“Another one?” Peter, the bartender, asked her.
She sighed. “I’ll wait a few minutes. I’m just looking for a mild buzz, not a full on drunk.”
“Suit yourself.”
“That one!” Rosalind’s face lit up. “I totally haven’t had sex with him.” She frowned, trying to remember. “I think I haven’t. If I have, I can’t remember. That’s the same as not having had sex with him, right?” And she ambled through the crowd towards her intended conquest.
“It’s a wonder she can remember to walk and breathe at the same time.” Maizie said, startling Fiona.
“Must you sneak up on me like that?” Fiona grumbled.
“I must. I need the practice. Stealth is important in my profession.” A tall, muscular werewolf accompanied Maizie. Handsome in a loutish way, looked like his nose had been broken more than once. He was broad-shouldered and towered over Maizie and Fiona.
“This is Konrad. He’s a member of the bodyguard guild. Good guy, very trustworthy, if you ever need any bodyguard work and I’m not available.”
“Trustworthy? You wound me, Maizie. That makes me sound…neutered.” He grinned, flashing big white canines that were elongated before the full moon. He looked as if he were ready to tear through a raw steak.
“Everyone knows you’re far from neutered,” Maizie said with a wink.
“As long as we’re clear. What can I get you ladies to drink?”
“Why, thank you, Konrad. I’ll have a tequila shot. Maizie, if I get really drunk and start acting like an idiot…”
“I promise to join in. I’ll have a double tequila shot, thanks.”
As Konrad pushed his way down the bar to signal the bartender, Fiona leaned in. “Is that your latest conquest?”
Maizie fanned her eyelashes, looking innocent. “Who, me?”
“Have you moved on from the vampire? I was starting to worry about you. Just don’t let Konrad bite you hard enough to break the skin; I don’t see you as looking good with pointy hairy ears.”
Maizie rolled her eyes. “Thanks, mom.”
Fiona had to admit to herself, she was surprised. In the Maizie had always been a player, moving from one handsome young thing to the next, but she’d seemed to really be falling for her vampire employer.
Which, actually, would explain why she’d be likely to dump him and move on. Maizie feared vulnerability too much to let herself actually fall in love.
Konrad returned with their drinks, and Fiona slammed another tequila shot. “Here’s to never speaking to my mother again.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Maizie drained her shot and slammed it down on the bar. “Hit me, Peter!” He refilled her drink.
Fiona stood up. She couldn’t tell if she felt shaky from the tequila or from the turmoil in her gut from her confrontation with her mother earlier that day. “I’m going to use the ladies room.”
As she headed back there, she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around.
It was Mitchell, one of a gang of human teenagers who were currently squatting in an abandoned warehouse near the river. They were runaways, castaways, society’s rejects. From time to time they stopped by Fiona’s shop to buy herbs to cure their late night excesses. The first time they’d come in, they’d tried to distract her so one of them could shoplift, but they’d swiftly found themselves dangling upside down from vines that snaked down from the ceiling; they’d always behaved perfectly after that.
Mitchell was normally pale and sickly looking, but tonight he was downright ashen. His eyes were bloodshot. He coughed frequently into a blood-spotted handkerchief, hands shaking.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” he wheezed.
“Mitchell, what the hell? You look like a half-revived zombie.” Fiona was taken aback.
“Can I talk to you?”
“I’m going to regret this, but all right. Let’s go.” She dragged him outside the bar so they could talk without shouting. “What’s wrong with you?”
“We’re sick. We’re all sick. I think we did a bad batch of Blue Smoke a few days ago.”
“God damn it! You’ve got the lungbleed fungus.”
He coughed hard into his handkerchief, and then looked up at her fearfully. “Is that bad? It sounds bad.”
“Is it bad to ingest a fungus that makes the veins in your lungs burst? Yes, you idiot. It’s fatal.” She waited while a look of shock washed over his face.
“Blue Smoke is often contaminated with lungbleed, which is a deadly fungus that grows on it. This is yet another reason why you shouldn’t buy drugs from scumbag back alley drug dealers, you moron.”
