Crushed (City of Eldrich Book 2)

by Laura Kirwan

  “It’s not control, honey,” Edna replied. “It’s physical infirmity. If I could do him, I would. I’m not sure you’ll be able to pry the youngsters off him.”

  “And if he rejects them,” Owen chimed in, “which he will because he’s sick with grief for his dead boyfriend, things will turn ugly. Hell hath no fury, right? And that’s regular women. Natalie Segretti could turn him into hamburger with a few words and a wave of her hand.”

  Meaghan sighed. “Only if Brian doesn’t beat him to death first.”

  “In which case, Natalie will turn Brian into hamburger. We have to keep Jhoro with us and under wraps.” He turned to Edna. “Sorry, doll. But you can’t be trusted, either.”

  “Don’t I know it, sugar pie. You better get tall, blond, and handsome out of my house. I’m close to stripping down and doing the hootchy-kootchy for him, and nobody wants to see that, not even me.” She glared at Meaghan, eyes narrowed. “I’m also feeling like I want to tear your hair out, dear, you being so close to him. You ever taken him out for a test drive?”

  “Edna!”

  The old woman snorted. “Don’t act all innocent with me. He’s a short tiptoe away from your bed every night. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

  Meaghan started to answer but stopped. Had she thought about it? And if not, why not? And why had everyone else been so giddy? “I fell into mommy-mode with him the moment he got here. But the witches . . . they went nuts about him. More nuts than you’d expect even for a guy this handsome.”

  Owen nodded. “I see what you’re getting at. Maybe there was some magic at work before Marnie’s charm was cast.”

  “Exactly. I found a trio of witches in my kitchen yesterday, watching him and they were mesmerized. Then Marnie came in and he kissed her. I thought the witches were gonna blast them both into cat chow, but then he smiled at them, and the witches sighed and smiled back. They didn’t even notice I was there until Jhoro saw me, and the looks I got when he hugged me made me very glad to be impervious.”

  Owen took a long look at Jhoro. “Maybe that’s why Marnie’s spell went wrong. Somebody else took a shot at him first. So, what do we do next?”

  “Find Marnie,” Meaghan said. “Even if she’s still alive, the Order hates witches and there’s a lot of ways they can hurt her short of killing her.”

  “So where do we look?”

  “City hall’s a good bet. We know there are wizards there.”

  Sid rejoined the conversation. “There’s also a lot of broken glass, and Jamie manifesting big poltergeist activity. We need to get him back, too.”

  Jamie. Meaghan had been so distracted by all this other crap she hadn’t had time to worry about him. She felt a bloom of panic in her gut. “I know. But I don’t think we can do that until we get everybody’s head clear. I need Natalie in her right mind.”

  “But we can’t shut this mess down without Marnie,” Owen reminded her. “And if she’s with the wizards, we’re going to have to deal with Jamie, ready or not.”

  Everyone was looking at her, waiting for her to figure out what to do next. What she really wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for twelve hours. She wanted to hide. Instead, she took a deep breath and tried to ignore her fear.

  “Okay,” Meaghan said. “We have to treat this as the same problem then, but I’m not leading us into city hall blind. We need to talk to Finn—if the thing Jhoro encountered really was him—and see if he knows anything. If Finn’s a ghost, Annie’s our best bet. She hates Jhoro at the moment because she thinks he’s trying to steal Russ, but on the plus side, she can’t hurt him with magic.”

  “How do we get her here?” Sid asked.

  Meaghan stared at him.

  “Oh, no. I’m not going back in that house with the love-crazy witch, the jealous cop, and your sexually confused brother. Russ kept asking me how to be gay. How should I know, I told him. Troon don’t think that way. Gay, straight, male, female—those kind of labels are a human thing.”

  Meaghan sighed and pulled out her phone. “Fine. Let’s do it this way.”

  Russ picked up immediately. “Where are you?” he hissed. “Natalie keeps threatening to hex me if I don’t give up Jhoro. I keep telling her it’s not my fault, I was born this way, but she won’t listen.”

