“But my mouth is—”
You want your hour or don’t you? I looked into the oceanic depths of his blue eyes, daring him to disagree. We’re here for Flick.
“—is going to get me in trouble if I’m not careful,” Crixus finished.
Liam looked him over with narrowed eyes, suspicious of this sudden change. “What did you say to him?”
“I reminded him that we’re here for Flick,” I answered, handing Liam the yam gun. “You seem to be the resident weapons expert. Help us out, would you?”
Manipulation without missing a beat, Doctor? We’re going to have fun, you and I.
Glancing at Crixus and Liam as they stood side-by-side, I had to brush away the metaphorical rendering of meat and potatoes as quickly as it suggested itself. “Shall we?”
I managed a total of three sashayed steps before I ate grass.
My would-be rescuers were too busy shoving each other out of the way to help me up, so I got to my feet on my own. “Must have caught my heel on a root,” I said, brushing grass from my knees.
“Nope,” Crixus observed. “It was a corpse hand.”
Liam and I looked backward in concert.
There, jutting up from the ground like the gnarled branches of a stunted tree, were skeletal fingers covered in withered flesh.
The dirt around the base of the wrist looked freshly dug, as did the trail of dirt winding away from it and stopping abruptly at an adjacent headstone.
“What the hell?’ Liam wondered aloud.
Similar trails scarred the entire cemetery, winding their way between the grave markers and around trees. Vanishing and reappearing among the meandering maze of the dead.
“That’s a coffin,” I said, my gaze halting on a silvered dome erupting from a mound of crumbling earth. “Something has pushed it out of the ground.”
“It’s not the only one.” Liam’s gaze had strayed further into the cemetery where many similar hills dotted the landscape.
My lungs seemed to shrink in my chest, refusing to take on any air shared with the hand clawing its way out of the dirt. I looked down at the shoe it had touched. It, along with its mate, would be headed down the trash chute as soon as I arrived home. “What happened here?” I whispered.
The ground in front of me erupted in a spray of grass and grit as something hit me in the chest. Breath burst out of my lungs and I fell backward, my head hitting the ground hard enough to set the clouds above me circling like a merry-go-round.
“The gold-hoarders lie!” a squeaky voice chattered. “The golds were not buried with this rotten he-peoples either!”
“It’s one of them!” I heard Liam shout. “One of the…potato things!”
“The he peoples!” the same pitchy voice declared. “They have come! And they have brought the she-peoples with them!”
Crixus stared at the silty little figure in open-mouthed wonder. “I’ll be gods damned. They do exi—”
Whump.
“Fuck!” Crixus fell to the ground beside me, his forehead bearing a bright pink blotch.
“They’re a little trigger happy,” I said.
“You’re one to talk,” Crixus grunted.
“Don’t even get me started,” I warned. “If you hadn’t—”
“The gold-hoarders!” Orange Hair’s shriek of alarm silenced us both. They have escaped! Find them! ”
“Flick!” I hissed to Crixus. “We need to get to him before they do.”
Crixus rolled his eyes and pushed himself into a crouch. “You take the perimeter. I’ll go straight up the middle. Ready?”
I nodded.
“Go!” No sooner than the word left Crixus’s lips than a yam came sailing in my direction and I dove behind a stone plinth bearing an angel statue. The wing above my head gave way with the sound of breaking stone, bits of debris spraying my neck and cheek.
Whump.
“Look out!”
A kaleidoscope of branches and sky blurred above my head as I hurtled through space, hitting the ground with Crixus on top of me. Milliseconds later, the angel fell backward and shattered against a neighboring headstone.
The weight and density of the body crushing mine into the earth was a marked improvement to the fractured stone I had narrowly avoided.
“You’re welcome,” Crixus said.
Whump.
His throaty groan could have been pain or pleasure, and feeling its vibrations against my ear and through my chest sent fire darting through me. Crixus rolled onto his back.
“Oops.” Liam peered around the corner of a marble obelisk. “Guess I missed.” Whump. He squeezed off another shot, this one flying just to my left.
