by Lexi George
Staying away had allowed her to pretend that the children’s deaths were his fault, not hers. If she kept moving, ran fast enough and far enough, the past and guilt wouldn’t catch up with her.
When she did return, it wasn’t to the old place. She’d bought the land and house on the river, miles from the farm, insulating herself from her failings and the bitter memories. Cassie swallowed and faced a difficult truth. She’d run because she was a coward, plain and simple, and that made her ashamed.
Maybe if she’d loved more, loved better, things would have been different. Love is patient. Love is kind. Always hopes . . . always perseveres.
Duncan’s words shone in her mind, bright as neon. I was a fool, he’d said. I returned within a fortnight to beg your pardon . . . to tell you that I love you. That I was wrong to leave.
To tell you that I love you . . .
Duncan had used the present tense—“love,” not “loved.” With characteristic Dalvahni stubbornness and commitment to a quest, he’d never given up on her.
Two weeks. Two lousy, miserable weeks, that’s how long he was gone.
If she’d stayed, if she’d had the fortitude to face her grief and Duncan’s rejection, they might have been apart a few days instead of more than a century and a half. Oh, sure, they’d have had one humdinger of a fight. Cassie would have raged and cursed, and blamed him for the children’s deaths. She might have even sent him packing.
But he would have come back, the squeam said. Duncan will always come back. He would have besieged you, warrior that he is, returning again and again. Until he broke down the walls of your wounded pride and bitterness, until your grief and guilt were spent and you forgave him.
And herself. Cassie swallowed the lump in her throat. The squeam was right. Eventually, she would have forgiven Duncan. She wouldn’t have had a choice—love keeps no record of wrongs.
It made her sad, to think how things could have been had she been stronger, loved more deeply and had more faith, but it was too late. Time marched on. Things changed. She couldn’t go back. But there was Here and Now, and that was something. Cassie had learned to find joy in the day by scooping up little bits of happiness when and where she found them. Otherwise, she’d have drowned in sorrow.
Great sex wasn’t love, but it was something, right?
She waited for the squeam to argue with her. To tell her to go for broke and entrust her heart to Duncan one more time.
Nada. Radio silence. Superego out to lunch.
“What is our direction?” Grim asked suddenly, startling Cassie.
“I thought we’d run by Chez Beck’s so Verbena can get her things,” she said. “And I need to check on something while I’m there. The restaurant is a client.”
“What sort of trade are you in?”
“Supernatural security, mostly. I do other things—love, healing, and money-luck spells, road openers for people seeking a new path or job, and banishing spells for the troubled—but security’s my bread and butter. I offer plans for home and retail security. Anti-norm spells, disturbance alarms, and kith repellent are my biggest sellers.”
“Kith repellent?” Grim gave her a curious look. “Are not most norms ignorant of the kith’s existence?”
“The kith repellent is for the kith, not the norms.” She grinned. “We are the things that go bump in the night, and we know it. The kith pay good money to keep the booger bears out. Beck and Toby have been my customers for years, starting with the bar.”
“The watering hole formerly known as Beck’s?” Grim asked.
“That’s the one. The shifter bar was kith only. I installed anti-norm wards and spells to misdirect them so they couldn’t find the joint.”
“And your precautions worked?”
“Yep,” Cassie said with undisguised pride. “Toby did the rest. He was the bouncer. Nobody got past the Great Snozzola.”
“I do not understand this term.”
“Toby can smell talent.” Cassie guided the truck around a curve. “Or in the case of a norm, the lack of it.”
“I can see how that would be beneficial when one runs an establishment for supernatural clientele. Have you placed similar wards around the restaurant?”
Cassie shook her head. “No, Chez Beck’s caters to kith and norms.”
“Is that wise?” Grim asked. “It seems to me a combustive combination.”
“It is worrisome,” Cassie admitted. “Most norms don’t know about the kith, and we want to keep it that way. No shifting is allowed at the restaurant, and no magical shenanigans.”
“Prudent, but easier said than done. Your solution?”
“I’ve created a sort of dead zone around the property where magic doesn’t work.”
“Ingenious.”
