Another jerk of memory. Something to do with angel wings. Damn it, I’d almost had it that time.
I shook my head again and tried to force the memory to reveal itself. . . .something about Robert and the oak tree. I touched my head. “But not this book. Another one? Another book?”
Sarge glanced at me, and I waved him off and tried to read another page.
A bigger swell of nausea rolled through me, putting an end to reading time. I closed my eyes, flipped Gran’s spell book shut and slid it back into my hip bag.
With my eyes closed, I tried to think about anything that would distract me from the growing need to lose my lunch. It would not win me any points with Corb if I puked in his very nice car. I swallowed hard as the saliva rushed through my mouth, only making the need to vomit worse. But the smell of dog bombarded me from one side, and saltwater from the other, and it was pushing me over the edge.
Sweat beaded on my forehead and dripped down my spine.
“Windows down, please,” I said. “Now!”
A moment later, the fresh night air swept in around me.
Eyes closed, I focused on the issues at hand. We needed to find the necromancers who’d done this. The ones who’d taken Gran and set the wraiths on me. Were they the ones looking for the spell?
Angel wings.
My nausea eased, my breathing deepened, and I tumbled into a dream. I found myself beneath the oak tree with Robert, drunk as a skunk, reliving a moment that hadn’t happened all that long ago.
I looked at the book in my lap. I’d flipped all the way to the back looking for a silly saying about houses. The top edge of the back page curled ever so slightly, separated at the corner like . . . it was glued together?
I picked at the edge with a fingernail, still drunk as a skunk but pleased to have a distraction from everything. The glued pieces crackled as I pulled at them, and it slowly gave way under my persistence.
A slip of paper fluttered out, hidden in that pocket between the pages. I picked it up and stared at the words, not really understanding what I was seeing. Of course, I read it out loud.
“Of death and power, of magic and pain,
"That which comes shall find those slain,
"Raised anew and given life,
"A warning alone, this call is strife.”
I frowned at the paper, turned it over to see nothing but a number on it. Three. What the hell did a three have to do with whatever it was I’d just read?
I jerked awake in the back seat of Corb’s Mustang, heart pounding and adrenaline roaring through me.
“I think I have part of the spell.”
10
As soon as I woke, I blurted out what I’d remembered. Which happened just as Corb pulled into the driveway of an ornate house with scrolling ironwork and several balconies on the four-story frame. He drove forward as Penny startled awake. “Where are we now? Holy damnation, we’re here already? Good. I have to pee like a racehorse.”
She quickly mumbled a spell under her breath, and I could feel something slide over us even in the car.
“There, easier than taking you all in one at a time,” the old witch said. “Much less work this way.”
A spell prickled against my skin, one that was all about hiding us.
I looked through the back window in time to see a shimmer slide over the rear of the car, like a glimmering sheet of gossamer material that cut us off from prying eyes.
Magic, I would never get tired of seeing it in action.
“What did you say?” Sarge mumbled, his shoulder bumping mine.
“The stanza,” I repeated, then reached forward and touched Penny on the shoulder, wincing as my muscles pulled tight. “The spell, I think I’ve read part of it. I think I’ve actually maybe got a piece of it.”
“Did you hear me?” How could any of them be ignoring something so important? Then again, I could feel my own bladder demanding action.
Penny swung a hand back and caught me in the face with her palm, covering my mouth. “Stop blabbering, girl, there are ears everywhere. You got to learn not to tell all your secrets in the wide open.” Penny let herself out of the car and the rest of us piled out behind her. My hip bag rumbled, and I flipped it open.
Alan spilled out and stretched as if he had any muscles. “Hardly comfortable, but better than sitting next to him.” He gestured toward Sarge with a thumb.
I rolled my eyes. “Even if you were alive and gay like him, Sarge wouldn’t hit on you. You’ve got no hair and a pot belly, and that’s not even taking into consideration your shitty attitude.”
