“But not the Whiskeys.” Quinn folded her arms over her chest.
“Not the Whiskeys.”
“They’re fair,” Chuck said, walking into the bullpen. “They’ve always been fair, since before the war, and that fairness has transferred through the generations.”
“Skipped one,” Paige muttered, thinking of Rachel.
Chuck quirked his lips at her. “I believe a djinni and a dryad can learn to work together, especially after he shows her how to protect her grove from his kind.”
Tarik bowed his head deeply. “Of course. That is an exceptional idea.”
“Don’t you want one of us to go look at the body?” Quinn asked.
“The body is probably already gone.” Paige glanced at the board with Rainbow’s notes. “What does that say? After two days?”
“It’s been five,” Rainbow said quietly.
Quinn sighed.
“Go,” Paige said to Michelle and Tarik. “Chief Tuck is waiting.”
“Hold up,” Ethel called, ripping open the box she’d carried in. “Special delivery. Just came in today.” She pulled a badge out of the box, read it, then handed it to Michelle. “I don’t have everyone’s yet.”
“How’d you get these?” Paige took the one offered to her.
“We’ve been planning this for months.” Ethel winked. “So, we got them stamped. Just had to wait for you to make a couple of decisions, and then we rushed the order.”
A gold outer circle, with a silver five-pointed star over it. A red circle in the middle with the trinity embossed in black. Troutdale PD, Red Star Division.
Captain Whiskey.
“The rest of you will get official badges after the chief vets you,” Ethel said. “He wouldn’t sign off approval before-hand.”
Michelle smiled, saluting with her new badge. “Well, let’s go make it official.”
Rainbow frowned inside Ethel’s box. “There’s one for me in there, right? With my name?”
Ethel raised her eyebrows. “No. You gotta go get checked out by the chief first.”
Rainbow glowered.
“I will admit,” Paige said to the young woman, “you are the one that worries me the most. The most inexperienced, the most immature.”
Rainbow shrugged, sucking in the corner of one side of her mouth.
“But you go in there and you show him the work you’ve already done, and you should be fine.”
Quinn sighed.
“And you?” Paige turned to the siren. “Don’t do to him what you did to me. You don’t play your own team.”
“I was just—”
“I know why you did it, Quinn.” Paige shook her head and dug into her pocket. “Just don’t do it again.”
“And if he asks?”
“To be shown? Sure. But only then.”
“Okay. Then what? Report back here?”
“No.” She handed Quinn the paper from her pocket. “There’s a list of people there. I want you to use your special skills and interview them. You’re not there officially, so come up with a cover story.”
“I’m good with those,” Rainbow said, chipper.
“Good.” Paige didn’t know what else to do. “Now, go.”
Dexx waited for the ladies to leave. “And me?”
“You?” She watched her team retreat. “You get yourself approved by the chief and then come back here to develop a training program. These kids need to be brought up to speed. Quickly.”
“I thought you said no paperwork.”
“You can come up with the plan using Play-Doh if you want.” She really needed Dexx, but she needed him to step up. “But we need a plan to get these guys trained.”
He sighed. “Because dead kids…”
“…are dead kids.”
Paige wasn’t quite ready for Leslie and Alma to show up. Mostly because she didn’t really know what she was doing. They needed protections set up. Wards. Great.
In Dallas, Alma had started them and Paige had just added to them. Along with everyone else.
That wouldn’t happen here. Paige was supposed to be the new matriarch.
New matriarch. New head of a special division. New leader of a revolution.
A lot of new stuff and she didn’t know what the fuck she was doing with any of it.
Alma got out of Leslie’s car looking like a freight train had ran her over.
“Grandma.” Paige walked toward and reached for her elbow.
Alma jerked her arm away, her lips flat, her white eyes defiant.
Well, awesome. Paige gave Leslie a wide-eyed look of “holy crap-balls, Batman.”
Leslie clenched her teeth and shook her head as she walked around the hood of her car. “Hey, Pea. Ready?”
“Yup.” Nope. Not at all.
Alma opened the back door and pulled a black garbage bag out.
“What’s in the bag, Grandma?” Paige asked as chipperly as she could without sounding completely fake.
“Broomcorn.”
“Oh good.” Thank goodness. “I was wondering where we were going to get that.”
Alma narrowed her eyes. “Where is my granddaughter?”
Paige beamed a smile at her grandmother. “And there are sage bushes outside all the doors. How lucky is that?”
“Sage?” Alma asked, the corners of her lips pulled down in confused disgust.
Shit. Had the djinn been wrong? “Yeah. Looks like just regular sage brush to me, and since they’re already here, I thought we could use it to help repel negativity.”
“You want to incorporate sage into your wards.”
She didn’t need to make it sound so stupid. Geez. “Yes. You think it’s a bad idea?”
Alma shrugged and shook her head. “You’d be binding your ward to the earth.”
“Bad?”
“Different.”
Oh, Alma was in a bad mood. “Okay.” Paige sighed. “What do we do?”
“First, you go find a stick.”
Paige really just wanted to throw a big ol’ tantrum. “A stick?”
