“Mrowf.” Bubba was louder this time, sounding pissed. His eyes flashed and I could feel the magic rising.
“Let me get—” I stopped as I turned to see Aegis and Sandy edging into the room.
“Hey, Bubba’s upset. Someone was out on the balcony. I can see the footprints.”
“Do you think it was Ralph?” Sandy pressed her face against the glass.
I winced. I had hoped to wait for a better time to tell Aegis that Ralph Greyhoof had seen me naked. Somehow, I didn’t think that would go over very well.
“Ralph? Ralph who and why would he be outside your bedroom window?” Sure enough, Aegis didn’t sound happy, and he didn’t even know who we were talking about yet.
I cleared my throat. “I don’t think those are his prints. They look like shoe prints, not hoof prints.”
“Are you talking about Ralph Greyhoof? Why would he be outside your bedroom window?” There was an edge in his voice that I had only heard the first time we had met. But then, it had been mixed with arousal. Now he just sounded pissed.
“Um…I was going to tell you about that. Ralph showed up in the bathroom as I was taking a shower—”
“Bathroom? You were in the shower? If he touched one hair on your head I’ll drain him dry, and he’ll feel every drop leave his body.” Aegis whirled, stalking to the door.
“Get back here, you big lug. Listen to me. Ralph didn’t touch me. He was trying to steal hair out of my hairbrush.” I paused. That didn’t sound much better, given what it meant.
Aegis slowed, then turned. “Why would he be doing that? Answer me before I charge over to the Heart’s Desire and light a fire under Ralph’s balls.”
“I don’t know, to be honest. He said he was doing it for some vamp chick who paid him to.” I watched Aegis closely, suddenly thinking that maybe, since he was from the fang-me set, Aegis might have some clue about who the strange vamp was.
Aegis frozen, then glanced out the window. “Stay inside. I’m going to have a look outside.” Abruptly, he turned and stalked out of the room.
I turned to Sandy. “Something’s going on. Those prints out there are shoes, and they look like about the size of a woman’s footprints. Bubba was having a hissy fit when I came in.” I turned back to the cjinn, eyeing him carefully. “Bub, is there still somebody outside?”
He looked at me, the pale gold of his eyes shining. He let out a whimper of a mew, then moved closer to me, rubbing his head against my leg. Sometimes, Bubba was a hellion. Other times, he seemed very much just a scared kitty-cat.
I leaned down and stroked his head, then scooped him up in my arms. “Bub, if there’s something scary out there, Aegis will find it.”
“There’s something out there in the snow.” Sandy reached for the handle on the French doors and before I could stop her, she opened the door, darting outside, then back in. She was holding a red rose. “What’s this?”
I stared at the flower. “What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know, but somebody is bringing you flowers. Maybe Aegis?”
Bewildered, I shook my head. “Lock those doors. Until we know whether Aegis finds anybody out there, it’s best to stay inside. Can you go back down to the party and keep things running smoothly?”
She nodded, handing me the rose and heading for the stairs.
As I sat on the bed, holding Bubba close to me, a noise near the hall door made me jump. I whirled around, but it was just Franny, standing in the doorway with a concerned look.
“Franny, did you see anything out there?” I nodded toward the balcony.
She shrugged. “I couldn’t have, now could I? You banned me from your bedroom. But Maudlin, something’s wrong. There’s a strange energy afoot and I’m not comfortable. It’s making me shiver in my shroud. You should be careful.” She sounded like she actually cared.
“You think something is wrong, too? Do you know what it is?” Carrying Bubba, I headed toward the door.
She moved back to allow me room to exit. I could have just passed through her, but by now, Franny knew how much I hated doing that. Not only was her energy unearthly cold, but it just gave me the creeps.
“I don’t know what it is, no. But there’s an unsettled energy around the house. We may have our differences, but this isn’t anything to joke around with. I have a horrible feeling that something’s going to go terribly wrong. Please, be careful?”
