much easier,” she said with a groan, swiping at the knees of her gray yoga pants. She removed the bright-yellow gloves and threw them across the kitchen into the sink.

  “A lot of things used to be so much easier,” I agreed. “When did Minerva come down?”

  “Shortly after I got up.” We each grabbed a cup and a cheese croissant with egg and bacon and sat at the table. “She was asleep when I got back from my coffee run. Poor thing.”

  I sat beside her and tucked a lock of long black hair behind her ear before returning my attention to Nette the Jet. “Are you sure you’re okay?” When she blinked over at me, confused, I elaborated. “Well, you were kidnapped, placed under a building being demolished, turned into a crow so you could escape—I still stand by that decision, by the way—then you shifted back into human form only to live through another explosion, and now you can suddenly see both my spells and the departed.” When I thought about everything that had happened to her—to us—in the last few days, I shook my head, astonished we hadn’t run from Salem screaming. “How are we still alive?”

  “Right?” She scooted closer, the curls that had fallen loose bouncing around her face. “With everything that’s happened over the last few days, we should be dead. And yet, here we are, alive and kicking. I think it’s you.”

  Here we go again. I rolled my eyes and took a sip of my lukewarm coffee before getting up to reheat it. At least we still had a microwave. We wouldn’t perish anytime soon.

  “Hear me out.” She rose to follow me the grueling ten feet it took to reach my destination. Because no way could I hear her from that great a distance. “You’re a charmling. You must have some kind of protective”—she waved a hand in a circle to indicate my exterior—“mojo. Like a magical barrier that keeps you safe.”

  “Fine.” I set the microwave and turned back to her. “What about you?”

  “It must extend to those around you.” She chewed on a nail in thought. “Like a shield. And you can push it out with your mind.” She couldn’t be more wrong if she’d proclaimed cheesecake a health food. Much to my undying chagrin.

  “You’ve seen too many movies.”

  She pressed her mouth together. “Okay, then, Miss Debbie Doubter, how do you explain it?”

  “I can’t,” I admitted before taking out my now-scalding coffee and hurrying to my seat, alternating the thick paper cup between my hands three times before I made it. “Holy crap, that microwave works wel
l.”

  “I think you’re like a superhero.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Only, you know, way less cool.” She sat across from me all nonchalant, like she hadn’t just insulted my very being.

  “What do you mean? I’m cool.”

  The unladylike snort she emitted would argue otherwise.

  I wilted. “I used to be cool.”

  She shook her head. “You were never cool.”

  My lids narrowed to menacing, razor-sharp slits. “I’ll have you know, I was totally cool in tenth grade.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “I was so cool, they called me the ice queen.”

  “No one has ever called you the ice queen.”

  “I was so cool, I ate popsicles in January.”

  “I’m not sure that has anything to do with—”

  “I was so cool, they once asked me to leave the swimming pool because I was turning the water to ice.”

  After a careful analysis that involved her staring at me for a semi-endless eternity, she reminded me, “They asked you to leave the pool because you swallowed half of it then coughed so hard you threw up before you could get out.”

  “Oh, yeah.” The memory washed over me in disturbing waves of disappointment. “That was a horrible day.”

  “I know. I was still in the pool.”

  I tested my coffee, decided to give it another minute, lest I lose several layers off the roof of my mouth, and asked, “Can we talk about something else?”

  She perked up. “Like… say… the business?”

  Ah, yes. Our new startup. “How’s that going?”

  “Fantastic.” She reached over Minerva and grabbed a notebook off the counter. Flipping through the pages, she said, “You have your first official office hours next week.”

  I’d been in the middle of testing my coffee again when I spit it onto her notebook.