Alma leveled a tired look at her granddaughter. “You’ll be making a broom.”
“I guess I’ll go with you,” Leslie said brightly. “Because we’re doing this at my place, too. Yay. I’m going to dump my purse at your desk.”
“Okay. Meet me out back.”
Alma disappeared inside with Leslie.
Paige could have walked through the building, but chose to stay outside. Alma’s mood sent waves of irritation coursing through her.
So, wait. The alphas were irritating her. Alma’s bad mood was irritating her.
Was she just irritated?
Could be. The move had thrown her off more than she was ready to admit. And…she needed sex. Not just a quickie like they’d been able to catch before. She needed biting, feeling, tasting, exploring good sex.
Look at her, prescribing sex like it was a drug.
Except that, according to science, it kinda was.
She wanted to rip Dexx’s clothes from his body and ride him hard ‘til morning.
Or for fifteen minutes.
Or until she passed out.
Whichever happened first.
No-no. She needed the good kind. Ride him hard for fifteen minutes, then bend over the bed and let him ride her. And then bring out the stool and ride him.
Yes. She needed sex. Badly.
The tree line butted up to the back of the rear parking lot. A few feet through the trees was river on the left, mountainside on the right.
Damn pretty country.
Cool-ish air danced along Paige’s skin. It was “hot” in Troutdale, but she’d come from Denver and then from Dallas, so eighty-six degrees with a slight overcast was definitely cool. The breeze whispered through the pine branches. She loved that sound more than any other sound out there.
Well, the sound of her kids’ voices.
Nope. Leah was starting to get on her last nerve with her pre-teen, the-world-isn’t-fair attitude. So,
no. And Bobby’s ear-splitting scream in the middle of night? Not winning him any favors. She knew. She knew. Baby. He didn’t know any better.
Her nerves didn’t care.
Wind in pine trees. Definitely her favorite sound.
“So,” Leslie called from the edge of the parking lot. “A stick.”
Paige loved her sister. Yes. Concentrate on the good stuff. Try to settle the nerves that way. “We’re building brooms. Who knew? Where’s Ethel?”
“Calming Grandma down in the way only Ethel can.”
Thank the goddess. “Oh, good. So, we’re glad we kept her, then.”
“Ethel? Hell yes.” Leslie passed Paige and headed into the tree line. “Grandma? Not so much.”
Paige shook her head and walked beside her sister. “How did you live with her all those years?”
“Hobbies.” Leslie shrugged. “I learned to make soap.”
“Where? There was no room in that house.”
“I took over the kitchen. We ate a lot of pizza.”
Paige chuckled. “Did I mention that Barn was going to be using one of the bedrooms on our floor?”
“You did. Yes. I don’t think everyone else knows, but you told me.”
“Oh, good.” Paige saw a lot of fallen wood, but nothing that would make a good broom handle. “I don’t know how long he’ll be staying.”
“According to Barn, only a couple of days. He’s been ready to follow you ever since you left Denver.”
Yeah. Poor guy. He’d just been informed about everything, and then Paige had left. Then a month later, so had Tony.
“I think I found one.” Leslie tugged on a fallen branch. It released, leaving her to stumble a little backwards. She held it up victoriously. “See? Perfect.”
The bark had been stripped off it and it looked a little long, but, yeah, it was pretty perfect. Now, to find hers.
They kept looking for several more minutes.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Leslie said. “Do you?”
No use trying to front with her sister. “Nope. Not a clue.”
“But that whole thing at the house?”
By “at the house,” Paige was fairly certain Leslie was referring to the wards at the Texas home. For one glorious, death-driven moment, Paige had managed to gather all the Whiskeys and apply their magick to the wards Alma had already built. “Fluke. I don’t know. I mean, you guys are the real witches with the spells and everything. I can call up elements.”
“I love you, Pea, but sometimes you’re stupid.”
“Thanks, Les.”
“You’re welcome.” Leslie picked up a branch, looked at it and put it back. “Spells with words and stuff are only for coven magick, when we need everyone to be on the same page, directing their will in the same location. Otherwise, we’d be casting, and one witch would be thinking about getting the lottery tickets, and another witch would be thinking of ways to dispose of her husband’s body—which is a pretty common thought. Just letting you know—and you’d get some very wacky spell-craft shampoo.”
Paige chuckled. “Shampoo?”
“That wants to give you lucky lotto numbers and can dissolve bodies. And all you wanted was fuller, lusher hair.”
Paige had no doubt that Leslie’s example was a poor one, but it did what she’d set out to do. Force Paige to relax. A little.
“There’s been a lot of pressure put on you lately.” Leslie squatted down to look at a fern. “It’s only reasonable that you’d be feeling a bit out of your element.”
That was all true. “I know how to summon demons, keep track of them, send them back when they’re done.”
“Which is still kind of odd for me.”
“I get that and don’t care.”
Leslie nodded and shrugged with one shoulder. “Fair.”
“But this whole taking care of the family thing? Being the one in charge of our protections? This is odd for me.”
Leslie leaned against a tall cottonwood tree and crossed her arms over her chest, making sure her broom handle didn’t poke her. “Then stop trying to take it all on.”
