by Faith Hunter
“I’m a big girl now.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, “Daddy’s at the door and he’s mad. Why is he mad at you?”
I didn’t lower my voice when I answered, but spoke in a normal tone, my booted feet bringing me closer to the glowering man, knowing he could hear me. “Because I let the Big Bad Ugly vampire witches steal you and nearly kill you. Because I put your mama in danger.” Big Evan’s glower turned uglier, colder. I thought about werewolves in the mountains near this house, killing people. “Because he loves you all so much that he’d fight anything to protect you. Your daddy’s doing the right thing, Angelina. He is.” I handed her to him.
The big man took her in gentle hands and set her down behind him, his body a barrier between us. I thought my heart would break. “Go back to the movie, Pun’kin,” he said.
“Okay, Daddy.” Her footsteps tapped away.
There weren’t many men who made me feel little, but Big Evan was one of them. He stood six feet six, and weighed over three hundred pounds, mostly muscle. He had red hair, a full red beard, and brown eyes so hard they could cut stone. He crossed his arms and braced his feet. Waiting. I pulled the damp lavender scarf out of my pocket and held it out to him. “Tell me what you smell. If you think it’s important, we need to talk. You, Molly, and me.”
Evan took the scarf and held it to his nose. He breathed in. Evan is a sorcerer, one of the few alive anywhere, and still in the witch closet, to protect his kids from unwanted attention. His eyes flew down to mine. Widened. He inhaled again. “I smell Evangelina and blood magic.”
I nodded. Evan knew about the witches in New Orleans and the diamond. Of course, he thought it was still safe and in New Orleans. “She stole the pink diamond from my weapons safe,” I said. “She’s been using it on vamps, blood-servants, and me. She’s using it to grow younger and prettier. Though she has the right to draw on her sisters’ magics, they haven’t noticed the changes in her. Which means she’s not just drawing on them as coven leader, she’s spelling them too.”
“That bitch is spelling my wife?” he snarled. Evan’s eyes narrowed, calculating, putting together what he might do to stop it. When he reached the end of his ruminations, he said something vile under his breath. “And I can’t interrupt the spell without serious consequences. Why didn’t you destroy the relic?”
“How?” I asked. “How do you destroy something that absorbed the energies of dying witches for hundreds of years? Drop it in the ocean? In a volcano? What happens to the energies in any of those cases? They don’t just wink out, poof, it’s gone.”
“You’ve brought nothing but evil to this house in years. I don’t want you here.”
Tears burned in my eyes, but he’d never see them. “Fine. You figure out how to handle it.” I yanked the scarf away, swiveled on a heel, and stalked back to the SUV.
“She lost some weight.” It sounded like the words were dragged out of him. I stopped, staring out at the curve of the world. The sky was bright, a patch of blue showing in the west. “Evangelina has. And”—he blew out a breath that sounded like a small storm—“at least fifteen years.”
I clenched my hands and turned back. “Her hair is silky as a child’s,” I said, “something adults’ hair loses by the time they’re forty or so. If her skin glowed any more we wouldn’t need lights. She let a vampire feed from her. I saw the wounds. When I accused her of it in front of her sisters, I don’t think they even heard the words.”
“This is your fault.”
“Accepted.”
“You better come in.”
I took a breath to steady my nerves and entered the house. The new door opened into a great room. The former carport’s back brick wall was now a fireplace with merrily burning gas logs and a hidden laundry room. Bump-out windows were on the western side, Molly’s orchids on display. Some were in bloom, including a heavenly vanilla. Big Evan stood still, mentally checking the house wards, eyeing the locks. “No opening the doors, Angie,” he said.
She nodded without looking at us. A kiddie film was on the TV screen, and her attention was fastened on a princess and a pony, her small body curled into the seat cushion of an Evan-sized, leather couch. She yawned and pulled an afghan over her, looking sleepy.
Little Evan was standing in the door to the kitchen, bare-chested, wearing footie jammie bottoms. He stared at me, eyes wide. I patted him on the head as I climbed the steps into the kitchen. The small intimate space had been expanded into the old family room and now housed a larger table, a pantry, and a central island as well as skylights for Mol’s herbs, growing in a bay window. But the heart of the kitchen was still the old Aga stove with bread baking in the oven, beef stew bubbling on top, the teapot on perpetual simmer, and copper pots hanging over it all.
