Midlife Demon Hunter: The Forty Proof Series, Book 3

by Mayer, Shannon

  Corb frowned. “That sounds like a spell of some sort. Some of them are subtle, not necessarily made to kill, but to keep you . . . busy. As you said, stuff just kept happening, obstacles kept getting thrown in your way.”

  A spell would make sense.

  Who would put a spell on my gran’s death papers? The person who killed her. But did that person even know I was looking? Probably not. Which meant it had to be someone else. I knew it wasn’t the human police officer who’d given them to me, Officer Burke. In fact, I suspect she’d put herself at risk to get the information to me.

  Corb tapped the table with one hand. “We need to go back to the house and look at those papers. That’s the only way to figure this out.”

  “You can tell if it’s a spell?” I frowned, wondering again about what he was, supernaturally speaking. “What about Missy?”

  Corb’s eyebrows shot up. “What about her?”

  “She is the most likely candidate, and she showed up at the house yesterday, pissed that she couldn’t get Gran’s spell book to work.” But even as I said it, I found myself thinking about those desks I’d passed before entering the council meeting, the ones that stripped people of magic.

  “I don’t think it’s a spell,” I said. “I really don’t.” If the envelope had carried a spell, then it would have clung to me, right? The desks would have removed it, and Roderick would have noticed. He’d said there was only a glamor on me.

  Corb stood and offered me a hand. “Just trust me, okay? We’re going to go for a walk, and I’m going to show you around town. While we walk, I’m going to make a phone call. I think we’ll need Tom on this one. I don’t want to risk you being hurt, so let’s just play it safe, okay?”

  One look at him told me that he was genuinely concerned.

  Besides, Tom was a good guy, I liked him, and hanging out with him was fine by me. Besides, as long as I kept moving, the goblins would have a harder time pinning me down.

  In the back of my head, my own thoughts whispered the fear that Corb was indeed right. That the envelope was spelled and I’d unleashed its dark magic simply by opening it. I should have trusted my feelings all along and asked an expert to look at the envelope to figure out why it had upset me so.

  It struck me that Robert had kept tapping at the envelope. A warning, damn it, had his tapping on it been a warning?

  Corb led me out of the restaurant the way we’d come, sending a text one-handed as we went. I waved at Skel. “Go relax, I’m walking from here.”

  The skeletal horse snorted and flipped his mane once before turning and trotting up the street. I don’t know if Corb even saw the horse, and if he did, he didn’t so much as flinch.

  “Tell me what you’ve been doing,” Corb said as he slid an arm around my shoulders and tugged me close as he finished sending the text. “I know a bit from earlier but tell me in more detail.”

  I started slowly rehashing the last two days, everything from opening the envelope but not looking into it to getting information from Jinx, finding Grimm, coming back to find Suzy dying, seeing Alan’s ghost in my room, putting Grimm’s pages in the Sorrel-Weed house, getting drunk with Robert, and heading to the council with my new bestie Rod. “And now I’m here with you.” Funnily enough, I skipped right over the shower scene with Crash.

  Talking through the situation, it struck me that I didn’t feel like I couldn’t look at the papers. It was more like I had legit been too busy.

  “Not a lot of time spent in your own room even, never mind the house,” Corb said, and I ducked my head, again choosing to say nothing about that blip in my timeline with Crash.

  “Are the papers still there, in the house?” he asked.

  I paused, forcing him to stop. “They’re in my bag.” I put a hand to the bag on my hip and Corb stared at me, horror flickering through his eyes. “I’ve got them with me right now.”

  19

  Corb took the bag from me, almost yanking it off, and opened it. Of course, the first thing that came flying out was Alan. What hair he had was all mussed and fluffed up in every direction, and his eyes were wild with rage.

  He immediately started shouting at the top of his lungs. “How dare you stuff me in that bag,” he shrieked. “I have every right to defend myself against your lies. In a court of law—”

  I snapped my fingers at him, and his mouth clicked shut.

  Corb didn’t so much as flinch as he dug around in the bag. “Where is it?”

