12. Twelve
TWELVE
Sully walked Dora and Rook down to the garage.
“Thank you so much for coming.” He meant every word. “You’re giving Ofelia hope. I can tell.”
“She’s mired in despair,” Dora countered. “It’s written all over her face, and you see it too.”
Sully looked away from the witch. “She just needs some sleep. She’ll rebound in the morning.”
“Oh, she’s going to be a monster in the morning.” Dora chuckled. “She’s going to be a witch on a mission. I’m looking forward to seeing what she does.”
“I love how you approach everything as a science experiment,” Sully groused. “Our lives are not experiments.”
“It’s still interesting as long as you’re not the one being experimented on.” Dora turned serious, her smile disappearing. “I will come up with that list and get it to you first thing in the morning.”
“Do you really think it will help?”
Dora lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I don’t know, but there is someone out there who has access to a cure. It’s our best shot.”
“If she has a cure, why not approach us and give it to us?”
“Maybe she didn’t hear about the attack at the party.”
“You heard about it.”
“Yes, but I get my information from 10 different pipelines. My feeling is that this creature lives a solitary life. She’s afraid to cross paths with the wrong witch.”
“Because it will invite questions,” Sully guessed.
“In a nutshell? Yes.” Dora bobbed her head. “We don’t know this person. She’ll know us, though. She’ll have watched us and formed opinions.”
“Which means she’ll be much more open to Ofelia approaching her than you.”
“I don’t need the attitude, but that’s essentially true,” Dora conceded.
“Okay.” Sully rubbed his forehead. “Just get me the list tomorrow. I’ll chase it.”
“There’s still time to save her,” Dora said in a soft voice. “My money is on Ofelia. She won’t let her friend go.”
At present, that was the only thing Sully was holding on to. “Yeah. Ofelia won’t allow herself to lose. Not when Angelique is the one on the line.” He managed a wan smile. “Be careful going home. There are wild banshees out there going nuts in the city.”
“Oh, I’m not a target.” Dora chuckled. “It isn’t anger or grief that fuel me. I might be targeted by a demon or something, but a banshee would never get anywhere with me. I’m too much of a glutton and not enough of a martyr.”
“That’s … an interesting take.”
Dora patted his cheek. “Everything about me is interesting.”
With that, she headed for the Cherokee. Rook helped her up into the passenger seat. Sully watched them until they exited the garage and continued to stare in their wake for another full minute. Then, rather than go upstairs to check on a situation that would break his heart, he headed into the bar.
He was familiar with Ofelia’s staff, and he stopped at the bar to check in with Dex, one of the bartenders. “Any problems tonight?” he asked the young shifter.
Dex was one of those guys with piercings all over his face and tattoos covering every inch of his arms. Even though Sully had an aversion to septum piercings — they just did not look cool to him — Dex was one of those rare people who could pull it off.
“No.” Dex shook his head. “Should I have been expecting problems?”
“No.” Sully pointed toward the bar. “I’m going to take up a cocktail for Ofelia before bed. Can you put together something mellow?”
“For both of you?”
“Yeah.” Sully definitely wanted a drink.
“Sure.” Dex could read people well, which was one of the reasons he was so good at his job. “Is there something I should be worried about?” he asked as he started mixing. “Like … you guys aren’t calling off the wedding, are you?”
Sully didn’t particularly like the question. “Of course not.”
“Just checking.” Dex’s smile was quick and showed off the dimple in his cheek.
“You’re just looking for an opening to hit on my woman,” Sully complained.
“That shows what you know,” Dex shot back. “I was looking for an opening to hit on Ofelia’s man.”
The flirting didn’t bother Sully. He knew Dex didn’t mean it. At least not in a homewrecker way. “The wedding is still on. We’re still happy.”
“And yet something is going on,” Dex guessed, his smile disappearing. “Is it anything I can help with?”
“Not unless you know something about banshees.”
“I just know that they’re not allowed in the city,” Dex replied. “It’s something that goes back like 30 years.”
Sully rested his elbows on the bar. “Who told you that?”
Dex shrugged. “It was one of the stories they used to tell around bonfires when I was a kid.”
“Meaning it might not be true.”
“Most of them were true, if exaggerated,” Dex countered. “Seriously, man, what’s going on?”
Since Dex was a paranormal, and he might have information, Sully opted to give him a barebones recounting of what had happened. When he was finished, Dex remained rooted to his spot.
“That’s … weird.” He shook his head. “And there are infected people locked away right now?”
