Blinking at me sleepily, she raised her head from her paws. The body that the boys had known had passed away; she was a German Shepherd now, which was nice. She looked a bit scary and I did need her as backup sometimes. I hated to leave her here instead of having her at the bar, but even when you ran a paranormal establishment, health codes still apply. I did hate to put a spell on the innocent health inspector who came through sometimes.
“I think my mother’s up to something,” I said.
Agnes yawned—what else is new?—but then got up, stretching with her back legs straight in her usual perfect downward dog, and jumped off the couch.
When I opened the driver’s side door for her, she jumped onto my seat and bounded across to the passenger side. It was only when I’d put the car into reverse and begun backing down the driveway that reproachful brown eyes swiveled my way. Her wet brown nostrils flared. I hadn’t had the chance to shower, and even I could smell the citrusy scent of my come and the spicy warmth of the boys’ cologne on my body.
“I have a life, Agnes.” I tried to cut off the discussion. “Just because you have to be celibate doesn’t mean I have to go with you.”
Agnes was a seventeenth century witch. When she was dying too young, of disease, she transferred her mind and soul into a dog’s body. It was a temporary fix, but she liked being a dog, and she’s been a dog ever since. She’s been my dog since I was a kid.
I was not sure how much of her was human now and how much was dog.
But I did know she was perfect the way she was.
“You know that ‘disease’ going around the Weres? Some people think it starts with a drug.” I frowned as I steered us down the road toward the highway. My mom lived in a gorgeous mansion in a tony neighborhood set on rolling, lushly manicured hills. Sometimes it amazed me that she could operate her business in such a fancy area without anyone noticing, but hey, the pretty white lady appearance has always helped shield her evil web. Plus, she buried the bodies elsewhere.
Agnes cocked her head at me.
“Well, yeah, I’m changing the subject because this is more important.” My mom was into the manufacturing and distribution of magical drugs that went unrecognized by the authorities. The authorities—outside of Precinct S—didn’t know anything about the supernatural. “It doesn’t sound like my mother’s kind of thing. Right? Why poison customers on purpose?”
She made a low whine in the back of her throat.
“She’s evil, not stupid,” I said.
Shaking her head, Agnes huffed. Despite her breed change, she had developed a very Golden Retriever sense of the world, seeing things as black-and-white, and these days she thought evil and stupid went hand-in-hand. The world could be a nice place if people would just stop being idiots and fix it up.
“I wonder if some Were crossed her,” I mused out loud. “If this is some elaborate revenge plot. Or maybe she’s innocent for once.”
The dog did not think this was likely. She settled down on the seat, her chin on her paws and baleful brown eyes fixed on me. She despised my mother.
“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” I muttered, half to her and half to myself. “Anyway, let’s hope she’s out visiting her labs like usual. I thought we could go on a tour of her house. Be my lookout?”
Agnes let out a big, doggie sigh and then closed her eyes, as if she were going to return to her nap. She was in—she was always in—even if she thought I was being stupid.
“Thanks,” I said.
Her nostrils flared again, as if she couldn’t get back to sleep, and she opened up just one eye, which regarded me steadily.
“Case and Hayes,” I said. “Remember them? My boys from high school?”
She chuffed. Who could forget?
“I still wish I knew what happened back then.” Part of me thought that they must have gotten to know me just to get close to the witches in town, to pry information out of the innocent, beguiled teenager I’d been. But part of me didn’t trust that cynical read, because even if it made sense, it was my mother’s read.
I wished I could ask them.
Just to pass the time as we drove to the outskirts of Boston, I filled in Agnes on the ways I’d defiled my office, leaving aside how desperately I longed to defile it all over again.. Maybe I just needed to talk through what happened.
I parked and cut the engine. I wondered if my mother would recognize the truck if she happened to see it, although I’d parked a few blocks away and off her route. I’d bought it since our big falling-out, but I knew she had her goons keep tabs on me.
I opened the door for Agnes, who jumped out onto the rain-damp street, which was shiny under the streetlights. Sometimes it was strange having a best friend who didn’t have opposable thumbs.
I didn’t know where my mother’s labs were anymore. She moved them regularly. But I hoped maybe I could find a hint here. And if I didn’t, I would have to meet her face-to-face and see if I could find anything out in conversation.
When I was a teenager, I couldn’t do anything to stop her. For years in my early twenties, until I got the bar started and found my own life, I had still been terrified of her. She’d made me bag drugs, made me take on a pretty face, made me keep that face on after the blow-back of a drug experiment scarred my real face forever. I wore the mask she’d made me, and now I didn’t know how to live without it.
I was also older and wiser and witchier now. If she really was hurting the Weres, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
I slipped off my heels and wiggled my feet down into the back-up sneakers I’d had in the backseat of the cab. When I closed my door, the sound echoed in the quiet night. Agnes and I padded together down the road until we reached a neighbor’s yard, cutting across and heading for my mother’s house.
Damp grass soaked through my sneakers and my feet made a squelching sound with every step. I was definitely not a ninja.