When a ghost was asking me to watch my step, I knew that things had taken a bad turn. “Thanks, Franny. I promise. Would you stay here and keep an eye on the bedroom with Bubba? You can come in the room.” I disabled the wards against her with a flick of the wrist. “Bubba can generally take care of himself but until we know what’s going on, I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Of course. Thank you for asking.” She silently drifted into my bedroom and stood by the window, with Bubba sitting by the hem of her gown.
As I rejoined the party below, Aegis returned, a dusting of snow on his shoulders. The flakes clung to him. He had no body heat to melt them off. I glanced around to make sure no one could overhear us.
“What did you find?” I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but he shook his head.
“Nothing. I didn’t find anything out there. But don’t leave the doors or windows unlocked tonight. Come on, let’s go talk to the guests.”
He stared at me, unblinking, and for the first time since we had met, I was nervous. He was lying and I could sense it. But there wasn’t much I could do.
“Fine. But we need to talk later.” I looped my arm through his and plastered a smile on my face. As we rejoined the party, the evening slid into a mire of doubt and shadow.
Chapter 3
BY THE END of the night, I was exhausted, and Aegis didn’t want to talk. In fact, he seemed preoccupied to the point where I took Bubba and went upstairs to bed by myself. We had occasional nights where we didn’t have sex, especially if we had played around during the early evening, but if he was home, we usually cuddled for a bit before I dropped off at around midnight. Scheduling my days around his nights wasn’t always easy, but we had done our best to synch up. But tonight, I decided it wasn’t worth opening a can of worms, and chalked it up to a grumpy day.
Next morning, I made sure that the basement was secure before heading out for the day. We had rigged up a mechanism where Aegis could bar it from the inside so that nobody could get in. He had a secret passage through which he could escape if the house was on fire or some other nightmare like that, but nobody besides us knew about it. We hadn’t hired the Alpha-Pack for that particular renovation. Instead, Aegis installed it himself and if he said it was secure, I trusted him. It was his life that was at stake.
I fed Bubba, then puttered around the house while debating over attempting to make pancakes. But I knew that my cooking skills weren’t up to the task. In all of the years I’d been alive, I had always managed to avoid being the one stuck in the kitchen.
Instead, I dug out the leftover cookies from the party, along with a couple deviled eggs that were tucked in the back of the fridge, and I added a thick slice of cheddar. In a fit of inspiration, I mashed up the eggs and spread them on a piece of toast, then added the cheese for an impromptu egg sandwich. After that, I finished off a half-dozen chocolate peanut-butter chip cookies, then drank the last few swallows in the quart of milk I found in the fridge. I had never stocked milk until I started living with Aegis, but he liked it, and so I kept it around now.
Bubba meandered past, giving me the side eye as I stood there, eating in front of the refrigerator door.
“What? You eat off the floor. My manners aren’t any worse than that.”
He sniffed, eyeing the milk in my hands. “Mrow?”
“No, I’m not giving you any milk, it’s not good for you. You know what it does to your digestion. The cat box is a horrendous mess and you end up urping for several days.” I tossed the empty milk carton in the recycling bi
n. “Besides, we’re out. I’ll pick you up some treats when I’m out this afternoon.”
Bubba leaped up on the counter and stared at me with that innocent look of his. He was gorgeous, with his long flowing ginger fur and wide, winsome eyes. “Mrowf?”
I stopped, letting out a short sigh. “No, I don’t know who was on the balcony, but I think Aegis found something. He’s not saying anything, though. But it wasn’t Ralph. I know that much.”
Bubba considered this for a moment, then wandered off into the other room. I watched his tail pluming as the drafts in the old mansion ruffled through it.
The caterers had cleaned up after the party, so there really wasn’t anything to clean, and if there had been, Aegis would have done the dishes while I was asleep. He usually left breakfast for me to eat, but given the amount of leftovers I knew would be in the fridge, I had told him not to bother the previous night. The man could cook and bake like a pro.
