Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
T wo dozen, actually. Plus, four more.
“What do the knots mean?”
Ida and her friends had returned from their trip around three thirty. She brought over the last of my clean laundry and a plate of chiles rellenos shortly after.
“Some kind of spell. Usually a curse.” I wrapped my wet hair in a towel turban and sat across from Ida.
Destroying the hex bags had taken the rest of the morning and all afternoon. I’d showered twice to get the icky feeling off me, but it hadn’t worked. I felt filthy, and it wasn’t from the digging. I was an earth elemental. Soil was my happy place.
Besides, whenever I thought to check, my skin was completely dirt-free, even after digging so much soil caked under my fingernails.
No, the icky feeling had come from the bags themselves. Even Cecil hadn’t liked touching them, and one of his favorite pastimes was researching untraceable botanical-based poisons.
“I figured that much, I’m asking what kind of curses were— good graves, what happened to your eyebrows ?”
“Cecil happened.” I filled her in as we ate. She wolfed down her beans, rice, and fried, stuffed poblano chiles. I drank two glasses of iced mint tea and picked at mine.
“I go away for a couple of days, and you get into all kinds of trouble.” She peered at my face. “I can’t tell if you’re annoyed or not. Eyebrows really are important, aren’t they?”
“Don’t eyebrow shame.”
“No shame. Not with me sitting in this glass house over here.” She flicked back her bangs and pointed to her penciled-on brows. “Tell me more about the hex bags.”
“It’s a rudimentary form of witchcraft, but it can be powerful in the right hands,” I said. “Because it’s a form of learned magic, I don’t know a lot about it. There wasn’t anything about it in the family grimoire. I did find a few things in the books Beau loaned me, but I haven’t had time to look through them all.”
“Give ‘em to me. I’ll take a closer look.”
“Okay.” That was actually a great idea. Ida was a faster reader than me, anyway. The woman gobbled up romances, mysteries, and thrillers like they were El Rancho Grande tacos.
She forked up the last bite of her beans while I grabbed them off my bed. “You said you were pretty upset when you saw the knots. Why?”
“Because,” I said, waiting for her to swallow her food before continuing, “they’d been soaked in blood.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Human or animal?”
“We suspect animal, but that’s only because Fennel’s certain it’s not human. And the hair worked into the spell looked an awful lot like one of mine.”
Ida laid down her fork, suddenly serious. “Dark magic?”
“Pretty sure, yes.” I nodded. “It’s looking more and more like someone wanted to curse me and didn’t mind taking a hit on their soul for it.”
“Who hates you that much? Besides that bastard wolf alpha, of course.”
“Certainly him, though I don’t think this is Floyd’s style. Maybe the coven.” I shrugged. “I’ve made a couple enemies in my travel work over the years, but none that would bother cursing me. Besides, this is next level stuff. It’s like drinking from the cup of poison you poured for someone else. Sure, I’ll suffer, but so will they.” A thought occurred to me, and I locked gazes with Ida. “Unless they don’t have to worry about backlash.”
She picked up on my line of thinking right away. “You’re talking about the damned. Demons and their ilk.”
“Demon blood might be mistaken for animal.” I drew a peace glyph in the condensation on my tea glass. “It’s frustrating. I need to talk to someone about this, but the person in town most knowledgeable about learned magic happens to belong to the coven, and I’d prefer they didn’t know what I’d found just yet.”
“You mean Bronwyn.”
I nodded.
She picked up her glass and took a sip of tea before setting it down again. “Could they be responsible for the hex bags? The coven?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. As much as I despise Margaux, I’ve never known her to delve into dark magic. She works for the Pallás pack, though, which leads me to believe anything is possible.”
“Surely Bronwyn wouldn’t mess with that stuff.”
“Maybe not, but I wouldn’t put it past some of the other coven members. Margaux’s hold on the group seems solid, but everyone wants to be the top witch. It’s a power game, and a surefire way to gain immense power quickly is through dark magic.”
“Well, I like Bronwyn, so I’m going to assume she isn’t involved,” Ida declared.
I was inclined to do the same, though perhaps not as definitively as Ida. I wanted to believe Bronwyn was a good person, but I didn’t know her all that well.
“This is worrisome.” Ida took her plate to the sink then poured herself another half glass of iced mint tea.