If my mother found me in her house, I’d have to concoct some kind of story to get out of there without a battle. A sudden burning desire to retrieve my journals from my childhood, maybe? I wonder what might have brought those books to mind, filled my loopy teenage cursive and lots of angst over Hayes and Case. I’d kept a cringe-worthy, diligent record of their doings from the day they swaggered into my high school.
My mother said my diaries were too boring to read—she said even Agnes would fall asleep—but I’d left her house one day with nothing but a backpack and stayed gone. Even once we reconciled a little, she wouldn’t return my diaries, no matter how boring they were. Anything that mattered to me was hers.
At the edge of my mother’s property, I paused. Agnes bumped into my leg and then sat down, her bony rump on the toe of my foot, like usual. As she panted in the cool night air, I held my hands out and searched for the strands of my mother’s magic. They drifted around the house, warning her of any intruder.
I gathered the strands, curling my fingers into the palm of my other hand, feeling the magic pull and resist and then finally give. I spun it all up and tucked it into the top of my bra since I didn’t have any pockets. Witches should always have pockets. It had been stupid of me to run right over here without changing. On top of that, I was sure I looked absurd in my cocktail dress and sneakers.
All that magic, and my mom had still locked the back door to her house. I rested my hand on the lock, imagining the way the gears would turn as it tumbled open. The lock released with a click.
I could’ve let myself out of a lot of closets when I was a kid if I’d been able to turn a magical key then. It had been my mother’s favorite method to get me out of her way. I’d spent many nights as a kid wrapped in one of her cocktail dresses, while the dim strains of a party below floated through the door all night long.
I stepped into the entryway between the kitchen and the garage. Through the long windows, the moon dimly illuminated the black-and-white tile from Italy and the black door to the coat closet. She did have impeccable taste.
“Mother?” I called, even though the word always burned in my mouth. “Are you home?”
My voice seemed to echo in the house.
I stepped out of my tennis shoes—if I tracked the night dew through her house, she would notice—and picked them up in one hand. Agnes sniffed the air and then shook her head. I picked up her paws and wiped them on the hem of my skirt. I could almost feel my dog roll her eyes.
On quick, bare feet we did a circuit of the house. The downstairs looked like something out of a magazine, all clean modern lines and touches of glam and fresh flowers everywhere. My mother needed for things to be beautiful.
I ran upstairs and checked the bedrooms. I hesitated in front of the door to the largest room, but when I pushed the half-open door, the broad bed was made up with silver sheets and a lavender throw, and both the twin silver lamps were off. My mother wasn’t here. I quickly crossed to check that the bathroom was dark, too.
We were alone.
I knelt to pull open the nightstand drawers. My hands trembled as I sorted through my mother’s intimate things: tissues and Chapstick and the book she was reading. I knew that she used to keep a journal, although hers was all business, but it wasn’t here. Neither was the day planner she used, quickly dashing off code in her beautiful cursive.
“Let’s check the basement,” I whispered to Agnes.
Together, the two of us retraced our steps. In the downstairs hallway by the door down to the basement, there was an enormous gallery print of my mother and me when I was fourteen. Our heads were tilted together, our long blond hair intermingled. We beamed broad smiles at the camera, looking like a catalog shoot as we stood next to the Charles river.
In that canvas, I still have my old face; my nose is long and looks slightly smushed at the end—my mother used to joke that an angel had tried to boop my nose before I was born, but didn’t know his own strength—and my eyes are almost lost under my heavy brows.
I still didn’t really understand that photo shoot. She had acted sometimes like she loved me, and that had been one of those days. It would have been easier as a kid if I’d been sure she was a villain.
It didn’t matter to me anymore. I squared my shoulders and pulled open the door. Agnes, tail wagging, ran down the stairs ahead of me. She looked back at me over her shoulder and whined.
My stomach froze. “What is it, girl?” I asked, but my voice was such a whisper that even she probably couldn’t hear me. I followed her down.
The basement had been converted into a drug lab. It was bright and sterile, like all her other labs; my mother was always too professional to risk dirty, contaminated drugs. It made my think the poisoning of the Weres must have been deliberate. On two long tables were a series of hot plates, glass containers, and bowls of herbs. She had all the ingredients that, fueled by magic, turned ammonia and lye into addictive delusion.
My mother always said she wouldn’t have a lab in her living quarters. She thought it was dangerous, stupid. Something must have been really important to her.
Agnes looked at me with wide, terrified eyes. Her head cocked to one side, as if she were listening to something.
Above us, I heard the click-click of feet crossing the marble floors.
5
Nick
I’d come in through the basement window while Fiona was poking around upstairs, and now I had to wonder if I’d tripped some kind of alarm. I knew the tread of Hayes’ and Case’s feet, and those footfalls upstairs weren’t theirs. Neither of them could walk in heels to save their lives. Fiona had come in wearing sneakers.
I felt her presence before I saw her through the wooden slats of the closet door. She pulled the door open. Agnes growled, low in the back of her throat.
“Friend,” I said softly, because I didn’t want to be attacked by the dog when we were trying to be stealthy.
