“Well—” I shoved her back, “—as much as I enjoy having a naked woman sprawled on top of me, do you think you can let me up now?”
A sly expression flittered across her face. “What’s the matter?” She walked her fingers over her hips, up her sides and over her rib cage until she cupped her breasts. “Scared of a little jiggle?”
On another woman it might have played out as seductive. On Dell, who must be picturing tassel-tipped pasties on her nipples, judging by the way she was swinging them in circles, I had to laugh.
My snorted chuckles drew Graeson’s attention, who made a point of ignoring Dell’s antics, which only made me suck in air harder.
“It’s all right, girls.” She gave them one last grope. “One day you’ll find someone who appreciates you.”
“You’re insane.” I bucked my hips. “Get off me.”
“Don’t stop on my account,” an easy voice drawled.
I bolted upright, knocking Dell onto the ground. I rose on my knees and flung out my arms to cover her nudity from…an invisible man?
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” he assured us. “Wargs aren’t big on keeping their clothes on.” Seeming to realize how that sounded, he cleared his throat and backtracked. “I meant that as a statement of fact. Not as a slur.”
“Show yourself,” I ordered.
“You have no jurisdiction here, Agent Ellis. This is my family’s property, and I’m free to do as I wish.”
The fact he remembered my name was a good sign, right? There he held the advantage. The Garzas had erupted into frequent shouting matches while casting their divinations. His conversational voice—and no face to match it to—stumped me. I had no idea which witch stood before us. “Are you Miguel?”
“No, I’m Enzo.” A huffed sigh, as if the mix-up happened often. “You should have remembered me as the younger, more handsome brother.”
“Ah.” I relaxed my posture. “Yes. Enzo.” The one with a sweet spot for Dell.
“What brings you to our door?” The voice moved closer. “We weren’t expecting Graeson for another week. Unless… Does he have another job for us?”
“No, but I do.”
“Okay, I’ll bite.” The air shimmered in front of me. “What do you want?”
“Information on Charybdis’s whereabouts.”
“Hmm.” The magic shielding him from view dropped altogether, revealing the dark-chocolate eyes and tousled black hair I remembered. He wore a pair of faded jeans well, and his vintage T-shirt defined his torso. “I thought the kelpie died.”
“It did.” My lips tingled as the blood oath let itself be known. “But we have reason to believe the kelpie was an avatar, that the real killer is still out there.”
He rubbed his jaw. “Do you have a fresh sample?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t see how you expect us to help.” He spread his hands wide. “Without fresh biological material or a personal item of his or his current avatar’s, we can’t pinpoint him.”
“What about Harlow—the mermaid girl? Can you cast for her?” I lifted my wrist and exposed the shell bracelet. Hours of her life were sunk into those pearls. Sweat certainly. Blood, possibly. “She made this and gave it to me. Will it work as a focus?”
His arms dropped. “The mermaid is missing?”
Not trusting my voice, I nodded until my throat loosened. “She was taken from the scene of the last crime.”
“Let me see it.” He held his palm out flat. “I’ll be careful.”
For the first time since she gifted me the bracelet, I removed it and set it in his hand.
Fingers closed over the pearls, he moved his lips in a soft incantation. Threads of light bled through the cracks in his fist, and his eyes, when he lifted them, swirled milky white.
“Yes.” Magic distorted his voice until it echoed in many layers. “This will do.”
A shiver skipped down my arms, and Dell pressed closer. Graeson, whose absence at my side I hadn’t yet noticed, appeared behind Enzo. The wolf’s posture remained calm and nonthreatening, but his eyes were sharp and focused, his body taut with the promise of violence.
Blinking away the haze, Enzo swallowed a few times. It didn’t help. He still sounded raw. “Call off your wolf.”