“Thanks,” Cassie said. “It was a challenging job. Kith talent comes in all shapes and sizes, and the spells require constant maintenance and upgrades.”
“Your spells have no effect upon the Dalvahni,” Grim pointed out. “We come and go as we please.”
“All built into the program. Conall wanted it that way, and what the customer wants, the customer gets.”
“I misdoubt you could have done it, at any rate,” Grim said with casual arrogance. “The Dal are tricksome.”
Cassie would have dearly loved to burst his balloon, but he was right, dammit. The Dal were a magical law unto themselves, more demigods than supers. Take Duncan, for example. In one morning, he’d conjured new clothes out of the ozone and bitch-slapped an angry troop of weres and shifters out of their forms without breaking so much as a sweat. Impressive and damn sexy.
Grim’s stomach growled, and he shifted on the seat. “I am loath to trouble you, but would comestibles be out of order? I have not broken my fast.”
Cassie glanced at the clock on the dashboard and was surprised to see that it was almost noon. “Sure.” Executing a three-point turn, she headed toward town. “You hungry, Verbena?”
Verbena made a small noise from the back that Cassie took as assent, and in no time, they were crossing the river bridge and toodling down Main Street. Downtown Hannah was picturesque and neat. Oak trees lined the pristine sidewalks, the storefronts were freshly painted, and wrought-iron streetlamps dotted every corner.
She pulled into a parking place a few doors down from the Sweet Shop, and the three of them piled out. A bell jangled over the door as they entered. Viola Williams, the Junoesque owner, welcomed them with a smile. Miss Vi knew how to cook Southern, and she prided herself on serving the freshest locally grown vegetables. Her desserts were homemade: banana pudding, moist cakes with fluffy icing made from scratch, and pies piled high with toasted meringue. Her husband, Del, was a darn good cook, too, known three counties wide for his barbecue and the drunk sauce served on the side.
Pauline, their bony waitress, trotted over, her bun so unforgiving that she appeared to have given herself a face-lift. She showed them to a booth and plunked a huge glass of tea in front of each of them. “What’ll it be?” she asked, giving them a skinny-eyed glare.
“Ribs. High on the hog, no herbs,” Grim said without hesitation.
“Herbs? You mean you don’t want no vegetables?”
“That is correct.”
“Humph,” said Pauline, jotting down his order. She spun on the toes of her orthopedic shoes, sharply addressing a man in overalls at another table. “Jim Bob Watson, you tump over another glass of tea, I’m gon’ knock you into next week, and no lie.” She turned back to glare at Cassie and Verbena. “Well? I ain’t got all day. You two?”
Verbena squeaked out an order for fried chicken, dark meat.
“Just tea for me,” Cassie said. Her stomach was roiling with unease, and the thought of food made her nauseous.
“Humph,” Pauline grumped again, swelling in offense. “You one of them women don’t eat?”
“I had a big breakfast,” Cassie said, giving the waitress a placating smile.
Pauline, however, was not appeased. She gave
Cassie a glare and stomped off, returning shortly with their food. Grim ate with the same deftness and attention to detail as Duncan, demolishing two slabs of ribs in short order. Verbena tucked away a surprising amount of food for one so elfin: two drumsticks and a thigh, field peas with snaps, macaroni and cheese, and a corn muffin.
Pauline returned to take their dessert orders, and Grim declined her suggestion that he sample the chocolate pie. “I thank you, good damsel, but I will have the butterscotch instead,” he told her.
“Fine, don’t listen to me. I just work here,” Pauline said with a snarl, and flounced away.
Cassie ordered a piece of strawberry cake, mostly because she was afraid Pauline would thump her on the head if she declined dessert, too, but she couldn’t eat it. She was too worried.
She was toying with a bit of icing when the door of the Sweet Shop banged open and a woman rushed inside. She was a vision in a fire-engine-red bandana top, black pleather leggings, and strappy red high-heel pumps with cheetah accents. She’d piled her mass of dark, curly hair up and away from her face with a banana clip. A gunmetal gray Chihuahua was clutched to her generous bosom. The dog was extremely ugly, with teeth like an alligator and malevolent black eyes. A puff of curly hair sat atop his tiny head, and nestled in the thatch of curls was a bow that matched the woman’s bandana.