  I turned my back on a freaked-out, mouth-flapping-but-no-sound-making Alan. We stood on River Street, tourists flowing around us, and we were going to pull out something that potentially carried a black magic spell. Probably not the best idea we’d ever had. I tugged Corb away from the flow of traffic and down a set of stone stairs that led to the river’s edge.

  You’d think there would be a lot of people there, but you’d be wrong. Most of the humans were up in the shops or eating their dinners, doing things that kept them busy enough not to pay any attention to a pair of people digging through a bag.

  “Look at us, our first date and we’re playing with a spell,” I muttered.

  “First implies that there will be second,” Corb said as he put my bag down at our feet.

  Alan shot between us, finding his voice again. “Don’t you dare kiss him, Breena. Don’t you dare.”

  “Not right now, Alan. Seriously.” I snapped my fingers again and made a reach for his ear. He dodged me, stepping over the edge of the walkway, and floated out over the water. If he looked down, he might wonder just what was happening to him. Then again, he’d spent the last several hours in a bag that was far too small for his physical body, and still he didn’t seem to understand his situation.

  You know, that he’d been killed and was currently a ghostly pain in my ass.

  Corb seemed perfectly unfussed that I was talking to his cousin, now a ghost; he crouched down. Likely he couldn’t see him. I followed suit, my thigh muscles screaming at me. Forget that, I went to my knees, tucking my feet under my butt with a heavy sigh.

  “Give it here.” I took the bag from him, stuck my hand in, and pulled out the manila envelope. I opened it and dumped out the contents.

  I blinked a few times, staring at the script that was scribbled all over the thick paper. It took me a moment or two of staring at the contents to realize what had happened.

  “Oh shit,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “The envelopes got switched. How the hell did that happen?” I frowned, thinking of the moments in the second-story room of the Sorrel-Weed house. I’d been distracted. I’d grabbed the envelope I thought held all the papers . . .

  Corb touched the paper. “This is all in Goblinese.”

  “It’s Grimm’s family history.” I touched the pages again.

  “No, I don’t think that’s it.” Corb picked up one sheet. “I only have a little of that language under my belt, but this here is a stanza.” He touched the middle of the paper, which looked no different to me than any of the other sections.

  “Okay, and a stanza for what?”

  “I think it’s a spell. Something about a warning. Strife . . . no, I’m not sure if that’s the right word. It’s been years since I studied this language.” He flipped through the pages. “Whatever it is, it’s hidden within this family tree crap. I can’t make it all out, though, it’s been too long.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking. I could ask Bridgette. She’d said she’d help if she could. But I couldn’t focus on that thought—my attention was on that word: strife. It had stirred something in me, but I couldn’t pinpoint what or why.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just give me a minute. There is something in here, something that my brain wants me to piece together.” But it was like grasping at oil-covered straws. I couldn’t for the life of me grab hold of the pieces and make them stick together.

  Corb and I sat there across from each other. “Will you let me help you, Bree? I think this is bad.
All of it stinks of dark magic and secrets that seem to want to put you in the path of some very bad people.”

  Alan snorted. “Magic isn’t real.”

  Corb looked right at him. “Says the dead man walking on water.”

  Alan stared down at his feet—and kept right on staring. “Holy shit. I did die. I thought I was dreaming.”

  Apparently Corb could see him after all, but my mind was preoccupied by the fact that Alan still didn’t believe in magic even after he’d used it to screw me over. It really said a lot about his mental state and inability to see what was happening right in front of him.

  Corb grunted, stood, and handed me my bag, and he most definitely saw the look I was giving him. “I can’t always see the dead, Bree, but yeah, I can see him. It’s likely because he’s related to me. I was hoping if I ignored him, he would go away. You can do that with ghosts.”

  I took my bag and slid it over my shoulder, choosing to shift the topic rather than to press him. “Where is Tom meeting us?”

  “At your gran’s place,” Corb said.

  Which really wasn’t that far of a walk, but Corb had his high-powered Mustang waiting not that far away. He let me in, and Alan climbed over me into the backseat—a weird sensation since I could feel and see him pass through me, but there wasn’t any weight to him.

