Aphrodite appeared next to the thick beige curtains over the one big window. “Can you at least open these a little? Maybe there’s enough sunlight to blind me so I can’t see this room.” She crossed her arms, bunching up the white blouse at her waist—one she hadn’t bothered to button. She’d paired it with a pair of purple leggings and thigh-high black boots. Her long hair had been twisted into two long braids with some sort of flashing, iridescent ties at the bottoms.
“Is today hooker day?”
She curled her lip. “No, it’s stuff a goddess into a slum day. You’re going to ask me to stay and watch her, aren’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“At least I don’t have to clean out that car.” She looked around the room. “It’s like a prison in here.”
I pushed the curtains open about a foot so she could see out. “It’s not so bad. Smells like it’s been painted recently.” I scuffed my boots on the short blue carpet. “Floor looks clean.”
She squinted and looked over my shoulder. I glanced back to see the shimmering form of Blythe’s spirit guide. I focused and peeled the dimensions and took in his usual angry expression as he stared hard at the goddess. At least he no longer wore the harem pants and vest Blythe used to picture him in. Now, he filled out a pair of faded jeans and a skin-tight, sleeveless yellow tank. The yellow was all Blythe…the sleeveless part of it too. Arms like his should never be covered. I did have to admit that his gorgeous black skin looked good against the color.
“I want to talk to you outside,” Phro murmured close to my ear. She poofed away.
When I walked outside, she spoke through gritted teeth. “Make sure he didn’t follow. Do that dimensional surgery you do.”
“He’s inside. What’s the problem?”
“I think maybe I knew him. From before, I mean.”
I’d had a feeling Frida had a bug up his butt when it came to the goddess, and I could easily imagine why. “Please tell me he’s not one of your famed spurned lovers.”
“Well, if you say please like that.”
Great. My spirit guide, the goddess of love, had slept with Frida and had just now remembered him. “I take back what I said earlier. Your look isn’t hooker. It’s cold-hearted slut. And there’s no maybe you knew him. Either you did or didn’t. How could you forget being with someone who looks like him?”
She shrugged and flipped one braid over her shoulder. “It was one measly year out of how many?”
“A year? You spent a year—” I snapped my mouth shut and counted to five. Then ten. When I felt sufficiently under control, it was my turn to talk through a clenched jaw. “I’m going to go wash my Jeep. Keep an eye on the witch and come get me if that little vampire somehow wakes up and gets loose. He seems to freak Blythe out, so it could be bad to have her waking up to him.”
“Or it could be fun.”
“Yeah well, as angry as Frida—wait, what’s his name?”
She had the grace to at least blush on that one.
“A year. In bed with that beautiful man for a year and you don’t remember his name, Phro? I’d do more than glare at you if I were him.”
“Luckily he can’t do anything to me. Just like Fred couldn’t. I’m not really the same things they are. Didn’t we establish all this at some point?”
Her mention of Fred coming so close to what I’d seen sent tension in to tighten my hands into fists. “I thought I saw Fred when we were pulling in here.”
“This sort of backwoods Bates Motel would have certainly appealed to the farm boy.”
“That’s just it. I don’t think he was really a farm boy—or his last incarnation wasn’t as one. Before he disappeared in that swamp, his face…even his body changed to someone older with darker skin.”
I looked around at the little motel and shops, and felt a creepy premonition crawl over the surface of my skin. “I think I did see him and I think he wanted us to stay here. But why?”
“Because low class appealed to him?”
Annoyance curled my lip. “Can it, Goddess. I’m trying to be serious here. My spirit guide, my real spirit guide—sort of—wants us here. Maybe he can somehow get to me here or something.”
“Then where is he now?”
“I don’t know. But we’re staying here until I figure it out, so drop the bitching. And try to make friends with Frida.”
I glared at her, then got into the Jeep and drove it to the car wash.