“It’s annoying, for sure.”
Ida looked thoughtful. “Well, if you can’t talk to someone in town about it, maybe you should talk to someone out of town.”
“You mean Joon,” I said.
Baek Ye-Joon was a travel mage who’d become a good friend to Ida and me in a short amount of time. He’d helped me battle a demon the first night we met, and that sort of thing bonds people.
He was also my number one choice to take over the Siete Saguaros if I didn’t figure things out with the soil here.
“Yeah. Invite him over. Tell him I’ve got a bottle of spelled wine with our name on it. The gals and I stopped at the Fairfield Witches Interdimensional Watering Hole on our way home from San Diego and picked up a few bottles.”
“Yikes.”
I’d drunk spelled wine with Ida a few times before. Once, I woke up on the floor of my trailer with the heels of my favorite black stilettos broken off and missing. We never found them.
“It’ll be fun,” Ida said.
“No, it’ll be dangerous and possibly illegal. Don’t serve Joon that wine.”
“He’s a big boy.” She sniffed. “He can do what he wants. It’s not like I’m trying to trick him or anything. I told you to tell him it was spelled.”
“I’m going to tell him what you did to your TV the last time we drank it.”
“Not like I’m the first person to roundhouse kick a television set. And besides, I’d been in the market for one of those new smart TVs for a while. Now I don’t have to use my cell phone to watch K-pop videos.”
Ida finished her tea, tucked the magic books under her arm, hugged me, and left. I ate the rest of my chile relleno and put the beans and rice into a container for later. I didn’t have much of an appetite.
I left Joon a voicemail, made some more calls, and ended the night curled up in bed with Cecil and Fennel watching a garden show. I wanted to be out there looking for Sy, but after spending the evening calling his most recent dates—all of whom genuinely missed him, damn —I’d burned through all my leads.
I was also magically weakened from dealing with the hex bags, and the guys were watching out for me while I rested.
The three of us lay on my pillows, comforter tucked up to our chins. Fennel purred pleasantly, eyes half closed; Cecil snored. He’d be heading out soon to keep the mandrake company, so I didn’t nudge him.
I needed to dig her up, but that was a tomorrow worry. I had more than enough tonight worries to keep me occupied.
Joon returned my call an hour before midnight.
“So what you’re saying is Ida’s going to slip me a mickey?” The mage’s voice was deep and humorous, his words edged with a hint of his Korean heritage and his West Coast Canadian and American upbringing.
“Oh no. She won’t slip it to you. She’ll tell you exactly what it is, and you’ll drink it anyway, because she makes it sound fun. Don’t be a Betty. Be better.”
He laughed, long and hard. “Feels good to talk to a friend. I’m definitely going to visit you two after I finish up here.”
“Are you still in Arizona?” Last I’d heard, he was doing a job for management in a Glendale casino.
“No. That was a fun one, though. I’m in Middle-of-Nowhere, New Mexico helping to set up a human-repulsion spell for a cafe and motel. A witch friend of mine needed a favor. I have a habit of collecting the things, so I made the trip.”
“You and me both.” Next to plants, favors were my favorite thing to collect. In the magical world, favors were more valuable than cash. “Joon, I’ve got a question. It’s a weird one.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
I told him about the hex bags, including what little I knew about my stalker.
“Knot magic is pretty straightforward. It’s neutral by itself—just a binding mechanism. The blood and hair are concerning. What kind of blood was it?”
“Fennel thinks it might be animal.”
“Animal blood worries me. Human or shifter blood can be freely given, but anything animal…” He trailed off.
“Animals can’t consent,” I said. “So anything with animal blood has to be dark magic.”
“How do you feel now that the knots have been destroyed?”
“Mostly, I’m tired. It took a lot out of me to destroy those things. The backwash from the magic was brutal. I took two showers, and I still feel filthy.”
He went silent for a beat. “I meant magically. I’d kind of hoped someone had cursed you not to connect properly with the soil under the Siete Saguaros and that finding those bags would help.”
I hadn’t admitted it to Ida or the guys, but I’d hoped for the same thing. “As long as I keep the park’s protection spell active, the magic in the hexes buried on the land shouldn’t affect me. Anything outside the barrier will—like when I walk the property line—but nothing on the inside.”