  “You aren’t getting rid of me,” he snarled. “I’m coming with you and you’re going to fix this. I am not staying dead.”

  I didn’t bother to look at him. “You’d think that dying would improve your attitude. Also, just so you know, no one can fix you, Alan. You are the epitome of asshole.”

  Corb gunned the engine and peeled out of his parking spot as only a younger man would do, not thinking about his engine, the rubber he was leaving behind from his tires, or the costs those things could incur. And yes, I thought about both.

  “So are you going to tell me what you are?” I asked quietly. “Or why you tried so hard to stop me from joining the Hollows Group and returning to the shadow world? I’m assuming you knew all along that I actually had potential.”

  I leaned back in the leather seat, enjoying the fact that, for the moment, I wasn’t running or climbing stairs. That my belly was full, and I was safe. I let my eyes close ever so slightly, watching him from just under my lashes.

  Corb tightened his hands on the wheel, turning them this way and that. “Yes, I knew you had potential. I wasn’t worried about your age, but I knew it could be a deterrent to the other mentors. Or I thought so anyway, and I played it up.”

  I watched him as he worked through his thoughts, noting that he still hadn’t answered my first question.

  “What are you?” I asked again. I had a few guesses, but I wondered if I was close to the mark.

  His hands slid down the steering wheel. “I’m a siren.”

  Alan guffawed. “Siren? Like calling sailors to their deaths? Please.”

  Himself might not see it in his cousin, but the second Corb said siren I started nodding, feeling the truth of his words even though I’d never heard of a male siren. It made sense, though. That was why he’d brought Suzy into the Hollows—because she was like him and . . .

  “So that’s why there’s all that lube in the bathroom!”

  Corb groaned. “Actually, no. That was Sarge trying to tempt me. We had a . . . fling when we met years ago. Every once in a while he tries to get me back into the sack.”

  I could feel my jaw dropping. Maybe the heat in the car had cranked up, or it could have been the image of the two of them together—let’s be honest, that’s totally what it was—but suddenly I was flushing. I grabbed the envelope and started fanning myself. Hormones, they were going to be the death of me if this curse business wasn’t.

  I cleared my throat. “So you aren’t really into me then, you prefer guys.”

  Corb swallowed hard. “I swing both ways, but I tend to lean toward women more. It’s . . . being a siren is fluid in more ways than just the water we use to power our magic.”

  That made sense. “I could taste the ocean when I kissed you. Were you . . . using your magic on me? Was that even a real feeling between us?”

  Corb was shaking his head before I finished. “No. No, you wouldn’t have remembered much if I’d used my magic on you. It has a tendency to erase memories. But I let you in . . . if that makes sense.”

  I lowered the envelope to my lap. “You let me see your magic?”

  “Something like that,” he said softly, almost as if he were afraid of my reaction.

  “This is stupid,” Alan grumbled, and I twisted around in my seat to stare at him.

  “You know what’s stupid? You. You’re stupid, Alan.”

  “I am not,” he snapped back. “I passed my classes with an A- average.”

  I looked across at Corb. “How? How are you two related?”

  He reached across the seat and carefully took my hand. “Really, we’re not all that related if you think about it. We’re, like, half cousins. Please don’t hold it against me.” He was grinning as he spoke, and I grinned back.

  “I see now why you’re the black sheep of the family. Full of sex magic and naughtiness. Not much of a fit with all those lawyers and doctors on Alan’s side.” I laughed and Corb joined me. Alan did not laugh, which only made me laugh harder.

  We pulled up to the front of Gran’s house less than a minute later. From the corner of my eye, the Sorrel-Weed house seemed to shimmer, the bricks turned dark once more. That was where Gran’s and my parents’ stuff was, along with the goblin coin. Damn it, I was going to have to get it back at some point. I let myself out of the car and scrambled forward into the front yard where I felt safe.

  Robert stood swaying under the oak tree, his head hanging low. “Friend. Safe?”

  “Hey, Robert. Yeah, I’m okay. You okay? That was a lot of whiskey.”