“He’s not my wolf” popped out of my mouth on reflex, but the truth was I had won Graeson. He really was mine. A wriggling tendril of panic wormed through my chest when it hit me. By that logic, I was his too. Having never belonged to another person, I battled my instinctive response to shove the thought—and the person attached to it—away. But my resistance didn’t make it far. A tilt of the silvery wolf’s head, as if he read my distress or understood my words and rebuked them, had me ready to call him to my side and stroke his silky ears while I whispered nonsense into them.
The sad fact was that Graeson-as-wolf was more of a danger to my heart than the man had been. Holding the man at arm’s length was easy when I recalled his betrayal. The wolf, though, was honest. I couldn’t hold my grudge when I peered into that wild face and glimpsed the simple animal happiness he experienced when I was near. A contentedness, if I were being honest, that mirrored in me.
If—when—I got the man back, I was in real danger of transferring that easy affection onto him.
“I see,” Enzo said at last. “Well, call the wolf off then.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Graeson, man, I thought we were tight.”
The wolf chuffed.
Dell laughed, a pealing-bell sound that captivated the witch.
“When are you going to let me take you out?” His eyes softened when they lit on her and, through no small miracle, he didn’t glance lower than her chin. “I’m not all bad.”
I whipped my head toward Dell, who flushed ten shades of red. “It’s nothing personal.”
He rubbed the spot over his chest. “Tell that to my achy-breaky heart.”
“Sorry,” she murmured, eyes downcast.
“Never be sorry that you’re being true to yourself.” Enzo placed his palm over his heart, a pledge. “I’ll be sorry enough for the both of us. Trust me.”
The slight curl of Dell’s lips in my periphery told me she wasn’t immune to the witch’s charms. Enzo wasn’t the only one holding a torch for unrequited like, and I had to wonder if her answer might have been different had she not met Isaac.
To clear the air, I stood and brought his attention with me. “Are you willing to help?”
A negligent roll of his shoulder. “For a price.”
“Name it.”
“It’s up to Miguel. I’m still an apprentice.” He gestured toward the dirt road. “If you’re willing to gamble, follow me.”
The deck was stacked in his favor, but a chance to know where Harlow was urged my feet forward.
Finally I was making progress.
A stern-faced man with eyes a shade lighter than Enzo’s awaited us on the porch of a pale-blue clapboard house. His crisp slacks defied humidity, and he wore a button-down shirt fastened at the wrists despite the heat. The house itself was the centerpiece of a bizarre garden divided into four distinct quadrants.
Decorative flowering plants adorned the area to my right, their zone tidy and pruned. Herbs grew wild on the left but managed to be at once inviting and forbidden. The rear of the house boasted a vegetable garden sprawling lush and plump. Its opposite was a massive square pond overflowing with water lilies, hyacinths and cabbage-like pistia plants.
“Adele,” Miguel greeted her. “It’s a pleasure to see you again so soon.” He reached behind him where a rocker sat and lifted a pink cotton bathrobe as though expecting us. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” She stepped up, let him help her into it and tied it on her way back to me. “Your house, your rules.”
“Agent Ellis.” His greeting for me rang cooler. “Come inside, won’t you?”
The wolf gave me a nudge to get me moving. He was acting more coherent, more human, by the hour. I
hoped that was a good sign.
Inside the house was as strange as the outside. Most of the living space was what you’d expect, but the books weren’t light reading. The tomes gracing his shelves were thick, leather-bound. Crystals reflected rainbows in the windows. Bone sculptures took up table space, and elegant taxidermy brought a bleak air to the room.
“Have a seat.” He took one of the two chairs positioned opposite a couch. “Tell me what brings you so far from home.”
Enzo waited until Dell had plopped down on the couch before claiming the other chair. Left the only one standing, I sat beside Dell, and Graeson came to rest at my feet, his tail curled around my ankles. All this Miguel watched with detached interest.
“She wants to find the mermaid.” Enzo dropped my bracelet into his brother’s hand. “I told her we could help, assuming you two can settle on a price.”
Miguel rolled the beads between his fingers. “What business do you have with the girl?”
“She was abducted from the scene in Abbeville.”
