Chapter 16
Tess
Suddenly, I wasn’t hungry.
“No. No, he didn’t,” I said quietly. “Hey, I’m just going to go check on … that thing.”
I turned and walked out of the room, out of the house, and to my car, grabbing my purse and phone on the way. Then I drove to the gas station and filled up my tank, just for something to do.
But I kept hearing Alejandro’s voice in my head.
Didn’t Jack tell you?
Didn’t Jack tell you?
Didn’t Jack tell you?
No. Jack hadn’t told me.
And that hurt so much.
“Tess!”
I looked up from the gas pump to see tiny Mrs. Frost waving at me from the driver’s seat of the car across the way, her husband seated next to her. Since Alaric had healed her cataracts, she drove all over the place. Apparently, Mr. Frost’s hip replacement had healed well, too.
“Hello, Mrs. Frost.”
“You kids better win that game next week! We’ll be rooting for you!”
“Just please don’t bring your crossbow, okay?” Last year, on our third loss in a row, she’d threatened to shoot Ace. Mrs. Frost had been a prize-winning archer for over fifty years, so it wasn’t an idle threat. Uncle Mike had been forced to talk her down and confiscate her bow until the game was over.
The ridiculous thought crossed my mind that maybe the Frosts were driving around with Ace hogtied in the trunk of their car, and I stared after them as they drove off.
Nah.
My phone was buzzing and buzzing when I got back in the car with my gas station Icee. It was Jack, of course. I didn’t really want to talk to him, but I was an adult and not a kid running away from an unhappy situation.
I answered the phone. “Jack?—”
“I didn’t tell you about it, because I’d forgotten about it.”
“What?”
“Alejandro called me a few weeks ago with some nonsense about this job, but I told him I wasn’t interested. I also told him to stop calling me about jobs because I was officially retired. And then I forgot about it, because we were in the middle of dealing with mutant zucchini.”
There had been a lot of trouble from that zucchini.
“How can you just forget about a huge job offer like that?” I was skeptical.
His voice, which had been rushed and a little frantic, warmed. “Tess. I love you. Nothing that would take me away from you is or could be important to me. Fireworks Lopez asked me if I wanted to get drunk and wrestle gators, too, and I didn’t tell you about that, either, because I have zero intention of doing either.”
Mateo, aka Fireworks, Lopez was one of the Swamp Commandos. He had a history of doing … questionable things. I wasn’t sure the two things were at all equivalent, but Jack loved me.
I knew that.
“I’m sorry I reacted like that,” I told him. “I should have stayed and talked to you, but it caught me off guard, and it’s been a heck of a week.”
“Come home, honey. And don’t be mad at me. I let your cookies get a little singed.”
“Oh, no!” I was a terrible host. First, I ran out on my guests, and then I let the cookies burn.
Suddenly, the ludicrous nature of that thought struck me, and I laughed. “I’ll buy some cookies while I’m here at the gas station.”
“Store-bought cookies? After a year of your cooking, my standards might be too high for that?—”
“Double-stuffed Oreos.”
“I could hold my nose and eat one or two.”
* * *
The sheriff called me when I was driving home.
“Hey, Susan. Are you recovered from that bad-luck charm?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, but I’m awfully glad I didn’t have my gun with me. That was some powerful magic. I hated everyone and suddenly wanted to tackle Nigel and punch him in the nose. His wife would have drowned me!”
She wasn’t wrong. Phaedra was not a forgiving woman.
Nymph.
Naiad.
Whatever.
“Any luck finding out who put it there?”
“No. It doesn’t make any sense. The only person who didn’t belong at the field this afternoon was Probie Truckman, who stopped by at five-thirty to yell at me for not finding his brother yet. It wouldn’t make any sense for him to put a bad-luck spell on me when he’s counting on me to solve his brother’s disappearance.”
I didn’t understand any of this. To lighten the mood, I told her about my Mrs. and Mr. Frost suspicions.
She laughed. “The worst thing is I wouldn’t put it entirely past them, if I could figure out how the Frosts, who maybe weigh a buck eighty between them, could overpower Ace Truckman. Even with her crossbow.”
“No news on Ace, then?”
“No, and it’s the weirdest thing. Nobody in his family has heard a word. The only lead Reynolds says they’ve found is that Probie really hated his cousin. Ace had maneuvered him out of a windfall in the business, apparently, and everyone knows how Ace treated Probie.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t put up with that.” I was so lucky to have a great family, even if my dad had been entangled with the Irish mob at one point. Well, and my grandma was a banshee.
But all families had their little quirks.
“Everybody is back to normal, though. I kept them around for a while to be sure, but whatever Rose did dispersed the dangerous magic completely.”
“She’s a powerful witch. One of the Cardinal witches.”
“They’re one of the strongest magical families in the country. Is she staying with you?”
“Yes, but just for a day or so, I think. She’s due in a couple of weeks with twins. She’ll probably want to be back home soon, but she needed a break from her family’s hovering.”
Susan snorted. “It’s not like we’d know anything about family problems.”
Susan’s family had left her a cursed inheritance and recently tried to kill her, so she won in the “whose family is worse” category. At least my banshee grandmother only gave me an ordinary car.
I patted my steering wheel in apology. My Mustang was a sweet car, not at all ordinary, and I was delighted to have her.
“Okay. Let me know if you hear anything,” Susan said. “See you at the pub?”
“Probably not. Rose is wiped out.”
I hung up and thought about Truckmans and bad-luck charms and poisoned popcorn on the rest of my drive home but didn’t come to any Eureka! conclusions.
Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough. I bet Sherloink Hams never had problems like this.