Chapter 4. Jenny
Jenny
I sat at the kitchen table and washed my morning pills down with a glass of orange juice. One pill for blood pressure. Another to take the edge off the arthritis. Calcium and vitamin D supplements for my bones. An estrogen supplement for the menopause. And a low dose of Prozac for anxiety.
I loved this room, with its old oak cabinets, the copper pots hanging by the stove, even the awful matching mint-green oven and refrigerator.
The large window behind the sink let in plenty of light for the spider plants I’d hung to either side.
A green glass pendant light hung over an oak table built by Temple’s great-grandfather.
The house smelled like incense, coffee, mold, and chocolate chip muffin batter. That last smell was courtesy of Temple, who was pouring the batter into pastel paper cups in three different muffin trays while he grumbled about the damage in the basement.
“The mold is dead, and I’ve bound a young water elemental to keep the groundwater away from the south wall. Phile will be here tomorrow afternoon to repair the framing.”
The name was familiar. “Didn’t I treat him for emerald ash borers last year?”
“That’s him.” He glanced at the doorway, presumably double-checking that no kids were lurking and watching.
He’d caught me up about his mistakes with Ava, too.
Once he’d confirmed we were alone, he opened the oven, slid the muffin trays inside, closed the door, and whispered, “Four twenty-five for seven minutes, then drop to three-fifty. Don’t burn them this time. ”
The oven door locked. Rather snarkily, to my ear.
“Whatever happened down there, it wasn’t an assault from outside.” He pulled up a chair. “None of the protective spells were triggered.”
“You think it was coming from inside the house?”
He turned away. “I’m ninety-nine years old.
A hundred and three if you include the years I spent trapped in a time-loop spell.
I’m the last of my family, meaning I’ve got no children or relatives to keep the homestead anchored and strong when I die.
What happened downstairs could be just the beginning.
You and Annette should think about finding a new place to live.
It might be dangerous to be here when I go. ”
“You can’t kick us out,” I said lightly. “We’re on the title, remember?”
Temple had been in bad financial shape twenty years ago, following a nasty little war with a demonic cult out of Wall Street. I’d been between jobs at the time, following an eight-month stint as an EMT for the Fresno fire department.
It was Felipe of all people who suggested moving to the East Coast. He thought a change of scenery would be good for me.
He was right, though I’d never admitted it.
He’d heard about Temple’s troubles through Council gossip.
I figured I’d rent a room for a while to help Temple with his money problems while I figured out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
When I realized just how much trouble Temple was in, I called in the big guns.
Among other things, Annette Thorne was famous for taking down a big embezzlement scheme in the Chicago Nephilim mafia.
She knew her way around ledgers and banks and all that accounting stuff.
Rumor had it she was loaded, too. I’d saved her life once when I was eighteen, taking out an incubus who’d gone full Fatal Attraction on her, so she owed me a favor.
Between Annette’s business savvy and her deep pockets, we managed to help Temple dodge bankruptcy and keep his house.
Going in as partners on a used bookstore and gift shop had come later, after we realized neither of us wanted to leave.
Despite Temple’s grumpiness at the time, he hadn’t really wanted us to go either.
Temple poked the corner of a hardback book near the edge of the table, turning it in slow circles. “Being on the title isn’t going to help if the roof collapses on your heads because I sneezed too hard.”
“I’ll pick up some antihistamines from the store. Voila, no more sneezing!”
He scowled. “You’re being deliberately obtuse.”
“We’re not leaving.” I hated problems I couldn’t fix. I’d always been better at straightforward punching and stabbing. “What about severing the connection between you and the house?”
“Bad idea. Too much load-bearing magic. Instead of this slow decline, you’d get a sudden, very nasty implosion.”
He opened the book, a first-edition hardcover of EB White’s Stuart Little.
It looked normal from the outside, but it contained far more than the author could have dreamed.
Those pages held Temple’s entire library, both magical and mundane: millions of pages squeezed into a relatively thin children’s book.
“I’ve been going through my ancestors’ journals to see how they dealt with it, but given our family’s traditional career path, very few of them died of old age. ”
“You’ll figure this out. You’ve got time. You’re in great shape for your age, and you don’t look a day over seventy-five.” I gave him a teasing grin. “If you’d let me take you to the salon to do something about that beard, I bet we could knock ten more years off.”
