Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Whatever vibes they bring with them as they get into the SUV, Quincy gleans enough to pull out and head toward their hotel without direction.
“When’s the last time you heard from her?” Ophelia asks Topher gently.
“Maybe two—two and a half—months ago,” Topher says, a hollow quality to the assertion because he’s not sure. “With all the stuff happening, we weren’t talking much.”
“Why don’t you try her again?” Ophelia coaxes; followed by the muffled sound of a call ringing and ringing before cutting off without even a leave a message. Mateo, eyes closed and still trying to get a hold of himself while slumped in the furthest back seat, counts twelve attempts.
“She’s probably busy,” Topher says softly from the middle row.
“Probably,” Ophelia returns, and they all listen to him dial again.
Mateo wants to say something soothing. Anything to offset the reality that anger issues plus what sounded like an impending divorce divided by a mom going MIA usually equals a husband killing his wife.
But he has to leave it to Ophelia.
The carnivorous thoughts have stopped which is great, but a salivatory bitterness coats his tongue, and he’s afraid he’s going to vomit.
That’s two moments of lost time in as many days.
When he’d blacked out during the tarot reading, he’d at least been using magic, so it made some sort of sense, but this time he hadn’t been doing anything.
Except watching Christopher be an absolute dick to Topher.
Something about seeing that guy be so dismissive about the literal death and mayhem following Topher around had really pissed off whatever’s inside Mateo.
The demon’s extreme investment in Topher’s familial drama and well-being wasn’t on his bingo card for the week.
It’d be embarrassing if it wasn’t so homicide-adjacent.
Jamming palms against his eyes, he can feel a breathless sort of volatility just below the surface, and he spends the ride trying to yoga breathe the demon away.
By the time they pull up to their hotel, Mateo’s pretty sure he’s not going to hurl.
They cluster outside the car, not quite ready to part ways. The situation is not only unfinished but also unstarted, because none of them want to put words to the unmistakable guilt that shuddered across Christopher Nystrom’s face.
Quincy waits a few respectable steps away, like sound doesn’t travel an arm’s length.
The evening air is amazing on Mateo’s heated skin, and he briefly fantasizes about sitting somewhere alone to get his blood settled. There’s a twitchiness, like he’s had too much caffeine.
“I thought, I mean, I hoped,” Topher tries haltingly, wrapping arms tightly around his middle.
“Just a few questions. When it’s so important.
He knows all about the accidents. I don’t know why he can’t see what’s happening.
I really thought if we were all just there, and we asked, he’d talk.
And I know mom’s a sensitive issue but …
but that was weird, wasn’t it? The way he …
I mean he looked like …” He doesn’t want to say it.
“Yes,” Ophelia says softly.
It isn’t the answer Topher wants, and he doesn’t know what to do with it, staring unblinking at the side of the car. A missing mom must suck so much worse when she loved you.
Mateo looks to Ophelia, and his eyes tell her everything he doesn’t want to say: Yes, something almost happened there but I’m okay.
And underneath that is a holy shit at the father’s reaction.
There’s also a question between them, and it’s scrawny, quivering a few inches away, and actually paid for the way too big suite they’re staying in.
An incline of his head and a lift of her chin. They’re agreed.
Even though all he wants is to lock himself in his room and have a little freak-out, Mateo turns to Topher. “Maybe you should stay with us tonight. We have some findings to discuss.”
Sitting on the arm of the hotel living room couch, Mateo balances a plate of pizza he doesn’t want on his knee and tries to work out the most professional way to start a conversation about Topher’s probably dead mom.
Quincy is still with them because Topher invited him along. Meaning the driver might be the closest thing Topher has to a friend, which is both sad and going to get weird when they start talking about blood magic. But it’s Topher’s dollar.
Ophelia, beside Quincy at the low coffee table, uses the moment Topher dips into the bathroom to explain the dad’s reaction in the mansion. Now everyone is up to date, uncomfortable, and unenthusiastically eating pizza.
Turning to Topher, Mateo watches him try to maneuver the world’s dullest plastic knife through a tomato-smeared slice on a flimsy paper plate that’s resting on his pale-gray-panted lap. It quickly becomes too stressful and forces Mateo to broach the terrible topic at hand.
