Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“ D o you think he’ll like it here?” I asked, when Ronan and I were back at the pub.
Angel the fish swam around his aquarium, visibly happier since Ronan and I had cleaned up his small glass residence.
“We’ll see. I’m going to clear out a space for him behind the bar. I suspect he might like it better than being cooped up in my office.”
I plopped into the chair on the other side of his desk and stretched out my legs. He grabbed water bottles for us out of a mini fridge and offered me a shrink-wrapped shamrock polvoron from his desk drawer.
“Calvin seemed relieved that you took him,” I said.
“Yeah. Even after you gave him that pain charm, he had trouble lifting his arm. No way he was going to be able to lift the aquarium. Besides,” he shrugged, “it’s a pretty fish. Patrons will love him, and Angel will probably enjoy people watching.”
“He probably thinks we’re the ones in the aquarium,” I said, as I sank my teeth into the buttery cookie. “Maybe we are.”
“Fish philosophy?”
“Not my usual field of study, but I find I’m at my best when I freestyle.” I powered down the cookie. Sugar hit my system with a jolt, and I perked up.
“I agree.” He gave me a sexy smile that sent warmth to places that hadn’t cooled down from our make-out session in the park.
“This is going to sound insensitive given the sudden sexual tension in the room, but do you have any more cookies?” I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. Magic, apparently even the effortless kind, expended a lot of calories.
“What? You mean my charm is taking second place to bakery goods? How will I survive the blow to my male ego?”
“We’ll get through it together, baby,” I said.
With a head shake and a chuckle, Ronan opened his desk drawer then tossed me another. “I meant to tell you this before we were distracted by fish-tank cleaning. I called the alpha while you were explaining the pain charm to Calvin. Turns out Mason Hartman really is missing. Trey wasn’t lying about that.”
“Are you concerned?”
“I’m curious more than anything.”
“Same.” I devoured the second cookie, dusted my hands on my jeans, and stood. Tacos sounded really good. Maybe a jumbo burrito. “Don’t you dare ask me to track him down, too.”
“As if,” he said, and stood with me. “But please be careful. If someone out there is strong enough to take a wolf like Hartman down, you need to be on guard. We all do.”
“Yeah.”
He watched me, not speaking, as if he was waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, he sighed.
Loudly.
“Oh my gods, what is it?”
He shook his head. “I’m waiting for you to tell me about what happened with your magic at the park, and later, at the community garden.”
“You are?” I hadn’t thought he’d noticed.
“Well, yeah. Your eyes looked like quicksilver after you took your sunglasses off. I couldn’t address it then because I had to tackle our eavesdropper and then I was distracted by other things.” He winked and tossed my second cookie wrapper into the trash.
That was fair. I’d been distracted, too.
“I’ve never seen them do that. Your eyes, I mean. And I would’ve noticed. I spend a lot of time staring into those topaz beauties.”
The compliment caught me off guard. I didn’t know what to react to first, so naturally, I was weird about it. “You stare at my eyes?”
“Often. They’re mesmerizing.” His own green-hazel eyes sparkled with warmth. “The color of Amontillado.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“Sherry,” he said with a smile.
“Oh. Right. Poe. Cask of Amontillado . Guy in the wall.” My cheeks heated. Apparently, it was one thing to make out with the man and another thing altogether to be complimented by him.
Why am I making it so awkward?
“I just meant the fortified wine, but sure.”
“Magic—My magic.” I ignored the amused look he gave me when I stumbled over my words. It seemed the man liked flustering me. I cleared my throat and started again. “My magic hasn’t been right since I came back home.”
“You mean, since your last trip out of town?”
“No. I mean when Mom died.”
He frowned. “But that was three years ago. You’ve obviously used magic since then.”
“Thankfully, Mom taught me other types—charms, chanting, spoken spells, power words—instead of focusing solely on our element. Because that’s where I’m having trouble. I’m an earth witch living on soil that I’m unable to magically connect with.”