Paige frowned at her. “But that’s what Grandma did.”
“Grandma was basically alone, knucklehead. She had two girls and no one else. Look at what you have.”
“I have you.”
Leslie smiled. She paused and her smile slipped. “And I’m thinking maybe we don’t count our kids out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Grandma did all this alone because she didn’t think she could have us help her. When, in fact, we probably could have used the practice. Look at where you would be now if she’d let you into her protections, her wards, the other things she does.”
Paige nodded. That wasn’t a bad idea.
“You gave me the idea originally, anyway.”
“I did?”
Leslie pushed herself off the tree. “Yeah. You invited the kids into the wards around our home. You had an idea about treating us kind of like we were a pack. And our wards were stronger for it. Much stronger. So, what if we do that with everything? They’d be stronger for it. Our magick would be better for it. And, right now, we can’t be weak. We need to use every resource we have.”
All very good points.
“And…” Leslie’s voice trailed off and a small light of fear entered her brown eyes. “I can’t help but wonder why my son’s gift has presented itself so early. Why all of my children presented early. I think the All Mother knows we need them. Now. To win our fight against Merry.”
Something glinted in the corner of Paige’s eye. She turned, trying to find it again. Leslie was probably right. Well, she normally was, truth be told. The idea, however, terrified her. “What do you think Merry would bring to us that we’d need our children to help protect us against?” Their children, for crying out loud.
“I don’t know.” The corners of Leslie’s lips pulled down. “But it scares me.”
“Me, too.” Paige frowned as she rummaged in the vegetation where she’d seen the flare. Her fingers grasped a stick and an almost electric shock shot up her hand and arm. “Ow!” She tugged. “I need to find a teacher for Leah.”
“Yeah, you do. What are you thinking?’
“Well.” Paige jerked on the stick, pulling it away from the vines and branches that entangled it. Was the wood calling to her? Was that the reason for the eye flare and the electricity? Yeah. Probably. The All Mother helping out with a flashlight and a cattle prod. “I don’t know,” she grunted, her stick coming free of the vegetation, forcing Paige backwards, “if Leah’s gift is Eastwood because of her father, or Blackman because of mine.”
“She’s a necromancer.”
Paige nodded, holding up her stick.
Leslie studied it. “Looks good.” She turned her focus to Paige. “What would make the difference?”
This stick would do just fine. It was covered in dirt and stuff, but it was about the right length, the right girth. It was time to head back. “I don’t understand the question.”
“Neither do I, I guess.” Leslie gave Paige a confused look. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Oh. Um, well, you know how each of us has different gifts?”
“Um, yeah.” She stepped around a wide pine tree. “So?”
“Well, looking at the old family grimoires got me to thinking.” Paige cleared the tree Leslie had disappeared behind. “What if each family has different sorts of gifts? And then, when the Blackmans had you captive, their magick was similar to my own. My witch hands?”
“Your what?”
Paige rolled her eyes. “Witch hands. It’s what I call them. Anyway, they’re made of the same inky black ooze magick that the Blackmans had.”
“And Leah’s magick?”
That was harder to pinpoint. “It’s kinda close to mine, but it’s door magick. I have door magick, so she might have gotten that from me. I can open the Gate to Hell.”
“It’s a
part of your soul.”
It was. “So, at first, I thought I could teach her, but it’s different.”
“Ah. So, probably Eastwood, like her dad.”
“Probably except his magick is blood magick.”
“But you’re hoping it’s Blackman.”
“Because they’re right down the street and they’re wanting to play nice.”
Leslie stepped out of the wooded area. “I can see the dilemma.”
And it was. If Paige really did need an Eastwood to teach her daughter how to control her gift, they were all screwed. “I’ll figure something out.”
“That’s what I always say when I have no idea how I’m going to figure it out.”
Yeah. That sounded about right.
“Well, don’t do anything stupid or reckless while you’re trying to figure it out.”
“And what would be stupid or reckless?”
“I have no idea.” Leslie opened the back door and held it open. “You bring new meaning to both words on a daily basis.”
A little too true. But that wasn’t helping her. What Paige really wanted was to go to the Eastwoods and ask for guidance. They couldn’t all be bad. There was just something off with the Blackmans. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she felt she wasn’t safe with them.
Her gut? Something she saw but didn’t recognize? Something she couldn’t put into words? Cawli? What? If she could figure out what the grounds were for that, she could figure out how much merit the reality of it had.
Alma sat in Quinn’s cubicle. Her expression had more lift to it. Her shoulders rose slightly, pulling back as she straightened herself.
Paige had to admit. Quinn’s cubicle was pretty badass. She might need to incorporate some of that work into her own office.
If she decided to keep it this way.
She had to admit, this wasn’t a typical police department setup. It just wasn’t. It looked supernatural.
Which would make the people she served as a civil servant more relaxed.
She had to keep that in mind. She wasn’t offering a normal police department.
She was a civil servant serving a community that hadn’t had the benefits of civil servants…possibly ever.
Possibly. There was still a lot she didn’t know.
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