“She hosts a Halloween carnival each year for children. It’s very important to her, and she didn’t want to cancel. The children expect it, and Grammie lives for the children. Whatever happened must be a mistake. If I can just get in to speak with her, I’m sure I can resolve this.”
“It’s a little late for that, Miss Lincoln. We’ll handle Mrs. Gould from now on. Consider yourself relieved of a client.”
“Relieved of a client? Why, you stuck up, son-of...”
“Lynlee!” Tig grabbed my arm when I started for Prieto, hands now fisted at my sides.
“We could relieve you of all of your clients, Miss Lincoln.”
I could physically feel his eyes bearing into me as he peered down his nose. Whatever magic he possessed had a freaky mojo to it. Or maybe it was just the cloak he used to mask his identity that caused it. Whatever it was, it made me very uncomfortable.
“At least let me talk to her.” My voice had turned pleading, and anyone who knew me knew I didn’t use wiles to get what I wanted. I was worried about Grammie, and I wanted to get her out of whatever mess she was in. Surely the Enforcers wouldn’t deny me that.
Prieto put a hand flat to his stomach and leaned forward for a small bow. “Thank you for you assistance this evening, Mr. Durhnam and Miss Lincoln.” And then he disappeared into a puff of smoke.
When Tig and I stepped back out to the party, I was pretty much fuming. My mentor had taken a few moments to remind me about Enforcers and how I should behave around them. This was an entirely new conversation from the one he’d first had with me about Enforcers almost twenty years ago. In that talk, he’d pretty much told me how they were all asshats and couldn’t be trusted and that besides their extra spells they were just once Neutralizers like us.
There was something going on with that goblin, and I would get to the bottom of it. For now, I needed a little space.
“Hey, Lynlee! Lookin’ good, girl.” Apparently space was something I wouldn’t be getting. I turned to the direction of the voice, though I already knew who it was. My very first client, Theodore Brewer, was racing towards me, his hand outstretched for a shake. Instead of my hand, though, he pulled my entire body forward for a bear hug. Which was ironic since he was in fact a werewolf and not a bear. Maybe wolf-hug would have been more appropriate.
“Teddy, I didn’t think you’d make it.”
“Well, Ruth thought it would be good for the kids.” He motioned to his beautiful golden-haired mate. Ruth stepped forward and extended her hand, though she seemed satisfied at just shaking. I recalled the lovely young woman she’d been so many years ago on Christmas when I’d rescued Teddy from his pack’s oppression. Now I found her just as striking. I was pleased to see the escape had been so healthy for both of them.
“And here they come…”
As if on cue, seven miniature versions of Teddy ran through the party, the shortest and presumably the youngest far ahead of the others, and all of them ranging in age from about three to thirteen.
“And there they go.” I muttered, a half-grin on my face as I followed the train of children with my eyes. I wasn’t afraid to admit that I loved Beck’s kids, but I also had a hard time digesting the thought of having seven youngsters in one house.
Geez…
In the process of watching Teddy’s rugrats cross the room, my gaze fell on Beck. He was propped against a table in the far corner of the room, engaged in what looked to be deep conversation with Breena. I tried not to stare, but there was something about the way Beck looked at the woman that gave me a funny feeling. There was nothing outwardly inappropriate about them. There were a good two feet between them, and I knew Breena was probably just talking about Jilly.
“I can’t believe you’re back with that guy. I mean, I knew that Christmas you were falling head over heels for him. I just didn’t think after the way he dumped you that you’d ever take him back.”
I snapped back to reality, frowning at Teddy. “Mind your own business, Teddy.”
He grinned, a pretty disarming grin if I might say so. He always did have a way with the ladies. Lucky for us, these days he was a little more couth than he had been as an overconfident college student. “I guess all of us can change, right?”
I rolled my eyes and forced a grin. “Good to see you and your family. Excuse me a minute.”
I headed off in Beck’s direction, focused so solely on him that I almost missed the short goblin who stepped right in front of me. I growled when I tripped over Tig. “What the hell?”
