by Ann Charles
His smug grin was begging for my fist. “She’s been around, burning plenty of sheets in town.”
That was it. It was one thing to insult me, but nobody disrespected my aunt to my face.
I closed one eye and cackled loud and long. An old man walking his dog on the sidewalk stopped and looked my way. Wiggling my fingers at Hawke’s wide eyes, I donned a creaky voice and chanted, “Eye of newt, leg of klutz, wither his pecker and shrink his nuts. Shazam!”
When I pretended to zap Hawke with my fake spell, he stumbled backward in surprise, tripped over a concrete parking curb, and fell flat on his rump on the asphalt.
I stepped over the parking curb and leaned down, pointing at his third-eye chakra so he’d clearly see the big picture I was about to paint. “You say one more derogatory thing about my aunt, you egotistical snot-bucket, and I’ll make your twig and berries fall right off.” I pretended to throw invisible fairy dust at him and added for good measure, “Poof!”
He snarled, sputtering before regaining control of his tongue. “Are you threatening an officer of the law, Parker?”
“Nope. I’m warning a piece of shit civilian who thinks wearing a badge on his crummy 1970s blazers gives him the freedom to insult upstanding citizens in this community.”
After one more threatening wiggle of my fingers, I strode toward Calamity Jane’s.
“You’re going down, Parker!” he yelled at my back. “Mark my words.”
“Don’t get cold water on your weenie, Detective,” I said over my shoulder. “It’ll shrivel up twice as fast.”
After a smile and a wave at the old guy on the sidewalk still gaping at me, I crossed the street, escaped to the warmth inside Calamity Jane’s, and parked my ass at my desk.
Now to wait for the shit-storm sure to blow my way.
Chapter Six
It turned out that pretending to put a hex on Detective Hawke was not one of my brighter moves, a detail that Cooper cursed at me about via text messages repeatedly throughout my day until I put my cell phone in silent mode.
Unfortunately, with Doc working down near Hill City all day, I couldn’t scamper over and hide in his office. I couldn’t even call and whine in his ear because his client lived in the boonies out of cell phone reach. So I was on my own, but with the influx of potential buyers and sellers thanks to Jerry’s new billboard pimping me, I kept busy enough to stay out of trouble for the rest of the day. After a couple of brief afternoon meetings with Jerry and the two new prospective male clients who’d made it through his screening process the day before, I was beginning to think Jerry might be onto something with that damned billboard … but I wasn’t hoisting any victory flags until I made a sale or two.
When I pulled into the drive that evening, Aunt Zoe’s pickup was the only one parked there. Harvey had a hot date tonight, according to the message he’d left me. We weren’t supposed to expect him for supper or breakfast tomorrow morning—if he was lucky. I tried not to think about Harvey and his hot dates any more than I had to, in spite of the details he always insisted on sharing.
Christmas lights hung crooked in the front window, twinkling, inviting me in out of the cold. It appeared Aunt Zoe’s plan to have the kids help her decorate for Christmas worked. I looked forward to seeing the results of their work and soaking up some holiday cheer. Cornelius meditated to recharge his aura. Snuggling with my kids healed my soul and brought me back to life.
Collecting my bag, I skirted Aunt Zoe’s truck and climbed the front porch steps. I was reaching for the front door when I heard a familiar engine coming up the street. I waited as Doc parked the Picklemobile behind my Honda.
He didn’t waste time in the cold air, his long legs making fast work of the front sidewalk. “Hey, Boots, how was your day?”
I blew a raspberry for an answer.
Chuckling, he joined me on the porch. Our breath steamed in the frigid air. “I finally got your texts after I made it back to the highway. Has Cooper stopped chewing you out yet?”
“Well, he hasn’t texted me in the last two hours, so maybe he ran out of hot air.”
“This too shall pass.” Doc gave me a hug and kissed my forehead, his lips warm.
“You missed,” I said, puckering up.
“Damn, I’ll have to try again. Let’s see if I can nail it this time.”
