by Ashlyn Kane
“That’s the spirit.” Cole got out of the car, and Leo found the courage to follow.
In daylight everything seemed perfectly innocent, even cheerful. The flowers outside the entrance were still in bloom. Leo unlocked the main door and let Cole precede him inside. “I’m on the third floor.”
“No elevator?” Cole teased. “No wonder you’re in such good shape.”
Leo snorted. The stairs didn’t do much, considering he walked up them maybe twice a day, but they did put Cole’s behind at an excellent level for Leo’s viewing. It provided a nice distraction until they reached Leo’s floor and the horrible pit in his stomach opened again, threatening to swallow every iota of joy.
“Right or left?” Cole asked when Leo didn’t move toward either door.
“Right.” Leo reached into his pocket for his keys.
Cole held out his hand. Leo could have kissed him, except of course that he couldn’t. “I’ll get the door,” Cole offered, and then he held out his other hand with the bag of candies.
“Thanks.” Leo picked out another lemon fizzy, touched. Calm washed over him as the flavor burst on his tongue. He nodded at Cole to continue.
The door swung open.
Leo didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Atmospheric ripped curtains or obviously rearranged furniture or some guy chopping a hole in the wall with an ax, then popping his head through to say, “Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!”
He didn’t get any of that. Just his apartment, exactly as he’d left it, as far as he could tell. Cole pocketed Leo’s keys as though on autopilot. “Is it all right if I keep my shoes on? I don’t want to take unnecessary risks.”
“I’m not taking mine off. I don’t want to touch things any more than I have to. You’re fine.”
“Great.” Cole turned and looked at the vase sitting on the counter, but he didn’t reach out to touch it. Instead he pulled two pairs of ordinary gardening gloves from his pocket and handed one to Leo. “Put these on, just in case.”
Leo examined them as he did so. “Are they, like, lead-lined or something? Magic-proof?”
Cole smiled. “Sort of. They’re cotton.” He shrugged, then reached for the vase. “Neutralizes curses. Nature’s protector, I guess. A T-shirt won’t stop a curse someone’s hurling at you any more than it would stop a knife or a bullet, but it protects from cursed objects like a T-shirt protects from a sunburn.”
“Huh.” Leo made a mental note to start keeping these in the drawer by the front door instead. “So? Anything?”
Cole lifted the flowers from the vase and held them over the sink to examine them. “Nothing on the flowers. Actually, this is a strange collection. Daffodils—that’s love, luck, and fertility.” He glanced over, a wry smile on his features, but his cheeks were pink. “Someone who knows about your predicament, maybe? And the fern. Protection, health, blah blah blah. And forget-me-nots. True love and memories.” He shook his head, then opened the cupboard over the sink and took down a glass, which he filled with water. He set the flowers inside. “I’d think you have a secret admirer, but I’m pretty sure a secret admirer wouldn’t be able to send you these.”
“So something weird, but not necessarily something dangerous.” Leo fought the urge to fidget.
“Essentially.” Cole turned back to look at the vase, frowning. “This, however….”
Leo took the opportunity to look at it in plain daylight. It was smallish, heavy-looking, maybe made of some kind of leaded glass. “Yeah?”
“This is definitely enchanted.”
Despite the magic candy, Leo’s stomach sank. But Cole was still holding up the vase, examining it in the sunlight, his brow creased. “I swear it looks….”
Leo wanted to prompt him, but Cole set it down again. “Never mind. Ready to continue?”
Continue? “Now what?”
Cole waggled his glove-clad fingers. “Looking for anything else suspicious. We’re gonna toss your apartment. Don’t worry, I’ll let you do the bedroom.”
For a second Leo weighed the pros and cons of searching for cursed objects by himself versus having Cole go through his sex toy drawer. Oh God, he really hoped none of that stuff was cursed. “But how will I know when I find something?”
“Well, it’ll probably be something you haven’t seen before. It’s much easier to plant an object than to steal one, curse it, and put it back.”
That would still mean someone had been inside Leo’s apartment, but he accepted the explanation. “All right. And if I find something suspicious, I’ll just….”