Finally, I scribbled out my to-do list for the day—a never-ending trail of shopping and planning—and settled in for a morning’s work on turning the mansion into a place where people would want to come stay.
BY ONE-THIRTY, my head was spinning from numbers-crunching. I squinted, seeing double as I turned off the ten-key. Time to go shopping. I had so many things I had to buy before we opened the next week that I was starting to panic.
Shouldering my purse, I told Bubba I was headed into town and firmly locked the door. As I tromped through the snow to my car, my fur-trimmed coat barely keeping the cold at bay, it occurred to me that I loved my new life, even when there were glitches.
My mansion was on the outskirts of Bedlam, but given how small the island was—twenty-six miles long and from two miles wide on the ends to fifteen miles wide at the center—driving into the town didn’t take very long.
Grateful I had the forethought to buy snow tires for my CR-V, I cautiously navigated Yew Tree Road toward the still-icy Thornbush Drive that would lead me into town. Obviously Harold Winsket had overslept. The chief of trash collection, he was also our snowplow operator during winter. When he couldn’t make it, Skerrit Tomas, his assistant, took over. Both of them were ferret shifters, and they were usually on the spot about their work. But the roads were covered in snow and ice, and the banks were only growing deeper.
As I eased down Thornbush Drive into the town square, I found myself smiling. Living in Bedlam made me happy.
Over the years the architecture had changed, but some of the old buildings were originals, going back to the early days of the island. The post office, city hall, and police station were a combination of red brick and gray stone—the same on the outside as they had been during the 1800s. Oh, they had electric lights now, and heating and plumbing, but the architecture stood true to form, and the buildings rose from under their cover of snow, full of old-world charm and strength. I had my doubts that they would survive a major earthquake, but then again, if the big one hit along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, we were all going to be running for cover.
Bedlam was a tidy town anyway, but she really spruced up for the holiday season. Multicolored lights encircled every tree along Main Street, and wreaths hung from the lampposts, shimmering with the brightly colored faerie lights. Downtown proper was built up around the central square, which acted like a gigantic roundabout.
In the center of the square itself was the city fountain, with a massive sculpture of a cat sitting on a crescent moon in the center. The water had been turned off because of the freezing temperatures, and a layer of snow dusted the cat’s ears and head, and the horns of the moon. There were four Yule trees, one at each corner of the fountain, and shoppers milled through the square, though no one lingered on the benches in this weather.
I found a parking spot in front of McGee’s Apothecary and, bracing myself against the chill, slid out of the car into the biting wind. Snowflakes were blowing every which way as I hurried into the shop. I needed to stock up on ingredients for several of my spells, and I also wanted to get some of Andy McGee’s elixir. It was the best tonic in the world, better than any multivitamin for energy and general vitality. I wasn’t sure what he put in it—he had developed a secret recipe—but it worked.
Andy’s daughter, Beth, was behind the counter when I opened the door. At the jangling of bells, she glanced up from her computer screen.
“Hey, Maddy. What brings you to town on a morning like this?” Her frown of concentration vanished, replaced by a wide smile. The girl was pretty enough, but more than that—she had the nature of a healer and just standing near her made anybody feel better.
I jammed my hands in my pockets. I’d forgotten my gloves in the car and just the short jaunt from the curb to the shop had left me chilled.
“I need some of Andy’s elixir, along with some other spell components.”
“One bottle or two?” She turned to the shelf behind her, to a row of bottles with old-fashioned labels affixed to them. They were reminiscent of tonic bottles from the early twentieth century.
“Might as well take two.”
“Two it is.” She pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. “Now, what else can I get you?”
“I also need an ounce each of Muddle leaf, gooseberry root, sassafras grass, chopped valerian, coltsfoot, and two ounces of comfrey leaf. Two pounds of Dead Sea salt, a packet of graveyard dust, and a bottle of War water.” I glanced at my list. “Oh, and if you still sell those incredible chocolate thunder bars, I want three.”