Sarge looked over his shoulder at me. “Alan chatting you up about little old me?”
I nodded and Sarge grinned. “I’d induct him to my side of the bed if he lost some weight and got hair plugs. Assuming he hasn’t changed since I last saw him alive, he needs a little help being beautiful.”
I rolled my eyes, but Alan stumbled back like Sarge actually meant it. I mean . . . he could not be more homophobic if he tried. “I think the lady protests too much,” I said.
Alan shot me a look. “What are you saying?”
“Just that you . . . never mind.” I really didn’t want to remind him about our lackluster sex life and the things that had made me wonder about his sexuality. I was too tired for a fight of that magnitude with my dead ex-husband after the day and night I’d had.
“She’s saying she thinks you still in the closet,” Feish announced to the air, unable to see Alan, but picking up on our back and forth. “You just too dumb to realize.”
While Alan spluttered and yelled that he was not gay, not in the least, just ask all the women he’d pleasured since our divorce, Penny opened the door to the four-story house and waved us in.
“Children, do move quickly,” she said. “Eyes are everywhere in NOLA.”
I motioned for Sarge and Feish to go ahead of me. Kinkly was still passed out on my shoulder, where she’d moved to sleep at some point, her arms tangled in a lock of my hair to keep her in place. Robert swayed to one side of me.
“Friend,” he said softly but didn’t move to follow us inside.
“Yes, you stay out here, keep an eye on things.” I patted him on the shoulder and he grabbed my hand, holding it there.
For just a moment his image wavered, and the other Robert, the one who had flesh on his, well, bones, looked back at me. His eyes were deadly serious. “Death, in all its forms, is haunting this city, Bree.”
Just that one line, and then it was skeletal Robert again. I patted his hand. “I got it. Danger abounds. We will be careful.”
Corb waited for me at the door, his face drawn tightly. I smiled up at him. “I’d really prefer for you to lose your cool inside, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m not going to lose my cool,” he said.
“No yelling?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“No freaking out that I brought a witch with us?”
His jaw twitched and his throat bobbed, but he shook his head. “No.”
I motioned for him to go ahead of me and he did, leaving me outside for just a moment on my own. Which meant I was the only one who saw the black-robed figure across the street, staring in our direction. The hood of the cloak swept one way, and then the other, and then the figure moved up the street.
Searching. But I would bet my last dollar that he couldn’t pinpoint us. Score one for the secret house of the Coven of Silver.
Three guesses what the mysterious figure was looking for, and the first two guesses don’t count.
“Well, that’s just ducking great,” I muttered as I shut the door, leaning into it hard and flicking the lock for good measure. There was a powder room at the entrance, and I let myself in and relieved the mounting pressure in my bladder with a sigh.
Washed up and feeling better, I followed the sounds of low discussion through the house into the kitchen where Sarge stood at the counter and was dutifully whipping something up. I didn’t care what it was, only
that it was food and I was hungry.
“The stanza—” I said.
“Let’s eat first.” Penny pointed her walking stick at the fridge. “Get them eggs going.”
I knew better than to argue with a woman over eighty who still had the strength of will to wallop you with her walking stick if you walked too close, or smack you in the face when she thought you should shut your mouth. So I cracked a dozen eggs and scrambled them, adding milk and a big shot of hot sauce. Sarge did pancakes and bacon, and I used the remaining elements to cook up the eggs. In no time, everyone was eating (minus the still sleeping Kinkly). The sun was just rising as we finished our very early breakfast.
As we finished, Feish yawned. “I’m tired. Going to read my romance book and go to sleep. You aren’t going anywhere?” She gave me a pointed look with her bulbous eyes.
I shook my head. “Going to talk to Penny and then get some sleep.”
Sarge stretched. “Yeah, you can fill me in later too. I’m not one for riddles or stanzas.” He kissed me on top of the head. “I’m glad you’re safe.” Warmth suffused me, and I patted his ass as he went by. He gave a little hop. “Saucy.”
