Chapter 22
“ She’s back.”
“I am?” I croaked. I sure as hell didn’t feel back.
Ronan’s glowing gaze met mine. There were bruised circles around his eyes, his skin was paler than normal, and his hair looked like he’d stuck his head out the car window on the way over.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’ve got the world’s worst indigestion.” I winced as a muscle spasm streaked across my chest into my back. “Other than that, I’m fine.”
“Fine. Right.” He brushed a lock of hair off my face, tucked it behind my ear. “We’re going to make a pact not to ever say that phrase to each other again.”
We wouldn’t. I doubted I could hold up my end of it.
I craned my neck and tried to look around, but it was hard to move. “Where am I? How did you get here?”
“You’re in a blood-soaked room in an abandoned house out in the middle of east Jesus nowhere.” Ida’s face appeared in my line of vision. “And Ronan’s here because I called him after I got your message. Thank the gods I paid for the location storage option on that tracking app, because your phone turned off right after you texted me, and I would’ve never found you.” She arched one penciled brow. “Tell me again that it was a waste of money because you, and I quote, ‘hardly go anywhere that I don’t tell you about, Ida.’”
“Uh-uh,” I rasped. “In fact, I’m going to buy a subscription, too.”
I blinked, trying to bring the room into focus. Everything was fuzzy, like one of those social media filters that made people look like they’d never had a zit in their life.
“ Meow .” Fennel’s furry face appeared to my left. Cecil clung to his collar, chittering animatedly. He was obviously irritated.
“You brought my partners, too,” I said, smiling when the gnome snarled at me. “Thanks.”
“Of course,” she said. “You think they’d let me leave them behind?”
“What happened to you guys?” I asked. “Where were you when the stalker attacked me? I really could’ve used one of your explosive hex bags.”
Cecil’s purple hat flopped over, partially hiding his face.
Ida jabbed a thumb at him. “He got drugged. Someone, I’m guessing your stalker, left a bottle of spelled boysenberry wine by the mailboxes, and this guy found it. Fennel was trying to wake him up when you got snatched.”
“Don’t drink strange wine,” I said, as if I hadn’t ever been guilty of such a thing.
“ Meow ,” Fennel said, backing me up.
Cecil’s hat flopped over more, hiding the rest of his face.
“Please stop moving, Betty,” an unseen woman chided me in a lilting, but firm voice. “I’ve got two of Cecil’s pain charms, a heal charm, and a skin-knitting poultice on your stab wound, but you’re still badly hurt.”
“Bronwyn?”
“Before you ask, I called her,” Ida said. “Now, I know you hate the coven, but I think this witch is one of the good ones. I figured we might need her help, and I was right. You scared Ronan and me half out of our heads when we walked in here.”
“More than half,” Ronan grumbled. He’d been unusually quiet since asking if I was okay. Had I traumatized him?
“Thank you for coming, Bronwyn,” I said.
“You’re welcome, but I’m not much help.” Her delicate features were pinched, and she kept wringing her hands. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital. You need blood and x-rays and probably surgery.”
“Oh sure. Right. Hey, Dr. Never-Heard-of-Paranormals,” I rasped, the pain charm making me a little lightheaded. “I got stabbed by a curse talker demon psycho with a dagger made from the calcium my magic pulled from the alkali soil behind my home. I just need a little blood and surgery.”
I coughed, winced. I wasn’t in terrible pain, but my throat was sore, and my chest felt restricted and heavy, as if I were taped to the floor.
“Betty, this is serious.” When I didn’t immediately agree to be carted off to La Paloma Regional, Bronwyn looked to Ronan. “She’s hanging in there, but I’m worried. Heal charms can’t fix everything. They require the one thing I’m not sure Betty has. Time.”
“I’m right here, you know.”
“For now,” Bronwyn said. “The charms are barely keeping you conscious. You could go into shock at any time.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
Ronan winced.
“ There is no need for a human hospital ,” a crisp, cold voice said.
Everyone turned to see who’d spoken, but I didn’t need to. I’d recognize his arctic tone in a pitch-black room. And I wasn’t surprised he’d found me. He had, after all, been on the phone when his grandson tried to snuff me out.
“Sexton,” Ida said, “you made it.”
“You called him?” I jerked my head to look at her, and a tearing pain overrode the pain charms. My mouth filled with blood. I coughed and sprayed Ida, Cecil, and Fennel. Ronan was on his feet and Bronwyn had the good sense to duck.
“Hospital. Now,” Bronwyn said.