“Sounds about as appealing as trying to give Cerberus heartworm pills,” he grumbled. “Next you’ll drag me to some ridiculous spa so I can sit around with mud and cucumbers on my face while they soak my feet in ionized crystal water or whatever.”
I was used to his grouchiness, but this was more. He was genuinely upset and trying to hide it. “Temple—”
“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. I’m not who I used to be, Jenny. I’m fading. Hell, I can’t even trace a damn blood droplet anymore.”
“What blood droplet?”
He blinked at me. “Didn’t I tell you about that yet? Annette took it from a customer earlier this morning. Ronald or Ronnie or something. She thinks he’s our harvester-stabber.”
Eagerness to find this guy warred with my worry for Temple. “Where did the blood end up?”
He cocked a thumb at the fridge.
I retrieved the plastic bag. Inside was a slightly singed tissue with a dark red smear near the center. “Why is it burnt?”
“Side effect of one of the seven spells I cast to try to find him. They all failed.”
I looked more closely at the blood, as if I could force it to tell me who it had come from. “You couldn’t get anything at all from it?”
“Nothing useful. It’s ordinary human blood. Type O positive. Cortisol levels are a little high. It should retain a strong connection to the body it came from, but it’s like that blood has never been inside a living human being.”
“You said Annette took it from a customer, so we know that’s not the case.” I didn’t ask how she’d collected the blood. “Are there ways he could be blocking you from tracking his blood?”
His breath hissed through his teeth. “There are spells to prevent your enemies from using hair, nail clippings, blood, and so on against you,” he said slowly. “It’s not the kind of thing your typical teenager would know, but I suppose it could be one of those.”
I took out my phone and opened the app Annette had set up to connect me to the shop’s security system. I typed in my password and waited for the app to pull up the cameras. A moment later, a screen appeared showing the hall and the front door.
I could scroll from one camera feed to the next, but I had no idea how to go back to this morning’s footage. I tapped one feed and found myself staring at a blurry close-up of the front door.
Forget this. Annette and both grandkids were up front. I could hear them breathing. “Annette, how do I pull up the history from our cameras?”
I heard her exasperated sigh. “Morgan, would you please go help Aunt Jenny with her phone?”
The Employees Only door in the hall opened. Morgan appeared in the kitchen a moment later. “Hi again, Uncle Temple. Good morning, Aunt Jenny.”
“Good morning, kiddo.” I stood to hug him, then handed him my phone. “I’m trying to see a kid who came in earlier.”
Morgan nodded. “Yeah, he was creepy. I thought he was going to throw hands with Grandma.” He tapped and scrolled through the app, working his own kind of magic. He returned the phone to me a short time later and tapped the Play button.
We watched the kid move through the shop. Morgan switched feeds for me whenever he moved out of view. The audio was weak, but I heard him tell Annette his name and ask her about last night.
“Who is this jerk?” Morgan asked. “Some kind of demon or monster?”
“Temple says he’s human.” I studied Ronnie’s face and build, fixing them in my memory.
I picked up the ziplock bag, pulled out the tissue, and brought it to my nose. Temple’s spell had burnt the edges, so the strongest scent was charred paper. I tore out the piece with the blood and sniffed again.
Blood was blood. It had a metallic smell I knew far too well. But I’d watched Annette gather this drop from the doorknob. She hadn’t just wiped up the blood. She’d also gotten any sweat or skin oil Ronnie left behind. And that scent was unique.
“Can you really, like, track him from that?” asked Morgan.
“There are probably, like, too many scents on the sidewalk to, like, track him that way,” I said. Morgan rolled his eyes at my teasing. “But I’ll recognize his scent if I cross his path or if I go somewhere he’s been recently.”
“I thought you didn’t do that anymore,” said Morgan. “The Hunter thing, I mean.”
“I don’t.” I wasn’t hunting. This was just a precaution.
“Why not? You have all those goddess power-ups, and there are plenty of threats out there, right?”
I liked Morgan, but he could get nosey, especially about anything magic-related. “There are, though not as many as you probably imagine.”
“Then why aren’t you out hunting them?” Morgan pressed. “With great power comes great responsibility, right? Aren’t you responsible for protecting people?”