As Sarge and Feish wandered off to find their respective beds, I noticed a small spider hanging off the back pocket of his loose pants. I did a double take as Jinx gave me a wave. Good thing I hadn’t swatted the other cheek.
This obsession of hers was not going to end well, but as unpredictable as she was, Jinx had proven handy more than once. I figured I’d let this ride, even if she was crushing hard on a guy who would not return the attention. After spending some time with Sarge during the whole goblin king ordeal, she’d decided it was meant to be because they were both shifters. She wanted to make a go of it with him.
I wished her luck, but didn’t have much hope for her.
I stood and cleared the table, Corb helping quietly. I knew without asking that he wouldn’t leave until Penny did. No matter what he might think of her abilities, he clearly didn’t trust her.
“Now the stanza,” Penny said. “Let me hear it.”
I paused at the sink and rolled the words through my mind again before I spoke them.
“Of death and power, of magic and pain,
"That which comes shall find those slain,
"Raised anew and given life,
"A warning alone, this call is strife.”
I paused as I lifted both brows. “What do you think? It sounds like it could be important.”
Penny pursed her lips, tapping the floor with her walking stick. “Could be. Was it in your gran’s spell book?”
I wiped my damp hands on a tea towel and flipped open my bag, slung over the back of a chair. “No, it wasn’t. The stanza was in this—” I dug around in the bag and then handed her Black Spells of Savannah and the Undead. I’d picked it up on a whim in the used bookstore, egged on by Oster Boon, the leprechaun who’d sold me Gran’s book. And I’d found the stanza hidden in the back.
She didn’t take the book, just stared at it. I laid it on the table in front of her, then sat in the closest chair. I flipped the book open to the back cover, which I peeled apart to retrieve the piece of paper that had the stanza written on it. “See, there is a number three here. And inside the book.” I let the book go, and it flipped around on its own until it stopped on the same line as before.
Of demon skin and angel wing.
I pointed at it. “This, this is why that stanza came back to me. Because I saw this at the same time.”
Penny sucked in a breath and her walking stick trembled against the floor. “I don’t know for sure. I’ll have to do some research. See what I can find, but if this . . . if this is real.” She stood. “I need to think on this. I need to call on my guides to direct me. This is more than just a bad spell, Breena O’Rylee. It could be devastating to our world. It could literally be the worst spell imaginable. One that is only told of in whispers and legend. A spell that is not supposed to exist.”
My jaw dropped. I’ll admit it. I mean . . .saving the world sounds good in the movies, but not so much when you were in the middle of it and didn’t really know what the hell was going on. I would’ve asked her more, but she stood and held her hand out to me as if sensing my questions and stopping them. “Let me think on it. We’ll discuss it tonight at dinner. Get some sleep, we all need it.”
And with that, she shuffled off, leaving me and Corb in the kitchen. He had his arms elbow deep in soapy water as he cleaned up the dishes and cutlery. Acting for all the world like he was content to be doing menial work.
“I didn’t thank you yet, for getting me out of there. Out of the jail that is,” I said. I chose not to say anything about Crash helping. No point in poking the bear if I didn’t have to.
He nodded, his words short and sharp. “Couldn’t leave you to die. I thought you’d know that.”
Yeah, he was still upset. I sighed, tired and painfully aware this conversation was only going to make me more exhausted. “Corb, why are you upset now?”
He turned, his shirt stretching across his broad shoulders. “You just made a decision that would affect us all. Like it was nothing to you to make it for the rest of us. Especially when you accused me of doing the same thing.”
I stared at him, not really shocked this was the direction he’d taken. “Right. But I didn’t tell you that you had to come with me. I gave you a choice at the beginning. This is my journey, Corb. You didn’t want to give me a choice—you wanted to just stuff me into a cabin.” I paused and let that sink in. “As for Penny, she is part of this. And what I’m hearing is that you don’t trust my judgment.”