“We should talk, Lynlee.”
“Yeah, Tig, we should. We should probably have talked a while back, shouldn’t we?”
His shoulders drooped, but he reached out a hand to take mine. I snatched my fingers away from his grasp and frowned. “Lynlee…”
“You shouldn’t be keeping things from me. I thought we already went down that road.”
“Lynlee, you’re right. C’mon, let’s go…”
I shook my head and pushed past him when I saw Beck coming my way. “Tomorrow. I need to get my head right before we talk.”
“Hey, gorgeous.” Beck winked and handed me a glass. “Here’s your refill.” He took a moment to assess my expression, his brows furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
Shaking my head, I downed the drink, set the cup on the closest table and waved my hands to indicate we should walk. “It’s time to go. You’re the designated driver.”
Beck pressed a few minutes later as we drove towards my house. “Wanna tell me what’s going on?”
I was drumming my fingers on my knee, staring out at the black night with what I was sure was an equally black expression on my face. “One of my charges got arrested.”
My boyfriend was quiet a moment as he stopped at a red light. The sound of my car’s blinker was the only thing that broke the silence. When the light changed and he eased off the brake, I heard him inhale and then his hand pressed down on mine on my knee, cutting off my nervous action.
“Do we need to go bail him out or something?”
A soothing calm worked its way from the place where our hands were touching and made its way to my breast. I too took a deep breath and turned my hand to clasp his fingers. “We don’t need to bail her out. I’m sure Prieto will take care of that.”
“Okay, and who’s Prieto?”
It was still difficult for me to open up to Beck, especially about my job. I was getting better, but sometimes the words would get stuck in my throat, and I’d cut myself off from him. He was beginning to recognize my signals when I wanted to keep things to myself. It had been the source of a few minor arguments, but mostly we were working those out.
“He’s sort of a superior. And Tig knows something about this that he’s not telling me.” I paused and considered my thoughts. The rum from my last drink was hitting me hard, and I was feeling all tingly and off balance. Things were whirling through my head like a tornado and I couldn’t make heads or tails of anything I was thinking. “Listen, Beck, I need you to trust me when I say I’m not trying to keep you out of the loop here. God knows I’m pissed off enough at Tig for doing that to me, so I’m not intending to do that to you. But I can’t think straight right now, and I’m getting all emotional. I might be almost drunk, too. So, can we talk about it later?”
Again silence. I geared up for an argument, sucking my stomach in and tensing. Instead I felt his thumb begin to move across the top of my hand, a suggestion of intimacy that scorched my skin. When he glanced at me, I saw a hint of a grin on his face. He raised a reddish brown eyebrow at me. “Six.”
“Six what?”
“Rum and cokes. I’ve been wondering all night how many it was going to take to get you drunk so that I could take you home and take complete advantage of you. Six appears to be the number.”
Beck was wrong. This witch would succumb to the wiles of this particular rakish human with the sexual appetite of a wolf even without a single drink. He was the kind of trouble I liked to get into.
“Not me. I’ve covered all the bases here. Sandy’s going to pop on over and pick the kids up from their party. We’ve got all night, gorgeous.”
I licked my lips, then closed my eyes and moaned when his hand moved to my knee and trailed up almost to the heat between my legs. I was wearing a skirt, which was pretty unusual for me. I decided in that moment that skirts definitely had their advantages.
We barely made it into the house before my lips attacked his, my tongue plunging deep to taste him. Beck responded by grabbing me around the waist with one hand and reaching the other down between my thighs to cup my heat. I shuddered when he applied just the right amount of pressure.
“God, you feel good,” he murmured, nipping at my neck with his teeth as he backed me towards the stairs.
Getting up to my bedroom was a dangerous venture, as neither of us was willing to break contact completely. I groped him with one hand and the banister with the other, carefully walking up the steps backwards.