  He reached out and tapped a skeletal finger against the oak tree. “Friend.”

  I nodded, not sure what he was referring to exactly. That he’d had a good sleep under the tree? That he thought the tree was his friend?

  “Anyone home?” I asked Robert, already knowing he couldn’t answer me.

  Alan strode past me and down the street. “I’m going to my room—Jesus, what is that?”

  I twisted around to see him staring at the Sorrel-Weed house. “You mean the demon watching you from the windows?”

  Alan squeaked and scuttled backward until he was partway up the stairs to Gran’s house.

  Corb stepped up next to me and Robert let out a grumble that could have been a laugh at Alan’s expense, or irritation at how close Corb was to me. Corb didn’t see him, though, so there was that. We both turned as the rumble of a familiar motorbike cut through the evening.

  I stepped out from under the low-hanging Spanish moss first and saw Sarge getting off his bike. Tom had already climbed off and was heading for the small front gate.

  “Trouble already?” Tom grinned. I smiled back.

  “Are you allowed to help me? I mean, I don’t want to get you in trouble right along with me.”

  Tom waved a hand in front of his face as if he smelled something bad. “I can see the spell attached to you from here. Easy to remove.”

  I blinked a few times. Something about there being a spell on me didn’t sit right, didn’t feel right and I couldn’t put my finger on it. What was it?

  “It is? Don’t you need the envelope the spell came from?” I really didn’t want to go into the Sorrel-Weed house anytime soon. Especially in the dark. I mean, it was important to know who’d killed my family, and Grimm would probably want his coin back, but I did not want a repeat with the blood-born demon.

  “Well, no, you don’t need the item that the spell came from.” Tom paused, and his dark eyes held me in place. “It’s a subtle spell—the kind of minor manipulation that the average person wouldn’t notice.” His dark eyes were serious as he drew close and dropped his hands onto my shoulders. A smell of burnt toast filled t
he air as he whispered words that made no sense, more like sounds than words, and his magic curled around me, sinking into my skin and sticking to the inside of my nose.

  I sneezed and wiped at my face. “Okay, what now? Blood of a unicorn? Sacrifice a werewolf’s hide?”

  Sarge ignored the jab. He was too busy looking around the yard as if he wanted to pee on something. I opened my mouth to warn him off the oak tree and ended up sneezing again. A chunk of something dark flew through the air and splatted on the ground. For all I knew, it was leftovers from the Sorrel-Weed house encounter.

  “What the hell is that?” I spat a few times, tasting burnt toast even though I hadn’t eaten anything of the sort.

  Tom winked and stepped back, pulling a small pouch from his pocket. He opened it up, pinched something between thumb and forefinger, then sprinkled black dust onto the gob of . . . whateverthehellitwas. “That’s it. It truly wasn’t a bad spell, just one that was meant to deter you. Which it was doing easily.”

  Only I wasn’t fully convinced, still feeling weird about a spell being on me that wasn’t really on me. I looked at Tom, but he was already looking away from me. Not meeting my eyes, which was confusing. “Tom?”

  “Look, you can owe the Hollows a favor for me helping you, how about that?” He smiled at me, but it was strained around the edges. As if he didn’t want to say it.

  My head was shaking of its own volition, mostly because I couldn’t stop staring at what now looked like a slug shriveling up under some salt. That was in me? Gross. “But that makes no sense, does it? I mean, deterring me is one thing, but—”

  Tom patted my shoulder. “You didn’t really want to open the paperwork. Something about it worried or scared you?”

  I gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah, something like that.” Still, something wasn’t adding up, but Tom talked right over my thoughts.

  “Some spells aren’t meant to be big and loud. Simple ones can be more effective than powerhouse curses or spells. Because you don’t sense them, and they align with your own hidden thoughts and inclinations. I’ve seen people with spells on them for years without realizing it. Sometimes they think they’re haunted, but they aren’t. Just spelled.” Tom gave my shoulder a squeeze when I shivered. “Trust me, this was not a bad one. Effective, but not bad.”