Molly was leaning against the counter when I came in, wearing a denim smock and dark red blouse. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and she wore garnet earrings. She clutched a fist between her breasts and her eyes were hesitant, sliding back and forth between Evan and me, nervous. “What’s wrong?” she asked. I cringed to know that, when my best friend saw me, the first thing she thought was trouble.
“Evangelina,” Evan said, “is dabbling in black magic.”
Molly’s eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment; then she smiled brightly. “I have hot chai on the stove. Evan, would you get the mugs?”
Evan looked like he’d been poleaxed. He had expected Molly to agree or deny or get angry, not act as if the words had never been spoken. His eyes on his wife, he opened the new glass-fronted china hutch and hooked fingers through three teal mugs. Molly took them and started setting up for tea. Evan said, “Evangelina is practicing black magic.”
“I have homemade gingersnaps and snickerdoodle cookies. And I know Jane wants whipped cream in her tea.” She opened the fridge and Evan took the spray can from her. He closed the door, cupped her head in his huge hands and tilted her face up, in what was the most tender gesture I had ever seen. He smiled down at his wife and she smiled back. I heard mumbled words, likely some form of Gaelic, saw his lips purse and heard him breathe out as he blew at Molly’s face.
I thought for a moment he had broken the spell on Molly. But she jerked back, strong emotion flushing through her, so hot I could feel it across the room. She whirled to me, pain and hurt on her face. “You never liked Evangelina,” she said. “But you don’t have to make up things about her.”
“Make up—”
“You never liked my sister. I tried to give you time to get to know each other, to become friends. And instead, when she met a man she liked, you took him away. How could you do that?”
Bruiser. She was talking about Bruiser. “She used a love spell on him, Molly. That’s wrong.”
“A love spell?” Evan asked. I nodded and he released his wife’s arms, stepping back, his shoulders drawing together. He was watching her the way a doctor watched a patient he was diagnosing. I just felt sick to my stomach.
“All I did was tell him he’d been spelled. I didn’t take him away,” I said gently.
“You always treated her like she was less than you, unworthy of you!” Mol said, as if neither of us had spoken. As she slipped past Evan, he made a circular motion with one hand, indicting that I was supposed to keep Molly talking. I didn’t think that would be hard to do.
“I’m scared to death of her. Doesn’t mean I hate her,” I said, “or look down on her.”
Tears gathered in Molly’s eyes. “My sister has suffered more than any woman should ever suffer, and all because of them,” she nearly spat, “the things you work for now.” She advanced on me, one finger pointing, her arm out straight like a wand or a staff, a weapon of destruction. Tears coursed down her face. “They took her family!”
Oh crap. A vamp turned Evangelina’s family? I vaguely remembered she had been married long before I met Molly, but thought the hubby divorced her and got custody of their daughter. But then, I hadn’t been friends with all of them until just before Carmen’s baby was born,
and I didn’t know much family gossip about Evil Evie. Behind Mol, Evan looked confused, as if he’d never heard that vamps took Evangelina’s family. With a tiny head-shake, he put that bit of news away for the moment and blew up a pink balloon. The sight of the big, bearded man blowing up a girly balloon was comical, but then it hit me. Evan was an air witch. He was using what he had on hand to construct a spell on the fly. “Why did Evangelina come home from New Orleans?” I asked, trying to guide Mol to safer topics.
Molly hesitated, “To get away from the vampires. The things you’re helping to—”
“She’s dating a vampire,” I said. “I saw the bite marks on her—”
“No. That’s a lie,” she said. Behind her, I saw Evan pause in the balloon blowing and sip something from a flask. He then blew the fluid into the balloon, the liquid a mist coating the inside. “You never liked my sister. I tried to give you time to get to know each other, to become friends. And instead, when she met a man she liked, you took him away. How could you do that?” She had just repeated herself, word for word. The phrases were part of the spell on her.