“Unnecessary.” The graveyard demon floated into the room in that reverse moonwalk way of moving he sometimes used. He slid from the door to my side the second Ida scooted back and made room.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get away from her.” Ronan grew a few inches taller and wider and sprouted a thin coat of fur. He took a step toward Sexton and the sound of bones crunching under his foot reminded me that there was a dead man in the room.
The man I’d killed. Sexton’s grandson.
“Ida?” I coughed, and another tearing pain ripped through my body. Two pain charms, and it was this bad? Bronwyn was right. I needed a hospital.
“It’s okay.” She wiped a streak of my blood off her cheek with the back of one hand. “You can trust him. If I believed otherwise, he wouldn’t be here.”
“This is a bad idea,” Ronan said, dragging his hand through his messy hair. “He’s a demon. The one thing you can’t do is trust them. It’s written in blood on their business cards.”
“And I’m saying we can. We need his help.” Ida kept her gaze on mine the whole time she spoke to Ronan. “Betty, you know our history. And still I asked him to come.” She wore an expression of such worry I felt compelled to nod my permission.
“I know. It’s okay, Ronan.”
“Everyone, please leave the room,” Sexton said. If he was offended by Ronan second-guessing his intentions, he didn’t show it.
My consciousness was starting to fade again. It was a miracle I wasn’t in shock from blood loss. Probably less of a miracle than my magic keeping me alive until Bronwyn arrived to help, but amazing nonetheless.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Ronan growled, and his eyes glowed so brightly, I could see them even with my rapidly dimming vision.
Ida spoke to him, softly, so I couldn’t hear. Ronan’s jaw stiffened, but he finally nodded. The three of them backed up until they were outside the room. Not that it mattered. My magic had ripped down the walls. They were simply standing a step behind the remaining studs.
“Gnome, cat, you remain. Keep her calm.”
Fennel and Cecil planted themselves on either side of my face. The cat’s fluffed out tail wrapped around my head like a Cossack hat.
Sexton unbuttoned his shirt cuff and rolled it up to reveal a ghostly white, skeletal forearm.
Skeletal .
“I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice a hint of sound.
“You have nothing to be sorry about. Lucien brought about his own demise. His hatred saddened me, but there was nothing I could do about it.”
“Before I—before he died, he said…” I coughed, speckling him with my blood.
“That you were my grandchild,” the demon finished.
I couldn’t speak, or nod without pain, but Sexton didn’t seem to need my response.
“You are.”
“How?” I mouthed the question, but I knew. If I was related to a demon, it had to be through the father I’d never met.
Mom, what did you do?
“We will talk when you are well and rested. Be still.”
Fennel nuzzled my ear. Cecil rested his cheek on mine. They seemed to be preparing for something, and that made me nervous.
“Be still?”
“Yes. Understand it is because of our unique relationship that I am able to help you,” he said. “I cannot heal someone to whom I have no connection.”
There was that word again. Connection . It always came back around to connections—to family, to friends, and for me, to the soil.
Jenny from the garden’s words came to mind:
Circles. Just seemed like we were always working in circles.
“Your spirit is trying to leave your body, and the necromancer is stopping her, but she will not be able to hold her for long.” He peeled back the poultice Bronwyn had applied. It left me feeling cold and exposed, and not because my shirt had been torn open.
Sexton removed the three charms around my neck and laid them out on the floor. When the last pain charm was off, I screamed, but it was hoarse and soundless and far sadder than an ear-piercing shriek would’ve been.
“My apologies. This will be unpleasant but understand I would never hurt you without good reason, granddaughter.”
And with those words of discouragement, he drew the index finger of his opposite hand down his forearm, slicing it open. Cold, dark red blood splashed into the wound on my chest. It felt like he’d thrown a handful of dry ice into me. It burned coldly, frosting me over.
On the bright side, I was only awake for the first thirty seconds of it before passing out from the pain.
I woke a few minutes later in Ronan’s arms.
I lifted my head, sniffed. Eww. I smelled like day-old garbage and probably looked twice as bad.
“The graveyard demon’s gone.” Ronan smiled down at me. “And you’re okay.”
I blinked myself fully awake. We were still in that dreadful room.
I couldn’t wait to get out of here and never return.
“Did he …?” I peered down at my chest, answering my own unfinished question. The hole in my chest was gone. My skin was gummy with drying blood and felt icy where the wound had been, but my heart was beating, and the pain was gone.
Ida spoke up. “He healed you and left. Said he’d call soon.” She sighed. “While we were waiting for you to wake up, I told him about Meredith. He says he’ll work out a deal with you. I’m sorry about botching the mandrake job, Betty. And everything else, too.”