  “You weren’t born this way, Russ. You didn’t even wake up this way. Now, shut up and put Annie on the phone.”

  Russ sighed. “I know she’s hurt, but I can’t pretend to be something I’m not.”

  “Whatever. Put her on the phone.”

  “What?” Annie snapped at her. “Your brother’s going to get hexed by Natalie and it will serve him right. Lying rat bastard pretending to like girls.”

  “He’s already hexed,” Meaghan said. “As are you and Natalie and Brian. I need you to get your shit together, like you did getting us out of city hall. Come over to Edna’s house. We need your help.”

  “Should I bring Russ before Natalie turns him into something? Why does he keep calling her ‘sis’?”

  “I have no idea,” Meaghan lied. “Leave him there. Tell him I need your help and you’ll be back soon. Then get over here.”

  She called Natalie’s phone next. “Don’t hex Russ,” Meaghan said before Natalie could say hello. “Or Brian.”

  “Like I’d waste the magic on either of them. What about Betty Bleach?”

  “Annie’s leaving. When she’s gone, go lock yourself in Jhoro’s room and leave the boys alone.”

  “Don’t let her hurt Jhoro,” Natalie said.

  “I won’t.” On impulse, Meaghan added, “And put up a barrier around the house. Nobody gets in, nobody gets out.”

  “But what if Jhoro comes home?”

  Meaghan rolled her eyes. “If he shows up, you can let him in. But we need to keep you safe from the wizards, okay?”

  “All right. Bring him home safe, okay? I can’t live without him.”

  Meaghan slapped her hand quietly against her forehead. “I promise. Now do what I asked you.”

  She ended the call and heard a couple of gentle knocks on the screen door. “Wait here,” she said to the others. “Let me head her off.”

  Annie had changed into a pair of Russ’s jeans and one of his T-shirts. “Boyfriend jeans,” she said with a wan smile. “A girl can still hope, right? That’s not too pathetic, is it?”

  Meaghan pulled her into a quick hug. “It’s not pathetic at all. Trust me. You can do more than hope. As soon as this thing is over, you’ll be the only one Russ has eyes for, I promise.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely. But until then, I need you to be the strong, sensible woman you were getting us out of city hall. There’s somebody here you aren’t going to want to see.”

  Annie stepped back. “Him? That yellow-haired, over-sexed, man stealer? Here to gloat?”

  Meaghan shook her head. “No, not to gloat.”

  Jhoro stepped into the hallway. Meaghan grabbed Annie before she could lunge at him.

  But Annie merely gazed at him, taking in his scratched arms, his muddy clothes, and his tear-swollen eyes. “He’s been crying?”

  “Yes,” Meaghan said. “This is what Marnie’s spell did to him. Or maybe it’s not even the spell. He’s grieving for someone he lost when Fahraya was destroyed.”

  Annie nodded, her rage spent. “The guy with the dark hair. The one buried in the forest.” She stared at the space around him. “But it’s not only him he’s crying for. There are others here with him. He’s grieving for all of it.”

  Please let it be this easy. “Finn—the guy with dark hair. Is he here?”

  Annie shook her head. “No. These aren’t ghosts I’m seeing. They’re . . . memories? I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like his memories are so strong, he’s manifesting them.” She shivered.

  “Still mad at him?”

  “God, no. There’s no room in there for Russ. Or Natalie, or anybody else.” She nodded. “I can feel the hex now. I
still feel jealous, but it’s . . . I can feel it isn’t real.” Now her eyes filled with tears. She opened her arms. “Come here.”

  Jhoro let her hug him.

  Meaghan drew in a sharp breath waiting to see what would happen.

  After a few moments, Annie patted him on the arm, stepped away, and dug a tissue out of her pocket. “Waaah. Now he’s got me going. I’m usually only a little empathic, but he’s radiating grief like a forest fire. I feel like the world just ended.”

  “Like it did for him. You aren’t going to get all mushy about him instead, are you?”

  Annie shook her head. “No. Not now.”

