by Amy Boyles
I nibbled my fingers. “What do you mean?”
He sighed. “What that woman most likely wants is to hand Reid over to the spirits so they can take possession of her. Dylan,” Roman said slowly, his gaze raking over me. “Reid will lose her soul.”
ELEVEN
Oh, heck no. I would claw out that woman’s eyes before she got ahold of my sister. Oh yes, Mama Bear was here and I was ready for a fight.
“So what are we supposed to do?”
Roman and I still sat in the car. He tapped his hands on the dash and studied the group.
“We have two choices, go in and confront them—”
“I like that one,” I said.
“Or,” he said pointedly, “we wait and watch.”
I crossed my eyes and glared at him. Roman thought that was the better idea, and it annoyed me.
“Staring at me like that isn’t going to change anything.”
“It might make you want to go in and stop them,” I said.
“It won’t.”
“You can’t blame me for trying,” I said. I watched the crowd. They were deep into a game of pool. “You know, that woman saw me tonight, and Flynn chased me from the house. If we go in there, that would stir them up. Get them riled, maybe even to the point where they’d admit something.”
“Dylan,” Roman groaned.
“This is my baby sister we’re talking about. We already suspect her of using insects to steal Polly Parrot, who’s still missing. Now she’s involved with some weirdos straight from a horror flick. We need to intervene, Roman. We can’t let her down. You can’t let me down. I married you because I love and trust you. You’re the strongest, most dangerous man I know. Now let’s go show those creeps that they don’t scare us.”
A slow smile quirked on his lips. “You’re right. You are right. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
I gripped his shoulders and pulled him into a blazing hot kiss. “Don’t keep me safe,” I growled. “We’re partners, darn it. Now let’s go kick some butt.”
Our doors swung wide at the exact same time. As we strode toward the pool hall, I could swear I heard Guns ’N’ Roses “Welcome to the Jungle” blaring somewhere down the street.
The music fueled me for what was about to come next.
When Roman opened the door, every eye in that room turned toward him, and every mouth fell.
I stopped, unsure of exactly what was happening.
Roman smiled widely at the group. “Miss me, fellas? It’s good to be back.”
I tugged on his shirtsleeve. “What?”
Roman glanced over his shoulder at me. “Oh, and if anyone hurts the little lady, you’ll be sorry.”
“What?”
What in heaven’s name was going on?
A group of tattooed men with silver bars in their noses and lips eyed my husband like lions about to take down a buffalo. I know lionesses generally do the hunting, but it’s the best comparison I could come up with, okay?
So sue me.
My gaze snagged on Reid, who was audibly groaning and rolling her eyes. I’m sure she was wondering what kind of craziness was going on.
She wasn’t the only one. I was right there with her.
I tugged Roman’s sleeve. “What’s going on?”
The trio of men that looked more dangerous than one-percent bikers crossed to us, making a semicircle in front of Roman.
“We ain’t bothering anybody,” a bald one said.
Roman hooked his fingers in his jean pockets. “Neither am I. That’s the way I want to keep things.”
“This ain’t your territory,” said another man with a mean scar slicing down his cheek.
Roman rocked back on his heels. “Oh? Is it your territory? ’Cause I don’t see a sign that says, CRIMINALS ONLY.”
The third man sneered. “And I don’t see one that says, WITCH POLICE WELCOME.”
“Looks like we’re at an impasse,” Roman said.
“We ain’t passing nothing.”
Roman paused. He pressed his lips tight, stopping himself from making a snide remark, I could tell. “Gentlemen, let’s call this a draw. You don’t bother me. I don’t bother you. Let me do my business, and you can do yours.”
The first man pointed two fingers at his eyes and then pivoted those fingers at Roman. “We’ll be watching you. One wrong step and you’re ours. This ain’t your ground.”
“It’s neutral,” Roman said.
Scar Man swiveled his head as if it were on rollers. “You’re outnumbered. It ain’t neutral. It’s ours.”
Roman took a step back. “Understood. But the rules of neutrality apply. You stay on your side, and I’ll stay on mine.”
The men hunched their shoulders. The first one spat on the floor, and they sulked off.
“What was that about?” I whispered to Roman.
We were in Silver Springs, but I had the feeling we were a long way from Alabama, if you know what I mean.
Roman didn’t answer. He was in a mode I’d never seen before, so I stepped back and gave him a wide berth.
He turned toward the group with Flynn, Reid and Jeremy, making a B-line straight toward the blonde woman.
“Lucinda,” he said. “Terrible to see you again.”
The blonde woman sneered. “Bane. This isn’t your territory.”
He jerked his head in Reid’s direction. “She’s family, which does make this my territory.”
Flynn stepped up awkwardly, flailing his hands like George McFly in Back to the Future. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on here, but this is my girl.”
Geez. Could the guy be any more clueless?
Roman’s mouth tipped to a smile, but no warmth touched his eyes. “I’m not here for your girl, Flynn.”
“How do you know my name?”