“Whistle?” Cole suggested. “Scream like a toddler? Calmly get my attention?” He shrugged. “Just don’t touch whatever it is with your bare skin. Oh, and beware of dust bunnies,” he added, pulling open a kitchen drawer seemingly at random.
Were dust bunnies a thing? “Why?”
“Hmm? Oh, no reason in particular. I just hate dust.”
Well. All right, then. Armed with just enough knowledge to make him dangerous to dust bunnies, Leo entered his bedroom.
On first glance, nothing seemed out of place. Leo opened the curtains and looked behind them for anything that shouldn’t be there but found nothing. The space under the bed contained no obvious cursed objects, though he did sneeze a few times, prompting Cole to call from the next room, “I warned you about the dust bunnies!” Leo pulled out a few lonely socks and was about to drop them in the laundry hamper when he realized he ought to dump that out too.
Clothes, more clothes, a towel, some spare change he must have had in a pocket. Nothing incriminating. Leo moved on to the nightstand drawers. Lube, condoms, passport—hmm, maybe he should put that somewhere else in case of spills—a couple of old photographs. The bottom drawer was empty; he hadn’t brought much with him when he’d moved.
His closet was clean, aside from another colony of dust bunnies and some dirty clothes that needed to be rehomed. He tossed them in the hamper. And that was most of the bedroom taken care of. He poked his head back out to the living room to find the couch cushions on the floor and Cole on his knees in front of the couch, using his cell phone as a flashlight to peer into the crevices.
Perhaps Leo could be somewhat more thorough. He turned around again and pulled back the covers on the bed. Hell, he might as well put his sheets in the wash too while he was at it. He picked up a pillowcase and shook it to slide the pillow out. But when he reached over to grab the other one—the one he didn’t sleep on—he felt something hard.
“Cole?” Carefully, Leo pulled the pillow and pillowcase apart. His mouth went dry, and his stomach twisted. What the hell…?
Cole appeared in the doorway. “What did you—oh.” He peered over Leo’s shoulder—a neat trick, seeing as he was several inches shorter—and then came around to his side. “Can I?”
Leo nodded, still holding the pillowcase open. Cole reached in.
The object was six or so inches long. At first Leo thought it was a cross. Then Cole turned it over and he saw the face.
His knees wobbled. “What is that?”
“You know what it is.” Cole set it faceup on the bed. “It’s you.”
The tiny doll looked nothing like him. Oh, it had yellow hair—“Flax,” Cole murmured—and blue eyes, and two legs and two arms. But the features were simply glued on a seed pod. “And winter cherry.” He touched the doll’s cheek. “Blackberry thorns. Boneset. Chicory.”
“I need to sit down.” None of that made any sense to him, but it made the hair on his nape stand up. Unfortunately it had the opposite effect on his spine.
Cole wrapped an arm around his shoulders and led him out of the bedroom. “Come on. You’re gonna sit on the couch and I’m going to pack your bag.”
“Am I going somewhere?”
“Well, you’re not staying here.” Cole picked up a couch cushion and put it back on the couch, then pushed Leo down on it. “Not if someone else can get in without you knowing, no matter their intentions.”
Leo blinked at him, but Cole ha
d already disappeared back into the bedroom. Leo could hear him opening drawers and pushing hangers around in the closet. “Intentions?”
“Flax. That’s healing, protection. Blackberry too. Boneset, that’s exorcism, drives away evil.” Cole must have found Leo’s overnight bag, because there came the sound of a long zipper opening. “And chicory. Removal of obstacles.”
That sounded… not terrible. “Wait… what?”
“Different signature,” Cole said. A drawer opened, closed.
“So… what does this mean?”
Another zipper sound, and then Cole appeared in the bedroom doorway, Leo’s bag slung over his back. “No idea!” he said. “But whoever made it, it’s not the person who cursed you, and it’s not the person who sent that vase. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Good idea. Leo got up, surprised to find that his knees carried him without any trouble.