The temperature couldn’t be much over forty degrees, so I grabbed my leather jacket out of the back of the Jeep before I hung the floor mats on the wall clips. I turned the switch to the foaming brush, dropped in the money and the stupid high-pressure water came on instead. Of course, I wasn’t holding the wand so it shot out of its holder and flipped wildly through the air. Freezing water drenched my jeans, my hat. I wrestled the wand under control and used one hand to aim the water at the mats and the other to pull off my now-frigid hat. With my hair sticking to my cheeks and neck, I shivered and unloaded a few things I couldn’t risk getting wet. Like Blythe’s laptop, which I should have unloaded at the motel.
Catching movement out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a couple of teenagers watching me from the parking lot of the little strip mall. The boy had black hair and a dark brown leather jacket over a black T-shirt. The girl’s hair had been bleached white and cut into spikes. She reminded me of one of the teens who’d attacked Nikolos and me outside his shop months ago.
As always, his face filled my mind and my heart clenched. He’d been so bewildered that day as kids half his size attacked him without provocation. They’d been spelled, sent by a nasty ghoul to beat me up and steal the ancient magic book.
Nikolos’s shop. The portal.
I realized I’d been standing there with the wand aimed at the Jeep. The entire front passenger seat was soaked.
Shit.
I turned the switch to something that wouldn’t cause the wand to snake around the bay and quickly pulled out my phone to call Castor. He picked up on the first ring.
“What?”
I could almost hear the snarl curling up his mouth. I pulled the phone away from my face, then back, and listened to him breathe.
“Beri?”
“What’s with the friendly greeting?”
“Sorry. I’m pissed at Dooby. He’s an Ass with a capital A.”
“What’d he do?”
“I went to bed after you and Blythe left and the nosy necromancer hid a camera in my room and filmed me.”
I watched the teenagers who had come closer to the car wash. They didn’t even try to hide their curiosity. “That’s creepy stalker stuff. Elsa’s a cop. She’ll kick his ass.”
“I can kick his ass myself, but that’s not the point.”
I fished around the back of my Jeep for another hat but only held it. My new smartphone wasn’t so smart—it muted or ended my calls if I tried to hold it between my cheek and shoulder. “What’s the point then? You were just sleeping…or, um, never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“No,” he growled. “I did not um never mind. Sleeping only or not, it’s an invasion of my privacy.”
“Let me talk to him.”
There was a loud thumping noise followed by a squeal of pain.
“Ow!” Dooby yelled into the phone. “Beri sweets, I just wanted to watch his hair grow. If you speed up the film, you can actually see it happening.”
“Tell her you cut it all off while I was sleeping and left it all over me.”
I had to bite my lip at my brother’s background yell. “Doob, not cool. You’d better behave or they’ll kick you out.”
“It’s your house.”
“It belongs to my brother and my sister as much as it does me. And because Blythe is currently homeless, it’s hers too.” I watched the teens, the boy shrugging at something the girl said after pointing at me. They both walked back to the shops and went inside the one on the end. The scuffling noises on the phone got louder. “Dooby? You still
there?”
“Your brother hit me again. And here I thought he was so gentle natured and nothing at all like you.”
“We shared a womb so I’m sure some of my evil wore off on him. But listen, don’t film him like that. I shouldn’t even have to say that.”
“He’s only pissed because the camera caught his lovely boner. He sleeps naked, did you know?”
There was another loud noise, a crash and a strangled noise from Dooby. With heat crawling up my neck, I yelled into the phone. “I don’t want to hear that stuff about my brother. Jeez, it’s like you have no couth monitor. Goddess, just leave him alone. He’s been through a traumatic experience.”
“And you haven’t, VonBrahm?”
“Hit him again, Castor!” I yelled into the phone.
This time, there was a clatter and the sound of running feet.
Castor, chuckling, got back on the phone. “That man is obsessed with my sex life.”
“You know what, Castor? He already shared more than I like to know about that part of your life, so keep the sex stuff to yourself too, ’kay? And don’t let him run off. I just remembered there’s a portal at Nikolos’s shop that has no guardian. Dooby will have to either tie himself to it or find someone else to watch it. I gotta go.”