“ Shouldn’t affect you?”
“Nothing’s perfect,” I said. “And there are dark magic spells that can break through anything—I don’t have to tell you that.”
“True, but it would make more sense for them to save the stronger magic for when you’re off your property and more vulnerable.”
I’d been thinking the same thing. “There’s something else. The hex bags almost had to be planted by one of the tenants here. Or a guest. Except, Cecil hates people and loves the garden room. He literally firebombed my stalker’s car when he tried to climb over the parking lot fence. What do you think he’d do if he caught someone burying curse bags around his favorite place?”
“Good point.”
“Still, Cecil’s only been here for a year. Fennel for two. The hexes weren’t ancient, but they could’ve been here longer than that—even longer than I’ve been back.”
“Another good point.”
“I sense a ‘but,’” I said.
“But what if they weren’t put there by a tenant or one of their guests? What if it was someone you allowed on the property?” Joon asked, in a way that led me to the obvious answer.
“You mean Sexton,” I said. Technically, he’d been Ida’s guest the second time he’d shown up, but the first and last times were all me. I’d not only given him permission to enter the property, I’d allowed him to talk to the soil.
Stupid, stupid, stupid .
“He’s a gravedigger demon, Betty. And yeah, he saved you that night, but have you really sat down and asked yourself why?”
Not really, no. But I couldn’t decide if that was because I was too distracted with other stuff or too afraid of the implications. If someone as powerful as Bertrand Sexton wanted me dead, I might as well start casket shopping.
“As far as the curse talker, my only advice is to stay away from him. My parents came up against a couple of them years ago and things didn’t end well for anyone involved. They’re dangerous.”
Joon and I tossed some ideas back and forth regarding the knots, and I promised to keep in touch before ending the call ten minutes to midnight.
Cecil was already gone, so Fennel moved closer, tucking his sleek furry body against my shoulder.
“Just one uncomplicated month. That’s all I ask for. December and January were busy, February was awful, and March is heading down the same path.”
Panic jolted me, and I turned to look Fennel in the eyes. “Oh gods, I forgot to get Cecil something for St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow—eh, today. Do you think his usual Four Loko and some raspberry jam thumbprint cookies will be enough? You know he expects to be worshipped.”
Fennel meowed drowsily.
“I hope so. He’s been so good about sitting with that mandrake.” I frowned. “Come to think of it, why is he being so good about that?”
“ Meow .”
“Oh gods, he thinks he can shape her into his image, doesn’t he? A mini-Cecil? There’s not enough lavender in the world to make me okay with that.”
Fennel let out a purr that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
I glared at him, grabbed my phone, and brought up Sexton’s number. My thumb hovered over the send, but I ended up tossing the phone aside.
Ronan woke me at five a.m.
I considered ignoring his call again—I was still pissed about him firing me—but, in the end, I answered. That sort of behavior was beneath me. I was too old to act this petty—except with Alpha Floyd. I reserved the right to ignore the wolf alpha leader’s phone calls no matter how spiteful and immature it made me look.
“Hello, it’s Betty,” I grumbled.
“Finally.” Ronan sounded both relieved and annoyed. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you since Friday.”
“What are you doing up?” I asked with a yawn. “Five a.m. to you is like midnight to normal people.”
“It’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend. I own a pub. Why the hell do you think I’m still up?”
Sure, I’d noticed the decorations when I was there last, but it hadn’t really sunk in that it was St. Patrick’s Day. Case in point: I’d forgotten Cecil’s gift.
“Take it down a notch, grouch. Why are you calling me at the crack of dawn, anyway? You fired me, remember?”
He sighed. “Have you found out anything else about Sy?”
“I owe you no information. Again, you fired me.”
“Betty, tell me if you’ve heard anything.” He sounded rattled.
“No. I talked to most of the women in his little black book, but nothing stood out. He’s well-liked.”
“Has Mason Hartman contacted you? Have you noticed him around?”
I pulled the phone away from my face. “Why are you asking about Mason?”
He didn’t answer me, just repeated the question, this time with more vehemence. “ Have you ?”
“No, I haven’t seen him. Ronan, what’s going on?”
“A lot of things I can’t discuss right now.”