  Meaghan sagged against the wall. “That’s a relief. You think seeing him like this would be enough to break the spell for Natalie?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m . . . like I said, something about him is amping my psychic radar off the charts. I haven’t been this empathic since I was a kid. And even with that, I can still feel the spell nibbling at me, trying to find a way in. Have you found Marnie yet?”

  “No, but we think the wizards took her. At least that’s what something that looked like Finn told Jhoro.”

  “And if it was Finn, you need me to see if I can talk to him.”

  Meaghan nodded. “It’s not a great plan, but right now it’s all I got.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Owen’s sleek BMW convertible was too small to carry them all, so they commandeered Edna’s enormous Crown Victoria. Sid and Jhoro didn’t know how to drive and Owen could only drive with the adaptive equipment he had in his own car. That left Meaghan and Annie, but Meaghan felt so exhausted she wasn’t sure she’d be safe behind the wheel. She climbed into the backseat with Jhoro and Sid, leaving Owen and Annie to navigate.

  Jhoro was big and warm and solid next to her. She put her head on his shoulder and said, “Let me shut my eyes for a minute.”

  When Meaghan woke up, she found herself alone in the car. She looked out the window for the others, but couldn’t see anyone. Trees crowded around the small clearing where the car was parked. She vaguely recognized her surroundings, but it definitely wasn’t the clearing where Finn was buried.

  Then she saw a shimmer on the other side of the clearing and within it a distant figure walking across a barren plain. That’s why the place looked familiar. She wasn’t awake. She was dreaming. Someone from the other side wanted to chat.

  She stepped out of the car. While she hoped to see her father, she wasn’t surprised when the figure resolved into a young man with dark brown dreadlocks. And wings.

  Finn.

  He smiled and raised his hand. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “You speak English?”

  “No. Is that what you’re hearing? I’m speaking Fahrayan.”

  “But I’m hearing English.”

  “Yet I hear you speak Fahrayan. Even without the requisite number of vocal cords.”

  “Curious,” Meaghan said.

  “Not really,” he said in a soft voice. “Death tends to erase such differences. We aren’t really speaking to each other in any case. This is happening in a dream.”

  “Yes, I’m aware. Which means you don’t have a lot of time to say what you’ve come to say.”

  He shook his head. “No. Is he well?”

  Meaghan knew he meant Jhoro. “At the moment, no, not particularly, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. Ignoring grief only makes it worse. As much as he hurts now, he’ll be better for it.”

  “You take good care of him. Like a mother. Thank you.”

  “You miss him.”

  Finn nodded. “They say that passes, but it hasn’t yet.”

  “I’m so sorry you had to die.”

  He shrugged. “It was my time. Nothing could change that.”

  “It must be hard to see him with Marnie.”

  “Unexpected, certainly.” Finn smiled for a moment, then grew serious again. “But death takes all that away. Resentment, jealousy, disappointment—it all fades.”

  “All of it?”

  “Everything but the love. The love stays.” He looked away, his face sad. “The love stays.” He turned his attention back to Meaghan. “There isn’t much time. You have questions to ask.”

  “You saw the wizards take Marnie?”

  Finn nodded. “I did.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “A sacrifice. To bring something evil into this world.”

  Meaghan frowned. “Jamie’s not the sacrifice?”

  “No, he’s the conduit.”

  “So, the Order isn’t going to kill him?”

  Finn shook his head. “They don’t need to. He won’t survive their passage.”

  “Whose passage? The Order?”

  “No. The wizards serve what’s coming.”

  “That thing inside V’hren?” Meaghan shuddered involuntarily.

  “No. Things long trapped that want to break free.”

  She waited for him to say more. I don’t have time to play twenty questions. When Finn failed to fill the silence, she sighed and asked, “Trapped where? How?”

  “A place between the worlds.”

  “Where that thing inside V’hren went? Is he one of them?”

  “He serves them, but he’s only a shadow of his masters.”

  Meaghan felt a stab of fear. “So these things are worse?”

  Finn nodded. “Much worse.”

  She shuddered again. Her first encounter with the Power, when she’d had her drug-induced psychic skills, had been bad enough. “So do those sigils they carved into Jamie summon them?”

