Moonshine: Phantom Queen Book 11—A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries)

by Shayne Silvers

  “I do not know.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I know it has something to do with the supermoon and the Ozark Caverns,” Watt replied in a monotone voice. “She called it something else, but I don’t know what else she could have been talking about. And I know about the caverns because she had me meet her there, several times. Also, before she sent me here, she mentioned something about visitors coming from out of town. She called it a ceremony.”

  “Right. Is there anything else you can tell me? Did you find out anything about this Angelika woman when you looked into her?”

  “I did. You wouldn’t guess it to look at her, but she’s in her forties. She rents a place in Lucia Ridge and lives alone with two cats. And she hates werewolves.”

  “Werewolves?” Leo’s eyes widened, his stunned expression mirroring my own. “Did she say why?”

  “She claims they terrorized her village when she was growing up and one day slaughtered her whole family, and that was why she came to this country. When I accused her of lying, she...did what she did to me.”

  “And what did she do to you, Watt?”

  “She...made me do things I didn’t want to do. Whenever she called, I came and took the bodies. I left them where she told me to. And then I forgot about it. But...how could I have forgotten about that?” Watt’s bloodshot eyes began scanning the faces in the room, frantically. “What did that bitch do to me?”

  “You’re drawing out his subconscious mind, Leo,” Morgan warned. “You have to pull back.”

  “And what happens if I don’t?”

  The way Leo said it, so feral and hate-filled, made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  “Then he’ll be forced to relive everything he’s ever repressed,” Morgan explained, calmly and without judgment. “You’ll strip his mind of all its defenses, and he will experience what is known as psychic death.”

  “So it would kill him?”

  “In and of itself? No. Though suicide is a likely outcome. Few have what it takes to face who and what they truly are, much less who they’ve hurt and been hurt by.”

  “Leo…” Hilde said, speaking up for the first time since he’d vetoed her concerns. “This is cruel, and you are not a cruel man.”

  “How would you know?” Leo asked, shifting the full weight of his attention to the Valkyrie before Morgan could warn him not to. Between one heartbeat and the next, Hilde’s face slackened until almost nothing remained of her previous expression.

  “I know, because I could never have fallen in love with a cruel man.”

  “Hilde...” Leo drifted off as though startled by the confession. Or maybe it was the fact that she’d said it in front of all of us; Hilde never had been the warm and fuzzy, sharing-is-caring type. The senior agent cursed, sat back, and pinched his eyes shut. “Get that mark off the sheriff, Miss le Fay, then help me reign this in, please. Before I do something I’ll regret.”

  As if on cue, Watt slumped, his head striking the floor with a dull thud, having no idea how close he’d come to being psychically eviscerated for being a shit human being.

  Pity, that.

  Chapter 35

  Roughly thirty minutes later, we sat and watched two EMTs load Watt into the back of an ambulance. The sheriff had already been sedated and restrained so as not to further impair his absurdly damaged arms, which perhaps explained the goofy grin on his face—not to mention the drool spilling down his weak chin.

  “I had no idea the sheriff was having such a hard time,” Holt mentioned as the scene unfolded. “He had some trouble after his wife left him. Anger issues. Hit the bottle a little too hard and a little too often. And after what he pulled with you and Agent Jeffries, maybe I should have suspected it was something worse...but still, a psychotic break?”

  That was the official story we’d come up with. It wasn’t a hard sell; by the time Holt and Nelson came to their senses, we’d staged it to look like Watt had drawn his gun and aimed it at himself. Of course, it helped that even after Morgan removed the mark, the sheriff couldn’t stop muttering all manner of demented nonsense. Talk of killer werewolves and dead bodies, mostly.

  “He’s gettin’ off easy, if ye ask me,” I muttered.

  “Oh, hey now. Look, I know he wasn’t exactly on his best behavior, but that don’t—”

  “D’ye know why I came down here, Deputy?” I interjected, speaking low enough not to be overheard by any of the guests who’d wandered out from their rooms to watch the show. “It’s because I heard a nasty little rumor that your sheriff was blackmailin’ undocumented immigrants. D’ye know anythin’ about that?”