“I see.” He studied the etchings on each sphere through narrowed eyes. “Is this personal or professional?”
“Both.” Hoping it might sway him, I added, “She’s a friend.”
“We can find her.” He closed his fist and sat back. “The closer she is, the easier it is.”
I scooted to the edge of my cushion. “Does that mean she’s nearby?”
A ghost of a smile shadowed his features. “What are you willing to offer me in exchange for this information?”
“I assumed there was a set price.” Graeson had told me their help was expensive, but not what it cost.
“For Graeson there is.” He studied me with a clinical air that left me chilled. “For you…for this…I need something else, something different.”
I sank my fingers into Graeson’s lush pelt. “Why don’t you spell it out for me.”
Dell snorted. “You told a witch to spell it out.”
I elbowed her in the side. “You’re not helping.”
Overhead the planks groaned, and all eyes rolled toward the ceiling. I jumped to my feet at the heavy thump that followed. Miguel blurred past before I could ask what the sound meant, but Enzo caught him by the shoulder.
“I’ve got this. I’ll get Isabella back in bed. She was probably curious about the voices and went to look out the window.” He jerked his chin toward us. “You finish up down here.”
We reclaimed our seats, the quiet pervasive, until Miguel spoke. “My wife is unwell.” His fingers tapped out a hasty rhythm on his knee. “I don’t have long to entertain offers, and I don’t have time for coyness.” He snared my gaze. “I want your blood.”
I recoiled, and Dell scooted closer. “My…blood.”
“My wife is a warg. You’re a shape-shifter of a different sort. You control your shifts. If I can isolate the strains of magic that make that possible, I can create a vaccine. She could do partial shifts when the moon calls to soothe her inner beast.” His voice went distant. “It’s not a cure, but it’s a hope for a better patch than any I’ve created so far.”
Blood was power. A lot of bad spells used it as both fuel and homing beacon. Whatever magic was twisted from my blood would rebound on me if the brothers misused even a drop.
“You’re asking for a lot.” Not just blood but trust too.
“You want the mermaid located while she’s still sane, I assume.” His tone was merciless. “There’s not much time left for that.”
I gritted my teeth. “Tell me about Butler, Tennessee first.”
“Butler. That sounds familiar. Let me check my records.” He held out a hand, and a ledger materialized there. When he set it in his lap, it flipped to a page near the center of its spine, and he marked a passage with his finger. “I’ll give you my oath your blood won’t be used for harm or against you. One vial is all I need. Promise me that, and I’ll read you the transcription word for word.”
Oaths were binding when sealed with magic. It was as safe an offer as he could make me. “I accept.”
“The creature walks among mortals. As death wears many faces, so must he.” Miguel’s shoulders relaxed as he read from the journal. “He is hunger, his cravings unending. This world will perish at the edge of his teeth. Butler, Tennessee will bear the brunt of that first bite.”
He closed the book and willed it back whence it came.
I waited. No, he wasn’t being dramatic. He was done. “That’s it?”
“Graeson was specific. He wanted a location, not motivation and not identification.” He picked at a thread sprung from a seam in his pants. “You’re fortunate Enzo keeps such meticulous records. Had I been entranced alone, all I would have remembered speaking would have been the answer to his question.”
“Meemaw did say not to accept his first offer,” Dell whispered.
I glowered at her. “Not helping.”
“Sorry.” She winced.
I rubbed the tense spot between my eyes with my pointer finger. “The apocalyptic nature of the divination didn’t, I don’t know, concern you?”
“Not particularly.” Tired of the loose end, he snapped his finger, and the thread knotted. “All divinations have bleak aspects, and most possible futures bear grim tidings. I can’t drop everything to run off to save the day every time a world-ending forecast is made.”
“How is the world possibly ending not your problem?” I challenged.
“For some of us…” his gaze drifted toward the ceiling, “…it’s not a possibility but a certainty.”