“Mothertrucker,” the woman gasped, her blue eyes bulging. “They’s after me.”
Cassie recognized the woman at once. Her name was Nicole Eubanks, and she’d paid the “witch” of Devil River a call some weeks back, seeking help with a personal matter.
“You get that dog out of here, Nicole.” Miss Vi hefted her zaftig body around the front desk to intercept her. “I done tole you a million times, you can’t bring him in here. That animal’s a menace. He should be put down.”
Cassie wanted to shout hell-to-the-yes on that one. Frodo the hellhound had nearly taken her arm off during Nicole’s recent visit. His mistress had driven out to Cassie’s house and tracked her down on the porch, demanding her help. “Man troubles,” she’d announced, gazing up at Cassie from the lawn with anxious blue eyes.
Nicole had been wearing stilettos that day, too, and the heels had sunk into the sod. She’d teetered drunkenly for a moment, then toppled to the ground like a demoed skyscraper. Cassie had hurried down the steps to help her up, but Frodo had objected. Strenuously. One look down Frodo’s razor-lined gullet, and Cassie had backpedaled, leaving Nicole and her alligator Chihuahua to fend for themselves. Nicole had floundered to her feet, unaided, and after much coaxing, Cassie had reluctantly agreed to help her with her “problem.”
And here she was again. What sort of pickle had Nicole gotten into now?
“Frodo wouldn’t bite his own fleas,” Nicole was saying to Miss Vi. “He’s my precious baby.”
“Then you got a sho-nuff ugly baby,” said Miss Vi. “Now get him out of here. I mean it. I run a clean business, and I ain’t getting no health code citation ’cause of that hid-juss mutt.”
There was a shout from outside, and a small herd of men charged past the plate glass window at the front of the Sweet Shop.
“There they is,” Nicole shrieked, glancing around wild-eyed for someplace to hide.
She spied Cassie sitting in the booth and froze, a look of incredulity and outrage on her chubby face.
“You,” she said in a voice of deepest umbrage. “This is all your fault.”
“What’s my fault?” Cassie asked, stunned.
The other customers in the restaurant sat like mannequins, watching the tableau in horrified fascination. Cassie spotted Robyn James from the Hannah Herald at a nearby table. She groaned. Robyn was always looking for tidbits to liven up the paper. Local flavor, he called them. This little farce would make Wednesday’s edition for sure.
“I come to you for help,” Nicole said, trembling with ill usage, “and you done cursed me. The Bible says, ‘Do not turn to mediums.’ I done sinned, I reckon, and that’s what I get for trucking with a maleficent being.”
“Melody who?” a man whispered in a stage voice.
His companions shushed him.
Cassie rose from the booth. “Why don’t we talk about this outside?” She handed Verbena two twenty-dollar bills. “Pay for our food, Verbena, please, while I have a word with Ms. Eubanks. I’m sure there’s been a misunderstanding.”
Nicole hesitated, and it hit Cassie that the woman was afraid. Of her. Nicole lived with a crazed velociraptor in a dog suit, and she was afraid of Cassie.
Cassie was appalled. “I won’t hurt you,” she told Nicole in a low voice. “If I’ve done something, I’ll make it right, I promise. Please don’t be afraid.”
Nicole wavered, and Frodo decided the matter by wriggling free of his mistress’s grasp. Snapping and snarling, he attacked the ankles of the diners. Customers scattered to the winds or scrambled on top of tables to escape the ravening canine. Dishes and glasses crashed to the floor, adding to the confusion.
Snatching up a broom, Miss Vi swung it at the dog, but the Chihuahua shredded it like a wood chipper. Miss Vi threw what was left of the broom handle at the dog and scrambled onto the checkout counter. “Out,” she bellowed, pointing at Nicole in righteous wrath. “Out of my restaurant, before I call the police.”
Nicole plucked the raging animal off the chair it was chewing to bits. “Come on, Frodo.” She planted a kiss on the merkin crowning the dog’s head. “We’s leaving.”