“Oh, my God,” Mitchell wailed. “That bastard. He’s dead. He’s so dead.”
Fiona shrugged. She didn’t have a problem with them killing off a drug dealer who sold tainted drugs to society’s castaways. And she had to admit, she wouldn’t have wanted to be on the bad side of that particular gang of teenage criminals. It wasn’t so much that they were powerful, but they could be vicious when provoked, like cornered animals. And they were stealthy, and they knew the back streets in this neighborhood better than they knew the skin of their bodies. They could navigate blindfolded if need be through sewers, down alleys, and up fire escapes.
“What’s more likely is that you’ll die before you get to him, coughing up pieces of your lungs and drowning in your own blood,” Fiona said coldly.
He went even paler, and tears glittered in his eyes. “There’s nothing we can do?”
“There’s one thing that I can do.” She’d tortured him long enough. She didn’t feel the least bit badly about it, though. He needed to understand the dangers of buying drugs from any jackass who popped out of an alley with a bag full of oblivion.
His face lit up with hope. “We’ve got money! We can pay you.”
“You’re going to have to, because I’m going to have to go collect the antidote myself tomorrow morning. It’s highly illegal, and I’m the only one who knows where to find it. This is going to be a major pain in my ass during the busiest time of year for my store.”
“Why is it illegal?”
“Because the only thing this antidote is good for is curing the fungus from Blue Smoke.”
“So the pigs make it illegal? Anyone who does Blue Smoke is condemned to death?” His voice went high with indignation, and then he had another coughing fit, spattering his handkerchief with red drops.
“I’m not in the mood for a debate about drug policies and you all being oppressed by The Man. But Blue Smoke, as you know, is a powerful mind altering drug that makes you lose all of your inhibitions, and not in a good way. People die because of the stupid things that they do while under its influence. So I can’t say that I’m against Blue Smoke being strictly on the forbidden list.”
She looked at him narrowly. “By the way, do you have any idea who might be hitting up the warehouses down by the bay? The Enforcers are all in a snit about it.”
He shook his head. “Some gang from the wharf is stealing artifacts from other countries and fencing them to collectors for big bucks. They’ve got insiders at the warehouses telling them when the good stuff comes in. There’s half a dozen of them. We don’t get involved in that stuff; it attracts too much attention.”
Another coughing fit racked his body.
“All right. This will cost you two thousand cash. I’ll gather the ingredients in the morning. Come to my house tomorrow at seven p.m. ” All her customers would be gone then, and she could slip him the cure in private.
“Done,” he said, a little too promptly. She grimaced, trying not to think about where the money probably came from.
Chapter Nine
“Thank God for hangover herbs,” Fiona said, draining half a cup of her special tea in one gulp. They were at the Greenhouse, waiting for the crowd to show up. As the healing herbs worked their magic, Fiona felt the pounding in her head ease up.
Maizie, sitting next to her at the counter, shrugged. “I don’t get hangove
rs. It’s a fire elemental thing, apparently. Our bodies just burn the poisons out of our system.”
“Bitch.” She set down her cup. “So, about you and wolfie boy…”
“My love life is complicated right now.”
“Double bitch,” Fiona grumbled. “It must be nice to be torn between two lovers.” Maizie shrugged, looking away, and Fiona had a feeling that there was something that Maizie was keeping from her. Something important. Unfortunately, if Maizie didn’t want to talk, no amount of nagging or prying from Fiona would change her mind.
“So you’re going to spend the morning picking flowers for a bunch of juvenile delinquent drug addicts? I could come with you.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m at my safest when I’m in the forest. Plants everywhere. It’s like having a green army at my disposal. I’d rather have you at the shop for security purposes. I love Renoir, but a five year old could whip him in a fight.”
“Well, that’s a faerie for you.”
As she headed out, she saw Mala sitting huddled in a doorway across the street.
“Hey! Mala!” she called out, and Mala wearily climbed to her feet and tramped across the street. She looked filthier than usual. Her toes poked out through holes in her sneakers and her blond hair was matted.