“Don’t be. You saved me, Ida.”
She smiled, her eyes bright with tears.
Bronwyn stepped up beside her. Lucien’s gold charm hung from her fingers. “This was on the man who tried to kill you?”
“Yes,” I said. “He swallowed it.”
Her normally upturned lips pressed into a thin, hard line. “Do you mind if I take this with me?”
“Not at all.” Something told me Margaux was going to be answering a few questions.
“Sexton took the bones,” Ida said. “The soul was long gone. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, but it is what it is.”
Ronan stood, still holding me in his arms as he rose. My chest didn’t hurt, and neither did the rest of me, except for a headache which might’ve been from stress rather than the concussion. All in all, I felt pretty good.
Still, I didn’t ask him to put me down.
“Let’s get you home,” he said.
“I don’t have a home.”
And after all that had happened to me over the last two days, that was the thing that made me finally break down and cry. I don’t have a home anymore.
He hugged me closer. “Then I’ll take you to mine.”
I nodded and sobbed into his chest. I was strong. Strong as hell. But everyone had a breaking point. Mine was the loss of my little Airstream trailer. My home.
Ida dropped us off at the pub at four a.m. She didn’t try to get me to go home with her, just asked if I needed anything. I did, but I had no idea what to say. Clothes, makeup, shoes, underwear…
Everything I owned was gone.
“I’ll call you later,” I said.
I kissed Fennel’s head and tapped Cecil on the tip of his nose. “Thank you both for everything. Go home and get some sleep.”
Ronan helped me out of the car, and we climbed up the stairs to his apartment together.
“How did Ida rope you into this mess?” I asked.
“She showed up at my door and demanded I come with her to save you. Drill-sergeant-ordering-a-new-recruit-to-drop-and-give-him-twenty sort of demanded.” We reached the landing, and he unlocked the front door. “Not that she had to.”
I stepped inside, and so did he. He shut the door and leaned against it then drew in a long breath. I was willing to bet it was the first deep one he’d taken in hours.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“A little. Mostly I’m cold.” I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered.
“Come on. I’ll make us some coffee.”
“Thanks. That sounds amazing. Could I take a shower?” I nodded toward his bedroom and gestured at myself. I was a sticky, bloody, dirty mess.
“You’ll do anything to get into my bathroom, won’t you?”
“Duh. Have you seen that place?” I smiled back, suddenly a little shy. “Got a spare toothbrush and some extra clothes?”
He started the coffee and left me with a mug and a carton of cream. I’d scrubbed my hands clean in his sink and was halfway through my first cup when he returned to the kitchen.
“The tub’s almost ready. I set out some clothes.” He gave me a sheepish smile. “I don’t have much to accommodate a woman. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I slid off the stool. “I appreciate it.”
The bathroom smelled like a lavender field.
He’d lit the electric fireplace and set a small radio on a stool away from the water. “Night Moves” by Bob Seger played on my favorite station, and I hummed along.
I showered off before getting into the tub. Blood swirled around the drain, accompanied by tiny globs of fatty flesh that I assumed had come from my chest wound—gross—and bits of wood from the boarded-up window in my hair. It took three washes to get it clean, and I still wasn’t sure I’d gotten all the slivers out.
Not that I was complaining. If Mason Hartman, or whoever he’d sent to help, hadn’t shown up when they did, I’d have been dead, which led me to an encouraging thought.
My magic worked .
On the one hand, I was eager to return to the Siete Saguaros and see if I truly had connected with the soil. On the other, I was in no rush to deal with the fallout from my trailer fire. I’d go home soon, but not yet. I needed time to think—or rather, time to not think at all.
Unwilling to wait a second longer, I dunked myself into the steaming bath water and let the lavender salts work their magic.
I tried hard not to dwell on what Sexton had said tonight, but when KLXX played “Devil Woman” by Cliff Richard, I found myself in tears again.
There was a gentle knock, and Ronan stuck his head inside the room, eyes pinched closed. “You okay in here?”
“I don’t think I’ll be okay for a while,” I said. “But I’m alive and soaking in the bath.”
He thumbed behind him. “We’ll talk out there. I made scrambled eggs and toast. No habanero peppers, I promise.”
I got out of the tub, dried off with the biggest towel I’d ever seen, and slipped on a pair of Ronan’s drawstring sweatpants and a pub T-shirt. I brushed my teeth with the new toothbrush he’d laid beside a tube of toothpaste, bagged my clothes up in a trash bag I found under the sink, and switched off the radio before heading into the kitchen.
