by Alyssa Day
"Funny girl." He nudged her aside and poured himself a cup of coffee. "It was a peaceful night as far as such things go, I guess. No more warlocks. No more mob bosses. Not even any run-of-the-mill burglars. My guess is Bannon is pulling back to decide on his next move."
She sighed. "I suppose it's too much to hope for that he's just going to give up and leave me alone, isn't it?"
His face turned grim. "I think we both know better than that. I've never heard of Bannon giving up on anything – or anyone – he wanted. I somehow doubt you're going to be the first. He probably considers a fire mage, and one he was involved with at that, to be a priceless jewel in his collection that he’s not about to let go."
“I’m not part of anybody’s collection.” Lily rubbed her arms, suddenly cold in spite of the sweater she wore. "I'm also not really a sit around and wait kind of person. I don't how long I can put up with this. I'm a woman of action. Can't we just take the fight to him? Are you sure he’s in Ohio?”
"Our intel says he's in Columbus. Less than an hour away from you. Not only that, but he's building his new base of operations there."
Lily set her cup down, hard, on the counter. "I don't believe this. Isn’t there some way you can stop him.? You know he’s doing this to harass me. Isn't there a law against harassing innocent citizens?"
"There's a lot to unpack in that series of questions, but the basic answer is no, there's nothing we can do to prevent him buying a house in Columbus and sending you flowers,” Damon said, and she could hear immense frustration in his voice. “The terror spell is hard to use against these criminals, and they know it. The evidence disappears once activated, so we can never prove in court. And trying to get a warlock to talk is next to impossible, because they all usually have a built-in oath in their contracts not to break the trust of the client who hires them."
“Which means they are actually physically and mentally incapable of snitching,” Lily said, sighing. “At least not without breaking their minds.”
His head snapped up. “You can do that?”
“Not me. Granny, certainly. Sue. A few others. It’s very hard magic. I wouldn’t even try it, because like most magic, it can backfire horribly on the one casting it.” She shuddered. “I’ve seen the results of some of that, believe me, and I learned early not to overextend.”
Lily crossed the room, unlocked and opened the door, and stepped out onto her porch. She waited until Damon followed her out into the bright spring morning to speak.
"Harry is an evil jerk and a sadistic asshole, and he likes to see the havoc he causes," she said slowly. “It’s likely he had some way of recording me so he could savor the result of his damn terror spell.”
"Yeah. Evil, yes. Stupid, no,” Damon said. “Anyway, it does neither of us any good if we bust him for harassment. That's just a fine, not even any jail time. We want him on smuggling and murder, or kidnapping and torture at the least. The horrible things he's been getting away with for too long."
She sighed. "I know, I know. It's just extraordinarily frustrating. I don't like being bait. And the more tension I feel, the more likely I am to set my new house on fire. It's a lose-lose situation."
Damon’s eyes widened. “He probably recorded, you said. Lily, that means he knows I’m here.”
Ice snaked down her spine. “Does he know who you are?”
“I don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Either he knows I’m P-Ops, or he thinks I’m a guy you brought home at night. Do you think he’ll let either of those things go?”
“We just escalated,” she whispered.
He nodded, looking grim. “I need to report in and call my partner. I think this is going to get bad.”
“Great. This is just freaking great.” She closed her eyes and tried to remember to be calm, but then a trickle of awareness raised the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. She whipped her head to the left to look down the sidewalk.
"Oh, no," she groaned. "Talk about a lose-lose situation. Here comes the cavalry."
Damon leaned against the porch railing and followed her gaze. "The cavalry? That woman is a hundred years old, if she's a day."
Lily started laughing. "Yep. She's a hundred and fifteen going on twelve, most days. You're about to meet Granny."
She tried to look at Granny through Damon's eyes. She saw a tiny, ancient woman, dressed in a violently pink and purple flowered dress. She was wearing support hose and purple support shoes, and she carried a lizard-puke green, fluffy purse.
For once, miracle of miracles, she was actually wearing her glasses.