“I need an assistant to help me pick flowers. Top secret stuff. You can’t tell anyone. I’ll pay you with breakfast from The Witches Brew.”
“Are we breaking the law?” Mala asked hopefully.
“Yes, so keep your lip zipped. You think it’s okay with your mother if you come with me for a few hours?”
Mala shrugged, pretending indifference. “She’s gone.”
Fiona’s heart sank. Crud. As if she didn’t have enough going on right now.
“Where?” she asked, as they headed into the Witches Brew.
“Away. Last full moon, she met some wolf out in the woods. They ran off together. She does that. Usually she comes back.” Mala gave a tiny shrug of her narrow shoulders, as if she couldn’t be less concerned.
“I’ll find a place for you to sleep until she comes back,” Fiona sighed, as they walked up to the counter at the Witches Brew. Oh, the joys of life in the Graveyard. She could be married to someone like Aelfwerd with a huge dowry living in a giant mansion with servants and going to charity balls and…
Suddenly the Graveyard didn’t seem so bad.
Rosalind was behind the counter, and she broke into a smile when they approached. “Well, aren’t you cute!” she said to Mala, handing her a sugar cookie. “Fiona, you never told me you had a daughter.”
“She’s a werewolf, Mala. Witches don’t give birth to werewolves. Also you’ve known me for years, and you’ve been to my apartment. No daughter.”
“Oh, duh! I forgot.” Mala scarfed down the cookie in two big bites, and Rosalind handed her another one. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A prostitute! That’s what my mom does.”
“Isn’t that cute? She wants to be just like her mommy!” Rosalind beamed. Fiona scorched her with a glare.
“Oh, right. Bad idea,” Rosalind said hastily.
“We’ll take two roast beef sandwiches, a hot chocolate and a coffee.”
“You let your daughter drink coffee? Isn’t she kinda young?” Rosalind looked surprised.
“No, Rosalind. The coffee is for me. The hot chocolate is for her,” Fiona said patiently.
Fiona went into the bathroom, dampened some paper towels, and scrubbed Mala’s face, arms and hands before they left.
As they walked out, Mala bit into her roast beef sub hungrily before looking up at Fiona. “Your friend’s nice, but she’s pretty stupid, isn’t she?”
“Kid, you’re all right.”
“She has a great rack, though. I bet she’d make a lot of money if she was a prostitute.”
“Enough with the damn prostitute talk!” Great. Now she was cursing at a ten year old. Between Erik and her mother, she was wound up waaay too tight. “You know why your mother gets mange all the time? Because of her job. She catches it from her customers.”
“Ewwww. Okay, I guess I could be…a waitress.”
“Now we’re talking.”
Fiona and Mala spent the better part of the morning tramping through the woods, searching for the elusive Belleflower, so named for its clusters of tiny bell shaped blossoms.
When they got back, she tried to think of the least crazy people that she knew, who might be able to look after Mala. Her choices were pretty slim; make that nonexistent. She didn’t know anyone who wasn’t crazy. So, with no other options that she could think of, she took Mala back to the Witches Brew.
“I need to hit you up for a favor, Rosalind.”
“Shoot.”
“Mala has no place to stay. Her mother ran off. Can she crash with you until I figure something out?”
“Sure. Ooh, I could do her hair and nails! And she could bus tables here for the rest of the day.”
“Thank you, Rosalind, I owe you big time. “
Rosalind looked puzzled. “You do? How much? Did you buy something from me?”
Fiona ignored her, and fixed Mala with a stern look. “No. Stealing. Tips. Or you’re back on the street.”
“That’s mean,” Mala pouted.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet. Behave yourself, or Rosalind will tell on you, and I can be a real hardass when I need to be.”
When she got back to her apartment, she fired up her crockpot, poured in water, dumped in the contraband blossoms, and set it to simmer. It would be ready by nightfall.
As she headed down to the shop, she felt her cell phone vibrating. When she checked it, she saw half a dozen messages from Erik asking her to go to lunch with him, then asking why she hadn’t returned his texts.