“Now I understand why you’ve been trying to sell the park,” he said.
“And why I’ve been traveling so much over the last year.” My nose stung and tears sheened my eyes. “I mean, I’m a travel witch, so that’s expected, but the truth is, staying at the Siete Saguaros is killing my magic. I go away to earn money, yes, but also to get away from it.” I sniffed. “And when I’m gone too long, I miss it. So much I start to have panic attacks.”
“Then what makes you think selling it is the answer?”
“I thought if I found someone to make it happy, it would loosen its grip on me. Free me. The way I need that soil is like an addiction.” This was the part I hadn’t told anyone, even Ida. “When it’s good, it’s very good. But when it’s bad, it’s dangerous. It failed me the other day, and if Cecil hadn’t been around to help, I’m not sure what would’ve happened.”
“Sounds like a toxic relationship,” he said.
Yeah, it did. “But it doesn’t always feel toxic. When I cast the protection spell, for instance, I feel connected to the earth there in a way I can’t describe. I touch the magic, and it’s … everything, even if it’s fleeting and unreliable.”
“Probably similar to how I feel when I fully shift. Like pure freedom.”
He’d nailed it. When I was younger and in tune with the park’s soil, I’d felt like I could do anything. I’d never worried about my magic failing, because it never had.
“I told you all that to explain what happened at the park. Kind of. I don’t actually know what’s going on. Only that instead of absorbing magic from the soil, I’ve started absorbing it .”
“Magic?”
“No, the soil. Over the past few days, I’ve noticed that whenever my skin touches dirt, it comes away completely clean. Until today, I didn’t know what was happening.”
I told him how the soil had heated, evaporated, and then absorbed into my skin. About how power had flowed through my veins and stung my skin from the inside out.
“That’s not how your magic works?”
“That’s not how any earth witch’s magic works. As I said, we pull power from the soil into us, we don’t pull the literal soil.” I tugged my bag onto my lap and hugged it. “It started happening at the Siete Saguaros, but today was the strongest I’ve seen it. And today was the first time I was able to tap into the magic—albeit accidentally.”
“Does all this mean you’re connecting with the earth there?”
The hope in his voice made me smile. “I don’t know what it means. For now, at least, please don’t mention this to anyone. It’s never good for a witch to reveal her power isn’t strong.”
“You have my word. It’s the same with shifters. Showing weakness in any way is a shortcut to being challenged.”
“I’d never repeat anything you told me,” I said.
He came around the desk and extended his hand. I put mine in it, and he drew me to my feet and brushed his lips over mine. “I know. I want you to know that about me, too.”
“I’m starting to know it.”
He kissed me again. “That’s good enough for now.”
I drove home with magic on my mind and the taste of Ronan on my lips. It was a taste I could get used to.
After parking the Mini in my usual spot, I walked out again and circled the fence to the stalker’s car. The incinerated skeleton of it, anyway. I wasn’t sure what spell Cecil had used to burn it, but it had been strong enough to reduce the entire thing to a brittle collection of bent steel and bits of plastic in a very short amount of time.
The wind brought the acrid scent of burned car to me then took it away, rolling it down the road with a clump of dead grass, a flyer for a local church barbecue, and a crumpled paper cup.
I brushed aside a patch of gravel and slipped my fingers into the soil beneath. “ Speak to me .”
At first, there was nothing.
I pushed deeper, driving my hand and part of my wrist below the surface. Black ants marched a military straight line from beneath a rock, past my knee, and under the dumpster on the other side of the fence. A lizard skittered over the misshapen car hood. A crow perched on a power pole and cawed at the sky.
Still nothing.
The dirt out here wasn’t as good for growing as on the other side of the fence. It was alkali, a high pH clay soil with high levels of magnesium, sodium, and calcium. Most things didn’t root well in it, but it was still useful to me. The earth was made up of many types of soil—clay, loamy, sandy, silty, peaty—and all of it carried magic.
