26—No Such Thing
Bonhi put the cuff in her pocket but kept the piece of lightning sand in her hand.
She followed Mama Soline outside, her fingers threaded through Dallas’.
Music floated down the street from somewhere close by, and boozy people walked every which way.
Night was falling, but Bonhi could see an opulent Rolls Royce idling at the curb in front of the shop.
The driver got out and nodded to Mama Soline.
He was tall and dark-skinned, wearing a double-breasted black suit, with black shoes and white gloves.
He wore sunglasses, even though it was almost dark, and chin-length locs framed his face.
He went around to the passenger side and opened the door for Mama Soline, speaking to her briefly, then he came back around, his eyes on Dallas.
Dallas approached him, about to speak. The man bared his teeth and flicked his strangely long and forked tongue out of his mouth. Bonhi gasped, shocked. Dallas took a step back. The man got in the car and drove away.
Bonhi grabbed for Dallas. “His tongue!”
Dallas shuddered. “It was like a snake tongue. Why do people do that to themselves?”
Bonhi held him close and searched his face, whispering, “He wasn’t, you know, like a snake shifter or something?”
Dallas shook his head. “There’s no such thing.”
Bonhi huffed out a breath. “Oh, thank goodness.”
Dallas took her hand. “At least I don’t think there is. He scented human, anyway. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
The urgency Dallas had felt when seeing the images faded, leaving him feeling like they had time to get the key. Nothing bad was going to happen right at that moment.
Bonhi ate chicken parmesan, while Dallas demolished a bread bowl of seafood gumbo.
They spoke little, both of them focused on filling their bellies.
They’d gotten back to the hotel quickly and placed an order at the hotel restaurant before they stopped briefly at their room so Bonnie could grab her laptop.
When they returned, their food was waiting at an outdoor table at the edge of the garden where they could see the sky. Torches surrounded them.
Bonhi checked to be sure she still had Dallas’ cuff in one pocket and the magic trinket in the other.
She finished her food and pulled her laptop in front of her, first checking the tentative court docket for the next day and day after.
There was nothing on either that had anything to do with her, not even Vernon’s.
Next, she checked for messages from her private investigator and found nothing, which bothered her.
She’d expected to hear from him by now. She sent him a check-in message.
Next, she typed a progress email to Vernon, telling him the private investigator should have pictures soon, and there was no hearing scheduled yet, but if it did happen, the earliest it could be would be 1 p.m. the day after tomorrow.
Dallas got up and grabbed a notepad and pen from the hostess desk. He sat back down and started writing while Bonhi was typing. After a moment she looked over to see he’d filled the notepad. She read the first line and realized he was writing down what’d happened at Mama Soline’s shop.
Dallas picked up his phone and called Aven, putting it on speakerphone.
“Pspspspsps,” Aven answered.
Bonhi looked at Dallas curiously. He rolled his eyes, then leaned close to the phone and spoke softly so the other diners couldn’t overhear.
“Skree, you’re on speakerphone. We found her. She’s ancient, but she glows white. I don’t think she’s a switch, but she did say she had witch blood. Maybe she’s got switch blood, and that’s what the white glow means.”
“Makes sense,” Aven said. “Your mom must’ve had switch blood for Dakota to end up a switch.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dallas said. “Listen.” He looked at Bonhi, then asked. “Is there such thing as snake shifters?”
Aven said, “Never seen one.”
“…Okay, but that wasn’t a no.”
“Put it this way. I’ve never seen one, nor do I think they exist.”
Bonhi and Dallas both exchanged a look.
“Did you see one?” Aven asked.
“No, no,” Dallas said, meeting Bonhi’s eyes and winking at her. “It was just a guy with a weird tongue. I thought you would say ‘no’ off the bat, that’s the only reason I even asked.”
Their waitress came.
“I’ll call you back, man.” Dallas hung up the phone.
They ordered one dessert to share and the waitress left.
Dallas poised his pen over the paper. “What did you see when I touched the carving?” he asked.
“I saw a woman wearing leather clothing from two hundred years ago. She had the cuff.”
“That actually happened,” he said, urgency in his voice. “Maze and I were in the forest meeting with Thorn a while back and that’s how I got the cuff in the first place. At the time, I couldn’t understand her, but in Mama Soline’s shop, she said, “You are the Scout.”
“I heard that,” Bonhi said, her fingers on his arm, her face close to his.