He hit the bull’s-eye, molding me against him. His cologne enveloped me, enticing me to explore more of his skin under his layers of clothing. His mouth made my head float, wiping out all thoughts about my crappy-ass day for a few blissful moments … until the front door creaked open.
“Mom,” Layne, my son, interrupted us. “Addy says she gets to frost more Christmas cookies than me because I was bad at school last month. Is that true?”
I crashed back to earth, extracting myself from Doc’s arms. “Layne, after all these years of making sure everything is equal down to the last Tic Tac, do you really think I’d let your sister frost more cookies than you?”
“Probably not.”
“There’s no probably about it.” I’d learned early on that even-steven was the only way to go with my twins if I wanted to keep my sanity. Although they had found plenty of other ways to encourage bouts of temporary madness in me.
Layne looked around me. “Hey, Doc, did Mom tell you that my grandparents are coming to check you out this weekend?”
I winced on Doc’s behalf. “Go tell your sister that she is not the head elf in charge of cookies this year. I’ll determine who frosts how many and when.”
“Can I tell her that you’re going to yell at her for trying to be the boss of me?”
I leaned down. “Absolutely not.” After planting a kiss on his forehead, I shooed him out of the doorway.
Layne raced up the stairs, hollering his sister’s name.
I slipped off my coat as Doc closed the door behind us. “I can try to delay my parents’ visit.” I hung up my coat and then took his.
“Why?”
“So you don’t have to meet them.” I avoided his gaze while hanging up his coat, my stomach full of butterflies about his reaction to this whole meet-the-parents deal. If he took me up on avoiding them, what would that mean?
“Violet, is there something you’re not telling me about your parents?”
Besides my mother being a pod person from the peace-love-and-happiness era and my father possibly browbeating Doc into a marriage proposal? “No.”
“Then why wouldn’t I want to meet them?”
Because that was sort of a precursor to a more serious relationship than we currently had, and there was a squirmy chance that my mother would scare him off with unfiltered stories about my past calamities on the dating front.
I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Because—”
The front door banged open behind Doc.
Cooper burst in with a gust of wind, both giving off arctic blasts. “Jesus, Parker! Could you have fucked this up any more?” He slammed the door behind him.
My cheeks spontaneously caught fire with indignity. “That asshole shouldn’t have insulted my aunt.”
He rushed me, his steely eyes even more hard and flinty close up. “That’s just sticks-and-stones bullshit. Did I or did I not explicitly tell you this morning not to fight with Hawke?”
I jammed my hands on my hips, not backing down an inch. “You said not to take the bait if he made fun of my hair, which he did and I didn’t.”
“I wasn’t only talking about your damned—”
“Coop!” Doc gripped the detective’s shoulder, pulling him back a step before we bumped noses. When Cooper scowled at him, Doc nudged his head toward the top of the stairs where Addy stood watching us with wide eyes and an open mouth.
Cooper pinched his lips together. His nostrils were still flaring when he turned back to me. “I’m sorry, Violet.”
I did a double take at his instant change of face. “Um … apology accepted,” I said, and then pasted on a bright smile for Addy, who was easing dow
n the steps. Her wrinkled brow told me she wasn’t fully buying our sudden niceties. “Hi, sweetie. Did you have fun hanging Christmas lights today with Aunt Zoe?”
“Yeah.” Addy paused when she was eye level with Doc. “She made us caramel apples for a treat when we were done.” Her narrowed gaze bounced from me to Doc, then held steady on Cooper. “Why are you mad at my mom, Coop?”
Cooper’s cheeks darkened slightly. He smiled, his whole face softening along with his mouth. His transformation from stormy to sunny always made me gawk, like catching sight of a double rainbow. “I’m not mad at your mom, Addy. I’m just upset about some stuff that happened at work.”
“Then why were you yelling at her?”
“Because she was there when everything went to hel … heck.”
In other words, I was to blame by association. Guilt twisted in my chest. Okay, so I had been the one who’d uttered the spell, but only because Hawke pushed me too far.