I shut off the phone and pretended not to see the handful of teens standing in the parking lot again. One of them was snapping a picture with her phone. Shivering, I stuck mine in my pocket, grabbed a scrunchie and swept my hair into a sloppy bun for the hat. There was a gift shop in the strip mall, so I loaded up the still-wet mats and other things, then drove to it, glad to see the teens disappear back into the end unit. I drove past, glancing inside to see tables with computers and a long counter. The place was called Perk and Work.
I chuckled at the awful name and went into the gift shop to see if the kids would follow me inside. They didn’t. But I did find a cute giraffe figurine for Elsa and a small thing that would solve the vamp problem. I stared hard at a display of cigars, remembering something Blythe had said when we were in another motel room in Alligator Flag. I bought one of those too.
Blythe looked a lot better when I got back to the motel room, which now smelled of burnt sage. She sat against the headboard with the remote control in her hand. The television blared some cooking show. “I’m hungry,” she said.
“The concert site is less than an hour from here. I’ll change into dry clothes and we’ll pick up lunch on the way.”
“Do I need to pack?”
“Nah, we’ll come back here, do more computer research.”
“There’s no Wi-Fi here.”
“Seriously? What kind of motel doesn’t have Wi-Fi? And one right off the highway too.” I grabbed a pair of dry jeans out of the satchel on my bed. They still had the stickers on them, so I peeled those off and picked up the black, floppy sweater I’d filched from Nikolos’s drawer. It would fall over my hands and cover my butt, but it was warm and we were going to be tromping through a forest in winter. Plus, I’d caught a faint whiff of Nikolos’s scent when I’d opened the drawer. All the tops in my bag were his. “There’s a coffee place that looks like an Internet cafe in walking distance. We’ll go there when we get back. We should still have an hour until dark if we don’t dawdle.”
“Internet cafes usually stay open after dark.”
“Yeah, but we have to figure out how to feed the vamp and he’s going to be pissed.” I set the giraffe on the top of the table and held up one of the other items I’d purchased. “But check this out. I found a tiny, retractable leash!”
Blythe started shivering again when I parked the Jeep. Between the ruts from tire tracks and the bits of trash on either side of the dirt road, this looked like the right spot. The front passenger side of the vehicle was still too wet, so I glanced in the rearview mirror to see Blythe’s hair bouncing with the force of her shaking. Phro hovered up front.
“If you’re still feeling sick, you can just stay here and nap. I’d appreciate if you’d refrain from throwing up all over everything.”
“It’s not my stomach. I told you, I’m fine on short trips.”
“Cold?” I pointed over my shoulder. “There’s a thicker coat in the back. I brought along a couple of Nikolos’s. The jacket would work better because you’d probably trip over the long coat.”
“It’s not too cold. I just hate forests.”
I turned in my seat so I could see her better. “You’re an earth witch. How can you hate forests? Think of all the cool herbs you find in them.”
“When Sophie took over as my mentor, she told me something bad happened to me in a forest. She never let me near them when I was growing up. When we went into Big Cypress Swamp, I was so scared.”
“We all were. Demons and fire elementals and stolen souls are all scary things. If it makes you feel any better, I’m afraid of fire elementals and I’m getting ready to face another.”
She frowned, stared out the window. “Let’s just get it over with.”
I waited for her usual jumble of words to spill from her mouth, but she was strangely silent. I thought rambling Blythe got on my nerves, but quiet Blythe was too unnerving.
We got out of the Jeep and right away, the air in the forest pricked along my skin, a static caress that bordered on pain. There was a coldness to it that didn’t breathe crisp or clean, as winter air should. This felt more like slush—dirty, cold and wet. I wanted to hold my breath to keep it out of my lungs.
Leaves crunched underfoot, but no other usual forest sounds were present. I didn’t see any squirrels or birds, nothing to make this part of the woods feel normal. The clearing wasn’t far from the dirt road and I could see where the stage had been set up by the deep indentions in the ground and the crushed bushes. It was like they’d thrown everything up without regard for the life here. Red plastic cups littered the ground along with paper plates and other trash.