“Her name’s Warrior Woman. She’s a myth or something. I don’t know much about her, but she’s a ghost or a switch or a switch ghost. I don’t know.”
“She looked real.”
“She did to me, too, until I saw her poof away in dark pink light.”
“She glowed?”
“You didn’t see it?”
Bonhi shook her head.
“Yeah, she glowed.”
Dallas leaned forward and caught her lips in a sweet kiss. She smiled at him as he pulled away, saying, “Mmmmm,” then, “Did you see anything else?”
“No.”
Dallas rubbed his scruff, his eyes far off. “Jameson has a title in ‘The Cause.’ It’s ‘The Keeper.’”
“Is there a Scout?”
Dallas shook his head. "I don’t know. I’m new.
I’ve only been in Nantahala for a couple weeks and Jameson and I…
” He kissed her again, then said, “We’ve been butting heads since I got here.
Let’s say there is a ‘scout’ role in ‘The Cause’ and I was picked for it by…
” He looked up at the sky. “By Fate, or destiny, or whatever picks these things… Why me?”
Bonhi shrugged. “Why not you? You’re amazing.”
Dallas grinned and looked down, making Bonhi smile and say, “You keep surprising me with how smart and resourceful you are, not to mention strong and sexy.”
He met her eyes. “You think I’m sexy?”
She laughed, smiling broadly. “You don’t know you’re sexy?”
He shrugged. “No. I mean… women used to notice me, before…”
Bonhi touched his cheek. “They still notice you. It’s you who isn’t noticing them.”
He met her eyes. “I only see you.”
It was her turn to look at the table. She flushed and looked back, saying, “Good.”
He took her hand to his lips and kissed the knuckles.
Bonhi saw something on the paper he’d written that caught her eye.
‘A cabin surrounded by trees.’
She read the rest of the list.
‘Snakeskin, bear, bird on fire, red eyes.’
“What’s this?” she asked.
He wrote two more things: ‘Bonhi, Dakota.’ He pointed at the list. “I saw these images whirling in the lights at Mama Soline’s. They seemed to mean something about the key we have to find.”
“An actual key?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I only know the vampires are looking for something, and ‘The Cause’ has to find it first, or we’re toast.”
Bonhi stared at Dallas and looked at the list. “I have a case ongoing right now that involves a cabin in the woods,” she said. “I can’t tell you about it because of confidentiality, but… what if it’s related?”
Dallas stared at her and she couldn’t read the look in his eyes.
“Have you ever heard of fated mates?” he asked, his voice low and gritty.
Her breath caught in her throat. “I mean, sure, in fairy tales.”
He touched her cheek and drew his hand to her chin, making her shiver. “It’s real,” he said. “Aven and Dakota are fated—a shifter and a switch paired up by destiny.”
Bonhi touched his hand. “Meaning what? That we’re meant to be together?”
Dallas shrugged and kissed her softly. “I could believe it.”
“But do you want it?” Bonhi asked, her throat thick with emotion.
Dallas caressed her cheek and stared into her eyes, saying, “I do.”
Bonhi smiled softly as tingles danced across her scalp and body at Dallas’ admission. Did she want it, too? She wanted Dallas, she knew that…. but… forever? She inclined her head and Dallas leaned in for a kiss—
A red rose wrapped in paper skimmed Bonhi’s hair and she pulled back. A skinny 11- or 12-year-old kid with short blond hair stood there, his clothes and face dirty, his hair stuck up every which way. He held a dozen roses in one arm and waved one rose at Dallas with the other.
“Buy a rose and you get lucky tonight,” the kid said.
Bonhi hid a laugh. Dallas leaned back in his chair and appraised the kid.
“You and me need to have a talk, man to man, about how to be respectful to women,” he told the kid, who just grinned and waved the rose.
Dallas stood, saying, “Excuse me, please,” to Bonhi. She nodded and smiled at him.
He walked to a quiet corner of the garden, waving that the kid should follow.
Bonhi watched them, her smile growing bigger as Dallas put his hand on the kids shoulder and crouched to talk to him eye to eye.
The kid nodded, maybe listening, maybe not, but when Dallas pulled out his wallet and handed over a bill, a smile broke on the kid’s face.
He handed over every single rose and disappeared into the garden.
Dallas came back, thirteen roses in his hands. He laid them on the table, saying, “I think he learned his lesson.”
Bonhi laughed and picked up a rose, her eyes on this man.
He was too good to be true.