“ A lot of things I can’t discuss right now ,” I mimicked. “Sounds like you’re back on your bullshit, Ronan. Call me when you’re ready to hire me again. For now, I bid your secretive ass adieu.”
“Wait—don’t hang up.”
I blew out a loud, exasperated sigh. “What else do you want from me? I can’t imagine I have anything else of value to you.”
“ Betty .” His voice was low, almost apologetic. “I know I hurt your feelings when I fired you?—”
“You didn’t hurt my feelings. You pissed me off. Also, I emailed you my bill, and I expect it to be paid.”
“I saw that. We’ll have to talk about the incidentals section, because I’m not paying for the bikini you bought because you needed, and I quote, ‘To follow a lead to the Bahamas.’”
I scowled at the ceiling. “The sale was ending. I had to act fast.”
“And what about ‘client-induced mental anguish’ charges? What does that even mean?”
“You know what it means, Pallás.”
“ Betty .” He sighed.
“The one thing I don’t appreciate is being coddled,” I said. “I hate it more than you can possibly imagine.”
“You don’t know Hartman like I do. I’m trying to protect you.”
“Your version of protecting me involves treating me as less than you. Less strong, less powerful, less capable.” It was my turn to sigh. “Look, there are ways you’re stronger than me by virtue of being a shifter. You have the ability to put on more muscle mass, for one. However, with most of the paranormals I come into contact with, physical strength is the last thing I worry about. There are medical and magical ways of getting around the difference, anyway.”
“Are you talking about performance enhancers?” He sounded genuinely astonished. “Are there magic-based steroids?”
“There’s magic-based everything, pal. Don’t ever underestimate a witch.”
“It’s not that I doubt your ability. It’s just … there’s more to it.”
“There always is with you.” Fennel must’ve sensed my distress, because he head-bumped my elbow and crawled onto my lap. “You ask me to help then fire me with some half-assed excuse about Mason Hartman. We both know Sy didn’t go on vacation. You knew anything I uncovered would be dangerous in some way.”
“Yes, but?—”
“But not Mason-dangerous, right?” I stroked Fennel’s sable fur with a shaky hand. “Then again, this isn’t about Mason, is it? This about your father and me.”
He didn’t deny it, but neither did he elaborate. “He’ll kill you without a second thought,” Ronan said. “Without a first thought.”
“Who? Your dad?”
“Hartman.” There was a snarl in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment before. He was furious, and though it made sense that his anger would be directed at me, I had the oddest feeling it wasn’t.
“The man could break me in half with one snap of his teeth. Trust me. I’m appropriately terrified of him.”
“See,” he said, his voice gentling. “I don’t think you are.”
“Oh, goody. Condescension and coddling. You’re on a roll.” He tried to say something else, but I kept talking lest he piss me off even more. “Sure, I’m scared of Mason, but I’m not going to let that fear keep me from finding out what happened to Sy. He deserves closure.”
A few seconds ticked past, during which I heard Ronan’s breathing pick up. Something was on his mind, and he was weighing whether or not he was going to tell me about it. I could sense it.
“Damn it, why won’t you tell me what’s going on with you? Haven’t I already shown you that you can trust me?” Even I was surprised at the way my voice cracked, but I was so tired—of the problems between us, my own problems, the park’s problems… I was nearly at my limit.
“Come here at eleven this morning.”
“Why?”
“We’ll go to Calvin’s place,” he said, “and put our cards on the table so he understands what’s going on.”
“Fine,” I replied, “but you’re paying for that bathing suit.”
“All right, but only if you promise you won’t do anything to put yourself in danger until then.”
I inhaled through my teeth, hissing into the phone. “That’s not a promise I’m comfortable making. My partners are a delinquent gnome and a willing-accomplice magical cat. Plus, my best friend just bought a case of spelled wine from the witches in Sundance.”
It was an attempt at humor, but Ronan didn’t seem to find anything funny about it. “Don’t go chasing any leads on Sy’s disappearance until we talk.” He added, “Please.”
“I’ll do my best. See you at eleven, Ronan,” I said, and hung up.
I tossed around for another hour before dragging myself out of bed and into old jeans and a raggedy, long-sleeved T-shirt. I’d be doing some digging this morning, so there was no point worrying about looking good.