Three Tato Mens tumbled backward like squeaking bowling pins. Their little arms and legs scrambled against the air as they tried to right their round, rolling bodies.
“Why don’t you just use your real gun?” Crixus asked. “Make sure they don’t get up again.”
“Because I don’t pick on things smaller than me. But these babies”—he said, tossing a potato up in the air and catching it—“are just about the same size.”
“Jaysus leaping Christ!” Relief flooded me as Flick popped out from behind one of the headstones, his small chest heaving. “You’re here!”
“Flick!” I said. “Thank God you’re okay!”
“Aye,” he puffed. “Had them digging this place up lookin’ for me gold. Wasn’t sure how much longer we could stall.”
I looked around the cemetery, grateful for the wall of mature trees circling it. Early on a weekday under a sky threatening rain, the grounds were empty save for us. Whatever magic Crixus had used to repair my apartment and clothes last night, I hoped it worked on graveyards as well.
“The she-peoples will come out,” the voice I recognized as belonging to Orange Hair ordered. “If they do, the Tato Mens will hold their fire.”
Crixus and I exchanged a nervous glance. He didn’t know any more about them than I did. Liam stood with his back the monument, yam gun drawn, ready to shoot. He nodded.
He would cover me.
I sat up slowly, rising to my feet with my hands held above my head.
Orange Hair stood in the clearing between headstones, his gun pointed directly at me. “The she-peoples sees many others in the day.” It was more accusation than observation.
“Clients?” I asked. “I do have many clients, yes.”
“They told us of the slaughter. Of the many Tato Mens who die for your pleasure.”
My head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. “You mean, because I’m a vegan?”
“Death word!”
I managed to duck in time to feel the yam whiz past my cheek.
“Soon, no more Tato Mens will die by the she-peoples’ fork. With the golds we have taken, we will buy our freedom! And the she-peoples will be punished for their treachery!”
A squealy cheer rose within the graveyard from little mouths I couldn’t see.
Anger and confusion warred for space in my mind. “What do you mean, my treachery? Do you have any idea how many people in the world eat potatoes? How is this my fault?”
“They told us of the she-peoples’ many crimes. Just as they told us of the gold. The ship waits to take the Tato Mens to the promised land across the sea where they may live in safety! Freedom from the fork!”
“Freedom from the fork!” came the echoed reply.
I calculated the odds that I might be able to punt Orange Hair over the wrought iron cemetery railing before the other Tato Mens opened fire. They weren’t good. “Who the hell are they? Are you saying someone put you up to stealing the Westies’ gold in my name?”
I felt warmth against my back and knew Crixus had made his way to his feet. “Look, guys. I have connections in the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. If you stop this now, I can make sure you’re protected. But there are rules. You can’t just tear-ass your way through the human world. You’ll need to submit to a—”
Whump.
Judging by the strangled sound behind me, a demigod’s tots were just as susceptible to a good yamming.
Helpful to know.
“The Tato Mens do not recognize the he-god’s authority! We will have our exodus! We will have—”
The gunshot ricocheted through the trees and I found myself diving for cover, following a bellowed order from Liam.
I knew the signature of Liam’s muzzle all too well, and the gunfire hadn’t come from him.
Orange Hair hadn’t moved as swiftly. His tiny black eyes blinked in disbelief, staring at the yam gun on the ground between his dirty little feet.
His hand still gripped the muzzle. A hand attached to an arm that no longer belonged to the rest of his body.
My horror shifted to embarrassment as I saw no blood leaking from the detached appendage or the stump sticking out of the burlap sack. As was to be expected from a potato.
Orange Hair looked from me to Liam. Tears streaked gullies through the sand on his cheeks. “Our arm”—his bottom lip quivered—“they shot off our arm.”
The shock and sadness in his voice rivaled the yelp of kicked puppy.
“What the fuck is that thing?”
