Chapter 1 #2
The ghoul watched me closely. I was still ignoring the wriggling worm, but it wasn’t getting any easier, because the thing had inched behind my ear and was snuffling at my jaw.
The ill intent emanating from the thing was creeping me out, and this was from a witch who spent a lot of time buried in soil.
“No. The one you used will suffice.” Dominick’s spurs jingled as he stepped back, the pain of his touch and the worm going with him. “What business do you have in my domain?”
It was tempting to heave a sigh of relief, but that would be a mistake. He’d approved of my strength—any show of weakness now would invite a worse pain than a squirming worm and a skeletal grip.
“I wish to take a cutting of the Curio rowleyanus.” I gestured to an overflowing planter to my right, outside the cemetery grounds.
My gaze flicked to the hooded figure in the trees. He’d moved closer, but still not close enough for me to make out his features. I thought “he” because something in my subconscious told me it was male, but I couldn’t see any part of the figure’s body to know for sure—if it even had one.
“And you have come to ask me for this … cutting?” Dominick appeared taken aback for a second.
Had he expected me to ask for something else?
With effort, I tore my gaze from the hooded man and gave the ghoul my full attention. “Well, no. I’ve come to ask the plant for the cutting. I’m requesting your permission to approach the mother plant.”
“She resides outside my grounds,” he said offhandedly.
Dominick had already let it slip that he oversaw more than the cemetery grounds, so this had to be some sort of ploy. He knew I was aware that his domain encompassed the entire town of East Pluto as well as every road leading into and out of it, though his focus was the cemetery itself.
But we were playing a game, so I said, “She is cared for by a learned horticulturist. You are the gardener here, so I assume you have affection for her. It’s only polite that I come to you for permission to approach her, much as a prospective groom might approach the father of his potential bride.”
Gods, talking like this was exhausting. Dominick’s social skills had gotten stuck somewhere in the mid-to-late eighteen hundreds in American culture, though, and Sexton had told me if I ever needed a favor from the ghoul that I should lean on this sort of old-fashioned, metaphoric-speak.
His head slowly turned toward the string-of-pearls plant a few feet away. “Curio, is this arrangement acceptable to you?”
The Curio rowleyanus shivered. A small section of plant rose above the others. An offering.
“May I?” I asked Dominick.
He nodded without looking at me.
Ghoul acts like I’m a waste of his time. I knelt beside the planter and accepted the cutting, cradling the plant in my hands with the delicacy I would’ve given a newborn.
“I promise to keep this one safe,” I whispered into the succulent’s pea-shaped leaves as I sank my fingers into her soil and sent a pulse of healing energy into her roots. “My deepest apologies for the loss of the other. It was an accident for which I take full responsibility.”
“She understands that plant life, much like human life, is fleeting. She bears you no ill will.” His tone was softer, less annoyed.
“Thank you.” I rose, my gaze drawn again to the hooded man. “Dark sovereign Dominick, if I may ask, who’s that hooded man standing under the mesquite tree?”
“Hooded man?”
“The one over there.” I pointed to the trees.
Dominick’s entire demeanor changed. He went from coyly malevolent to viciously angry in an instant. Thankfully, I was used to Sexton’s creepy movements and didn’t leap six feet in the air when his freezing breath hit my ear.
“You brought him here.”
“I only brought my partners, my wolf shifter bodyguard, and my bestie Ida. I thought he was with you.” The figure was now farther away, though I hadn’t seen him take a step. “He’s leaving. Maybe we should go after him.”
“You brought him here,” the ghoul repeated.
I shook my head. “I swear I didn’t.”
“Do you not hear the call, demon-witch?” The words fell from his lips like sleeting rain.
I tightened every muscle in my body to keep from shivering, but one got out anyway.
“It won’t go away because you wish it to.
You can reject your grandfather and banish every demon you see, but it won’t disappear.
It can’t. He can’t. He’s waiting for you. ”
“Who? The man in the cloak? I don’t know what you mean.”