“So,” he begins, making Topher start, knife slipping and nearly sliding sauce onto his pale gray shirt. Mateo stifles a scream for the shirt and Topher gets it under control. “We should probably try to find your mom. Like. In a hurry.”
Topher abandons his slice on the low table in front of him before turning his round eyes on Mateo in miserable question.
“In case she’s more receptive to questions than your dad,” Mateo adds quickly, evading the probably-dead-elephant-in-the-room, afraid those enormous eyes are going to overflow again.
“And to make sure she’s alive,” Ophelia says around a bite of a toppings-less slice, the cheese and sauce discarded into a disgusting pile on her plate.
Mateo gives her a holy shit look, which she fully sees but ignores.
“I don’t know your dad, mom, you, your life, or your personal chauffeur that stunt driver-ed us out of harm’s way a few hours ago,” she says, still chewing. “But I know guilt and lies, and your dad’s full of shit. And there was magic all over your house.”
“What?” Mateo, Topher, and Quincy all say.
“There’s protection spells on that whole place,” She abandons her crust on the table between them.
“Weird ones. Like … nonstandard. Daddy Dearest came home before I could really study them, but even if I’d kept looking, I’m not sure I’d get anything more than that.
Custom but nothing like your mom’s.” The last part is said to Mateo.
Which probably means they aren’t super evil. But it’s also the most buck-wild thing Ophelia could say. A warded house that didn’t reject Mateo shouldn’t be a thing. Don’t let demons in is a pretty standard thing practitioners want. Could imply the wards are shit, but that’s not what Ophelia said.
Focusing on Topher, who’s blanched so completely that the blue of his blood is visible through his skin, Mateo says, “Has your curse ever popped off at home?”
Topher starts. “No. Nothing’s ever happened there.”
“Okay. So. Maybe the wards are keeping you safe at home,” Mateo muses, looking back to Ophelia. “Do the wards feel like the same magic as the office?”
“Totally different,” Ophelia says with feeling. Meaning the wards on the house aren’t blood magic.
“There was magic at the office?” Topher whispers in dismay.
Mateo digs around in his pocket and unearths the little lady figure he’d found under Topher’s mattress. Balanced on his palm, she’s barely an inch tall.
“That’s magic as all hell,” Ophelia says.
“It was under Topher’s mattress.”
“Is it the focus? For the curse?” Topher leans in close to examine the cute, simplified features. She’s little more than the suggestion of a woman with long, straight hair.
Ophelia takes it carefully between fingers, looking between it and Topher for a bit.
“It’s the same energy as the wards on the house.
And similar, but not the same, as what’s coming off of Topher, but …
” Her eyes drift partially closed, the out-of-place blue of her irises fading.
Dread ices Mateo’s veins as he readies himself to jump forward and catch her if she slips away.
A tense moment and she blinks slowly. “It’s—” She draws in a breath, frowning minutely. “It is a focus, but not for a curse. There’s nothing negative about it.” Her hand unconsciously comes up to rub an eye, like she can scrub away whatever she’s seeing.
Taking the figure back, Mateo says, “It’s a focus for a god then.”
“God?” Topher parrots in alarm.
“Lowercase g.” Mateo runs a thumb over the smooth face of the little wooden woman.
“These are usually on altars. The idea of higher magic is: Light the right candles, incense, perfume—whatever that entity likes; recite the right words, which can be a spell, intention, dance, song, or power word; and then you can briefly connect to one of these entities. It’s for channeling powers or communication.
This is a specific entity, but I don’t know who. ”
A lot of blinking as Topher tries to absorb this. “But why was it under my bed?”
Mateo shares a look with Ophelia, both hoping the other’s figured it out, but no dice.
“I would guess it’s trying to protect you too.
If it matches the magic of the wards on the house it might be an amplifier for those.
But then, what the hell is going on with this curse?
Why would someone go through all the trouble of cursing Topher but then protect the real estate? ”
“I have no idea, but I think we’re dealing with multiple casters,” Ophelia says.
“One protecting and one cursing?” Mateo asks.
“That’s not the distinction,” Ophelia says, ticking them off on her hand.
“Protection wards on the house, lady figure, and Topher’s curse look similar.
They’re all the same kind of magic. I don’t know what the blood ward at the office was going to do, but the curse on Topher looks completely different than it—not the same type, skill level, or intensity of intention.
At least two different magics at play means at least two casters. ”