Rose had written to Lily about all of Granny's adventures in driving without her glasses, which Lily had found hilarious and horrifying in equal measure. The old witch was about twelve steps past legally blind.
"Are you going to get down here and give me a hug, girl, or am I going to have to come up there and smack you over the head with my purse?" Granny flashed a huge denture-filled smile. "I want to know who the pretty kitty cat is, and why he’s still at your house at breakfast when you were seen having dinner with him last night."
Damon had a thunderstruck expression on his face, and Lily laughed. "So. This is Granny. You look the way we usually feel around her. Come on and meet her."
She rushed over to give Granny a hug and was dismayed to find that the old woman seem to have shrunk in the years Lily had been in California. Her bones felt tiny and fragile, as if they’d break under the slightest pressure. She felt an unwelcome constriction in her throat at the realization that Granny really might be finally getting old.
Granny hugged her back and then smiled up into Lily's eyes. "Oh, no, you don't, don't even think about getting weepy over me. I'm gonna outlive you all."
She released Lily and turned toward Damon with what in anyone sixty or seventy years younger would have been a leer. “Talk to me, handsome.”
Damon held out his hand. "Damon Jones, ma'am. I'm a friend of Lily’s."
Granny's smile sharpened. "Oh, is that what you call it?”
She took Damon's offered hand in both of hers, and the sensation of magic that Granny carried with her everywhere intensified by about one hundred degrees. Lily stepped back a pace, but Damon held his ground. The hair on his head stood straight up in the air as if he were being electrocuted, and he was gritting his teeth and straining forward with all the muscles in his body to try to hold himself in place against her magic. Lily was impressed in spite of herself at how well he did.
"Granny, be nice to the special agent. He's from the government and he’s here to help." She started laughing. Some oxymorons were just too hard to resist.
"I'm perfectly fine," Damon gritted out. "Just another lovely day in Garden City."
Abruptly, Granny released Damon's hand. "Barbary lion, hmm? I dated a Barbary lion once. He took me to Morocco on vacation, but I couldn't tell you a thing about the country. We never got out of bed for seven days straight."
"Granny!" Lily could feel herself blushing so hard her face felt like it would burn off. "Special Agent Jones does not need to hear about your sex life, Granny. Nobody needs to hear about your sex life. Remember the talk we had several years ago about things that were appropriate to share in public and things that were not?"
Granny shook her finger at Lily. "Don't you lecture me, young woman. I've been the head of the Cardinal family since long before you were a glimmer in your daddy's eyes, and I think at my age I'll say whatever I darn well please. Anyway, the kitty cat doesn't mind, do you?"
Damon's mouth dropped open a little, but he snapped it shut and tried really hard to look like none of this was getting to him. She could tell he was fighting a smile, though. "No, ma'am. I don't mind at all. In fact, I'd love to interview you. I understand you’ve forgotten more about magic than most witches ever knew. Is there any chance you can put up a ward that would keep dark magic away from Lily but still let a human being through?"
Granny, who'd been grinning--okay, well, leering--at Damon, sna
pped her head up and pinned Lily in place with a hard stare. "What happened? Why didn’t you call me? If you –"
Abruptly, the tiny woman stalked toward the porch, holding her hands out in front of her. When she was within five yards of the house she stopped, and her entire body stiffened. After a few seconds, she whirled around and pointed at Lily.
"Warlock. I can't believe you had a warlock here last night and you didn't call me. This is some no-kidding bad magic. Not something for you to screw around with. Now, Mr. Very Special Agent, you're going to sit down and tell me everything you know about what's going on and who is threatening my Lily."
"We’ll be glad to tell you what we know, Granny, but we don't have any chairs yet to sit on,” Lily explained. “It's a long story –"
"Oh, you've got chairs now," Granny said, heading for the door. "I'm too old to sit on the floor. Come on, come on, what are you waiting for? Make me a cup of coffee and tell me all about it."
Lily walked into her house, and she was only a little bit startled to see that her living room was now completely furnished. Okay, it looked as if an escaped mental patient had decorated it, but there was actual furniture. A peacock blue couch claimed pride of place in the middle of the room, with two fluffy white side chairs and a coffee table that looked as if it'd been formed out of one giant, unbroken piece of rose quartz.