I took my hand out of the dirt, bringing a handful of alkali and a memory with it.
“Gross, Mom.”
“Different, Betty, not gross. Alkali has more to offer than most people think. Especially to witches like us.”
I sat cross-legged on the wet ground, my back against the chain-link parking lot fence. My gaze flitted from Mom to the road behind her. I didn’t have many friends in town, but if any of them saw me sitting in the mud with my mom, they’d think I was a bigger freak than they already did.
High school sucked. I couldn’t wait to graduate next year. Or sooner, if I had my way.
“Rain doesn’t even penetrate this stuff.” I broke open a clod and showed her the dry center. “How can roots get any nourishment?”
“It’s not ideal for growing things, you’re right about that. However, it is ideal for some things. Watch.”
She held her palm three inches above the ground. A shivering mound formed beneath her hand. She whispered a spell—I recognized the words shape, bend, reveal—and flipped her hand over.
A delicate white rose with a winding stem lay on her palm. It was the color and texture of bone and had been formed using the calcium in the soil.
“Never forget that all soil is useful to us. And never take your gift for connecting with it for granted.”
I whispered the same spell Mom had used all those years ago into my hand then shook away the loose soil.
Lying in my palm was a bone-white dagger.
It tracked. Mom had made something beautiful, and I’d made something deadly. Our personalities had been as different as the objects our magic crafted.
I rose. Pocketed the dagger.
The soil glowed so softly that I almost missed it. I bent over and plunged my hand into it one more time.
“Speak to me.”
Power lapped at me like a wave. Information poured from the earth—the stalker hadn’t been back, there’d only been the one hex bag on this side of the fence, and it was good to feel my presence again.
I hugged myself. Smiled. It wasn’t the park soil responding to me, but it was the next best thing. And it felt good.
Instead of going directly to my trailer or the garden room, I went to Ida’s. I needed to talk through some ideas, and she was my favorite sounding board.
She opened the door and gave me an up-and-down look. “Is that a knife in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”
“Both. Scandalized?”
“Nothing you do surprises me anymore.” She motioned me inside. “C’mon in. I’m making a sandwich, you want one?”
“Depends. You aren’t eating pimento loaf, are you?”
“It’s delicious. You’re missing out.” When I made a face, she harrumphed. “I’ll make you a peanut butter and jelly.”
We ate at the table next to Meredith, who was sleeping in her pot. “How’s she doing?”
“Good,” Ida said. “She perked up when BTS started playing. Even moved her leaf to the beat of the song. She loved the part where RM rapped.”
“BTS is universal,” I said.
“It sure is. She hasn’t screamed or anything, but I’ll put her on my nightstand tonight to make sure she doesn’t, like you told me to.”
“If you have trouble, and I’m not around, Cecil seems to be able to deal with her pretty well.”
“Good to know.” She pulled a piece of crust off her sandwich. “So, have you told Sexton what happened?”
“Not with everything that’s been going on. This has been one heck of a strange day.” As we ate our sandwiches and drank huge sweating glasses of iced tea, I filled her in on my day, including the case details I hadn’t already told her about, and of course, she fixated on one tiny part.
“You made out with Ronan Pallás at LPM park ?” She waggled her brows. “Hubba, hubba.”
All I’d told her was we’d gone for a walk. She’d extrapolated the kissing stuff from my dodging the question when she asked.
“Can we focus on the important stuff, please?”
“You mean boring stuff,” she said, but made a “go on” gesture.
“So, what do you think about the woman from the garden? Jenny…” I realized I didn’t have a last name for her.
“Perkins, if she still goes by it,” Ida said. “She’s a fox shifter. She was married to Isaiah Perkins, the head of her skulk, for twenty years. They had a son together before he left her for a younger woman and sued her for spousal support. A year later, he died of a heart attack in bed with the younger wife, so who really won here?” Ida chuckled.
“Maybe she loved him,” I said, for something to say. I wasn’t really invested in that part of the story.