Not only did Andy make the best elixir, he also made one of the best chocolate bars I had ever eaten. Nobody could say the man wasn’t talented with mixing things. He was one of the best alchemists in Bedlam, and he was one of the few humans. His daughter showed similar talents, even though she was only in her thirties.
As Beth bustled around the shop gathering my purchases, I took a seat in the small reading nook next to the window. Various magazines were scattered on the table—Dazzle, Star-Crossed, SpellCaster’s Monthly, and The Otherkin Gazette. The daily Bedlam Crier was on the table, too, and I picked it up to glance through the news. There wasn’t much—Bedlam was a fairly quiet community as far as sensationalism went, but I noticed a prominent ad for the Heart’s Desire Inn on the third page. Ralph and his brothers weren’t sparing any expense, it seemed.
“Here you go.” Beth finished weighing out my herbs and slid the plastic bags into a paper one. “I put the tonic in a separate bag to avoid any possibility of getting your herbs wet.”
I fit my credit card into the chip reader and waited, then entered my PIN when it prompted me. “Thanks, Beth. I have some shopping for the Solstice to do. Merry Yule, in case I don’t see you before then.”
She handed me my bags and receipt. “Blessed Yule to you, also. Don’t leave that Muddle leaf around where it can be confused for oregano, or you’ll have a few weeks of trying to sort out all the confusion.”
I locked the bags in the car, then walked the half block to Art World, where I hunted through the prints until I found a copy of “Woman, Reading.” It was an Impressionist-inspired painting by a relatively unknown artist of a woman wandering through a meadow, a book in her hand. Franny had seen it in a catalog I had been looking through and had loved it. While I drew the line at painting the kitchen pink, I decided I could give her this for Yule and maybe bring a little joy into her life. While the clerk was wrapping up the print for me, I flipped through another stack.
I was mulling over a painting of a rose garden when my phone beeped at me. Pulling it out, I saw a text had come in from a number I didn’t recognize. Frowning, I opened it to see a picture that stopped me cold.
“What the hell?”
“Excuse me?” The gallery clerk looked over at me from where she was wrapping my painting.
“Nothing,” I murmured, turning away and looking at the text again. The text was a photo of a painting, that much was obvious. And the painting was of Aegis, his arm around a striking blonde. They were holdi
ng goblets of blood, raised as if to toast the artist.
I caught my breath. Who had painted this? And who had sent it to me? I thought about asking the clerk but decided that wasn’t the wisest idea. I started to text back who are you? why did you send me this? then stopped.
The representative smiled at me. “Will this be all?”
My heart in my throat, I nodded. “Yeah, please ring me up.”
She quickly began tallying up the painting and tax. “All right, here’s your total.”
“Thanks.” I handed him my credit card and then, clutching the print for Franny, headed back outside.
What the hell was a painting of Aegis and a blond woman doing on my phone? And then, I stopped and glanced at the text again. The woman looked very much like the vampire Ralph had described to me. The one who supposedly paid him to swipe my hair.
“Crap.” I didn’t know whether to text the person back or not. Whoever sent it definitely wanted to make sure I saw it, but the phone number had a different area code. That didn’t necessarily mean much, given the way people moved around. My phone still had a Seattle area code. Breathing heavily, I decided to pay a visit to Ralph later in the afternoon to see if he could confirm whether it was the same woman. Or to find out if he had been the one to send the photo to me. I’d avoid texting back until after I talked to Sandy.
Fretting, I moved on to French Pair—a boutique that carried lingerie. Aegis’s favorite color was purple, so I shuffled through the teddies till I found a bustier and cute boy shorts in a rich plum shade. The bustier was jacquard, with a richly embroidered print in black on it. I held it up, trying to assess whether it would fit over my boobs or not. I was more than well endowed and it made some tops a bit problematic.
“Choosing a gift that keeps on giving?” Sandy’s voice rang out behind me. “I saw you through the window so I decided to join you before lunch.”
Bewitching Bedlam Page 4