  Holt’s eyebrows climbed so high I thought they might actually touch his receding hairline. “Watt? No way, not a chance. His ex-wife’s family was from Cuba, for Christ’s sake. Hell, I’ve never heard one person have a bad thing to...”

  “Somethin’ cross your mind just then, Deputy?”

  “No...I mean, yes. It was something Watt’s former sister-in-law said the other day, that’s all. A story about how he met his wife.” Holt shook his head. “No, I still can’t believe it. This is all his ex-wife trying to get back at him, I bet, for getting the house in the divorce.”

  “Interestin’ to hear ye say that, Deputy. Any chance ye can explain how a recently divorced Sheriff Watt managed to pay off his mortgage in full last month on a cop’s salary?”

  “He did what?”

  “Aye. And we have the bank records to prove it,” I lied. “So, do me a favor next time ye chat with your alcoholic boss with the anger management issues? Let him know that we hope he gets well sooner rather than later, because we have a prison sentence with his name on it.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Hey, Holt!” Nelson called to the older man after conferring with Lakota and Hilde on the other side of the street. “Those two want to come get the guy Watt took into custody.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Holt spared me a sidelong glance before shouting his response. “Tell them to hold on a minute and we’ll join them! Speed things up.”

  “Really? You sure you wouldn’t rather go with the sheriff, boss?”

  “Yes, dammit, I’m sure! We’ll deal with him, later. First let’s focus on cleaning up his mess.” Then, in the same tone of voice but much quieter, he said to me, “If what you’re saying is true, I’ll find out.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And what will ye do?”

  “If I find out he hid behind his badge while exploiting hardworking people for money? Oh, trust me, prison will be the least of his problems.”

  Funnily enough, I believed him.

  Holt sauntered off a few seconds later with a muttered farewell. Together, he and Nelson hopped into their cruisers and waited for Lakota and Hilde to pull out so they could all head to the station. From there, the two women intended to fetch Jimmy and go back to the caravan, hoping to unearth whatever tenuous connection linked their pack to Angelika’s coven. Leo and Max, meanwhile, were taking it easy at the bar while Leo recovered from bottling up all that power. Which was why when a raspy, feminine voice purred over my shoulder, I knew it had to be Morgan.

  “Nicely done! Remind me never to play poker with you.”

  “Who said I was bluffin’? Didn’t ye hear?” I held up the badge I’d palmed in case Holt had pushed back harder or, worse, been complicit in Watt’s blackmailing schemes. “You’re talkin’ to Special Agent Quinn MacKenna, Department of Homeland Security.”

  “My, what a lovely forgery! May I see it?”

  I handed it over without comment.

  “Superb craftsmanship. Simply marvelous. Here you are, dear, you can have it back.”

  “Is there somethin’ I can do for ye, Morgan?”

  “On the contrary. I believe there is something I can do for you.” Morgan slid an arm through mine and began escorting me away from the crowd of gawking onlookers. “I thought you and I might have a chat, and perhaps do a l
ittle sightseeing while we’re at it.”

  “Ye seriously want a tour of Branson? Now?”

  “Oh, absolutely not. I find this city repulsive. Nothing but squealing, misbehaved children as far as the eye can see. And all that dreadfully kitschy decor, don’t even get me started.”

  “Then where d’ye have in mind?”

  “Why, here, of course.”

  Morgan yanked me abruptly around the corner of the hotel and out of sight. Expecting to step onto the flat, paved surface of a sidewalk, I whipped around to ask the enchantress what the hell she thought she was doing. Instead, it appeared I’d stumbled onto the overgrown floor of a dense forest; I went flying, my left foot caught on a tree root. Luckily, Morgan was there to break my fall.

  The enchantress shrieked as we tumbled to the ground, then again after I mounted her hips and pinned her wrists to the dirt. She squirmed and bucked, reflexively, but had nowhere near the experience she needed to shake loose someone who’d fought as much as I had.

