Chapter 13
Tess
We all stood, frozen, as a beautiful, very pregnant witch stalked across the field toward the dugout, her extraordinarily blue eyes snapping and her long golden hair streaming behind her. Alejandro, all black-haired, copper-skinned deadliness, dropped the small leather duffel he held and strode next to his wife, his hand on a gun holstered at his waist.
Jack started after them, and I followed, ignoring his upraised hand. He should know better than to try to make me stay behind by now, anyway.
Rose brushed past Lorraine, who was scowling at her. As she passed my friend, Rose murmured something and waved one hand gracefully. Instantly, Lorraine gasped and then stumbled. Alejandro caught her arm and steadied her, and then Jack reached them and put an arm around Lorraine.
“What happened?” She had a dazed expression on her face. “We started practice, and suddenly I was looking at everyone through a red haze …”
I took her hands in mine. “Are you okay? Rose said there was a bad-luck charm. I was so worried about you.”
She blinked back tears. “Tess. Oh, honey. I was mean to you. I’m so sorry! I don’t know what came over me.”
“Don’t even worry about it. It wasn’t you.” I hugged her, my throat suddenly tight. Weirdly, I was grateful for the bad-luck charm. I hated the thought that Lorraine could be so angry with me.
Rose, Jack, and Alejandro were all inside the dugout now. Rose pointed at something but stopped Alejandro from touching it.
“No. Jack will have more natural immunity to it.”
Jack lifted the paper bag and walked it out to a sturdy metal trash can near the dugout. When he tossed it in, Rose lifted her arms and spoke an incantation, and the paper bag exploded into a ball of fire, sending flaming bits of popcorn everywhere.
“Popcorn was the bad-luck charm?” I shook my head, stunned.
Lorraine looked around at our teammates, all of whom had come in from the field and stood around us in a loose semi-circle. “Who brought the popcorn?”
Everybody shook their heads and looked at everyone else. Turned out, nobody brought the popcorn.
“How did it get into the dugout?” Jack asked.
Nobody knew that, either.
I figured we wouldn’t get to the bottom of it soon, and I had more important things to do than try. I rushed over to Rose, who was looking pale.
“Hi, Rose! I’m Tess Callahan. I’m so happy to finally meet you. I think maybe you need to sit down?”
Her smile was genuine but strained, and she rested a hand on her enormous belly. Twins, Alejandro had told us. “I really need to rest. Didn’t expect to be casting spells the minute I got here. The babies are overexcited.”
She rubbed her belly, and the grass at her feet trembled. I took a startled step back, and looked down to see stalks of flowers poke up out of the ground, grow several inches in seconds, and burst into colorful bloom.
“That’s … beautiful!”
She groaned. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t me. The babies are excited.”
The babies?
Nigel, Dead End’s only resident ogre, ambled closer. Nigel was small for an ogre, he’d confided in my dance class when Molly and I were kids. (He’d bestowed the award of Best Pirouette in the five-to-seven-year’s class on me, and I’d been delighted. Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruby took me out to a special dinner to celebrate.)
However, size was relative, and being small for an ogre still meant being huge for a Dead Ender. Nigel was nearly nine feet tall and proportionally wide. His long, slightly pointed ears poked out of corn-silk blond hair, and his lovely violet eyes were wide and curious. (His skin was tanned golden brown, not green. Shrek was spoken of with hatred in ogre circles.)
Alejandro, probably not accustomed to ogres, put his hand back on his gun. Jack motioned for him to stand down, which he did, I was glad to see. I didn’t want the scary special agent to frighten my friend.
Rose, though, held out her hands to Nigel, her eyes widening with wonder. “Oh! Brother Ogre! May the wind dance through the hills of your ancestors.”
Nigel beamed and took her hands. “And may the gardens of yours bloom with fertility and delight,” he rumbled, and then he leaned down and gently kissed her forehead before releasing her hands and stepping back.
She laughed and patted her stomach. “I think I’ve had enough fertility.”
“The little witchlings are playing,” Nigel said, pointing to the flowers continuing to sprout and bloom in an ever-widening circle around Rose. “Their magic shines like twin stars in your aura.”
“My granny foretold that they’d be the most powerful witches of their generation,” she confided in a lowered voice. “That’s pretty scary, as you can imagine.”
“May I offer a blessing?”
“We would be honored, Sir Ogre,” Alejandro said, reaching out for his wife’s hand. I didn’t know if it was natural talent or his P-Ops training, but he was excellent at reading a situation.