  “They don’t need to be summoned. They’ve been waiting for millennia. But they need a way in. The sigils are the spell needed to open the way.”

  “But why now? And why Jamie?”

  “The fulfillment of a prophecy.”

  Meaghan scowled. “Prophecy is nothing more than hindsight and good guessing. I don’t believe in prophecy.”

  Finn smiled. “As was prophesied. Prophecies are tricky things, though. Your father told me to tell you to use your head and find the . . . loopholes? Am I saying that correctly?”

  Now Meaghan smiled. “Good old Dad. Once a lawyer, always a lawyer. Yeah, you’re saying it correctly.”

  A prophecy, she thought. Great. More cryptic, mystic nonsense. She didn’t bother to ask him the details. He’d merely smile enigmatically and tell her he couldn’t talk about it. “You see my father a lot?”

  Finn didn’t disappoint her. “I only spoke with him once, not long after I died. I can’t really tell you more than that.”

  “Of course you can’t. Any suggestions on how to get Marnie back?”

  “Help is coming. But you have work to do before it arrives.”

  “Help from where?”

  Finn looked over his shoulder and then turned back to Meaghan. “My time is up. I wish I could tell you more, but . . .” He shrugged.

  “Yeah, I know. No peeking beyond the veil. That would make it too easy.”

  “Keep him safe,” Finn said.

  The dream dissolved into the sound of gentle tapping. Meaghan jerked awake and saw a face smiling at her through the car window.

  A woman about Meaghan’s age, with wild black curls threaded with a few white hairs, stood outside the car. Meaghan, still fuzzy with sleep, gazed at her, confused. Where the hell was she?

  Annie appeared behind the woman and waved.

  Meaghan opened the door and climbed out of the backseat.

  They were in the clearing where Finn was buried. Owen and Sid stood on either side of Jhoro, who sat by the stone at the head of the grave with his face in his hands. Sid had his small, blue hand on Jhoro’s shoulder.

  “No luck,” Annie said. “There’s no sign of him.” She gestured at the woman with the curly hair. “This is Ruth Greene. Ruth, meet Meaghan.”

  Meaghan stared a moment, her head still fuzzy with sleep. “Sorry,” she finally said. “I fell asleep and I’m not waking up very quickly.”
She didn’t want to say anything about her dream until she knew who this woman was. “Um, Ruth, I don’t mean to be rude, but . . . who are you and why are you here?”

  “Owen didn’t tell you?” Ruth sighed. “He told me you knew all about us. I’m here to help you with the Fahrayans. Owen didn’t tell you any of this?”

  That was fast. But Finn had also said they had work to do before the help arrived, so he probably hadn’t been talking about Ruth Greene.

  “He gave me a proposal this morning, but I haven’t had a chance to read it. You know what’s going on here?”

  “Love is in the air, and it’s starting to stink. There’s a missing witch?”

  “Yeah,” Meaghan said. “Sorry to be so blunt, but who are you? Who do you work for?”

  Ruth shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  “Simplify it for me.”

  “Basically I work for an agency that deals with magical . . . stuff.”

  “Seriously? Is this a government agency? The feds are trying to hide the existence of magic?”

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “Please. You don’t believe in that X-Files crap, do you?”

  “I’ve worked in the public sector for over twenty years. What do you think?”

  “I think you know how rare it is for government to get its shit together enough to pull off a competent conspiracy.”

  “So who do you work for?”

  “It kind of depends on who you ask. Everybody thinks we work for the other guy.”

  “You’re double dipping?”

  “More like quadruple dipping. We get funding from several levels of government under several different names.”

  Meaghan raised an eyebrow. “Fraud?”

  Ruth laughed. “Big time. But what else can we do? It’s not like we can submit budget requests for what we really do.”

  Despite everything else going on, Meaghan was fascinated. “You know, that sounds a lot like a government conspiracy.”

  “Ha! You got me. But there’s only five of us so it’s a lot easier to pull off. And we’re conspiring to con the government, so the conspiracy’s on the other foot.” She squinted a moment. “Or something like that. But we’re small potatoes, so we get away with it.”