"Granny. You really didn’t have to do this," Lily said, looking around and noticing the red and purple throw rugs, the green and orange wall hangings, and the Born to be a Wild Witch poster hanging in her hallway. "You really, really didn't have to do this."
"Isn't it gorgeous? I'm thinking about becoming an interior designer in my spare time," Granny said proudly. "Sue said – Sue is my daughter, Agent Jones," she confided to Damon. "Sue said interior design was not a field for somebody who is colorblind, but I said ‘overcoming challenges’ is the motto of the Cardinal family. I'm no quitter."
“I thought ‘charge ahead no matter how foolish’ was our motto,” Lily muttered under her breath. Colorblindness. That explained a lot. No worries. She could change it all out as soon as she could get online and order some new furnishings to go with the few she had coming in the truck.
If the truck ever arrived, which was looking more and more like an impossibility at this point.
Damon was standing next to the six-foot tall sculpture of something that looked like a cross between a zebra and a giraffe, and the edges of his lips were quivering. Lily could tell he was trying desperately not to smile or even burst out laughing. She kind of didn't blame him. She was feeling the same way herself.
"I think you should name the zeebraffe Fred," he said.
Granny squinted up at him. “Zeebraffe?”
“Giraffbra didn’t really work,” he said reasonably.
“Oh, sure.”
"Why Fred?" Lily looked at the hideous sculpture and then back at Damon. "Okay. Who do you dislike so much whose name is Fred?"
Granny beamed. "Fred is a wonderful name. I once dated a guy named Fred, and he had the biggest –"
“Granny! How about that coffee?" Lily said desperately. The last thing anybody needed to know was about how big Granny's ex-boyfriend's whatever was. And knowing Granny, it really could be a whatever.
"Did I tell you about the time Fred and I ran away with the circus?” Granny’s smile turned wistful. “We traveled with them, on trains and in wagons, for a good part of the Twenties. Hanging around the big cat act really gave a new meaning to the term Roaring Twenties, if you know what I mean, lion."
“Wait. You mentioned that before. How did you know Damon is a lion?” Lily didn’t know why she bothered to ask, but it had just popped out, because she was annoyed that first Gianni and then Granny had known right off the bat, but she hadn’t. "Also, the 1920s?"
If Granny had been old enough to be riding around with the circus in the Twenties, how old did that make her now? It boggled the mind.
Granny shook her head and gave Lily a pitying look. “It couldn't be the 1820s, now could it, dear?”
Damon grins. "Of course not. That would be ridiculous."
Granny patted his arm, and Damon heroically managed to only flinch a little bit.
"Of course not," Granny said. “I was very busy with Nikolai in the 1820s. Very stern Russian, was my Nikolai. He never would've run away to the circus with me."
The weird thing about it, Lilly decided, was that she wasn't at all sure that Granny was kidding. Nobody had ever specifically determined, to the best of her knowledge, how long witches could live. So who knew?
She sank down on the couch and something jabbed her in the butt. She reached down and picked up a vividly colored peacock feather and stared at Granny in disbelief. “You didn’t make this couch out of actual peacocks, did you?”
Granny snorted. “Of course not. But I hear Tulip has a mated pair of peacocks in her garden she’s very proud of. They might be a little bald today.” She shrugged, in a completely insincere show of bewilderment. “What’s a girl to do?”
“If you were hanging out with some Russian dude named Nikolai--"
“Russian prince, dear.”
Lily blew out a sigh. “Russian prince named Nikolai in the Eighteen Twenties, you’re not exactly a ‘girl’ anymore, are you? And I thought Sue made you and Tulip quit feuding?”
Granny narrowed her eyes. “That witch criticized my peach pie.”
Lily started banging her head back against the couch, over and over. “That was fifty years ago.”
Granny lifted her chin and sat carefully down in one of the white fluffy chairs. “Exactly. Practically yesterday.”