“And I cannot explain. I am not the messenger,” he said—paradoxically, I thought. Hadn’t he just given me a message, albeit a super cryptic one?
“Wait. Please. Who is he?” I called to Dominick’s rapidly retreating back. He’d already crossed the barrier separating the cemetery from the grounds surrounding it.
“You’ll find out soon.” A roach scuttled from his coat pocket, across his back, and up one side of his head. “A friendly word of advice: Keep the feline close.”
I glanced at Fennel, who stood several feet away on the edge of the cemetery grounds, his sleek ebony tail wrapped around his front paws.
When I turned back, the ghoul was gone.
So was the hooded figure.
“You conjured that man, ghoul,” I said under my breath, “to scare me.”
As if being in a cemetery with a ghoul wasn’t pants-pissingly terrifying enough.
I stared for a beat into the darkness that had swallowed the ghoul and hooded man then snapped back to myself. I thanked the string-of-pearls plant for her generosity, summoned Fennel with a wave, and headed for my car.
To my surprise, both Mason and Ida were now standing outside it. Mason’s arms were crossed over his chest, and he was glowering at me.
“How the hell do you expect me to guard you if you disappear like that?” He dropped his arms and stormed back around to the driver’s side. “You’re making it impossible to do my job.”
He threw open the door and folded himself into the backseat, grumbling about still being sore from his silver injuries.
Cecil gave me an obscene hand signal then let out a chitter that sounded like an enraged squirrel.
Fennel bounded to Ida, rubbed against her leg, and offered up his most comforting purr.
“What’s he talking about? Why’s Cecil pissed off? I was right there the whole— Ida?”
My best friend had gone sheet white. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, as if she were staring into her own mind rather than a spot over my shoulder.
I darted over and gave her a gentle shake. “Ida? Talk to me. What’s wrong? Did the ghoul do something to you? Are you in pain or—”
“No.” She blinked several times, inhaled, and smiled at me. It didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m all right.” She shivered. “It’s a little cold out tonight. Let’s go home.”
June in the low desert wasn’t as hot as August, but it wasn’t mildly warm, either.
It had been a brutal 105 degree day, and the temperature now, at just after midnight, was in the low nineties.
It wouldn’t be anything approaching “a little cold out” for another three or four months, but I didn’t challenge her.
She looked too emotionally bruised, too fragile.
Instead, I loaded her into the car, got in myself, turned the music up loud enough to make conversation impossible, and booked it home.
Fennel rode on Ida’s lap the whole way. He head-bumped her gently, and she stroked him with trembling fingers.
Mason bolted out of the car the second I pulled into the parking lot of the Siete Saguaros Mobile Home Park.
He fished his keys out the pocket of his sweats and got into his black SUV.
Once inside, he rolled down the window and pointed at me.
“The pack third is here, so I’m off duty. Get inside your house, Alpha.”
Then he gunned it out of the lot, his tires spraying gravel and leaving some rubber on the asphalt as he sped away.
“See you tomorrow at noon, sweetheart,” I called after him.
Ida quietly asked me and the boys to accompany her to her place for a drink.
Cecil demurred. He was still annoyed with me for reasons unknown, and besides, he’d want to get the cutting planted as soon as possible.
Fennel, however, stuck to Ida like glue.
Meredith kept furling and unfurling her leaves and her tiny BB eyes rolled from Fennel to Ida to me to Ida.
Everyone was visibly uneasy.
Although I wanted nothing more than to shower and slide into bed with my third alpha, I agreed to go to Ida’s. It was obvious she needed an immediate debrief on the night’s events, and I owed her that. Also, I wasn’t leaving her side until she looked better.
I made her sit at the table while I prepared two cups of peppermint tea and refilled the ceramic water bowl she kept in the kitchen for Fennel, and occasionally, Cecil. The gnome wasn’t above sipping from a dish if the water was cold and fresh enough.
When the tea was done, I carried our cups to the table. “You’ve been using the peppermint tea blend Cecil and I made. Good to see that it met your high standards.” I said this lightly, a little goading humor to get her to comment. Or smile, at least.