  “Get off!”

  “Not until ye tell me where we are!”

  “First let go of me, you thankless heathen child!”

  “D’ye use a Gateway?” I glanced in both directions, searching among the trees for any sign of those magical rifts that allowed exceptionally gifted practitioners to bypass customs—not to mention defy the laws of physics. Unfortunately, there were none. Wherever we’d ended up, we were stuck here until she decided otherwise. “Take us back, right now!”

  “I will do no such thing,” Morgan snapped, her eyes dancing with irritation. “I brought you all the way out here so we could talk in private, and so we might investigate those caverns that odious Regular mentioned. Because I’m nice like that. Now, kindly get off of me before you ruin this dress more than you already have, and I am forced to turn you into a toad.”

  “Swear ye mean me no harm, and I’ll let you up,” I insisted, warily.

  “You have my word.”

  I slid off her, slowly, and sat with my back pressed against the thin trunk of a young tree. A quick scan suggested Morgan was telling the truth. The forest mirrored what I’d seen of the Ozarks thus far—nothing but viridescent trees and rock clusters everywhere the eye could see. We were at the base of a downhill slope leading to a hilltop backlit by a setting sun.

  “This better come out,” Morgan muttered as she rose and inspected the back of her dress. “I didn’t exactly pack a second outfit.”

  “Well, what the hell d’ye expect? Ye should have just told me what ye were goin’ to do.”

  “I wanted it to be a surprise,” she huffed. “You were looking a little sad and pathetic, so I thought we might go do something useful to lift your spirits.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment,” I admitted, grudgingly. “But we need to go back. I can’t be out after dark, it isn’t safe.”

  “Nonsense, there are several hours’ worth of daylight left. Besides, that’s one of the things I needed to talk to you about.”

  “Come again?”

  “Max tells me you’re taking sleeping potions to keep your latent power at bay? And something about a goddess trying to take you over? Why don’t you fill me in. Perhaps I can help.”

  I sighed, shoulders slumping with the realization that this would be the third time in as many days I’d had to recap what had happened to me over the course of the last year and a half. Still, the enchantress was right. She’d been around for centuries, if not millennia, and had an intimate knowledge of Celtic lore. If anyone was qualified to offer advice, it was her. Rather than go into the whole spiel, however, I painted the tale in broad strokes until I got to my time on Aeaea and Circe’s tutelage. And, to Morgan’s credit, she didn’t interrupt me once—not even when I detailed my first nocturnal ascension.

  “So,” I concluded, my throat a little dry from all the talking, “that’s what happened. I got back from the Underworld, and Circe brewed the potion to help keep me from terrorizin’ this realm and drawin’ unwanted attention to meself.”

  “Oh, she was quite right to do that, dear,” Morgan acknowledged. “The gods may run amok far more often than mortals think, but any deity worth their supernatural salt knows how to cover their tracks and keep collateral damage to a minimum.”

  “Aye, and I don’t.”

  “Yes, and we’ll get to that. But first, do you happen to know what she used? In her potion, I mean?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Hmm...by any chance, could she have had any petals from that lotus flower left over?”

  I scowled at that.

  “The reason I ask,” Morgan continued, “is that I can’t think what else it could possibly be. Gods do not sleep in the traditional sense. They simply go elsewhere. And if ambrosia is their catnip, then the lotus flower is their peyote.”

  “What’s your point?” I asked, a shiver running up my spine at her ominous tone.

  “My point is, where have you been going when you lay down at night?”

  “Nowhere. I dream, that’s all. They’re just dreams.” I glared at the enchantress, willing her to disagree with me. “They aren’t real. They can’t be.”

  “Maybe they are nothing more than dreams,” she allowed. “But downing a potion night after night is dangerous and will come back to haunt you in the end. Fortunately, I came prepared.”

  Morgan reached into the air like she’d pluck a fruit from the bough of a tree, only to have the lower third of her arm disappear into a miniature Gateway. She rummaged about, grinned, and withdrew her hand with a flourish. Wrapped around her fist was a silver bracelet with familiar patterns decorating its surface. From it hung a single silver charm: a feather.