“Are you going to take her to jail?” Addy asked, her frown edged with worry.
I looked at Cooper with raised brows. Great question. Inquiring minds would like to hear his answer.
His steely gaze slid my way. “No. But she and I do need to have a serious talk later about why she needs to keep her nose out of trouble. Does your brother ever stick his nose in your business and make you mad?”
She nodded so hard her chin bobbled. “All the time. He likes to boss me around. It drives me crazy.”
“Hear! Hear!” I said, baring my teeth at Cooper.
He cocked his head sideways, his hardened jaw and matching glare issuing a warning.
“Are you staying for supper again, Coop?” Addy leaned her hip against the stair rail.
“Well, here’s the thing, Addy. You’re sort of stuck with me for a while.”
“Like overnight again?”
“Even longer.”
I growled under my breath.
“Hear! Hear!” he shot back at me before returning his focus to Addy. “You see, my house is being sold and Doc needs his spare room back, so I don’t have anywhere to sleep each night and it’s too cold outside to camp.”
“Oh, that’s sad. You can have my bed, Coop. I’ll sleep with Mom. Her bed is huge.”
Dammit. I crossed my arms. There went any more slumber parties with Doc for a while.
“That’s very sweet of you, Addy, but I can sleep on your couch if that’s okay.”
“No!” She put her foot down on the stair step for emphasis.
Cooper and I exchanged raised eyebrows.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because that’s where Doc sleeps when he stays over. We need to leave it open for him.” That answered my question if the kids realized Doc had been sleeping in my bed when he stayed during the last week. Addy crossed her arms, mimicking my stance. “You sleep in my room, Coop. Mom always says that we’re supposed to be giving, especially at Christmas. I’d like to give you my bed until you find a new house to live in.”
“Addy,” Aunt Zoe hollered from the kitchen. “Come set the table.”
“What about Layne?” Addy yelled back.
“He’s part of the clean-up crew tonight.”
“Oh, yeah.” With a smile at Doc, she leaned over the stair railing and whispered something in his ear. At his nod, she skipped down the stairs and around us into the kitchen.
I started to ask Doc what she’d said, but then bit my tongue. That was his and Addy’s business. I turned to Cooper. “How do you feel about pink polka-dotted bedspreads?”
“I’m not taking your kid’s bed.”
“I don’t think you understand how Addy works,” I said. “She will badger you until you give in.”
Doc chuckled. “She comes by her willfulness genetically.” He dodged my swat, his smile fading as he looked back at Cooper. “What’s this business about more clocks being stolen from Ms. Wolff’s apartment?”
Cooper took off his coat and draped it over the stair rail. “There are four more clocks gone as of this morning. Unfortunately, nobody saw anyone suspicious hanging around—not Freesia, or any of the officers we’ve had patrolling, or any of the other Galena House residents.”
“Why did Hawke automatically start sniffing around me? I don’t know anything about those kooky clocks.” An idea hit me. “Does this have anything to do with the new evidence he has?”
Cooper shook his head. “Don’t you get it, Parker? Hawke is so set on finding you guilty of something that every single crime that occurs now ties back to you somehow in his head.” He squeezed the back of his neck. “Then you go and pull this hocus-pocus shit out of your ass and it reinforces his nutty beliefs about you being a witch even more.”
“What ‘hocus-pocus shit’?” Doc asked.
I winced. I’d purposely omitted that tidbit from my long-winded texts, wanting to lay out the whole scene for Doc before letting him know where I’d fallen short in the maturity department.
“Your girlfriend pretended to put a hex on Hawke today.”
Doc’s dark eyes widened. “A hex?”
“It wasn’t really a hex,” I said.
Cooper scoffed. “How was that not a hex?”
“A true hex is something passed down through a book of spells. I made it all up on the fly.”
His gaze narrowed at my explanation. “Christ, Parker. You’re really something, you know it?”
“Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment, Cooper.”
“What did you say, Killer?” Doc asked.
