“Two-headed?” Ruthie asked.
“Okay, fine. But you have to admit, Rachael could work. It’s worked on every soap I’ve ever watched.”
“That does not instill confidence, Defiance.”
“Sorry, Gigi,” I said.
“We’ve been through the wringer and back,” the chief said. “Have I ever left you? Did I leave when you were possessed by that lizard?”
“You were possessed by a lizard?”
Ruthie shook her head.
“Or when Percy was infested with toads?” the chief asked. “Or when you took out that female serial killer with that strange witch fire? Did I run? No. And that shit scared the hell out of me.”
“Wait, what serial killer?”
He looked at me. “A member of your grandmother’s coven turned out to be a serial killer. Only her clientele was exclusively witches. She joined the coven, then killed two of your grandmother’s best friends.”
Ruthie lowered her head, the memory obviously painful.
“When she came after Ruthie, we were ready. Her entire coven lay in wait to ambush the woman. Took her out with some kind of blue fire.” He looked at her. “But I stayed, Ruthie. All the hocus-pocus. All the bizarre incidents. All the secrecy. I stayed.”
I rubbed my forehead. “You killed her?” I asked Ruthie.
“I had no choice. No jail could’ve held her, and she would’ve gone on killing until she got what she wanted.”
My natural instinct was to ask what she’d wanted, but I already knew. She’d wanted me. Or someone like me. She’d wanted a charmling. What else would a powerful witch want but more power?
But that wasn’t the most pertinent question.
“I never left,” he continued. “Through all of that, I never left you. But the first time you die and come back to life without your powers, I’m history.”
“I’m sorry, Houston. I just . . . I didn’t handle things very well, did I?”
“No.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Marry me, or I’m never coming back.”
She blinked up at him, her mouth forming a pretty O. “Houston.”
“I mean it, Ruthie. I think we’ve dated long enough. It’s time to take our relationship to the next level.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that life is too short to live in fear.” He took her hands in his. “Marry me or lose me forever.”
The corners of Ruthie’s eyes crinkled. “Since you put it that way.”
My heart melted. They kissed, and it wasn’t as icky as I thought it might be.
Everyone congratulated them, and my dads took out a bottle of wine to celebrate. But once Ruthie and the chief got settled at the table, I planned to pounce. To catch her off guard. That was the plan, anyway.
Before I could bring up her lie, she said, “Defiance, there’s something I need to ask you, but I want you to feel free to say no.”
“I have something to ask you too.”
“You first,” she said, ever the diplomat.
“No, you go ahead.” I’d lost my window of surprise either way.
“I insist,” she countered.
“Okay. Why did you tell me you killed my mother?”
The room quieted around us.
“What?”
“You told me you’d killed three men and one woman in your lifetime. Is that true?”
Her lids drifted shut as she realized her mistake. “I—I wasn’t counting the witch. She was an unusual case.”
“Gigi.” I leaned closer. “Who killed my mother? Because it wasn’t you.”
The chief took her hand in his and squeezed. “She deserves to know, Ruthie.”
Ruthie shook her head.
“Gigi.” I kept my voice soft and even. “Who killed her?”
She swallowed hard, and whispered, her voice so soft I almost didn’t hear her. “You.”
I reared back, the thought so absurd. “I was three. How could I even manage something like that?”
“You were a three-year-old with the power of an atomic bomb behind you. When I got home that night, your mother was trying to siphon those powers, like I said.”
“And?”
“And I tried to stop her. You were hovering in midair, and she had one hand above your chest. She’d performed a transference ritual. Black magic. By that point, though she had only a fraction of your power, she was far too strong for me. I knew there was no stopping her, but I had to try. I recited a binding spell. She laughed at me.” Ruthie’s face showed the agony she felt. Her own daughter. “She sent out what power she did have to . . . to break my neck.”
A hand shot up to cover my mouth.
Her tear-filled gaze drifted to mine. “You knew. Somewhere deep inside, you knew what she was doing. While she was focused on me, you reached up and touched her face. There was such love in your expression when you . . .” She sniffed. “We both collapsed. You ran to her and threw yourself over her, sobbing and apologizing.”
“But in your book of shadows you wrote, She’s gone. I had no choice. May the great Goddess embrace her soul.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“That was about you, sweetheart. When your fathers took you. You were gone from my life, and I didn’t know if I could live after that. I didn’t know if I wanted to.”