Lucinda sneered. “He’s been following us. Had his girlfriend walk in during the middle of our thing.” Her eyes pinned me. I wanted to duck behind Roman, but I forced the fear to the pit of my stomach and stepped around him.
“That’s my baby sister you’re talking about bringing into your little game. She’s hands off.”
Reid barreled into the middle of us. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I can take care of myself.” She slashed her arms in front of me. “I don’t need y’all coming in and babysitting me. Neither of you.” Her anger flared at me. “You always ruin everything. Everything, Dylan. You have to stick your nose in just about every ounce of my life. Well stay out. Stay out.”
She charged out the back door. I shot Roman a concerned look. “I’m going after her.”
I raced into the darkness, but Reid was gone. “Reid! Reid! Those people are bad. They’re not your friends. I’m only trying to help.”
“Stay out of it!”
Her voice came from above. I glanced at the roof and saw her legs dangling over the side of the building.
“How’d you get up there?”
She knuckled a tear from her eye. “How do you think?”
“Public, Reid.”
“I don’t care,” she shot back.
We weren’t supposed to work magic where regular folks could see, though clearly Sera had already broken that rule tonight.
I raked my fingers through my hair. All I wanted to do was help Reid. Not push her away.
“Look. I’m sorry you think we made you look like a fool.”
“You did make me look like a fool. You did. I can’t go back there.”
“Reid, you don’t want to be involved with that woman. Tonight I saw her doing something bad. Very bad. Something you wouldn’t want to be a part of. Trust me.”
“How can I trust you when all you do is ruin my life?” She threw something to the ground. It lightly struck the asphalt. Probably a pebble.
I hoped that was the biggest thing she tossed in my direction. “You have to listen to me.”
“No, I don’t.”
Frustration built inside me. I needed to talk to her face-to-face.
Explain what happened. Forget rules and regulations about not working magic in public. It was late. No one was out here anyway.
I concentrated on being lighter. A swoosh of power ignited in my stomach, and before I knew it, I had launched into the air and was landing lightly on the roof.
“Decided to use your power in public? What will the neighbors think?” she snapped.
“Cool it,” I said. “If you can use your power, I can too. If Jonathan Pearbottom wants to arrest me, it won’t be the first time.” I exhaled. “I have to talk to you.”
Reid staggered to her feet. “I hate you.”
That stung. It speared my heart like a fiery arrow. “Listen, let me tell you about that woman, Lucinda. She’s not your friend.”
“I don’t care what you have to say.”
Anger twisted inside me. I was trying to help her, darn it. I clasped her shoulders. “You are going to listen to me.”
As her mouth opened in protest, I spewed out everything I had seen. Every intimate detail. Stuff she didn’t want to hear and I didn’t want to say, but I had to. Reid needed to know everything.
“And I have pictures to prove it,” I snapped.
Reid gasped. “That’s disgusting.”
I smiled in victory. “Well, that’s what happened. I don’t know how your little boyfriend is involved with these people, but you might just want to kiss Mr. Premed goodbye.”
The look of shock on Reid’s face made my heart constrict. “How do you know what he’s studying?”
“He came to see me. Said you didn’t want us to meet him so Jeremy was taking it upon himself to make introductions.”
She twisted from my grasp. “I didn’t want y’all to meet him because I knew something like this,” she said, pointing below, “would happen. You’d ruin it. Y’all always do. If it’s not big sister, then it’s crazy grandmother.”
I scraped my fingers down my cheeks. “Reid, I’m sorry. It may seem that we butt our noses into your business, but we have good reason.”
She slapped her thigh. “What reason is that? To make sure I never grow up?”
Her words slammed into me. They stung because they were partly true. “No, of course not. I want you to find your way. Figure life out. Move out of the house, all that good stuff. But I want you to be safe, and Reid, there’s something dangerous about that group. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there.”
Part of me wanted to ask her about Polly Parrot, see what she knew. But the conversation was too explosive. Too fragile. If I started poking and prodding about that, she’d clam shut and wouldn’t say another word. It was the teenager in her.
She backed away from me. “They’re my friends.”
Just then, I heard the door swing wide. I glanced over the lip of the building and saw a head of blonde hair cutting across the parking lot. I’d been so consumed in my conversation with Reid I hadn’t noticed if anyone else had left.
Heck, a thousand people could’ve walked out and I probably wouldn’t have noticed. Was Roman still in there? My gaze washed over the parking lot. I didn’t see him, so he must be inside.
“Jeremy cares about me,” Reid said, pulling my attention back to her. “He gave me this.”
She thrust out her arm. Coiled around the wrist was a silver bracelet.
“It’s very pretty,” was all I could think to say. “But I want you to be careful. The people that Jeremy is involved with are…strange. Maybe dangerous. Has Jeremy ever talked to you about Milly?”
Reid looked at me like I was three sides of crazy. “No. Why would he talk about my grandmother?”
“No reason.”
“Come on, Dylan. There must be a reason.”
I shook my head. “None.”
Loud voices drifted up from the parking lot. From my stance on the roof, I could see the halo of gold hair that I assumed was still Lucinda. It looked like she was talking to someone, but I couldn’t see who.