Damn it, she wanted to see him, but she couldn’t have him come around today. Belleflower had a distinctive smell; if Erik caught a whiff, he’d know she had the illegal medicine in her apartment.
She texted him back. “Lunch tomorrow? Very busy today. Can’t get away.”
A few minutes later his reply came through. “Are you up to something?”
“Stop being so suspicious! What are you, an Enforcer?” she shot back.
“I’m coming to check on you.”
She quickly texted “NO! Seriously. I have a lead on the warehouse case. Come by first thing tomorrow and I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”
“Fine,” he texted back. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
At 7 o’clock, with the sun melting into the horizon and all the customers of the Greenhouse headed back to safer neighborhoods, Mitchell pounded on Fiona’s doorway. She peered through the peephole, then yanked open the door.
He looked worse than yesterday, eyes bloodshot, cheeks sunken in, lips crusted with blood.
She handed him a small cup of the potion she’d made for him, and he gulped it down greedily. Within seconds color rushed into his face, his wheezing subsided, and he took a deep, shaky breath.
“Thank God! I thought I was a goner for sure,” he said, fishing in his jacket pocket and pulling out a packet of cash. He held it out to her with thin, shaking hands. “We won’t forget this.”
“Forget what?”
“You know, you got this illegal cure for us and – ohhh, I get it. Nothing ever happened!” He nodded enthusiastically.
She handed him a bottle of green liquid. “One quarter cup will do it. You better get this back to your friends now before – Oh, crud.”
She could hear heavy boots thudding up the stairs to her house.
Erik Bloodstone, come to check on her.
“There’s an Enforcer coming up the stairs. Out the back window and down the fire escape, now!”
He stuffed the bottle into a pocket inside his jacket and let her rush him into the kitchen, where she yanked open the window. Quickly, he scrambled out the window, and she slammed it shut and locked it, then rushed to open the front door, with was shaking
with every strike of Erik’s fist.
Erik stood there, with the rays of the sinking sun lighting his glorious golden hair like a halo. He wore jeans which accentuated his massively muscled thighs, a white t-shirt, and a broad black leather belt.
“Erik! What a surprise!” Fiona stood in the doorway, blocking his entrance. “I didn’t expect you.”
“Can I come in? Unless you’re entertaining.” He looked at her suspiciously. She knew she was acting strange.
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Erik. I have a lover here. You can join in, if you like.”
“Actually, that’s not my thing. I was really hoping that it would be one on one.” She could see the humor glinting in his eye, and it made her angry. She felt as if he were making fun of her.
“Hilarious,” she said coolly, stepping aside to let him in.
“What are you up to? Why didn’t you answer my texts?”
Behind them, she heard a clanging sound on the fire escape, and Erik pushed past her into the apartment.
“What was that?” he said, as she blocked him.
“There’s a stone gargoyle who lives out back. Keeps an eye out for intruders. He’s clumsy; he trips all the time.”
“I should still go check,” he said.
“No, actually, you should…” She didn’t know what came over her. It was part anger and frustration at the way that Erik kept flirting with her and teasing her. Part fear that he’d find Mitchell and bust him with the illegal cure.
But suddenly, she stood on her tiptoes and did something that she’d dreamed of doing ever since the first minute she’d clapped eyes on Erik back in middle school.
She kissed him.
Erik stood stunned as she pressed her lips against his, and she waited for him to pull away, to curse at her, to laugh at her. She quickly pulled back, mortified.
Suddenly his hands were tangled in her hair, tipping her head back, and he plunged his mouth onto hers.
His lips were as soft as pillows, and his tongue was firm, thrusting into her mouth and probing deeply. He took the lead, with a kiss that was commanding and sensuous and hungry, and she felt herself melting into him. He tasted delicious, like sweet wine, and she wrapped her arms around him, hands behind his neck, and arched her back so she could press up against him and feel every inch of his flesh against hers.
Big Beautiful Witches: I Married A Warlock Page 7