We had just about made it to the top when I tripped, both hands reaching behind me to catch myself. Beck still had me around the waist, so I didn’t land very hard, but when my palms made contact with wet, squishy carpet, all the lust building up inside me dissipated.
“Oh, hell…”
My boyfriend cocked his head with a frown, not so quick to recognize what might be wrong. I scrambled to my feet and showed him the wet spot on my rear end before I rushed to the bathroom, the most logical source for a water leak.
“Damn,” Beck muttered, following close behind me.
I opened the cabinet door to inspect the sink pipes but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Crawling my hands along the floor, I searched for water, but found only dry floor. Panic and frustration were mounting.
Not my house. I love this house. I wailed in my own mind.
“Here, Lynlee. It’s in here.”
Raising my head, I frowned and turned to begin walking on my hands and knees back into the upstairs foyer. Beck was at my coat closet, moving waterlogged boxes that had been stored there. I moaned and pulled myself up. “But how can it be coming from there?”
“Backs right up to the bathroom. The pipes are in the wall inside the closet.” He continued removing my belongings. “We’re going to need to tear the wall out to get in there and stop it for the night. No way we’ll get a plumber here at this hour.”
I bit my lip and stomped my foot. With a shake of my hand, I conjured my wand and pointed it at the wall, popping out a four by four square of Sheetrock. There, just as Beck said, were the pipes for my bathroom plumbing. One of those pipes was spurting water from the joint.
“I’ll get the pipe wrench.” He bounded down the stairs towards my utility room. I knew he’d find it lickety-split since a few months ago he’d spent an entire weekend organizing a set of “man-tools,” insisting every home needed them.
Springing my mind back to the problem at hand, I tapped the end of the wand at my palm and a big glob of putty appeared. I slapped the stuff over the leak and worked it all around the joint, then smacked the putty with my wand to turn it solid.
I heard Beck stomp back up the stairs and after a few seconds he stopped in his tracks right beside me. We both watched the pipe for a few minutes, waiting to see if it would spring a leak again, but it remained dry.
I grinned and shot my eyes up to his.
“So much for that pipe wrench. I’m beginning to wonder what you need me for.”
One of my eyebrows shot up as I stared at him hard. “I know exactly what I need you for,” my voice was husky with unfulfilled desire.
Beck tipped my chin and kissed me. “Then let’s get this mess cleaned up so that you can tell me more about this need.”
Bright and early the next morning, Beck and I stepped into my grotto so that I could orb him back to his house. We were so exhausted after the water leak clean up that we never did enjoy any sexy time. I was disappointed, but I was already considering plans for how to make it up to us soon.
I conjured my wand and drew a glowing rectangle on the air in front of me. My amulet was tucked inside my shirt, hanging from a long chain around my neck. I pulled it free and concentrated on Beck’s home. A map appeared with a little star marking the proper coordinates. When I touched the amulet to the star the crystal warmed up, glowing in my hand.
With the grotto programmed, I slipped the amulet into a slot in the granite. In just a few seconds our bodies began to tingle as the building and the grotto faded from view and striations of color flashed before our eyes. Before long we were there at the spot just beside Beck’s front door.
“You sure you don’t want to come inside?” Beck asked.
“Nah, the kids have school, and I’m sure they were up late, even with Sandy’s help.” I said the words without thinking, and although my human boyfriend was taking magic much easier these days, I still inwardly cringed when I made an offhand comment about paranormal activities. Sandy was a sandman, so if the kids were slow to sleep, he would probably have given them a dose of dust to put them down.
One side of Beck’s mouth turned up in a grin, then he leaned forward and pecked me on the lips. “Call me.”
I made my way home a few minutes later, strongly considering a nap as I entered the back door. The steady hum of five box fans up on the second floor reminded me that I had to secure someone to permanently fix my pipe leak. Although I had a few favors I could have called in with some of my MAUCs, I decided to go “human-school” and just hire a regular plumber.