“I do, but—”
“I never would have asked Penny to come if I’d thought she would hurt any of you. I remember her from when I was a girl, Corb. She was a good friend of my gran’s. My memories of Gran took me to her.”
“So was Hattie. So was Missy.” He tossed the frying pan into the water, and I cringed. Cast iron. Didn’t he know not to wash it with soap and water? I pulled it from the sink and dried it with a paper towel.
“Yes, you’re right about Missy and Hattie. But a coven is thirteen witches. I only knew a few members of Gran’s coven growing up—they were spread out across the south. You think they’re all out to get me?” I stood up a little straighter. “What is the real issue here, Corb? That you aren’t running the show?”
“That you don’t love me,” he whispered.
He couldn’t have caught me more off guard if he’d thrown the frying pan at my head. And those five little words could not have hit harder than said frying pan.
He didn’t turn around, his head lowered with his chin to his chest. “I’m a siren, Bree. Love doesn’t come to us the same way it does to the rest of the supernatural world. We rarely get to be with one person—our very nature won’t allow it. We flit between relationships and people all the time, and I’ve always been fine with that. But with you . . . you consume my thoughts. I can’t get you out of my head, and you don’t seem to feel the same way. It’s eating me up inside.”
I stood there stunned, and he took my silence and ran with it.
“Feish keeps saying that you belong with Crash. I don’t know if that’s true, maybe you believe it. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I can’t walk away from you. Before, I thought I could share you, but now I . . . I don’t think I can. I don’t understand it. It’s like you’re calling to the siren side of me, which is impossible, because you aren’t a siren. I want to protect you, but you keep throwing yourself into danger as if you don’t care if you live or die.”
I went to stand next to him. His hands were buried in the water, his forearms showing every line of tension in his body as the muscles flexed and twitched, his head bowed as if he couldn’t even look at me. “I don’t particularly care to die, at least not yet. I mean, if that was the case, I would have just refused the ride out of the jail.”
He didn’t laugh.
Shit, I was shit at this. I bit my lower lip a
nd then plunged in. “Corb, I don’t know what to say. You have to know that I care about you, that you are an important part of my life, but love isn’t on the table right now. Not for you, and. . .” I swallowed hard. “I don’t think for Crash either.”
Some of the tension flowed out of him, and he lifted his head to look at me. “You don’t love him?”
“I’d love to jump on him.” I shrugged and fought the emotions tangling inside of me. “But I’d love to jump on you too. I haven’t had anyone in my bed for a long time, and you’re both so freaking hot, it’s hard to think around you.” The tension ramped back up as I said that last part, his gaze taking on an intensity that I felt all the way to the center of my bones. Which was not the goal here.
I was supposed to be defusing this situation, not making it worse. “I’m just being honest. I don’t know that either of you are good for me. Let’s be straight, neither of you have been particularly upfront with me. You both try and fail. So maybe that’s on me. Maybe I just have shitty instincts when it comes to men. Look at my first choice, after all.”
Corb blew out a big breath. “Yeah, I never understood you and Alan.”
“Honestly, neither did I, and it’s even more baffling now that I know what I gave up for him.” I frowned. “Maybe when we find Gran, I’ll ask her what she remembers about that time, when I left town because I was gaga over him.”
That thought might have stayed with me longer, but I was rudely interrupted.
Corb put his still soap-covered hands on either side of my face, warm and soft, and kissed me.
11
Here’s the thing about kissing a guy who has magic humming under his skin mere hours after surviving yet another threat on your life: it doesn’t leave a lot of room in your head for anything like “there might be a better time than this” or “let’s save Gran first and make out later!” or even “you don’t know who you want, you really want to make out with both guys?”
Midlife Ghost Hunter: A Paranormal Women's Fiction (The Forty Proof Series Book 4) Page 9