They left the apartment, Cole with a bag of garbage to take down to the dumpster and an armful of flowers, Leo with his packed overnight bag. He hoped Cole had remembered his toothbrush and some scrubs. But if not, well, Leo could always go shopping.
On the second-floor landing, they ran into Leo’s across-the-hall neighbor just coming in, sweaty from one of his dog walks. “Hey, Leo.”
“Nate,” Leo managed, thankful for programmed politeness. “How’s it going?”
“Loving life!”
He always was. He was absurdly good-natured.
Leo and Cole continued to the ground floor and let themselves out of the building. Once Cole had tossed the garbage away, he squared his shoulders and said, “So about that noise you heard last night.”
Oh great. “Yeah?”
“Probably nothing. Your neighbor needs some soundproofing. I can help.”
Leo didn’t ask. Cole popped open the trunk and Leo tossed his bag inside. “Now what?”
Cole untucked the flowers from the crook of his elbow. He’d wrapped the vase in Leo’s scrub top from the night before for the trip down the stairs. He brandished the florist’s business card. “Now we’re going to find out what this guy knows.”
Chapter Nine
PEASEBLOSSOM resided in a tiny building that had once been a carriage house but had been updated to include plumbing, shelving, and a lovely bay window that currently held a colorful display of Thanksgiving arrangements. Fortunately, at the moment, Leo and Cole were the only patrons.
The bell above the door rang cheerfully when they entered, which seemed a silly formality since no one in the place could have missed their entrance. Avery smiled at them from behind the counter—once upon a time that had made Cole’s heart beat double time, but he’d spent enough time in Leo’s company that he was becoming immune to extremely attractive men—and then something went whap whap whap, and Leo hit the floor as a knee-high gray blur ran out from the back of the shop.
“Hi,” Cole said to Avery.
“Oh my God, hello, beautiful,” Leo said to the dog.
Avery’s smile widened, as though nothing in the world could possibly endear him so much as someone loving his dog. “Good morning, gentlemen. What can I do for you?”
Using the T-shirt, Cole set the vase with the flowers shoved haphazardly back inside on the counter, hoping Avery could see well enough to know he shouldn’t touch it. “We’re here to find out who sent these flowers.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he noted that Tinkerbell had flopped over to beg for belly rubs. Leo didn’t seem inclined to stand up. Maybe the combination of puppy magic and lemon fizzies was too much for his body to process.
Avery looked at the vase. Then he looked into the cooler on the wall to his left. Sure enough, it contained daffodils—unusually out of season—and forget-me-nots as well. But his eyes, so dark a blue they were nearly violet, held only confusion. “These were mine,” he agreed, touching a finger to one of the blooms. He kept his hands well away from the vase. Then he gestured with his head to where Leo and Tinkerbell were getting better acquainted.
“Leo.” Cole resisted the urge to poke him with the toe of his shoe.
Leo stood up, narrowly avoiding hitting his head on the counter. “Sorry! Hi. I like your dog.”
Cole tamped down on a teeny, tiny jealous part of him. Leo hadn’t taken to Niamh like that. Then again, Niamh was a familiar, not a pet, and talking animals were probably a bit of a shock. “Leo, Avery. Avery, this is Leo,” he said. “He’s a client. The flowers showed up at his place.”
Avery gave Leo a once-over, and that teeny, tiny jealous part of Cole grew into a small jealous part. “Nice to meet you,” Avery said, friendly but professional. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
Leo’s shoulders slumped. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
Avery shook his head and touched the daffodil again. Cole swore he could see the water level in the vase sinking as the flower bloomed more fully. “I recognize the flowers—they came from here. But I don’t remember selling them, and the vase—that’s definitely not something I carry.”
Too much lead in the glass, Cole thought. And too old, and definitely too enchanted to be sold somewhere that catered to mundanes.
“What do you mean, you don’t remember selling them?” Leo frowned at Avery, then looked at Cole. “How does he not remember? Were they stolen?”
“It’s a possibility,” Cole admitted. “No security system?”