I wheeled around at the foreign voice to find a man I knew had to be Ronan Molloy. Not as tall as Crixus or Liam, but easily as broad and heavily muscled. Hair dark auburn, eyes shaded in sunglasses, mouth a thin slash across a hard jaw, the gun in his hand an extension of his outstretched arm.
“They’re Tato Mens,” Liam said, stepping out from behind a tree, his own weapon drawn. “And I would suggest lowering your gun before they fuck you up.”
Ronan snorted, his wide shoulders shrugging in disbelief. “What’s that ugly little shit gonna do? Beat me with his arm?”
From my peripheral vision, I saw Flick leap out of his hiding place and take up Orange Hair’s yam gun. “Tot-shots, lads!” he cried.
“Tot-shots!” the Tato Mens shouted.
Liam knocked the gun from Ronan’s hand with a well-aimed potato a split second before Flick and his new minions opened fire. Familiar grunts of pain broke from Ronan like clouds of dust beaten from a rug.
I glanced down at Orange Hair, who stood back from the fray. His head of orange curls angled toward the ground.
“Here,” I said, picking up a long, sharp twig from the base of a nearby tree. “Go have fun.”
His eyes brightened as he seized it with his good hand. “We have been mistaken about the she-peoples. We can see now that their ugliness has made them kind!”
Waving his stick like a sword, he raced toward his comrades.
“Did he just call me ugly?’ I asked.
“To each their own,” Crixus shrugged.
“Well, I guess that rules us out,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.
“I’m only half god, remember?”
“You were kind enough to remind me earlier. Or, remind someone, that is,” I added.
Crixus reached toward me and picked a blade of grass from my hair. “Jealous?”
“That would not be an accurate assessment of the situation.”
In the distance, Ronan made a noise that suggested Orange Hair might have broken the stick off in any number of places.
“I was,” Crixus said.
“You were what?” I asked absently.
Two of the Tato Mens took turns jumping on Ronan’s stomach and crotch. Others pulled at his hair and his eyelids while Flick kept a yam gun trained on him. They went sliding off when Ronan rolled to his side and vomited in the grass.
“Jealous,” Crixus admitted.
“Please,” I remarked. “You don’t get to be jealous. ”
“Listen to me,” he said, his voice empty of any of its characteristic arrogance. “I—”
“Oh look!” I interrupted. “Here they come!”
The procession of burlap-clad bodies marched toward us like the Roman legions returning from battle, Orange Hair leading the charge, the twisted twig in his hand as grand as any emperor’s scepter.
Ronan was carried aloft above their heads, his wrists and ankles tied with strips of fabric ripped from his own shirt, a yam in his mouth as a makeshift gag.
His body was limp as it tumbled to the ground. Eyes swollen shut, clothes torn, face and neck scratched and bruised, he looked like he’d been put into a cement mixer full of bricks.
“He’s not dead,” Liam informed me. “Just going to be counting bruises instead of sheep for a while.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “They still think I took the gold. They’ll just send someone else after me.”
Crixus looked down at the dirt-smeared faces gazing triumphantly at their giant prize. “Any chance you guys can get the gold back?”
Orange Hair shook his head. “We have already given it to the harvesters. Even now our brothers in all the state-places are being delivered to the ships. The Tato Mens’ promised land awaits.”
“You used gold stolen from an Irish gang to buy some potatoes?”
“Not some,” Orange Hair said. “All. We take them to the land across the sea where the Tato Mens may be safe. Where the rice-things are eaten.”
“Ahh,” Liam said. “Cue the nation-wide potato shortage.”
“But unless we can find more golds, some brothers will be left behind.”
“Well why didn’t you say so, laddie?” Flick hopped down from Ronan’s forehead and took Orange Hair by his remaining hand. “Come and have a look at this.”
We followed Flick’s green coat tails to a nearby mausoleum. Chiseled into the door between two tall columns was a name and inscription that had me stifling a laugh: Patrick Kelpie McSweeny, A Man Who Cared for Many.