“Nobody cleaned it up?” Blythe stepped around me and knelt. “This was a place of magic. Not the good kind.” She shuddered and her paleness from earlier returned with a vengeance.
With one step into the forest, I’d understood why the witches had set their concert here. I knelt and dug my fingers into the freezing soil. Dark ripples moved up my arm. I flicked the dirt off and scrubbed my hands on my jeans, but the blackness remained, alive and hungry.
The woods had housed an ancient magic.
Deep and ugly, nothing like the friendly, curious magic of Nikolos’s ley line. No, this place had been fed on darker helpings. It was visible in the gray-tinged bark and the rotting, alarmingly small piles of shriveled, cracking leaves. The trees held on with a desperation one could see in the roots, which had literally crawled above the dirt as if gasping for clean air because of an earth too tainted for nutrients. They twisted and snarled along the surface. I expected them to take on life—wrap around my ankles, suck me below and smother me into fertilizer.
I was nothing’s food.
Catching Blythe trembling out of the corner of my eye, it occurred to me that in her current state, the little witch could very easily end up a meal. I tightened my hands into fists. Not on my watch, she wouldn’t. “Blythe, do you have any herbs in that silly bag that could numb you to this place?”
She met my eyes, her own fixed and glassy as if she was already being pulled under.
Frowning, I snapped my fingers in front of her face. “Hey, shake it off!”
She blinked, shuddered, and her mouth tightened as she reached out to stroke one hand down the trunk of a dead blackjack oak. “Sophie taught me this rhyme when I was three.
The spill of dark magic
Upon our Mother Earth
Renders blood and death
In place of rebirth.”
She wrapped her arms around her middle. “This place, Beri, is so long past rebirth. What kind of person does such a thing?”
I curled my lip. “Probably the kind who teaches a toddler such a rhyme.”
“All young witch
es and wizards are taught rhymes like that.”
“Blythe, we already know that Sophie has been lying to you. And look at this!” I pointed to the dead tree beside us. “Look at what that group did to the woods. It looks like this covers a lot of territory. What are they doing to drain the earth’s energy like this?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. And yes, I do think Sophie has lied to me, but there has to be a good reason. She loves me like a mother. You’ll see and understand when you meet her.”
“Doubt it. But none of that matters this instant.” I slipped my dagger from the wrist sheath and knelt to cut one of the overgrown roots. “Maybe that vamp can tell us what happened to the forest. From the looks of that warehouse, he kept a lot of his sprite magic.” I stood, slipping the knife back into the sheath then putting the root in my jacket pocket. “We need to get back, get on your computer and figure out where they went next.”
I hurried toward the Jeep, wanting out of this sad, dead forest but before I got to the road, I saw a shimmer in the air. Stopping, I peeled the dimensional layers and what I saw froze the breath in my already cold lungs. A boy and girl stood in front of us, the girl in a long medieval-type dress, the boy in jeans and a flowing buccaneer’s shirt. They didn’t speak. I’d seen enough murdered spirits over the years to recognize them on sight. But where was the killer? Victims were tied to their killers until their murders were solved. If the witches did this, the ghosts would have been with them. With so much of the woods dead, the sound around us was muted, but when I cocked my head and really focused, all I heard was the sound of something rustling deeper into the forest. Every atom of my body told me we were not prepared to face that noise.
“Hey, Blythe? Run for the Jeep.”
She’d been around me long enough to know to go. No questions, just a jump into movement I found admirable. She didn’t have long legs, but she could run—even in her silly slippers.
I breathed a sigh of relief when we reached the road and climbed into my vehicle. When Phro appeared next to Blythe, Blythe screamed, then scowled at the goddess. “I hate when you do that. Can’t you warn me or something?”
Blood of an Ancient: A Beri O'Dell Book, Book 2 Page 7