Chapter Seventeen
It was mid-morning by the time they got going.
Because apparently, learning your buddy is a demon, and that you’re a witch, and freeing him from a truck, and then unearthing some kind of weird binding Satanic agreement he was trapped in, and following all this up by very inadvisably letting him do things with his mouth that made you come your brains out?
Well, it took a huge amount of time. In fact it took so much time that they had to go pick up Popcorn before they headed over to see Cassie.
And Popcorn was not happy about this situation.
This time, he clamped his little mouth on Jack’s leg the second Jack walked into her apartment.
As if to say, How dare you keep my mother away this long .
Though he soon calmed down when Jack graciously accepted the admonishment.
“I get it, I get it, I kept her out way past her curfew. I’m sorry, tell me how I can make it up to you,” he said, and in answer Popcorn suggested a second breakfast from his automatic feeder.
One paw on it, and a scowl aimed Jack’s way.
Jack obliged, and all was well.
She came out of the bathroom to find Popcorn in his arms, licking his face and wiggling his butt with happiness.
“You two are sickening,” she informed them, but Jack had precisely no shame about it.
He let her dog kiss him and lick him and pet him with his tiny paws all the way back down to the truck.
Then he apologized to said dog for having to put him in the back.
“Maybe you should have him ride in your lap,” she said, and he actually shot her a hopeful look. Much to her annoyance. “You’re not letting him ride in your lap, Jack. The only person who’s going to be lap riding anytime soon is me .”
And that got him.
He started the truck while gawping at her, half shocked, half so obviously thrilled she couldn’t regret saying it. Whatever was going on between them was good, and it was horny, and maybe it couldn’t lead anywhere but that was fine. It was fine. It didn’t have to be anything other than what it was:
A witch and a demon, being sex buddies.
Perfectly normal.
For a book written by Charlaine Harris.
A fact that made her chuckle all the way to Cassie’s ramshackle home. She started over the dirt track they’d parked on the other side of, and the wild grass that made up Cassie’s garden, still amused about it.
But when she looked behind her, Jack wasn’t there. He was still in the truck, glaring out through the windshield, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly it had turned his knuckles white. She had to dart back and go over to his window, and ask him what on earth was going on.
And he wouldn’t look at her when he answered.
“If I go in there she’s gonna clock me immediately.”
“And by that you mean she’ll know you’re a demon.”
He shot her a withering look. “Nooooo, I was talking about guessing I’m a fully paid-up member of the Pat Benatar Fan Club,” he said.
Then let that sarcasm sink in before he jabbed his hands aggressively at the air over the steering wheel.
“Of course I’m talking about that. She’s a witch, she’ll see it right off. ”
“But you’re in human form.”
“It won’t completely matter.”
“It matters to me. All I can see is your hairy, totally ordinary face.”
“Really? You sure? Nothing else starting to flash its warning lights at you?”
“I don’t even know what I could be looking f—” she started to say, as she examined the face he tilted first one way, then the next.
Everything seemed normal looking, until suddenly there it was, there it was, there it was.
A big, weird feeling, like a cold hand grabbing her by the nape of her neck—and so roughly and intensely that it cut her sentence short.
She came close to stepping away from the car.
Or maybe grabbing that pen she couldn’t remember putting in her pocket, but knew was there instinctively now.
My talisman, my tool, the thing that helps me channel my magic, my knack , she thought, and had to force it down.
After all, this was just Jack. It was Jack.
A demon, yes, but not one that would ever hurt her.
And she wanted him to know that she knew that.
Though of course he clocked her reaction anyway.
“Getting it now, huh. Feels like something just hit your funny bone. If your funny bone was in your spine and the something that hit was a hammer made of ghosts,” he said, so matter-of-fact she could almost imagine it didn’t bother him.
Except for the cigarette he started peeling out of its packet before he finished the rest of his words.
“Give it a while, you’ll start getting the double. ”
And he lit it on the last word.
No match, she noticed. Though of course she’d almost noticed that before.
On the porch, she remembered—only this time it was clear as a bell.
He just clicked his fingers and they sparked and there it was.
The glow of the tip, a plume of smoke, blown away from her.
And then the way the smoke coiled around him, answering the question she had wanted to immediately ask.
A double was something that surrounded him.
A shadowy shape, so suddenly visible she had no idea how she hadn’t seen it before.
However, it wasn’t scary in the way he seemed to be suggesting.
It didn’t make her want to hex him or something like that.
Instead, she found herself reaching out to it.
Just to see what it felt like. Or to watch what it did when she touched it.
And the answer was—it drifted away in a slow wave.
Then after a moment, it drifted back.
As if it didn’t like being disturbed, until it realized what it was being disturbed by.
Once it knew it was her, it coiled one tendril out and around her finger.
Cold, but also somehow comforting. Like a ring she used to wear all the time, recently found buried in ice.
She held her hand up and admired it like that, so engrossed it jolted her when he suddenly spoke.
“I can feel that, you know.”
“Oh. Oh sorry. Sorry, I’ll stop.”
“Don’t remember saying it was anything that would make me want you to.”
God, the look he gave her for that. It was almost sultry.