I’d turned on the radio and sat down with my first cup of coffee, when my cell rang again. I hummed along with the smooth country-rock chorus to “Fire Lake” by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band for a second before I answered.
“ Are you all right ?” The voice formed ice crystals in my ears.
“Hello, Sexton,” I said, and turned down the volume. Bob Seger music and graveyard demons didn’t mix well.
“Did you not hear me? Are you well, witch?”
“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“I received news there was an explosion near your property.”
That made sense, but the words didn’t ring true when Sexton said them. He’d been worried, but for some other reason.
Does he know I dug up the hex bags?
No time like the present to find out. “Everyone’s fine. However, there is another issue.”
“Issue?”
“My partners and I discovered ten hex bags buried around the property, one of which was buried beneath the wreckage of the car that exploded. All were soaked in blood. One had what we believe was a lock of my hair.”
“You believe the hexes caused the explosion?” he asked.
“No, Cecil caused the explosion,” I said. “Do you know anything about the bags?”
“Me?”
“Yes.” I started to raise my mug to my lips, but abandoned the move when I saw how badly my hands were shaking. “Please. Will you please tell me the truth, Sexton? I need to know.”
He let out a sigh that curled around my brain and squeezed. “Twenty-eight,” he said.
“What?” Now my voice was shaking. “What did you say?”
“Seven times four. There are twenty-eight bags buried beneath the soil of the Siete Saguaros, not ten.”
I cleared my throat with a dry cough. Ronan had mentioned feeling like his mouth was sweating the other night. Now I understood what he’d meant. “ Seven times four sounds like part of a spell.”
“Indeed.”
“Did you bury the bags here?”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “I will tell you everything. Come here or I will go to you.”
“Here, please.” I felt more secure in my own home. “You have my permission to enter the property up to my trailer.” I gilded the words with magic. Over-the-phone permission didn’t work with most people, but then, Sexton wasn’t most people.
Or a person at all.
“Thank you. Goodbye.”
There was a knock at my door.
I set down my phone, opened the door, and invited the gravedigger demon to have a seat at my table. I was entirely unsurprised to see him so soon. Sexton had powers I didn’t have names for.
“Sit,” I said.
He nodded a skull carved from marble. His jaw reminded me of one half of a bear trap. When his gaze focused on my face, his mouth creaked open in surprise, revealing sharp, angular teeth.
“Where are your brows, witch?”
“Casualties of Cecil’s explosion.”
“I see.” I had no idea how the enormously tall, spindly man managed to fit so comfortably at the trailer’s compact booth table, but he did.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“Please,” he replied, in his distinctive, theatrical tone. “Black. Tell me, did you really only find ten?”
I was so angry that he’d known about the hex bags I wanted to wrap my hands around his hollow-cheeked face and shake him until he rattled. Instead, I kept my voice cool and steady and reminded myself that Sexton wasn’t human, probably wasn’t entirely sane, and wasn’t known for his patience.
“No.” I poured him a mug of coffee and sat across from him, drawing my legs under me since his took up the entirety of the space under the table.
“How many did you find?”
“All of them.” I didn’t apologize for lying earlier.
He downed half of the steaming coffee in one gulp. My throat burned in commiseration, but he didn’t even flinch. “The soil showed them to you?” There was an odd trace of hope beneath the frost in his voice.
“Yes. Once I’d dug up the first one, the soil expelled the rest.”
“Very good.” He sounded as pleased as I was livid.
“Why did you bury those evil … things in my soil? I trusted you.”
“As I have told you before, it is never advisable to trust a demon—even me.” He tapped the table with a skeletal finger. “However, this time you can. I did not bury them. I did not purchase or craft them. While I do possess an affinity with the soil, I do not possess the botanical magic required to do such a thing.”
Botanical magic ? “The bags were filled with knot spells. That’s learned, nothing natural or elemental or even relating to plants…”
Not related to plants— except for the organic substances the knots had been formed with. Cotton string, ribbon, and embroidery floss, hemp twine, jute, and a stem.
A lavender stem with my hair inside. My favorite herb and a small, organic piece of me. It was personal. Whoever had done this knew me well.
“Sexton,” I said, my voice whisper-soft as I steeled myself for the answer I sensed was coming. “If you didn’t put them there, who did?”
“Your mother.”