Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
It made the most sense to bring Harlow back to our cottage for the night. Not only was she unsteady on her legs and physically exhausted, but it would only be a short trek through the fields to get there.
Perhaps I also had a personal investment in seeing to it that she stayed safe, where Corbin and I could keep an eye on her.
Besides, who wanted to explain dragging her half-delirious ass onto the Faust property? We might get S.P.A.R.K.L.E.D. to death.
When I had attempted to haul her upright over my shoulder, someone argued that she deserved to be treated better than a sack of cornmeal.
So, Corbin took up the task of carrying her petite figure.
Such a romantic fucking idiot.
The remainder of the night, we all collapsed onto the sofa in the middle of the living room. Harlow lay overlapping the two of us. Tucked against my side, her head rested on top of my stomach, and my muscles tensed as her fingers brushed against the exposed skin where my shirt had ridden up.
The lower half of her was spread across my legs and over Corbin’s lap while he slept seated upright. His hands lazily traced over her legs even when he was passed the fuck out.
As she lay there, I felt her breath even out when she ultimately slipped into peaceful slumber.
I hated admitting it, but the subtle purring noises she made every time she exhaled while sleeping made me want to stay awake the rest of the night just listening.
It wasn’t the most comfortable of positions, cramped on the couch, but compared to being on the cross frame, it made me feel like a prince. It had nothing to do with the fact that having her cuddled up like this was the closest thing to a princess a guy like me would ever get.
“Baylor, honey. Wake up.” I wearily blinked the sleep away from my eyes as I lifted my head. A frail hand shook my shoulder lightly.
My mother’s face hovered above mine with a smile that always lit up a room.
“I’m up, I’m up,” I grumbled as I rolled away from her, further retreating into the multiple layers of blankets on my bed.
A knowing sigh slipped from her. “Your father needs extra help in the fields today,” she said in a tone that I instantly read as my father is behaving like a stubborn bastard.
Has a bad back that he refuses to acknowledge, and if I had to guess, he was out there hauling baskets of freshly picked corn.
I lay there a moment longer before I kicked the blankets away in surrender.
Fifteen minutes later, I stepped outside to witness my father carrying a large basket of corn.
I had called it.
Approaching, I eased the overflowing basket from his hands.
“Mother said the kitchen sink is clogged again.” A lie.
The kitchen sink was working just fine; I had fixed it myself last night.
If there just so happened to be a fresh glass of lemonade sitting on the counter nearby? I knew nothing of it.
My father, a man with deep-set crow’s feet set at the corners of his blue eyes and blonde hair that had been bleached by the sun, groaned in either relief or frustration.
“That damn sink again? If that confounded woman would stop dumping everything under the sun down the drain…” His words faded off into cranky grumbles.
His hands shook slightly from overexertion as he reached up to grab his cap with patches stitched into the fabric to cover up wear and tear. Removing it, he wiped a layer of sweat from his forehead before tucking it into the back pocket of his work pants.
With weariness and exhaustion evident on his face, no matter how much he tried to mask it, his eyes met mine. “Do me a favor, son. When you find a woman? Make sure she’s worth burning for. Give her the match and pray to the old gods. If she burns you? Be the smoke in her lungs.”
Both my brows popped up high at the rare and unsolicited advice.
“And if she doesn’t?” I asked.
My father stood there pondering his response before speaking with the weight of generations settling into his voice. “If she doesn’t… Let the flame die at her fingertips.”
Each word was spoken with a heavy and solemn tone. Which was promptly ruined when he added, “And make sure she doesn’t clog the damn sink every other week.”
I chuckled under my breath as I watched him continue to gripe to himself on his way inside to fix the properly functioning sink. Carrying the basket of corn to the shed to be loaded up and brought into town this afternoon, I stopped short in my tracks on my way to grab the next batch.
On the ground, my father’s flat-brimmed cap lay there. It must have fallen from his pocket. Picking it up, I looked it over in my hands. With a smirk tugging at the corners of my mouth, I decisively secured it on my head. For safekeeping.
My eyes blinked open as I stared up at the ceiling of the living room.
The fan lazily spun above us. Harlow still clung to my side, passed the hell out.
Corbin had slumped over to awkwardly lie against the arm of the sofa, still keeping contact with our girl’s legs with a possessive hold on her, even while unconscious.
A sense of pride tugged at me that we had worn her out. If having us like that tuckered her out this much, the corn maze hunt would probably knock her out cold for a week.
Assuming she makes it out.
That predatory voice in my head was feeling cocky. We always won the annual chase. Why wouldn’t we be confident?
The other part of me, the part that I hadn’t listened to in a long time, hoped it would be a season of change.