She had to force practical thoughts into her head, just to force out the ones saying things like: He’s done so many nice things to you and you haven’t actually returned the favor and Does he want you to and Maybe he’s starting to get a little sexually frustrated .
Because of course this wasn’t the time, or the place.
And plus, Popcorn was watching from the back.
He looked pissed . She had to say something normal just to get him to stop standing on all four stumpy legs, glaring at her. “What is it I’m touching?” she asked, and Popcorn deigned to sit down, as Jack answered.
“The shadow of my demon soul. I don’t shed it, you see, it’s still tethered to me.
It just dims down to almost nothing—or at least, almost nothing to most. To a witch, it will always be sort of visible.
It will always be felt.” He shrugged, all that sultriness gone as quick as it had come. “Like I said, she will figure it out.”
“But what do you think she’s going to do when she does?”
“Banish me to a null dimension. Maybe try to yoke my ass.”
“I don’t even know what a null dimension or a yoke is.”
“A kind of void that can hold a demon, and a way to bind one to you.”
“Cassie wouldn’t do that. She’s not like that. This place she’s made—I think it’s, you know, to help supernatural beings. In fact, I know it is now, because I can see the fricking sign on the ground over there.”
She pointed back toward the house.
But when she looked at him, he didn’t seem convinced. He seemed weary. Knowing. Too knowing. “You’ve almost been here before, haven’t you,” she said, as she realized. And he shrugged in answer.
“Yeah, I figured what she was doing a while ago. Most supernatural beings have already heard. Witches are pretty rare, usually, and so when one shows up and is interested in helping the community, word spreads fast.”
“But you didn’t think she’d help you.”
“I just know that I’m scary, okay. Scarier than you seem to consider me to be.
And that’s nice, but it’s just not reality, kid.
So you go, and you talk to her, and you find out whatever you need to find out, for you.
And I’ll be here, waiting,” he said, then gestured to the house. At which point, she realized.
He hadn’t really brought her here to find answers for himself.
He’d done it so she could find answers for her .
So she could talk to another witch, and find her community.
Finally share things with a friend that the friend had probably been waiting for.
She even felt as if she could almost remember now—sometime in her store when Cassie had come in and tried to say something.
You went blank. You couldn’t see it, you had suppressed it, just like Jack said, just like you guessed , she thought, as she gave his hand one last squeeze and walked up to the house.
Knocked, and waited for Cassie to answer—which she did, in a flurry of dark hair and flour and pink cheeks.
Though none of those things were what Nancy noticed.
Instead, she saw into the house beyond.
And everything was just as it had seemed the last time she had been there, and yet somehow utterly different at the same time.
Sparkles hung in the air above the big pot that sat on the stove.
The microwave readout had words on it, aimed at Cassie’s boyfriend, Seth.
I can’t believe the raccoon has stolen your shoe again , it read, as he hopped around the kitchen.
Then she looked down, and there was the raccoon in question.
The one that chittered at Cassie in a way-too-human sort of way.
And Cassie answered, “I don’t care how much you want it, give it back. We have company that can see you now, so you’d better smarten up and fly right,” she said—because she knew, of course she did. She could see that Nancy was different now, that she understood now.
She even winked at her as she bustled back into the kitchen.
“I’m guessing you’d like some guides right around now,” she said, and before Nancy could answer, Cassie started gathering up books, muttering as she went.
“The witch one, obviously, maybe this one on familiars, this thing about how to unearth your knack… Seth, can you pass me that pamphlet on deadly creatures?”
Then Seth grabbed it, and set it atop the pile.
With a hand that didn’t look quite human.
“Are you…” she started to say.
But he was already answering. “Werewolf,” he said, as the raccoon attempted to steal his other shoe.
Which kind of blunted the scary impact of such a revelation, she had to say.
Because, sure, he probably sprouted seven-foot fangs and giant rippling wolf muscles.
However, he could also be felled by a small furry mammal, apparently.
And not even a particularly terrifying mammal.
Cassie called it Pod.
She introduced it as her familiar.
“And yes, I can hear it talking,” she said. “You’ll probably find something talking to you soon, too. And you might start glowing. And find odd things happening to you, or being attracted to you, or wanting your help.”
Like a sexy demon who can’t date , she thought.
But she couldn’t say. She didn’t have to say.
Halfway through collecting the books, Cassie stopped, and assessed her so frankly it made all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
It made her heart flutter wildly, half in fear and half in something else.
A fellow witch seeing another for the first time , she thought, and found herself reaching out a hand.
And the hand was glowing.
It was surrounded by silver, in the same way she could suddenly see gold around Cassie. “You have the same problem I did,” Cassie said. “Someone you like is suffering, and you want to help them, and you’re not sure how. Is that right?”
“Yes. Yeah. He wants to be less—”
“Monstrous. I see it. But I’ll need to see him to help him fix it.”
“He doesn’t want to come in. He’s kind of a little bit… shy.”
“And you don’t how to persuade him?”
Cassie said the words sassily, pointedly. Like she knew Nancy had it in her—and in truth, she did. The idea of how simply popped into her head the moment Cassie spoke. Frame it like a thing all normal, date-worthy men do , she thought. Just the next step in his education.
“How do you feel about a double date?” she said.
And Cassie grinned.