I stood and walked to the sink to look out into the backyard, and she followed me. “Gigi, why didn’t . . .” My voice cracked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to have to live with that, sweetheart. What would that have done to you growing up? What good could’ve come of my telling you now? I just thought . . . I wanted to keep the memory you had of your mother safe. But Houston is right.”
“I usually am,” he said.
We laughed softly.
Roane was at my other side. Not crowding. Just there.
I took his hand. I would deal with the emotional turmoil of Ruthie’s bombshell later. I pretended to shake it off. “You had a question too?” I asked her.
“It can wait.”
“No.” I straightened my shoulders. “I’m okay.”
She played with the sleeve of her dress. “I was wondering when you and Annette are going to get this business going.”
I looked at Annette. “Are you ready?”
“I was born ready.” She fluffed her feathers.
Ruthie nodded. “Then I would like to be your first paying customer, if you’ll have me.”
“You had me at paying,” Annette said.
“I didn’t want to tell you this too soon, but I think it’s time.” She glanced at the chief, seeming nervous all of a sudden. “And I didn’t know how to tell you either, Houston.”
He stood and walked over to her. “Tell me what, love?”
“I didn’t die of natural causes. Someone killed me.”
The chief and I exchanged glances.
Ruthie lifted her chin. “I want you to find out who.”
“Ruthie,” I said, the room closing in on me, “are you saying someone murdered you?”
She nodded. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was a combination of belladonna and a deadly mushroom called death cap.”
That was specific. “How . . .” I swallowed, trying to keep my act together. “How did you figure that out?”
“The taste.” When I shook my head in question, she explained. “Let’s just say my lunch ended up in the toilet. I didn’t realize it was anything more than just an upset stomach until I got to the pantry. The world started spinning, and I had severe abdominal cramping. That’s when I recognized the taste.” She thought back. “Definitely belladonna, but there was something more. Something to give it an extra kick.” A soft shiver ran through her fragile body. “All I know is someone wanted me dead.”
“I’m sorry, Ruthie,” Annette said from her perch.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” She glanced at me. “It bro
ught you two into my life.”
“Ruthie,” the chief said, “why didn’t you tell me this before? We would have performed an autopsy.”
“Why didn’t you?” Annette asked him, genuinely curious.
“We thought it was natural causes. There was no evidence of foul play. Otherwise, we would’ve requested an autopsy.”
“Which is why I didn’t tell you,” Ruthie said to him.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
She brushed an invisible piece of lint off a sleeve. “Lying naked on a slab while someone cuts out my brain does not appeal to me in the least.”
“Ruthie Ambrosia Goode,” he said, both frustrated and hopelessly stricken with love.
Part of me wanted to remind her that she wouldn’t have felt a thing, but I did understand. I wasn’t sure the chief did, but we women seemed to take a different view of these things.
By the time we finished our conversation, I knew three things about Ruthie’s death. She was poisoned. She had not left the house in a few days, so whoever did it had to have gotten inside. And whoever poisoned her knew more than a modicum of witchcraft, because no one could’ve gotten past Percy without using some kind of concealment spell.
Of course, they also had to get past Roane. He stood completely quiet, as usual, but I could sense the anger and tension coming off him in waves.
“We’ll look into it,” I said, glancing at Annette.
She nodded in agreement.
“As will I,” the chief said, his expression grim.
“Can we circle back to me, now?” Annette pecked at Papi’s hand when he tried to pet her, and I was right there with him. “I think I’m getting lice.”
He jerked back his hand.
“You know,” I said, taking the opportunity to tease her. “Roane figured all of this out on his own. How to change back to a wolf. Maybe you need to put some thought into it. Pull up your bootstraps and, I don’t know, put your back into it.” So many cliches. So little time.
She hit me with a low, grating coo. An evil sound that incorporated the rattles and clicks of a hell spawn fresh from the underworld. My dads backed away from the island warily. Minerva raised her phone again.
“See?” I said. “You’re already getting the hang of being a crow.” When she lowered her beak and gave me the thousand-needle glare again, I turned to Roane. “Any thoughts?” I asked, hopefully shifting her ire.
He grinned at her. “You’ll shift back when you want to.”
“But I want to now,” she said, spreading the feathers on her wings and ruffling them.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Think of the money we could make off you. We could go on tour. Do talk shows.”
“You’re hilarious,” she said, a microsecond before Ink pounced.
We’d been so preoccupied with Ruthie’s murder and Annette’s avian quandary, we didn’t notice the scruffy, battle-scarred cat stalking its prey until after it leapt forward.