Their voices rose. It was evidently an argument. Reid stepped over to me.
“Who’s that?”
“Your sleazy friend Lucinda.”
Reid elbowed me. “She’s not sleazy.”
“She does it in haunted houses,” I said, giving her a hard stare. “That’s almost as bad as doing it in a graveyard. It’s weird and sleazy.”
Reid shut her mouth, which was smart. There was no way she’d win that argument. Sleazy is as sleazy does, I liked to say.
Anyway, Lucinda’s voice rose. A sudden flash ripped from where she was standing.
Everything went silent.
“What was that?” Reid said.
“I don’t know.”
I jumped off the building, imagining in my head that I wore an invisible parachute that hatched and floated me all the way to the ground. It mostly worked. About a foot from landing my parachute disappeared and I fell, rocking back onto my rear end.
Reid, to her credit, landed effortlessly.
“That’ll leave a bruise,” she said.
I rose, rubbing my tush. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
I limped across the parking lot.
“Lucinda,” Reid called.
I pointed between two SUVs. “She was over there.”
We reached the cars and found Lucinda. She lay on the ground. Her hair stood straight up as if she’d jammed her finger in an electrical socket. Her eyes were opened wide with fright, and her arms and legs were bone stiff. She looked like a statue that had tipped over.
Reid screamed. The doors of the pool hall opened, and folks flooded the lot.
Roman ran up to us and put an arm around my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“I am.” I pointed to Lucinda. “But she’s not.”
Roman reached down, felt for a pulse. “No, she isn’t. She’s dead.”
TWELVE
Roman attempted CPR on Lucinda for ten minutes. I wasn’t sure how I felt about his lips being on another woman’s, but I got over it.
Anyway, it didn’t work. Whatever had killed Lucinda killed her good.
Because this appeared to be a magical murder, Roman called the witch police, bypassing the Silver Springs Police Department altogether.
Jonathan Pearbottom strode through the lot. A fog cloud had settled on the ground, and the detective cut through it wearing his usual tweed cape and bowler cap. Man, if only he’d been wearing a monocle, he would’ve looked right out of a Sherlock Holmes movie or something.
“Bane,” he said, taking Roman’s hand.
“Pearbottom. Thanks for coming on such short notice.”
Pearbottom glanced at me. He started to scowl but then stopped. “I see Mrs. Bane is here, too. Found the body? Why does that not surprise me?”
I bit my tongue. Pearbottom and I had a tumultuous relationship to say the least. We were mostly on good terms. Mostly. But obviously he couldn’t help himself from needling me.
Pearbottom’s gaze zipped from me to the pool hall. “Is that what I think it is?”
Roman grazed his knuckles down his jaw. “Yep.”
“Hmm. Never thought I’d see one of those in Silver Springs,” Pearbottom said.
The suspense was killing me. “What is it?”
“That,” he said, pointing with authority, “is what we call a criminal hangout in a neutral zone.”
“What?” I said.
He wrapped a hand around my shoulder as if that would help me understand better. “Sometimes criminals who want to lay low pick hangouts in places that aren’t magical.”
My jaw dropped. “So they picked Silver Springs?”
“It seems they did.”
I pulled away and stared up at Roman. “Is that how they knew you?”
He nodded.
“Is that why you didn’t want to go in there?”
His jaw flexed. “I didn’t want to go in because that would’ve compromised what we were doing. Once I recognized the people inside, Lucinda in particular, I knew we had to enter.”
I frowned at
him. “How long have you known about this place?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. Oh man. I knew what that meant. He knew! Roman had known about this place and hadn’t told me.
I smacked his chest. “Why didn’t you mention it? I’m assuming you’d known about it for a while? Knew that people you’d arrested were hanging out here? Because from the way they were acting, I’m guessing you had arrested some of them.”
His gaze darted from mine. “Maybe eighty percent.”
“Eighty percent! And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I need to get going,” Pearbottom said, leaving me alone to berate my husband.
My arms flailed like noodles. “You could’ve been hurt. Stalked! Killed! Something could’ve happened to you, and I never would’ve known why. What’s wrong with you?”
Roman pinched me by the shoulders and walked me away from the now-staring throng of witch police and onlookers.
When we were shielded by a row of cars, he said calmly, “Will you settle down?”
“No, I will not settle down. You should’ve told me. Trust, Roman. Trust. That’s what marriages are made of.”
“I know what a marriage is made of. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry. Or worse, go in there yourself and find out what the place was all about.”
I crossed my arms. “I would never have done that.”
Total lie. It’s the first thing I would’ve done.
“Right. You would’ve marched in there and told criminals to leave me alone.”
“I would not.”
“Would too.”
I squared my shoulders and pulled away. “Okay, so maybe I would have. But that does not mean you shouldn’t have told me.”
“You’re missing the point of what that place is.”
“Okay, Mr. Smarty-pants. Why don’t you tell me?”
“It’s attitudes like this that make it hard to explain these things to you. You get all bent out of shape.”
I fisted my hands and yelled, “I am not bent out of anything. I am perfectly fine.”