Fiona gasped, her wide eyes meeting mine. I slapped my hand over her mouth, pulling her against my body with an arm around her lower back. I raised my eyebrows at her, shaking my head.
She reached up and grabbed my wrist, yanking my hand away from her mouth. Agnes brushed against my legs and then settled herself into one corner of the closet. Fiona turned in my arms, pressing her adorable ass against me as she closed the closet doors behind her.
Hip lips grazed my ear. “My mother’s here.”
She must be rattled. She was supposed to be keeping her identity a secret, and Hayes and Case sure knew her mother.
I turned my mouth into her hair, using magic to send the faintest whisper into her ear, with no chance of being overheard. “It’ll be all right.”
She stiffened in my arms, surprised that I had magic too. Witches were rare in this world, but where I came from, everyone had the gift of magic.
When she shook her head, the ends of her long strawberry blonde hair teased back and forth across my arm, which still held her against my body.
“What is it?” I whispered. “We have to stay quiet until the path is clear. Then we’ll get out of here.”
The footsteps crossed the floor, nearing the door downstairs.
“It’s not that simple.” Her voice was so soft I could barely make out the words, but I could feel her breath hitch in her chest. Her heart was beating a mile a minute; I could almost hear the hum of her blood, her pulse wild and uncontrolled. “I have panic attacks. Closets.”
I wanted to know why the hell she had panic attacks. Had someone hurt her? I felt a protective clench at the thought.
There was no time for discussion, though. The door was creaking open.
Into her ear, I whispered, “Stay with me. I’ll distract you.”
She gave the faintest nod, her head moving against my shoulder.
Shit. She didn’t even know me. What could I do for her that would keep her calm instead of scaring her? I knew a spell to soothe anxieties, but if she felt my magic brushing up against her mind, it might freak her out more. I hated any kind of magic that poked near my brain.
She didn’t know me. But I could show her who I was.
I leaned my forehead against hers. This close, I could feel her heart pounding against my chest. I breathed in the faint scent of her perfume, a light, happy-go-lucky floral that made me think of a t-shirt-and-jeans kind of girl, not this girl with the shimmering black dress that clung to every curve. I wondered about the kind of girl who needed to wrap herself in magic, who showed off her rocking body but hid her face.
She was hiding, but I wouldn’t. I let my eyes drift shut, pulling a memory to mind—trying to find the details to make it sharp and clear—and opening up my mind to her.
I was just a kid. Maybe six or seven. In the summers, from the time she left him until I was ten, my mother took me to visit my father in the Russian countryside. The place where he had grown up and where he still made his home was completely different from the city I lived in the rest of the year, where I spoke English and played video games and drank Tang. My father lived in a fairy tale house, a dark green cottage with elaborately painted shutters in the middle of a birch forest. The house always smelled like strong black tea and milk from the cow he kept for himself. I brought each detail to mind, wanting Fiona to see the house the way I remembered it: the sun coming in through the lace curtains, my father’s simple dark furniture, the broad hearth, my bed with the cozy, threadbare quilt my grandmother had sewn.
I thought the place was magical—as much as I missed video games—but the day I remembered for Fiona was the day I discovered just how magical it was.
My mother had kissed me goodbye and abandoned me for the month, as was her habit, disappearing into the birch forest like a ghost vanishing amidst the white trunks. I stared after her without crying. I would cry later, at night, but I already tried to be a little man around my father.
My father and I went back into the house. We stared at each other like the strangers we were after a year apart. I knew my father loved me, in a way, because he always wanted me with him when I was there. He made me come
along with him on all his chores, milking the cow with my clumsy small hands, gathering sticks while he chopped wood, weeding the rich, dark earth of his garden.
“We’ll sit by the samovar,” he said into the gap between us. It was what he said when he meant we would talk and he would tell me stories The samovar was an enormous gilt vessel, and my father’s sat outside, heated with coals or pine cones, depending on the season, his mood, and his finances. Water was heated in the main tank, and on top sat a kettle where concentrated tea was made to mix with the water.
When my father went back into the house, I thought I would help him. I stretched up to get the kettle.
Even the curved metal handle was hot to the touch. It singed my fingers, and I jerked away, knocking the kettle off the samovar in the process.
I softened the intensity of that memory, not wanting to scare Fiona, who rested her cheek against my shoulder. I breathed in the soft scent of her hair, which brushed against my jaw. What I wanted her to see was my father, with his eyes wild above his beard, as he caught me up in his arms. How my father had pressed his big hand to my face and whispered, “Istselil moyego syna, moyu zhizn.” Be healed, my son, my life.
If we hadn’t been hiding in a closet from a witch, I would've pulled my shirt off to show her the faint burn scars, faded now, that still spread across my chest. My father had focused his magic on the worst of the burns, the ones across my face. It was a precious memory, the way my father’s tender touch and magic had cooled the burns. My father looked like a fearsome man, with his hulking frame and his long beard, his dark ponytail and his blazing eyes, but he was gentle. In the days that followed, as magic healed my wounds, my father had held me and read aloud to me.
Realms and Rebels: A Paranormal and Fantasy Reverse Harem Collection Page 136