A few calls later, I had an appointment set up for later that afternoon. I tapped my pen onto the desk calendar in my home office. I didn’t have any activities on my schedule. The day after Halloween was usually pretty quiet for MAUCs. They’d generally spent so much time reveling the night before that they took November 1st a little easy.
I should be relaxing too, but my mind couldn’t seem to forget the look of Grammie Charley last night on Prieto’s phone. Touching my cell phone to wake it up, I scrolled through my contacts to Tig’s number and hesitated.
I wasn’t sure that I was ready to talk to him yet. Also, he was probably still sleeping after his wild night partying. I squinted my eyes closed and hit the button to turn my phone to sleep mode again. Rolling my head from side to side I tried to ease some of the tension building in my shoulders while opening my laptop.
A few minutes of searching and I found the clip of Charley’s arrest. I watched it one, two, three times. On the fourth, I halted the video and stared into her eyes. The image was fuzzy, her face frozen in time as she was rushed through a crowd of people to be hustled into a police car.
Charley was a jovial person, the apples of her cheeks always rosy and permanent creases in her face from an almost-constant smile. The image on my laptop was an entirely different person. There were bags under her eyes and a hollow look to her expression. Resignation was the word that came to mind.
“What would she be resigned to?”
Shaking my head, I considered the even bigger question. Why had the Enforcers allowed her to be arrested anyway? It would have taken a large team of Neutralizers, but they could have covered up the entire episode, thereby allowing them to deal with Charley independently. On Halloween, it didn’t take much to make people believe the things they saw were just their overactive imaginations.
“There’s something else going on here.”
Tap, tap, tap… I flicked my pen onto the calendar and bit my lip.
Sitting here fretting about it wouldn’t do me any good. Charley was my charge, and even if it meant a crapload of trouble, I needed to get to the bottom of things. I clutched the amulet around my neck and ran to the back door, throwing it open with a bang and jumping off the porch towards the storage shed.
I was running on that strange burst of extra energy I got when I was really too tired to do anything. But even knowing tha
t, I moved as fast as I could. Once in the shed and at the entrance to the grotto, I tightened my fingers around the amulet and focused on Charley. My magical map appeared with a pulsing spot to indicate the location of her amulet. I touched mine to it and programmed the coordinates and stepped into the grotto to orb there.
Never sure of where I might pop up when I orbed, I hunched down in a little ball with my wand in hand just in case. It was an unnecessary precaution.
I ended up inside an empty room. I looked around cautiously, lifting myself upright in one long slow movement. The room was stark and bare, just a few tables against the walls in front and to the side of me. I saw a plastic bag on one of those tables. Inside something was pulsing and glowing. A few steps confirmed what I already knew. It was Charley’s amulet.
I chewed my lip some more as my brows furrowed in deep thought. “A hospital?” I asked myself.
All the air was knocked out of my lungs when I turned around. The entire wall behind me was made up of rows and rows of metal drawers. Reality struck me hard.
This wasn’t a hospital.
This was a morgue.
I drew in a breath slowly, chanting a calm mantra to myself so that I wouldn’t lose control completely. I approached the wall and held my hands out in front of me, closing my eyes and focusing on any residue of magic that might be lingering. On the lower left hand side, I found a drawer that had a familiar feeling, just barely detectable. Before I could talk myself out of it, I pulled it out and then quickly unzipped the top of the body bag.
Grammie Charley was there, her eyes closed, her lips blue and pursed into a tight frown. She didn’t have that look of peace people say dead people have. She looked sad and alone. My heart constricted, and I licked my lips. I reached one hand towards her cheek, but I drew back before I touched her.
A noise somewhere outside the door drew my attention, and I slid the drawer back quietly, then prepared to orb out of the room if anyone came in. I relaxed a bit when about sixty seconds passed and no one entered.
The wall opposite the morgue drawers had some file racks so I approached them and searched for anything that might give me a clue to Charley’s death. By the time I opened the last folder and found nothing about her, my frustration level had mounted to a fever pitch.
A Bundle of Trouble (The Lynlee Lincoln Sets Book 1) Page 20