Annette screamed—a human scream, not a bird one—and fell backward off the island while Roane, with his own catlike reflexes, caught the stealthy creature in midair, its claws a millimeter from sinking into Annette’s exposed belly.
She landed on the other side with a loud thud. Much louder than a bird would have.
We scrambled around the island and gaped at a short, curly-haired Goddess in all her unclothed glory, trying to catch her breath. She lay stunned, staring at the ceiling, taking in tiny gulps of air.
“You did it!” I shouted to her just as I noticed Samuel, who’d been chasing Ink around, standing there with his hands over his eyes. I laughed and knelt next to him, before looking back at Nette. “And you’re naked.”
Percy rose from the ground and covered her most vulnerable assets while Roane pitched in as well. He turned away, lifted his shirt over his head, and handed it back to her.
“Thank you,” she said, a soft pink blossoming over her exposed skin. She sat up and Percy shrank back as she pulled the shirt over her head. “Thank you, Percy. If only I had a kilt too.”
Roane laughed softly and helped her stand. Thankfully, his shirt was plenty long enough to cover her best parts.
Samuel refused to remove his hands from his eyes. Until Ink slid past him, and he took off.
I got the feeling Ink was beginning to enjoy their game of cat and mouse, even though he was now the mouse. I turned to Minerva. “Please tell me you got all of that.”
She raised a thumb from behind her phone, her jaw hanging slack on her pretty face. I knew exactly how she felt.
After coming up with a game plan as far as Ruthie’s murder, I showered and got ready for bed. Showering before bed was not something I normally did. I was a morning girl. But I hadn’t had one in over a day.
I put on a T-shirt and lay on the bed, thinking about the crazy turn my life had taken. Not the least of which being the fact that not only had a I killed a man by freezing him to death, I’d also killed my own mother. I mentally carved two notches in my belt to remind myself of how quickly things could go south. Of how fast my magics could take control and do the unthinkable. Before I came to Salem, the thought of taking a life was unfathomable.
It was a lot to digest.
That combined with Annette and Minerva and Samuel and the witch hunter and Ruthie’s revelation . . . it was all so much. Yet there was a part of it all that felt right somehow. Like I was exactly where I needed to be.
I wondered if that had anything to do with a certain sexy someone. A kilted wolf with eyes the color of the forest on a cloudy day and a mouth blessed by the Gods. I also wondered what other parts of him were equally as blessed.
With a grin created from the flavorful pairing of mischief and lust, I whispered, “Just how well do you hear, Mr. Wildes?”
Thirty seconds later, I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to everyone who helped with this endeavor and to my Grimlets for all your input. Love you all!
About the Author
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Darynda Jones has won numerous awards for her work, including a prestigious RITA®, a Golden Heart®, and a Daphne du Maurier, and her books have been translated into17 languages. As a born storyteller, she grew up spinning tales of dashing damsels and heroes in distress for any unfortunate soul who happened by. Darynda lives in the Land of Enchantment, also known as New Mexico, with her husband and two beautiful sons, the Mighty, Mighty Jones Boys.
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Also from DARYNDA JONES
PARANORMAL
BEWTIXT & BETWEEN
Betwixt
Bewitched
Beguiled
CHARLEY DAVIDSON SERIES
First Grave on the Right
For I have Sinned: A Charley Short Story
Second Grave on the Left
Third Grave Dead Ahead
Fourth Grave Beneath my Feet
Fifth Grave Past the Light
Seventh Grave and No Body
Eight Grave After Dark
Brighter than the Sun: A Reyes Novella
The Dirt on Ninth Grave
The Curse of Tenth Grave
Eleventh Grave in Moonlight
The Trouble with Twelfth Grave
Summoned to Thirteenth Grave
The Graveyard Shift: A Charley Novella
THE NEVERNEATH
A Lovely Drop
The Monster
Dust Devils: A Short Story of The NeverNeath
MYSTERY
SUNSHINE VICRAM SERIES
A Bad Day for Sunshine
A Good Day for Chardonnay
A Hard Day for a Hangover
YOUNG ADULT
DARKLIGHT SERIES
Death and the Girl Next Door
Death, Doom, and Detention
Death and the Girl he Loves
SHORT STORIES
Nancy: Dark Screams Volume Three
Sentry: Heroes of Phenomena: audiomachine
Apprentice
More Short Stories!
Bewitched: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Betwixt & Between Book 2) Page 22