“Evangelina is using the blood-diamond, the relic I took from the vampires, Molly. It’s powerful, made with the unwilling sacrifice of witch children. She spelled you.”
“You never liked my sister. I tried to give you two time to get to know each other, to become friends. And instead, when she met a man she liked, you took him away.” Molly was caught in a continuous loop of suggestion and I had no idea how to help her break free.
“Mol?” Evan placed one hand on her shoulder. Molly stopped. Turned. And Big Evan popped the balloon. The sound was loud in the confined space. Molly inhaled quickly, a gasp of surprise. Instantly her eyes closed and she slumped. Evan caught her as if she weighed less than Angelina. He carried her out of the kitchen back to the new master bedroom, leaving me alone.
I looked around the kitchen, at loose ends. Should I let myself out? What if that set off the wards? I didn’t cook but I checked the bread in the oven. There were six loaves, all golden brown. I found the knob that said OVEN and turned it off, then found a cloth and removed the loaves, setting them on the counter, totally out of my comfort zone. I turned off the stew.
Evan still wasn’t back, so I went to the great room and stood in the doorway watching the children. Angelina was asleep, her face scrunched up in dreams. Little Evan was holding one of his sister’s dolls, raising and lowering the arms, making little engine noises like a Transformer. They were safe. Happy. Watching them, some of the tension left me.
Angelina sucked in a breath. She sat up, her eyes wild. She screamed. “Deerdeerdeer!” I raced down the short steps and grabbed her. “Deerdeerdeerdeerdeerdeer!” she screamed over and over. I sat on the couch and rocked her, whispering sweet nothings of comfort as she screamed, the cushion warm from the heat of her sleeping body. Suddenly she was sobbing. She twined her arms around me and held on. Little Evan abandoned the doll and climbed up beside us.
“Dewerdewer,” he said, trying to imitate his sister.
“What’s wrong with the deer?” I asked her, wishing Evan would come back and help. But the doorway remained empty.
“She’s killing the deer. She’s eating them.” Angie looked up at me. “It was still alive, Aunt Jane. Its eyes were open. I saw it.”
My breath tightened in my chest, an involuntary pain. Beast ate deer. Was she seeing memories of Beast’s last kill? “Who is killing the deer, Angie Baby?”
“The frog. The big frog.”
I wiped her eyes on the afghan, trying not to laugh at the image. “It was a bad dream, Angie. Just a bad dream.”
“She’s been having it a lot,” Evan said from the doorway. “We’ve been letting her watch too much National Geographic. Her frog has teeth and it’s feeding live prey to its frog babies, like foxes and coyotes do, to teach their young how to hunt.” I looked at him and he added, “Mol’s still spelled, but sleeping.”
I stroked Angie Baby’s hair, holding her trembling body. “If I hit Evangelina over the head with a baseball bat to distract her, can you break the spell?”
Big Evan almost smiled. “As happy as it would make me to see that, no. I’ve never disrupted a coven power-ring. Let me study on it a while.” Which went against my every instinct.
Evan looked at the door, and I knew I was being given the bum’s rush. Quickly I asked, “What happened to Evangelina’s family, her husband and daughter? Why did Mol say the vamps were involved?”
“They disappeared years ago. The daughter and Evangelina didn’t get along. Marvin took off and he took the girl with him. They vanished. Evangelina followed up leads for years. Never found them.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why Molly said that about her family.”
“If Molly is spelled, could Evangelina have put that in her mind?”
Evan looked worried, his mouth thinning, lips hidden by his beard. He said, “Yeah. But I’ll have to deal with that later. Come on kids,” he added. “It’s time for dinner, and Mommy’s taking a nap.” He met my eyes. “The wards are down. You know where the door is.”
“Yeah. I do.” I sat Angie on the couch and opened the door. On the night air, I smelled . . . wolf. My hackles rose, Beast’s pelt rising against my skin. “Did you and Molly adjust the wards on the house to exclude werewolves?”
“You mean the werewolves that followed you from New Orleans?” he said, his words harsh.