“Black Magic Woman” by Santana had just ended.
Damn that DJ.
I detoured to the succulent on Ronan’s bookcase on my way out the room. It was well-watered but needed better light and more company. I took the lonely plant to the living room coffee table where it would get the right amount of light and a little more socialization.
Ronan watched me move it but didn’t comment. Guess he was used to my weirdness at this point. He’d already finished eating and was sipping from his mug. I went into the small kitchen and opened three cabinets before Ronan asked me what I was looking for.
“Herbs. I assume you cook with some.”
“I don’t have an extensive collection, but yeah. Cabinet by the stove.”
I tsk ed at him. “Worst place to store them.”
“It’s a small cabinet. What am I supposed to store there?”
“Literally anything else. Do you have an electric kettle, she asked with no expectations,” I said.
The superior look he gave me made me smile. “In fact, I do, he replied with self-satisfied glee. I’ve even used it a time or two.”
He dug the kettle out of the cabinet beside the sink, poured water into it, and plugged it in. I went through the spice cabinet. There were a few helpful herbs, including chamomile and turmeric. Because they were dried and powdered, they’d lost nearly all their magic. Still, they were better than nothing.
I sprinkled a generous amount of turmeric into a bowl, along with a few other herbs, and pushed magic into them with an under-my-breath groan. My magic was tapped, and it hurt my head to use even a small amount.
Of course Ronan heard my groan. “What’s wrong? What are you doing?”
“Healing my headache. The stalker … he hit me on the back of the head. Knocked me out.”
“Sexton didn’t heal it?”
“I think he healed the concussion, but I have a splitting headache. Probably reaction. All the adrenaline flowing and?—”
He rose from his stool and came around the bar.
I waved him back. “I’m fine. Just sore.”
“Stop saying that. Stand still and let me take a look.” He cupped the sides of my face, stared into my eyes. “Your pupils are the same size, thank the gods. Holy hell, I let you take a bath alone. What if you’d passed out?”
I smiled up at him. “Thank you for caring.”
“Ah, Betty.” He brushed his mouth over mine. A feather touch of lips. “That’s such a small part of how much I care about you.”
I admit, I basked in the sweetness of his words for a moment before continuing. “Thanks also for letting me stay here.”
“I’m glad you let me bring you. I wouldn’t have been able to rest if you hadn’t.” He kissed me again, gently opening my mouth with his. His kiss was like morning—coffee and sunshine and clean, fresh air.
“I needed to not go home.” That sounded insensitive, as if I’d only used him for his place. “Not that I only came home with you because of that… I, uh … it’s more than just?—”
“I know.” He pressed his lips to my forehead. “Eat. Drink your weird magic tea. I’m going to grab a shower. We can talk more after.”
“Can we kiss more, too?” I asked. “I like that more than talking.”
A rumbling masculine laugh was his reply. I took it as a yes.
The tea was bitter, but when I felt a crawling heat inside my head and the band around my temples eased, I knew it was working. Normally, the bitter tea would’ve killed my appetite, but the first taste of buttery toast on my tongue and I was off to the races. I ate the rest of the eggs and toast and made another two pieces to have with my second cup of coffee.
Ronan emerged from his bedroom in sweats that matched mine and a white undershirt. His hair was damp, his feet were bare. It felt wildly intimate to be close to him like this, wearing his clothes, eating his food, breathing the same air.
I handed him a piece of my toast, and he ate it, washing it down with a fresh cup of coffee. We both stared out his kitchen window at the first wispy beams of light on the horizon.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Which part? The part where I ended up kidnapped and chained in a room beside Mason Hartman? Or the part where I killed a man with magic?”
“Mason was there?”
I gave him the shortened version. It all seemed so long ago. Days instead of hours.
“Do you think he brought you the soil?”
“Who else?”
“I’d like to strangle the bastard for not telling me where you were.”
“Don’t. He helped. Leave it at that, please.”
We stared out the window together again.
He asked, “Anything else you want to talk about?”
“Are you referring to the part of this mess where I’m the granddaughter of a gravedigger demon who healed a mortal stab wound on my chest with his blood?”
“Gravedigger or graveyard demon? I’ve heard it both ways.” He rested his elbows on the bar and sipped from his mug.
“They’re interchangeable.” I studied his profile. “I understand if it creeps you out. It creeps me out.”
“You’re still you, Betty. And you could never creep me out.”
“Thanks, but don’t lay out a challenge like that, either. I can be creepy if pushed.”
He set his mug down and swiveled around to face me. “Want to go to bed and sleep for a few hours?”