Damon cleared his throat. “Far be it from me to interrupt family reminiscences, but can we maybe talk about current events? Can I get you a cup of coffee, Ma’am?”
“Thank you, young man.” Granny beamed up at Damon. “What nice manners. Give me one of the donuts, too, please.”
“I’m sorry, Granny, we don’t have--" Lily began.
“Chocolate or powdered sugar?” Damon called out from the kitchen.
Lily sighed. Of course. The woman who conjured up an entire living room’s worth of furniture wouldn’t be stopped by a mere bag of donuts. “I’ll have a chocolate one,” she said, surrendering to the moment.
“Not a jelly donut in sight,” Damon said with an air of satisfaction, carrying a large white pastry box and a coffee mug out of the kitchen. “You are a woman of extraordinary graciousness and discerning taste, Mrs. Cardinal.”
“Jelly donuts are Satan’s pastries,” Granny said primly. “And you can call me Granny. Everybody does.”
Lily, reaching for a donut, stopped and stared, outraged. The nerve of that woman. “What? The last time I brought a guy home and he called you Granny, you turned him into a toad.”
Damon choked. “Ah, is that a figurative toad?”
Lily glared at him. “No, it is not. He was hopping around in the pond out behind Granny’s house for three days before she turned him back. He never spoke to me again.”
Granny rolled her eyes. “Like you care. He was a putz.”
“He was not! I thought he was the one,” Lily gritted out. “And you ruined everything.”
“The one, huh?” Damon said lightly, but his eyes did that flashing-gold thing.
“The one,” Granny repeated, scoffing. “What was his name, Lily?”
“His name?” Lily pretended to be very involved in the next bite of her donut, stalling for time. What had his name been? Charlie? Jerry? Something with an “ee” at the end…
“Busted!” Granny shouted.
Lily scowled at her. “Fine. But you didn’t know at the time.”
“Of course I did. He was weak, and you’d never put up with weak.” Granny winked at Damon. “Now I can tell that a big, tall, sexy hunk of lion shifter like you doesn’t have a weak bone in your body. And speaking of big boners--"
“Granny!” Lily buried her face in her hands, wishing she knew how to teleport l
ike her birds. Wondering if anybody had ever died of mortification.
As if on cue, Hugging and Mugging popped back into the room. Hugging landed on Lily’s shoulder and Mugging floated down to the table next to Granny.
“Big boner,” Mugging squawked. “Big boner.”
An unexpected noise filled the room, and Lily looked up, startled. “What in the world?”
It was Damon. He’d finally broken, and he was leaning against the wall, holding his abdomen, bent over, his shoulders shuddering.
“Damon? Are you okay?”
He looked up at her, and she realized he was cracking up. Laughing so hard he couldn’t talk. “Big boner,” he gasped, and then went off into another peal of laughter so filled with honest delight that Lily had to smile along with him, and then she started laughing, too, even as she felt the bars loosen, just a little, on the cage she’d built around her heart.
Even the thought of her heart getting involved was scary as hell, but any man who could laugh like that about her family . . . Wow. Just wow.
“Big boner,” Mugging agreed. “Big boner.”
This time, Granny started laughing, too, and five minutes later the three of them were howling with laughter, gasping for breath, and repeating ‘big boner’ periodically, when somebody peered in the screen door.
“Missus Hairball? I’m Joe Bob Louis, and I’ve got your stuff.”
8
Lily blew out a sigh and watched Joe Bob Louis drive off to wherever in the world he was going to end up next.
“I can’t believe you tipped him,” Damon said, making her jump.
“Stop sneaking up on me,” she demanded, still barely able to fathom how a man that big could move so noiselessly. Must be the cat in him. Feline stealth moves. “Anyway, what could I do? At least he was entertaining. When he told you that he couldn’t get out alive without having a Brazilian wax…”
“Hey. I just asked why he was limping. There are some things too gruesome for even a tough P-Ops profiler to hear.” He pretended to shudder, but then he grinned at her. “I also can’t believe you’re keeping the furniture that caused two peacocks to lose their dignity.”