Avery shook his head. “Just the old-fashioned kind.” He waggled his fingers as though to indicate the occult. “Didn’t think I’d need more, in this town.”
“You probably don’t.” But it did preclude catching the perpetrator on video. “I don’t suppose the day’s cash-out was off?”
“Actually, now that you mention it.” Avery eyed the bouquet, then flipped through a spiral-bound notebook next to the register. “Yeah, I had extra. Approximately what I would’ve charged for a bouquet like that, but I didn’t write it in my receipt book. See?” He handed the book over.
Leo took it before Cole could and held it close to his face, squinting. “Actually I think maybe you did write a receipt.” He took a pen from the wire cup on the desk and poked at the torn-off bits of paper still stuck in the coils. “Looks like someone took your carbon copy.”
Avery groaned. “My sister’s going to give me so much shit for not switching over to digital when she bugged me about it.”
Cole wasn’t sure that wouldn’t have resulted in a fried hard drive, but he kept mum.
“Why don’t you remember, though?” Leo asked.
Cole and Avery exchanged glances. “Memory charm.” The room seemed to dim a bit as Avery made the realization, and the flowers in the vase shriveled.
“Memory charm,” Leo repeated. He looked at Cole, expression halfway between jaded and imploring. “That’s not just a made-up thing from Harry Potter, I’m guessing.”
“Sorry.” This whole situation was a mess. Cole didn’t blame Leo for feeling overwhelmed. But in the meantime, he had a suspicious occurrence to investigate. He turned back to Avery. “You want me to have a look?”
Avery shrugged. He didn’t seem hopeful that Cole would find anything, but he didn’t seem particularly concerned either. Maybe his kind had a sort of spidey sense for when they were in real danger. “Be my guest.”
The remnants of the spell still clung to him, even through his own aura, though they were sloughing away. But Cole doubted even Avery’s natural abilities would undo the work the charm had already done. “Well, it was definitely a spell. Not enough of it left to finger a suspect, though.”
“It was worth a shot.” Avery frowned at his receipt book, then set it aside. “It seems strange, doesn’t it? Sending a protection bouquet with a cursed object?”
“It’s definitely strange,” Cole said grimly.
Something pawed at his leg, and he looked down and smiled at Tink, who was grinning up at him with her sweet pit bull smile and leaning on his leg as though she thought he needed a hug—or more likely, t
hat she needed butt scritches. Cole obliged.
Leo sighed and knelt to pet her under the chin. “Now what?”
Cole knew where he had to go, but he couldn’t take Leo with him. Not this time. Not yet. He let out a long, slow breath and prepared himself for the inevitable. “I’ll drop you at my place. There’s something I have to do alone.”
Chapter Ten
“LOCK the door behind you,” Kate said without looking up.
One day Cole was going to get used to that. It still made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. But he slid the dead bolt into place, and then he dropped into the chair across the desk. “So you’ve been expecting me.”
For once, the desk was almost completely empty. Kate stuck her needles in whatever project she was working on and set it in the basket on the floor. “Kind of. Thought you might bring your guy.”
“He’s not my guy.” He’d only known him a little over a week. And now they were roommates. He remembered mocking Leo for giving Roman a key too soon; the irony wasn’t lost on him.
Kate didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead she reached for the tarot deck sitting at the right-hand side of the desk and passed it across to him. “Shuffle.”
The cards were really too big to shuffle the normal way, but Kate had worn this deck in over many years, and she’d been making Cole practice shuffling since she was old enough to have her own tarot. He shuffled, cut the deck, shuffled again for good measure. Then he passed them back.
Kate tapped the top card rhythmically. “So?”
Right. Cole ran a hand through his hair and willed his palms not to sweat. “Three-card spread,” he decided. Please let that be enough. “What do I need to know about me and Leo?”
Kate flipped over the first card.
A boy facing left, holding a cup in one white-gloved hand: a willingness to take on evil. Cole often drew the Page of Cups.
“No surprise there,” Kate said, and turned over the card that would represent Leo.
Four of Swords. Isolation. That made sense.