How accurate were his divinations that he could afford to ignore such dire warnings? Was he truly content to let the world run out of time since his wife’s was so limited? Or did he place his materialistic faith in people like me, who, to borrow from Mai, must have a savior complex?
“Now, the mermaid.” The bracelet dangled from his fingers, an incentive. “What will you give me for her?”
A growl rose up the back of my throat that was echoed by Dell and the wolf at my feet. “I agreed to pay you a vial of blood for your help.”
“The blood was for the divination.” He worried the beads through his fingers like a rosary. “This is a separate price for a separate act.”
I didn’t bother making an offer. I didn’t see the point in it. “What did you have in mind?”
“Be our guest. Three days should do it.” A slight smile. “I might need more blood or—”
“—a fresh guinea pig,” I finished for him, rising to my feet. “The answer is no. You’re not the only one running out of time.”
The witch would draw out each nugget of information at a cost that would climb higher and higher. I had wasted my time coming here. What scraps I’d learned through the divination shored up Ayer’s rantings, but neither told me what had drawn Charybdis to Butler, Tennessee.
The only way to find those answers was to fly up there myself and take a look around.
“What about me?” Dell scrambled up behind me. “Is there anything I can do?”
Miguel was shaking his head before she finished. “Enzo bargained with me to spare you from my agreement with the pack.”
Dell blanched at the mercy she had unknowingly been granted, and her gaze skittered toward the stairs where her knight errant had gone. Knees wobbling at the magnitude of this news, she sank back onto the couch. “Why would he do that? He doesn’t even know me.”
“Infatuation,” Miguel said with casual cruelness. “The difficulties Isabella and I face haven’t deterred him. Let his inherent magic infect you, let it warp your natural energies until each shift is a step closer to your death, and then he might begin to understand the idiocy of his bargain.” Lips mashed into a white line of regret, perhaps for speaking his mind, he stood. “Once you leave, whether you got what you came for or not, you won’t be permitted back onto our property.” He crossed to the front door and rested his hand on the knob. “There are rules, and they must be upheld.”
Anger sprouted fine p
latinum hairs up my arms, and an idea formed. “Your wife is a warg.”
“I’ve said as much, yes,” he answered, condescension ringing through his tone.
“Locate the mermaid, and I’ll give you a second vial of blood.”
His brow furrowed. “To echo your earlier sentiments, the answer is no.”
“Are you sure?” I lifted my arm and pushed magic through my limbs to hasten the spread of the warg aspect. “The divination was worth the blood of my base form, which possesses non-specific magics. Think of it as a control sample. How much more would it be worth to you if I saved you some work? What if I gave you that Gemini baseline with a natural infusion of the warg magic instead of your clinical variety?” I spread my fingers and allowed him to admire the curled tips of my claws. Power swept up my throat and danced along my jaw until my gums ached. When I spoke again, it was to lisp through fangs. “Fine tha mermaid, an’ you can ha’ this too.”
“Your offer intrigues me.” Eyes bright, Miguel began pacing the entryway. “Magic is coded into warg DNA. Gemini capture a scrap of that wild energy, distill it from their blood, absorb it and use it to augment their own.” He continued thinking out loud. “It would cut out several steps in the process and eliminate the threat of two opposing magics rejecting binding with one another. Blood from a Gemini robust with warg magic.” He stopped, seeming to come to himself. “Your blood may prove to be a magical universal donor.”
I held my breath. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes.” He vibrated with energy. “Quickly, let’s go to my lab.”
“Not so fast.” I planted my feet. “I want the information first.”
“That won’t be possible.” He took a thin knife from his pocket and slashed open his palm. Dipping his fingers in the red liquid, he wrote a few symbols that ignited in his palm. “This is a binding oath, a vow that I will give you that which you seek, but to ensure the quality of the sample and your cooperation, I must ask that your end of the deal be met first.”
Having little experience with witches, I wasn’t sure what I had just witnessed. “Dell?”
Dog Eat Dog World: Limited Edition Bundle (Black Dog) Page 123