Chapter 14
brEATHE
it’s about time that cousin and
brother figured out they’re clan, too.
— gus
Ithrow my hands up in the air. “As if this day hasn’t gone hell enough, now the rat talks!”
“Gus is NOT a rat,” chimes in Gus.
Oh, my Alpha. It wasn’t my imagination. It wasn’t a trick. Gus… he can really talk. And I think I pissed the little guy off.
I crouch low so that I can stroke his back. Since he doesn’t bite me with his little not-rat teeth, I figure he’s not that mad. “Chill, buddy. I know. You’re a wild Virginia opossum.”
He lumbers over and pats my boot. “Good cousin.”
Ah, shit. “So… you really do think I’m your cousin?”
This can’t be happening… this can’t be happening…
Gus nods. “Cousin is part of the clan.” He points at himself again. “Gus. Mother. Mother’s wolf. Gus’s wolf friend, too. Cousin.” He shuffles next to Ash and taps his shoe this time. “And Brother. Gus’s clan.”
Ash joins us on the floor, extending his ghostly hand. “Hey there.”
Gus rubs his cheek against Ash’s fingers. “Gus loves Brother.”
Same, Gus. Same.
While the three of us are having this moment on the floor, Penelope is nibbling on her thumb nail. “I’m so sorry,” Penelope blurts out. “I think I figured out what happened. I redirected the communication pathway through the nearest emotionally bonded opossum!”
I arch my eyebrow at the slightly panicky witch. “You wanna try that again in English?”
“I made the opossum talk!”
Oh. “Well, yeah. We can all see that.”
She looks miserable. “Where did he even come from? I didn’t see him.”
“Gus watches from the counter,” answers Gus. “Gus likes to be high.” He twitches his whiskers. “Gus likes to talk.”
“It won’t last,” Penelope says, like she’s grasping at straws. “It should wear off in a minute or two. When my spells backfire, they never last. We just have to get through the side effects.”
Side effects? Honey’s sidekick is talking. That’s one hell of a side effect.
“If Gus can’t talk much, then Gus will be quick.” He scurries over to Penelope, rising up and catching a fold of her skirt with his claw. “Magic lady?”
She swallows. “Yes, Gus?”
“Fix Brother, please.”
The entire room quiets at that.
Penelope glances at the space beside me where Ash has been all night—and then she shudders out a breath.
“I’ll try my best.”
By the time we get back to my apartment above the shop, Ash is looking a little more hopeful.
The morning’s shooting rattled him more than he wants to admit. I can tell. Every few minutes, his gaze drifts toward the windows like he’s expecting another bullet to come flying through the glass. And every single time he does it, his eyes land on me afterward instead of himself.
It doesn’t help that we put all our hope in Penelope arriving to break the curse, and now she doesn’t even think there is a curse.
Gus, meanwhile, has decided that being his clan-wide emotional support opossum is his full-time career now.
He rides on Ash’s shoulder while we climb the stairs, little pink paws tangled in the collar of Ash’s sweater vest while Ash absently steadies him with one translucent hand.
Penelope was right. The spell wore off after we listened to a minute of Gus explaining why Honey is the best Mother to ever mother in the history of mothers.
Now he’s back to chittering softly to Ash as I let Penelope go ahead of me while I make up the rear.
Penelope pauses halfway up the staircase, her expression tightening slightly as she glances toward Ash again. Not directly at him. She still can’t fully see him. But I don’t think it’s Ash she’s looking at. I think it’s the door leading to my apartment.
“That’s strange,” she murmurs softly.
I stop on the step behind her. “That’s never something you want to hear a witch say.”
Penelope winces. “Sorry. I just…” Her blue eyes drift toward the door again, thoughtful and worried all at once. “Now, I don’t actually see a curse on him. That hasn’t changed. But now that he’s so much closer to his body… the color around his has changed just enough to be noticeable.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
Penelope worries her lower lip between her teeth before answering carefully: “It means whatever happened to Ashton isn’t presenting the way a normal curse would.” Her fingers go back to playing with her skirt. “But I’ve seen something like this before when I’ve had to treat another shifter.”
That gets everyone’s attention.
Ash’s expression shifts instantly from cautious to hopeful. “You have?”
“You have?” I echo for his sake.
Penelope nods. “Rarely. That case also involved spirit displacement with some sort of magical contamination.” Her brow furrows slightly. “I need to examine the body.”