I repeated my spell for him, acting it out with the one-eyed squint, croaky voice, and wiggly fingers.
While Doc leaned back against the stair rail and laughed, Cooper glared at me, confirming my suspicion that the detective’s funny bone had been removed at some point in his bullet-filled past and jammed up his anal cavity for safe-keeping.
“I told you not to interact with Hawke,” Cooper grumbled. “What in the hell were you even doing in the police parking lot?”
“I was walking Dominick Masterson to his Land Rover.”
That sobered Doc in a flash. “Masterson? What did he want?”
“He wants to hire me.”
“As his Realtor?” Cooper asked.
“Partly.”
Doc crossed his arms, bristling like Cooper. “Hire you to do what?”
“Find the lidérc.”
“And kill it?” Doc pressed.
“No, bring it to him alive.”
Cooper cursed under his breath.
Doc’s jaw visibly tightened. “Does Masterson think you’re some kind of bounty hunter?”
“I don’t know what he thinks.” That was the truth. Dominick was a total mystery to me, from the extent of his non-humanness to why he had returned to my world. He’d claimed he was sent back to help, but something in his black eyes told me that trusting him would be hazardous to my health.
“What was your answer?” Doc asked.
“I said I’d think about it.”
He swore. “He’s trouble, Violet. He’s not here to make sure you live happily ever after.”
“I know,” I whispered, glancing toward the kitchen to make sure we didn’t have an audience. Well, I didn’t really know anything for certain, but Doc and I were on the same page when it came to Dominick. “Think about it, though. If I don’t catch it, that thing is out there roaming free. It’s only a matter of time until it attaches to some poor victim.”
“You’re a killer,” he whispered back, “not a catcher.”
“And I told him that, but he seems to think I can capture it without sending it back to whatever hell it came from.”
“Please tell me you’re not falling for his fake charm and pretty-boy looks.”
Did I detect a hint of jealousy there? Doc must know by now that I was smitten to pieces with him. “For your information, I’m not fooled by his charm or good looks because he makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Right.” Cooper snickered. “Let me guess, you sta
rt to swoon in his presence?”
“Don’t snicker at me.” I pinched his arm. “There’s something about Dominick that sets off my warning radar.”
“What radar?” the detective asked, rubbing his arm.
“The one that makes me nauseated whenever an enemy gets too close.”
“Is that true?” he asked Doc.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m the one with the radar, not Doc.”
Doc sighed, plowing his fingers through his hair. “Violet, you don’t even know how to kill it yet, let alone catch it.”
“I have an idea how to solve that.” When he continued to frown at me, I explained, “Prudence.”
Cooper shook his head. “That’s a bad idea.”
He said that only because the last time he visited Prudence, the ex-executioner ghost, she wrestled him for control of his body and won. Unfortunately, her victory left me with a nasty bruise on my leg that took almost two weeks to fade.
“Does anyone else have a bright idea on how to catch a lidérc?” I asked.
“I do,” said a high-pitched voice from the top of the steps.
We all looked up at where Layne stood, his hands in his jeans pockets.
“Hey, honey.” I pasted on a fake smile. “Did you wash your hands for supper?”
He nodded, coming down to join us. “I know how to catch a lidérc, Mom.”
I licked my lips, wincing inwardly at letting him overhear me talk about my other job. The last thing I wanted my kids to know was that their mother was a killer, even if I only executed those who were causing harm to the innocent.
“How do you know what a lidérc is, Layne?” Doc asked.
“I read about it.”
I worried my lower lip. “You mean in one of those books you got from the library about ghosts?”
Layne shook his head. “It was in that old book I found in your bedroom when you were sick.”
My eyes met Doc’s. Shit! Layne had read the family history book. I should have known that if it had words on the page, Layne would be all over it.
“What’s the book about?” Cooper asked Layne, slipping into cop mode.
“It’s like a graphic novel with all sorts of pictures of different warriors and their weapons and kills. It’s really cool.”