Stretching to look at the clock on the wall behind me, it was much later in the morning than I wanted. If I were going to look into this so-called crazy bitch in the basement of the library, I needed to get going.
If anybody was going to inject a little fear into my kitten, it would be me. Not some mentally unstable hag.
Getting untangled from both Corbin and Harlow without disturbing them both was trickier than keeping straw out of the house after spending time out in the fields.
Each movement was a concentrated effort until finally I was able to pry myself free from them without disturbing either of their slumbering forms.
The most I got out of Corbin was a whiny snort, and Harlow burrowed into the warmth of the cushions where I had lain.
After several steps away, I clenched my fists in frustration as I turned back and snagged the handknit blue-and-white blanket from the back of the sofa. I draped it over Harlow’s body. It wasn’t much, but it would provide another layer of comfort in my absence.
Less than half an hour later, I was out of the cottage and making my way toward the library.
Heading down the sidewalk, my hands buried in my jacket pockets, I forced myself to focus on the task at hand. Whoever had unnerved Harlow was going to answer to me.
Before reaching the far corner of Main Street, I noticed the Council approaching Full of It, a little later than normal for their typical fare of hot bean water and bland pastries.
I caught the tail end of their conversation. Fascinating was the piece where Ms. Kiln said, “He could be inducted tonight if we wanted.”
“No, we wait until after the hunt. Lure him in with promises of making change,” Sheriff Hawkins sharply responded.
Bitch.
Eyes narrowing, I stepped up to their makeshift huddle right at the diner’s entrance.
“You wouldn’t happen to be talking about welcoming a new member onto the Town Council, would you?
” I didn’t disguise the suspicion in my tone.
If they were going to draw in another member to their fucked-up club, I had one guess at who it might be.
Someone who had too much sparkle for his own good, and a drop-dead gorgeous daughter who sucked cock like a dream.
All sets of eyes shifted to land on me. Let them look. I wasn’t here to play games; I was only here to claim prizes. One prize in particular: Harlow.
The sheriff took a step forward, but Mayor Dennison grabbed her shoulder, forcing her to stand down.
“Now, Bale,” the Mayor Dickwad spoke like he was about to lecture a child. “All Town Council matters are confidential, you know that.”
I grunted. “Of course, I wouldn’t want to overstep. Now would I?” I replied sarcastically.
Giving a mockingly flourished bow with a tip of my cap, I gestured for them to continue on their merry way towards coffee as bitter as field rot and as dark as the burnt straw of my soul.
Without rising from my bent-over position, my cerulean eyes tracked their wary movements as they shuffled into the diner.
The sheriff was the last to walk past, the condescension rolling off her in waves. She leaned over, murmuring, “Happy hunting tonight, Bale.”
I nearly cracked a molar from clenching my jaw so tightly.
Only when the door rattled shut behind them did I fully straighten.
Let them plot their next moves. I was plotting mine.
A few minutes later, I was schmoozing my way past the librarian on shift while Mrs. Sampson nursed her hangover from last night’s festival activities in her office.
The motion-sensitive lights flicked on overhead as I hit the bottom step leading into the designated reserve for all the town’s historical records. If silence were a smell, it’d be stale and oppressive as death.
On full alert, I wandered between the shelves looking for anything out of place. Books were lined up on shelves, chairs were lined up neatly at the tables, and no ghosts haunted the room other than those in between the pages.
Approaching the door that always remained shut behind the staircase, I ran my fingers over the tarnished brass handle. Someday, I’d show my kitten a piece of this town that very few knew of. First, I needed her to survive the hunt—survive me.
Seeing no one down here, I turned to go back towards the steps when something caught my eye. Not only were the indents in the carpet off track, suggesting it had been moved recently, but something was underneath the machine.
It could have been nothing, or…
Aboutfacing and stalking over to the copier, I pulled it away from the wall it was set against, the power cord getting drawn taut and nearly yanking the plug from the outlet.
Beneath it was something that set something in my gut on fire. Red wax. Black soot. Remnants of a sigil drawn in something that smelled like copper and evil. Witchcraft.
Dropping to a knee, I picked up a corner of a piece of parchment that hadn’t fully been burnt to ash. Inspecting it, nothing was damning about the paper other than it had survived whatever flame had eaten up the rest of the page.
I pocketed the evidence. Corbin would need to see this for himself. Harlow may have been in more danger than I had originally suspected. Fuck the Dennisons, fuck the current Council. This was far beyond any of them.
Roughly shoving the copier back into place, I took several steps back and gave another look around the unoccupied space.
“You fucking make one chant in her direction, I will fucking destroy you down to your pointy shoes. I’ll light this whole damn town on fire, and no amount of water will extinguish the flames,” I warned.
I hope she fucking heard me.
The snickering coming from the shadows suggested she had.