“Nah. Isaiah wasn’t the kind of man you love. He was the kind of man you cover your drink around in a bar. Jenny was too good for him.” She popped the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth, washing it down with the last of her tea. “The son isn’t much better than the dad. He moved away after Jenny refused to support his lazy butt. I doubt she’s seen him in years.”
“What do you think of the advice she gave me?”
“Anything Jenny says is worth listening to. We worked together on a few cases when she was lead investigator for an insurance firm. She’s sharp about most things—not men, but we all have weaknesses.”
“She suggested I circle back to the beginning. If I did that, I’d need to look closer at Calvin, but Jenny was adamant Calvin had nothing to do with it.”
“That’s because she’s got the hots for him. Has for years. Don’t know why Calvin’s dragging his feet about courting her. Not as if the man’s got a line of women outside his door.”
I stared at her. “How do you know all this stuff about people?”
“Unlike you, I have friends outside the Siete Saguaros.” She picked up our empty plates and took them into the kitchen then reappeared a moment later with a bowl of freshly washed grapes.
“And you’re an incurable gossip.”
“There’s that, too.” She popped a grape into her mouth.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said, as the implication in her words hit home. “I have friends. I have lots of friends.”
She sat down and broke off another grape. “You have contacts and people who owe you favors. Except for me, so lucky you, because I’m a great friend.”
That was true. “I also have Fennel.”
“Sure.”
“Stop being right. It’s annoying.”
Her response was a wide grin.
I twisted off a branch with about eight grapes and ate them one after another. “Okay, Miss Right, let’s focus. After I talked to Calvin, I came here and made some calls. I visited Annabelle Rossi, but I didn’t get the feeling she was lying about liking Sy. She seemed sincere.”
“Feelings can lie.”
“True, but the truth charm didn’t alert.”
“You said something about your charms not working very well lately.”
That was true. And that was why I came to Ida. She didn’t have any compunction about challenging me—even if the subject was a sensitive one.
“What did Annabelle say? You never told me.”
“She was pretty open about their, eh, relationship. Said she and Sy had fun together, that she didn’t mind sharing him, because he wasn’t the love of her life, just someone she had sex with once in a while. She knew Sy’s heart belonged to his late wife Edina, like hers belonged to her mate Joshua.”
Ida made a sound that conveyed sarcastic disbelief. “Yeah, right.”
“What’s that mean?”
“No one who knew Annabelle and Joshua Rossi ever believed they were in love. They were mated . It was kinda sad, really. Joshua was a beta shifter—a rabbit, I believe. Annabelle’s a strong alpha mole shifter. Once she latched onto that poor man, she forced him to leave their shifter group on the East Coast and move out here. Cut him off from everyone.” Ida shook her head. “Several of us tried to help the poor guy, but she was such a controlling—” She pressed her lips together in a line so tight they went white. “We ended up making things worse.”
“I’ve never liked the idea of fated mates,” I said.
“Me neither. It’s one of those things that works great in a romance book but stinks in real life.” Ida shook her head, hair flying into her eyes. “Of course, Joshua could’ve refused the mate bond in the first place, but I’m told the pull of a connection like that is hard to resist.”
“I’ve heard that, too.”
“Yeah.” Ida drummed her fingers on the table, deep in thought.
“So, it’s safe to say Annabelle was lying about her relationship with her late husband?” I asked the question already knowing the answer. The charm had failed. It was obvious now.
“Oh yeah. I’m not saying she’s a kidnapper or anything, but she lied to you about her relationship with Joshua.” She paused, seeming deep in thought. “Or maybe she wasn’t lying. Maybe she believes what she’s telling you. Abusers don’t always see themselves as bad people—especially the narcissistic ones.”
Damn. If I’d shared this with Ida sooner I’d have been much further along in the investigation.
“The day Joshua Rossi died was probably the first moment of peace he’d had in years. Annabelle was a cold-hearted, selfish person back then, and I can’t imagine she’s not the same now.”