“Yeah,” I sighed, “those werewolves.” Once again, in Evan’s eyes, I had put Mol in danger. And I was just about to make that worse. “They’re trying to make mates and I think they’ve discovered that witches might work better than humans.”
Evan cursed foully under his breath. I walked out of the house into the night. Alone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
And if the Fangheads Kill Them?
I stopped at the herb shop and parked in the shadow of a massive flowering plant. The big leaves were elongated, heart-shaped, and, this time of year, the entire small tree was covered with odd flowers, dark fuchsia, sharp-pointed petals, with dark blue centers. Molly had told me its scientific name, but all I remembered was Japanese butterfly bush. Today, the long, limber branches were trailing the ground, heavy, bent by rain. I brushed a straggling branch and it sprang back like a kids’ weapon, nature’s squirt gun, scattering water all over me. I grimaced up at the dark sky. “Thanks. I needed another drenching.”
Before I went inside, I walked around the café and shop, sniffing. A wet breeze danced in the dark, lashing my face and body with overgrown shrubs while the muddy earth sucked at my footing and roots and vines tried to trip me. Around back, a small ditch funneled rainwater down the steep hill, gurgling. Rising on the breeze, I smelled werewolf. It wasn’t fresh tang, but the wolves had been here recently. I had been too distracted to notice when I came for breakfast, or I’d have caught the scent. The dang dogs were everywhere. I had smelled them at Molly’s, now here. Maybe it was more personal than targeting witches for mates. Maybe they were deliberately targeting my friends. In the electronic age, it wouldn’t have been too hard to discover who I cared about.
I went inside, to stand on the mat just within the shop, keeping my muddy feet off the floor. Regan and Amelia, the human Everharts, were working, Regan at the cash register ringing up a final sale, Amelia mopping up muddy footprints. They acknowledged me with matching grins. When the customer left, Amelia said, “We missed you at the café. It’s good to see you, Jane.”
Regan offered me a bakery treat and the last cup of a flavored tea. I pulled off my muddy boots to keep from messing up the clean floor, and sat at a table while the girls worked around me, closing up the shop, chattering about college and term papers and Amelia’s new boyfriend. I ate and drank and nodded. When I was finished with the mega-muffin—lemon-poppy seed, bigger than a softball and Oh My Gosh delicious—I told them about the wolves, concluding with, “They’re trying to rebuild their pack and trying to make mates. And even though you’re h
uman, you smell like witches, females who might be able to survive the wolf bite.”
The girls, who had gathered closer as I spoke, looked at one another and got this look. I never had a sister, but I knew what silent, instantaneous, nonverbal communication looked like, and this was it. Almost as one, the girls swiveled and disappeared behind the front counter. They popped up with guns. Big honking guns. I started laughing.
Amelia was holding a perfectly legal 12-gauge shotgun, and Regan was holding two very different semiautomatics with matte black grips. Regan said, “The handguns are loaded, of course; this one”—she held up the H&K—“with silver nine mils for vamps, but I hear it works well on weres too. This one”—she held up the S&W—“is loaded with hollow points for humans and robbers.”
My brows went up. Hollow point rounds explode just after impact, and when they hit anything made of flesh, that explosion shreds everything in its expanding path. They are for killing, not stopping. And not something I ever expected an Everhart to own.
Amelia patted the shotgun, “Molly sent us to the guy who hand-loads your silvershot and this baby holds four of the silver fléchette rounds. That’s all we could afford.”
Regan said. “But we got plenty of regular ammo for robbers.”
“Rapists.”
“Kidnappers.”
“And drunken good ole boys.”
“We been robbed once,” Regan said, her eyes narrow. “Never again.”
Still laughing softly, I finished off the tea, debating whether to tell the humans about the predicament with their witch sisters. I decided against it for now, and stood, pulling on my boots. “Stay safe. Don’t shoot the good guys.” They turned the lock when I left the shop, and it fell with a clunky, defiant finality. Molly’s sisters were an interesting bunch. Dangerous as heck. But interesting. I was in the SUV, trying once again to get dry, when my cell beeped. I smiled when I saw Rick’s new number in it. “Hey there,” I said.
“You know where Henrii Thibodaux’s Bayou Queen is?”