  “A woman commissioned one of these, some thirty years ago or so,” Morgan explained as she passed it over. “And it worked so well that I made a few extra, with some improvements of course. It should do what your potion was meant to. It’s designed to shield you from your own power, so long as you don’t take it off.”

  I stared at the accessory, turning it over in my hands until the feather dangled. “The woman who requested ye make this...did she ask for one with crows on it?”

  “You know, I think she did! Why do you...wait, how could you have known that? You weren’t even born.”

  “I expect I was about to be,” I replied, thinking back to the first time I’d seen a bracelet like this one—an accessory designed to blunt my burgeoning abilities before exposing me to the powers that be. Was it, I wondered, that her legendary foresight had included even this?

  “Oh, that infuriating creature!” Morgan exclaimed, having apparently come to the same conclusion. “If she weren’t already dead, I’d kill her. I know Nemain was your mother, but I swear—”

  “Nemain?” I interrupted.

  “Your mother. That was her name.”

  “I t’ink I’d know me mother’s name,” I drawled. “I’m tellin’ ye she went by Morrigan.”

  “Oh right, the geas! It’s been so long I’d actually forgotten. The truth is, your mother put a rather potent spell on her name to keep it from being spoken aloud by anyone, centuries ago. I don’t know why. As far as I know, no one did. Of course, your mother refused to be called the Nameless One or anything ridiculous like that, which is why everyone began addressing her by her title. Morrigan. Originally, however, her name was Nemain.”

  “Nemain…” I echoed, experiencing a strange wistfulness at the sound of it. Like I’d heard it before, somewhere. I shook my head, secured the bracelet around my wrist, and held it up to catch the light. “T’anks for this, Morgan. If it works, I will genuinely owe ye.”

  Morgan lowered her arms, looking sheepish for the first time since I’d met her. “There’s no need for all that. Consider it a gift from your Godmother.”

  “From me what, now?”

  “Your Godmother,” she repeated. “The way I see it, that woman who raised you was your mother’s choice. I can’t fault her for that. Nemain and I weren’t exactly close.”
/>
  “Given what I just heard, I’d say that’s an understatement,” I teased.

  “Yes, well, sorry about that. It’s just that your father, on the other hand, would most definitely have chosen me for the job. And, if he’d had any say in the matter, it’s just as likely that you would have been raised by me, instead.”

  For some reason, I found myself charmed by the notion that Morgan le Fay, enchantress extraordinaire, envied my Aunt Dez in any capacity. Of course, hers was a ridiculous sentiment; she’d have turned me into a toad for real the second I hit puberty. But it made me think better of her, all the same, to know she’d fantasized about it.

  “So, should I call ye me Fairy Godmother, then?”

  “If you must,” Morgan replied, her face screwed up in distaste. “But I’d prefer you didn’t.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, chuckling.

  “In any case, as your paternal Godmother, I’d like to offer you some exceptionally sound advice.”

  “Oh? And what’s that?”

  “Sleep with that obscenely sexy brujo. Please. Do it soon, and do it often, for all our sakes.”

  I gaped at the enchantress, too stunned by her bold pronouncement to speak.

  “Listen,” she continued, “your heart is your business. But if I have to spend another minute in a room with you two, I think I may have to bespell you both and get it over with. And I mean that. It’s like watching a lit match hover over a candlewick for hours on end. My nerves can’t handle it.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about,” I mumbled, blushing. “We flirt, sure. And he’s attractive. Alright, extremely attractive. But this t’ing between us…”

  “That’s what I mean!” Morgan exclaimed. “The untapped metaphysical potential between you two defies logic. For someone like me, it’s like standing in a magnetic field wearing a suit of armor. Can you imagine what you two could do with all that power?”

  “No, I really can’t.”

  Morgan opened her mouth to say more but hesitated when she saw my face. “Did I say something wrong?”