Cassie followed Nicole outside. She found her hovering on the sidewalk, her eyes twitching this way and that. “Now,” Cassie said, staying well out of Frodo’s reach, “what’s this about a curse?”
Nicole sobbed, tears streaming down her face. The Chihuahua made a noise of distress that sounded like a miniature buzz saw and lapped at Nicole’s wet cheeks. Nicole gave a watery chuckle. “Sweet boy,” she said, stroking the malformed creature. She glared at Cassie. “I been dating Dan Curtis, one of Hannah’s finest. His mama and sisters ain’t been happy about us from the get-go, on account of I’m eight years older than him. A-and because they’s skinny minnies and they say I’m fat.” Her chin wobbled. “Dan likes my figure. H-he asked me to marry him. His mama started snooping around when he told her he’d proposed, and found out I’m divorced . . . a-and that I used to dance at the Booby Trap.” Her voice broke. “They’s Baptist, see? And Baptists don’t even have sex standing up—too close to dancing.” A tear dripped off her chin and into Frodo’s waiting maw. “I come to you for a charm. Something to make Dan fall out of love with me.”
“I remember,” Cassie said. “I told you not to let those spiteful women spoil your happiness, but you wouldn’t listen, so I gave you what you asked for.”
“Never did no such thing.” Nicole’s bosom heaved. “I asked you for a repelling charm. What you give me attracts ’em.”
“What?”
Cassie stared at Nicole in horror. “Oh, dear. I’ve been a little out of sorts lately. Something must have gone wrong.”
“You damn straight something went wrong.” Nicole’s plump face was flushed with righteous indignation. “You whammied me.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Nicole gasped and spun around at the heavy tramp of feet. A dozen or more men of varying ages—several that Cassie knew for a fact were married—rounded the corner of the drugstore. When they saw Nicole, they charged, their eyes glazed with a strange fever. One of the men wore police blues—Dan Curtis of the grasping helicopter mom, Cassie presumed.
“Mothertrucker, here they come,” Nicole shrieked. “You gotta fix this, Miss Cassie. I ain’t cut out to be no love goddess.”
The herd of men let out a collective bellow of distress and stampeded. Nicole shrieked and bolted, her hoochie heels chugging up and down on the sidewalk. The frenzied men swept past Cassie, knocking her aside, and thundered after Nicole.
“Think she’ll make it?”
Cassie turned to find a silver-haired gentleman regarding her. Amasa Collier
came from old money. He’d been a successful lawyer until he’d started seeing demons and his practice had dried up. The joke was on the norms. Amasa did see demons, though most folks thought he was a whack job. The norms didn’t know half of what went on in this town, bless their hearts.
“I hope so,” Cassie said. “You know Nicole?”
“Yep. She’s quite the artist. Has a display in my gallery. Made a replica of The Last Supper out of cigarette butts that will make you weep. You should stop by.” He gave her a sharp look. “Did you really whammy her?”
“Not on purpose.” Cassie worried her bottom lip. “Apparently, the charm I gave her is defective.” She sighed. “I take that back. Apparently, I’m defective. Something’s up with my powers.”
“Maybe I can help.” Amasa unhooked a thin metal rod from his belt and held it up. “Know what this is?”
“A couple of coat hangers twisted together?”
“Contrabulator. M’own device.” Amasa waggled the thing in the air. “Mind if I run a simple diagnostic test?”
“That depends.” Cassie eyed the wire. “You planning on doing a probe?”
Amasa chuckled. “Nope. Nothing invasive. Simple scan. Won’t hurt, I promise.”
He waved the contrabulator in Cassie’s direction, and to her surprise, the dang thing lit up and hummed.
“Hmm,” Amasa said. “Lot of gray and murky brown in your aura.”
“Meaning?”
“Blocked energy fields. Distrust. Reluctance to let go. Fear of sharing yourself with others.”
Cassie felt her jaw unhinge. Amasa Collier had described her to a T.
“But whadda I know?” He gave her a sly smile. “I’m a crazy old coot. Ask anybody.”
Amasa ambled off, whistling and swinging his contrabulator, and Grim and Verbena came out of the Sweet Shop. “All is well?” Grim asked. “You seem disquieted.”