If that’ll help. Considering she keeps dipping into what I’m calling ‘magic’ speak, it’s probably best if she stops trying to explain something I don’t understand, and just do what Gus asked her to do and fix Ash.
Ash’s body still lies exactly where we left him in the neatly made bed in the spare room, pale and motionless on top of the blankets. Even after days of seeing it, the sight still does something to my gut every single time.
Ghost Ash stops at the foot of the bed, an unreadable expression on his face. And I get it. I do. No matter how determined he is to soldier on and look forward to the moment this is all behind him, seeing himself like this still shakes him.
Penelope moves quietly toward the bed while Gus stays at her heels, watching everything she’s doing intently.
“How was he found?” she asks.
“In a dumpster,” I answer cheekily. She already knows that, but I can’t help myself.
“I would once again like the record to show,” Ash begins, and it warms my heart that there’s a teasing note to his voice, “that I do not normally spend time in dumpsters.”
I tease right back. “You were literally inside one, Ash.”
“I was unconscious. I thought I was dead. You thought I was dead.”
I smirk at him. “Still counts.”
Penelope hides a smile while carefully examining his body and I realize that, even without hearing Ash’s half of our little back-and-forth, she probably has a good idea of what just passed between us.
“I know. What I meant was, anything unusual about how he was found?” she asks.
Being tossed in the trash seems unusual enough to me, but I doubt that’s what she means. And then, in a flash, I remember something Riordan mentioned when he said his wolves cleared the scene and recovered Ash’s body.
“There was one thing. When they pulled him out of the trash, he was missing a shoe. One of the wolves found it and put it back on his foot before they brought him here.”
Penelope stills immediately as though that’s important somehow. And then… “Which foot was it?”
I glance at Ash. My mate looks as confused as I feel. “Um. I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“It might.” Penelope tugs off one of Ash’s shoes, then the next. Leaving them on the bed, she grabs his left foot and peels off the sock.
I recoil. So does Ash otherwise I would’ve slammed right into him.
His heel is black. Totally and completely black. The discoloration spreads outward beneath his skin in thin dark veins like rot creeping through marble, all the way to his toes.
Ash stares at his own foot in horror. “What is that?”
Bracing myself, I take a deep breath, but I… I don’t smell anything. It looks rotten, but it doesn’t smell rotten, and I understand why when Penelope smiles triumphantly and says, “Magical contamination.”
My stomach has gone queasy. I put the back of my hand to my mouth, desperate not to hurl. “You know what this is?”
“I think so.” Her triumph fades as the frown returns. “I was told it was a curse. I didn’t bring any supplies for something like this. I need surgical tools. A magnifying glass so I can really see what’s in there, but that’s all back at the coven house.”
So? “Stay here,” I tell everyone. “I’ll be right back.”
So maybe my junk shop appears as downright chaos to everyone but me. It doesn’t matter. Like I’ve always said, I know exactly where everything is, and that’s why I’m heading back into the spare room less than three minutes later with everything that Penelope needs.
I place both of them on the bedspread.
Penelope gives me a curious look.
I shrug. “That’s my upgraded first aid kit, complete with a sterilized scalpel, rubbing alcohol, and tweezers.
” When everyone stares at me, like it’s weird I have that, I get a little defensive.
“What? Sometimes being a raccoon who dumpster dives means occasionally having to dig glass out of your skin. We heal from a lot, but I’m not trying to test sepsis, okay? ”
Penelope nods at the first aid kit. Her fingers reach for the compact, hovering over the metal. She doesn’t grab it, though. In fact, she’s lost a lot of color in her already pale face as she purposely doesn’t touch it.
“What… what’s this?”
I snag it, flipping it open. “It’s a mirrored compact. But, look… this side is regular mirror.” I twist it. “This side is a magnifying glass. Surgical tools and a first aid kit. We’re ready to rock and roll.”
I am. Penelope looks even more ghostly than Ash does.
She swallows roughly. “Will you hold it for me so I can see?”
Sure. I’ll do anything to help Ash. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“I am, but… if you don’t mind me asking… where did you get that mirror?”
“This? I don’t know. It was in a dumpster in town. I thought I’d buff it up and sell it. It’s got a little taste of magic to it. You sense it, right? I figured it might be worth a little something once I cleaned it up, but it works as a magnifying glass for now.”
“Yes… yes, I definitely sense it. In fact, I would like to purchase it from you, if that’s all right.”
“Penelope? You fix Ash, I’ll give it to you, free of charge.”