Flick snapped his fingers and the protective metal gate swung open, followed by the sound of scraping stone. We blinked in the dim doorway as daylight reached its fingers into the gloom.
No coffin or casket to be seen. Instead, rows of gold ingots stacked as high as my head. “You call this a small windfall?” I asked.
“This? Why no. Been adding to this for a long time now. We have one in just about every cemetery in the world. Spoils of war, lass. People be most grateful for our help when they win, don’t you know.” The buttons on his shirt strained as his small chest puffed with pride. “Just added a couple bits and bobs the other day, was all.”
He kicked open a nearby chest to reveal a mound of jewel-encrusted gold chains, hoops, and rings.
“Wow,” the Tato Mens sighed in unison.
“So you see, lads. I have some resources to spare for the cause. Might be enough to change your luck.” He gave Orange Hair an impish grin.
“The gold-hoarders would do that?”
“Aye. If you’d be willing to let me show you how to get along in the human world. You can’t just go running around stealing things and shootin’ people in the bollocks with those guns of yours. There’s a balance to the things, boyo.”
“The Tato Mens will learn!” Orange Hair declared. “But what about the she-peoples with the pinchy face? The Westie-mens still hunt her. How can the Tato Mens help?”
“Pinchy?” I repeated. “What do you mean pinchy? I’ll show you pin—”
Liam clapped a warm hand over my mouth. “She would love your help,” he offered in my stead.
Flick looked at Crixus. “Well, it seems only fitting that we pay the doctor for the services. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I had fully intended on it,” Crixus said, sliding me a covert wink.
“Perhaps we can leave our friend over there with enough gold to help the Westies forget their troubles, eh?” Flick suggested.
I peeled Liam’s hand away from my mouth. “Flick, this is incredibly generous of you. Are you sure?”
“Sure look it! Now, let’s lay a lash to it, boys!”
“What did he just say?” I whispered to Crixus.
“He said he’s sure and also that we should get to work moving the gold.”
“Aye. And doing that won’t be a stro
ll through the hen house, I’m afraid. We ought to make sure our friend is secure. I don’t suppose we have any rope?” Flick asked.
“We do,” Liam answered.
“Splendid! A shovel would come in handy as well.”
Liam nodded. “Check.”
“But I suppose a tarp would be too much to ask for,” Flick sighed.
“Blue or silver?” Liam asked.
“I’ve always liked the blue,” Flick said.
Liam sent me a smile that almost made me forget why he carried these items in his car trunk. “Well my friend,” he said. “You’re in luck.”
*****
Alone.
Five letters had never contained such infinite luxury. Never had my bed felt so inviting, never had my sheets felt so smooth against my bare legs. All this empty space, and every inch of it mine.
My dresser drawers blissfully unoccupied. My couch empty. My floor free of bodies to tip-toe over in the morning.
The day felt like a tidy pouch, its drawstring now tugging closed. Flick reinstated and scheduled out for weekly appointments. Liam on a plane back to Vegas. Crixus off to receive his next assignment. Ronan Molloy given enough gold to pay off the Westies and have enough left to buy himself a small island. And me, tucked back into a night that resembled my former life.
If luck was a lady, she could share my bed anytime.
Sinking against my pillow, I reached into the nightstand for one of my go-to guilty pleasure paperbacks. The Rogue’s Lusty Lady would do nicely for tonight. I picked up a whole-wheat cracker from the fruit and cheese plate on my lap and scraped a smudge of creamy brie.
The buttery cheese melted on my tongue as the book’s first sensuous words unrolled like bolts of satin over my tired mind.
His naked flesh was an ode to predatory grace.
“That’s not an authorized biography.”
My screech shattered the room’s silence as the book flew from my hands and into Crixus’s chest.
“Crixus!” I gasped, when air finally forced its way down my lungs. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Two strides closed the distance between us. Without a word, he lifted the plate off my lap and set it on my nightstand. He held my wide-eyed gaze as he found the edge of his black t-shirt and stripped it over his head in one practiced movement.
Unlucky: The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist Page 9