Rose nodded. “Yes. Thank you. We will take all the blessings we can get for these two.”
Nigel lightly touched her belly and murmured a few words in a language I had never heard before. The sound of it was like nothing I can describe … but the rumble of an avalanche crossed with the whisper of wind over water comes closest.
When he finished, even I could see the aura shining around Rose, and so could everyone else, from the sound of the oohs and ahhs that surrounded us. A halo of golden light, shot through with silver shimmers, spun and danced around her—especially around her belly.
“Wow,” I murmured.
“Thank you for the blessing, Brother Ogre. I’m Rose Cardinal, and if you ever have need of a garden witch, please call on me.”
“Nigel,” he said, his purple eyes twinkling. “If you have time, please have Tess bring you to visit. My wife is a Naiad and would offer the blessing of her water nymph kind to the babies.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. His wife Phaedra had once bemoaned the fact that Nigel wouldn’t let her drown ungrateful children.
Rose suddenly stumbled, and Jack was there to catch her. Alejandro reached for his wife, but Jack nodded his head toward the parking lot.
“I’ve got her. Grab your bag? Tess can lead the way to the truck, and we’ll get you to our place so Rose can rest.”
Susan tapped my shoulder. “I’m going to figure out this poisoned popcorn/bad-luck charm thing, and I’ll call you. Alejandro, it’s good to see you again. I hope to get to spend some time with you and Rose. Congratulations on the babies.”
He shook her hand but then, distracted, gave me an obvious hurry-up glance. I called goodbye to everyone and started for the truck, but then I stopped.
“Lorraine, would you mind overseeing the distribution of the new uniforms?” They were in the back seat of the truck, and we’d need the room. Plus, having something to do might help her feel better, since she was clearly still upset about how the bad-luck charm had affected her.
By the time we reached the truck, Jack had already placed Rose in the front passenger seat, having first moved the seat back as far as it would go to make room for her belly. I handed over the package, hugged Lorraine, and squeezed into the seat behind Rose. Alejandro took the seat behind Jack, and we were off.
We were almost at my house when I realized Jack had said “our place.” A wave of warmth slid through me, and I smiled. It really had become our place, even though Jack, for the first time in his life, owned a house of his own.
Rose laughed. “Ah, I can feel the love in this car. Jack, you are truly caught, aren’t you?”
“Definitely.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to pry. This pregnancy has made me so sensitive to people’s emotions that when Tess just thought of something that made her aura light up, I felt it strongly.”
“Awww,” I said, blushing, and then tried to change the subject. “How did you two meet?”
She burst out laughing. “We had a basilisk infestation, and P-Ops sent Alejandro and his partner. My true love, there, came loaded with weapons that could have stopped an invasion by an army of angry giants.”
I was confused. “For basilisks? Aren’t they basically just angry lizard-chickens?”
“Yes,” Jack said, chuckling.
Alejandro sighed. “In my defense, I was the new guy in my P-Ops division then, just out of the training academy at Quantico. It was ‘haze the new agent’ day, evidently. My coworkers put stuffed chickens on my desk for weeks afterwards.”
P-Ops was acronym-speak for the Paranormal Operations department of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, opened when supernaturals came out of the coffin.
“For weeks? That’s a lot of taxidermy,” I said, marveling. I’d only seen two or three stuffed chickens in all my years at Dead End Pawn.
Now Alejandro was laughing. “No, Tess. Stuffed like children’s toys. Not like your alligator.”
He’d been in my shop before, on more than one occasion.
“By the way, Rose, what was that with Nigel? I’ve never seen him act like that.”
“Ogres and garden witches have always been in harmony,” she told me. “We both respect and love nature in the same way. I’ve only met a few in my life, though. He was so sweet, wasn’t he?”
When we got to my house, I showed Rose the bathroom first, because pregnant women and bathrooms were a no-brainer. Then Alejandro got her settled on the couch with her feet up, and I rustled up pie and ice cream for everyone, coffee for those who wanted it, and a giant glass of milk for Rose.
“You are a wonderful woman, Tess. I can tell we’re going to be great friends.” She sighed and dug into her slice of apple pie.
“I’m glad.” I placed the pie dish on the trunk I used as a coffee table, near enough that she could easily get to the last slice in the dish if she wanted it.
Jack, maybe not understanding the nutritional needs and cravings of a hungry pregnant woman, finished his pie and reached for the pie dish.
That’s when the armchair he was sitting in flew up into the air, taking him with it, and headed for the front door.