Chapter 18 #2
Beyond them, it appeared Cecil had taken care of his assassin.
Cecil’s purple hat lay beside a pile of gray ashes on the sidewalk.
“What just happened?” I looked at Fennel. “Did you do that?”
A flash of spotted fur scrolled past so fast I couldn’t fix my gaze on it. It sped by again. Once more. On the third passing, the fur stopped inside the alcove.
My mouth fell open. It was a leopard. A large one. A large leopard with a lot of blood on its front paws.
“Th-thank you,” I said, because it seemed like the right thing to say to someone who’d just saved your life. I followed up this lesson in eloquence with: “Do we, uh, know each other?”
The big cat chuffed.
It occurred to me that I knew exactly one leopard shifter in La Paloma. I cast around for his last name. What had Dr. Marrakchi called him? “Joshua? Joshua Tyler? Is that you?”
He made a chirpy purring sound and nodded.
Behind us, Fennel threw open the door to Wicked. I went to the car to fetch Cecil and his hat and we all headed inside. Fennel, Leopard Joshua, and I went inside, anyway.
Cecil hung back. He pulled three spell bags out of his hat and dropped one on each body before dashing inside the store. There was a muffled whomp-whomp-whomp and the bodies turned to gray dust.
“You’ve been working on that one.”
His nose wrinkled. He nodded and shoved his hat onto his head.
“Can you do something about the blood on the windows?”
He shrugged, headed back outside.
Bronwyn’s cell phone was at half battery. It was same model I had, and the battery life was awful. She hadn’t been gone longer than a couple hours at most. There were calls from Margaux and me on it, some from other numbers. The last call she’d answered was from Mason yesterday at ten p.m.
I immediately checked in with Margaux, leaving out the confrontation with The Org. It was a distraction neither of us needed. If The Org had taken her, Middleman hadn’t seemed to have been aware of it.
“It appears she left for work as usual. You found her phone in the aisle, so she obviously made it to Wicked.” She sighed. “I’m going to perform a tracking spell. I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”
“You don’t need me there to help?”
“No. I have access to your magic through the coven. I also have access to Bronwyn’s. Our bond might make locating her easier. It might not.”
On that cheery note, she ended the call.
I wanted to scream with frustration. Instead, I peered down at the leopard who was seated beside Fennel, both cats with their tails around their forepaws. “Need some clothes?”
A couple minutes later, Joshua came around the corner wearing a pair of sweatpants a size too small for him and a T-shirt emblazoned with the Wicked store logo.
I’d gotten a pain charm from Cecil to replace the one I’d given Joshua in Dr. Marrakchi’s office, and the shifter put it on.
He looked tired, but better. More alert; less desperate.
“Thanks. I’m going to go look for the other pain charm. It’s probably in the parking lot. When I saw you were in trouble, I went back there to shift and ruined my clothes.”
I gestured to the cremains by the front door. “How did you do that to them?”
“Practice,” he said. “Before I was shot, I was my group’s second. Head of security for an Alpha of over fifteen hundred shifters. I’ve always been fast.”
“Fast is one word for it. Deadly is another.”
“Yeah. If you’re wondering about the technique, I severed their spines through the backs of their necks with my claws. That’s not something I do often. Only when there’s no alternative. Please know I’ve never done anything like that to get drugs. Never.”
“I believe you, Joshua,” I said.
He gestured toward the street. “The third alpha let me use the pack trails to let off some steam. I was on my way back to the motel when I saw you needed some help.”
“Was Ronan there with you?”
“Not with me. He and your second took a few wolves out. Guess some young ones were causing problems—brawling, stuff like that. Kids needed to let off some steam, you know?”
No, I didn’t know. I might be able to protect the wolves from blackmail, give them work, and establish medical care, maybe even mediate the occasional domestic issue, but I couldn’t take care of their wolves. I wasn’t a shifter.
And to be perfectly honest, I was glad. Being a part-demon witch was tough enough to handle. I couldn’t hand Ronan the pack soon enough.
“They’re both in wolf form?” That would explain why they hadn’t answered their phones, especially when they believed my happy ass was safe at the park.
“Yeah. They said they’d be there all morning—are you okay?”
A shock of fear-pain punched hard, and I doubled over with my arms wrapped around my abdomen. Bronwyn.
“I’m okay,” I managed when I was able to straighten up. “My partners and I’ll drop you off. You can’t walk back to the motel dressed like that. I’ll make sure someone brings you some clothes, too.”
“I’ve got clothes. Someone from the pack dropped off a duffel bag for me. Two pairs of running shoes, some sweatpants, and some nice clothes, too.”
“Ronan?”
“Nope. He called to ask what he could bring me the day after I got the duffel, and when I thanked him, he said it wasn’t his doing. We thought it was you.”
I shook my head. “I should have, but I got distracted by way of an arrow to the shoulder. Long story. Tell me, the running shoes, what brand were they?”
“Adidas, why?”
Mason, you grumpy old softy.
We locked up Wicked, dropped off Joshua, and the boys and I headed toward Bronwyn’s house. I was out of ideas and figured I might as well help with the spell.
My cell rang halfway there, and I answered it automatically.
“Hello, Betty Lennox, it’s your worst fucking nightmare,” a male voice whispered.
The whisper hadn’t helped hide his identity. I’d have recognized his distinctive rage anywhere. “Hello, Biscuit Grotto. That’s Alpha Betty to you.”
“I will never call you alpha.”
“You know,” I said, with the tone of a woman who’d just popped a stick of gum into her mouth. “I had kind of picked up on some reticence on your part. Why do you hate women so much, Biscuit? Was Mommy mean to you?”
His fury was palpable over the line. “I’m going to eat this witch slowly, piece by piece, and make her watch. She’ll be alive right up until I crush her heart between my teeth.”
Rage boiled through me.
“Ooo, I felt that through the bonds, Witch Betty. You’re faking that cool girl act. You should be scared instead of pissed off, but I can wait to see the fear in your eyes.” His laugh was the stuff of which nightmares were made. “If you want the bitch to live, come and take her place.”
The same bonds that had told Brock I was angry told me that he was dead serious. And holding onto his sanity by a thread.
“Texted you the address.” My phone vibrated against its clip on the air vent. “You’d better get here fast, and you’d better be alone. If I even suspect you called anyone, she’s dead.”
“Oh, goody. It’s in East Pluto. Even better, it’s on the south side of Dominic the scary-ass ghoul’s cemetery.” I pulled over and dropped my head onto the steering wheel. “I didn’t even know there was a house back there.”
Breathe. Focus. For Bronwyn’s sake, I had to stay in control.
“All right.” I straightened, entered the address into my map app, and clipped the phone back onto the dash.
“Here’s what we know and don’t know. Beeble Gumbo wants me dead.
He’s a coward, so he definitely has another wolf or two—or more—at this meeting place.
They’ll attack me the second I appear. Does that sound right? ”
Fennel meowed in agreement.
“We also know it’s pretty much a given that he’s managed to grab Bronwyn since he knew she was missing. She must be unconscious, otherwise he’d be dead.” Unconscious or worse, but I wasn’t going to speak those words into the universe. “That woman has forgotten more spells than I ever learned.”