Sully had been careful not to involve Angelique in the story, just in case Biff came sniffing around. “Yes. We need a cure.”
“The story I heard mentioned a cure. One time. Thirty years ago.”
“Yes, we’ve talked to that woman,” Sully admitted. “She doesn’t know who cured her. She’s given us some ideas, but we’re still working on it.” He paused a beat. “Tell me what you heard about banshees not being allowed here.”
“There was some sort of spell,” Dex replied. “I don’t know the specifics — magic has never been my area of expertise — but somebody cast a spell that kept banshees out of the city. When they showed up, they were supposedly repelled within a few days.”
Sully thought of the story Ofelia had told him about fighting a banshee and getting on Ellen’s radar. “There have been a few banshees in the city since then.”
“Yeah, but not as many as you would find in another city. My theory is that those banshees are just off enough that the spell doesn’t affect them the same way it does regular banshees.”
That fit with Dora’s theory that some of the banshees were evolving, Sully internally mused.
“Think of it like shifters,” Dex continued, missing the fact that Sully had veered off into a different thought.
“If a spell is specifically pointed at wolf shifters say, it could affect fox shifters. It could affect hybrids. It just might not affect them all the same way, even though they’re really close in the genetics department. ”
It was an extremely interesting theory, and it gave Sully one more thing to think about. What if it was like the wolf and fox shifters? Stories suggested that they’d once been the same species and then split. Perhaps it was the same for the banshee they were looking for.
“Here you go.” Dex presented Sully with the cocktails in a flourish. He’d gone all out with the garnishes.
“Thank you.” Sully took the glasses and put them on a tray. “I’m going to borrow this. We’ll bring them back in the morning.”
Dex waved him off. “It’s not like we don’t know where you live.”
“Thanks. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
“I hope it helps.”
“Me, too.”
OFELIA HAD BEEN GRATEFUL FOR THE cocktail when he brought it to her.
They’d both downed them and then passed out, exhaustion claiming them quickly.
Sully was certain his sleep would be restless, but when he woke the next morning with Ofelia’s head resting on his shoulder, he realized he’d slept the entire night without moving a muscle.
“Morning,” Ofelia murmured as they both slid out of sleep together.
“Morning, baby.” He kissed the top of her head. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Better than I probably should have.”
“Why would you say that?”
Ofelia shrugged. “I feel guilty for sleeping when Angelique is running out of time.”
He made an exasperated sound. “Fe, you’re doing the best that you can. We’re doing the best that we can. Don’t make this worse than it already is.” He regretted the words the second they escaped his mouth.
Ofelia took them in stride, however. “I do that sometimes. I’m kind of a Debbie Downer. I don’t know what you see in me.” She buried her face in his chest.
He chuckled. “You have a split-personality,” he countered. “You are a Debbie Downer some of the time. There was no option of escaping that because both your parents share that tendency. You were doomed on that front.”
“Well, that’s a cheery thought,” Ofelia drawled.
He laughed harder. “You also have more hope than anybody I’ve ever known,” he said. “You get that from your father. I didn’t realize it until he was receiving treatment, but he’s an incredibly upbeat person.”
“When mental illness isn’t dragging him down,” she agreed.
“Don’t go there,” Sully warned. “He’s fine, for right now at least. Let’s focus on Angelique.” He’d filled Ofelia in on what Dex had told him the night before. She’d been as intrigued as him.
“Yeah, I like the idea that there’s a banshee in town that has evolved past the other banshees,” Ofelia admitted. “Usually, you hear about these evolutionary splits long after they’ve happened. We might be front and center for one of them.”
“We might be,” Sully agreed. “We need to figure out how to find this individual.”
“Well, I actually have an idea on that.” Ofelia propped her chin on her fist as she stared into Sully’s eyes. “When my father was running the bar, he was familiar with paranormals. He wasn’t keen on me showing signs of being one, but he welcomed them into Krewe.”
“Money is money,” Sully guessed.
“Yes, but it wasn’t just that.” Ofelia emphatically shook her head. “He wanted to learn from them, for my sake.”
“See, your dad really is a hopeful individual.” Sully leaned in and kissed the tip of her nose. “Unfortunately, your mother is as moody as they come.”
Ofelia barked out a laugh, then looked around, as if worried her mother was going to jump out of the shadows and lambast them for making fun of her. “Anyway,” she said when she’d convinced herself there was no danger surrounding them. “My father heard a lot of stories back then.”
“Do you remember him mentioning a banshee?”