Chapter Six #2
I had to hand it to them. My boys dropped whatever they were doing in the garden room and were instantly at my side. Autry eyed us from her bed in the garden room.
“Stay in the garden room,” I said. “Keep Meredith company, if she’ll let you.”
The kitten blinked sleepily. I took it as a yes.
Ronan’s wolf climbed into the back seat and the boys got into their car seat. I tossed my bag and his clothing on the front floorboard. “Where do I go?”
He shifted until he was still wolf but able to speak. “La Paloma,” he grunted. “Dusty Trails Senior Center.”
I’m playing tennis with Gladys at the senior center in La Paloma at nine.
Glacier-like chills gripped me. Ida.
I threw myself behind the wheel, tore out of the parking lot like a bat out of my grandfather’s birthplace, and took the farm roads into town. I was so focused on getting to Ida and Gladys, I didn’t even switch on the radio.
I double-parked next to a Toyota with body damage and scooped up Cecil and my bag. I set the gnome on my shoulder and the bag on my elbow. Fennel and Ronan followed us in.
Humans might be convinced to believe Ronan was simply a Guinness World Records level German Shepherd, but any paranormal would instantly recognize what they were seeing. Good thing this particular senior center catered only to paranormals.
The screaming started the second we opened the heavy security doors. The scent of sweat-soaked fur greeted us in the atrium. Wolves.
The screaming was coming from a woman to the left of us.
She appeared to be in her early twenties, so she was either an employee or a guest of one of the seniors.
Her eyes were big and stark and her brown skin dull and lifeless.
She was scared out of her mind, and Ronan’s wolf form wasn’t helping things.
I caught her eye and held a finger to my lips, shushing her. I mouthed the words, “Good guys,” and gave her a thumbs-up. Remarkably, this seemed to work, because she stopped screaming and dropped to the floor with her arms clasped tightly around herself, crying and huffing.
“Where?” I asked.
She pointed a trembling finger at another set of doors to the far right. I knew from visiting that they led to the women’s locker room.
Ronan was already through them, Fennel on his heels. Unlike me, he hadn’t needed any guidance. His wolf knew exactly where to go. I ran after them, Cecil holding onto my hair to keep himself on my shoulder.
The locker room looked empty but felt packed.
A terrible scent, one I could only describe as blood and undercooked hamburger meat, overwhelmed the room. A petite, gray-haired woman peered out of a locker to my right.
“Wolves,” she whispered. She leaned out of the locker just enough to point out where they were then quietly shut the door.
I fast-walked in the direction she’d indicated, a silent Cecil iron-gripping my shoulder.
Two aisles down, I came on a scene from a nightmare. Gladys lay unconscious on the floor in her black tennis dress, chest torn open from her throat to her abdomen. Ida crouched beside her. Ronan’s wolf had his muzzle pressed against the wound as if he were—gods above and below—feeding on her.
“Ronan,” I cried out, but he ignored me.
“Don’t worry. He’s helping,” Ida croaked. “Some kind of wolf thing.”
She used the bench beside her to pull herself to her feet. Her white tennis outfit wasn’t spattered or even splashed with blood—it was drenched. And given the injury on her right temple, some of the blood was her own.
Rage erupted in me, spewing fire into my blood and belly. This had to be Floyd’s doing. Who else would target Gladys? What possible benefit could come from attacking an elderly retired cocktail waitress on a fixed income?
He’ll pay for this.
“Betty, they used silver on her,” Ida said.
I hurriedly unzipped my bag and extracted pain and heal charms then set the bag on the floor for Fennel to paw through. Although Cecil was better at working with herbs, Fennel had his own magic. I kept some of his favorite supplies in the side pockets in case he needed them.
I slipped two of the chains over Gladys’s head, pressing the charms against an uninjured section of skin.
She didn’t wake up, but she appeared to relax slightly.
I wished I’d had the foresight to have Cecil create a heal charm keyed to her specifically, but I hadn’t thought a fast-healing wolf would need it. Still, my general-use charm would help.
The charm I handed to Ida was keyed to her and would heal minor wounds quickly. I kept it handy for when she took crazy chances, like the time she attempted to fix the electrical outlet in her bathroom herself, and last year, when she tried hanging her own Christmas lights.
She sighed in obvious relief. “That’s better.”
“Where are the wolves?” I asked in a voice too steady given the anger boiling through me.
Ronan continued to gnaw at Gladys’s wound, and I had no idea what to do about it. Ida was hurt. Gladys was dying. Ida was hurt. Hurt. Dying. Hurt. I was losing myself, my sanity. My brain was simultaneously sluggish and racing at breakneck speeds.
“Gone,” Ida replied. “They did what they came to do and left. The target was Gladys, not me. I just got in the way at the end. Wish I’d been here when it happened. I’d have—”
“Was it Floyd?” This time my voice wasn’t only steady, it was deeper. There was a quality to it I didn’t recognize. A cold darkness.
Ronan froze. His tail stiffened, ears flattened, hackles rose.
Fennel’s fur spiked all over. He growled, low and mean.
“I don’t— Betty?” Ida eyed me the way prey watches a predator. “It’s okay. I’m all right. Gladys is the one—” Her voice broke on a sob.
She was all right. Sure.
“Who was it?” Now my voice sounded like a song played at half speed.
“Two wolves. Alphas. I don’t know their names.” She held out her hands, palms up. They were stained with Gladys’s blood. “Betty, take a breath, okay? You don’t look so good.”
“Benny Tortuga and Shawn Krane,” a voice said from behind me. It was the small woman from the locker. With her were three other terrified seniors.
Another woman spoke up. “I’ve seen them at Alpha Pallás’s bar. I think they work security there.”
What a fucking coincidence.
“Godsdamn him.” I spun around and headed out of the locker room.
The women drew back, terror scrawled across their faces.
The second woman who’d spoken ducked her head and asked, “What are you?”
“That’s Betty Lennox,” the first woman said. “She’s a witch—one of the good ones.”
I had one foot through the doorway when the second woman said, “She looks more like a devil.”
Cecil resumed his incessant chittering in my ear the second I threw myself into the Mini. Ignoring him, I dialed Margaux Ramirez on my cell. “Get to the senior center as fast as you can. Gladys Jiménez was attacked by Pallás wolves. Silver injury. Ronan is with her.”
“Betty? What’s wrong with your voice?”
“Leave now and break every speed limit to get there. It’s bad.” I ended the call and tossed the phone in my cupholder, started the car, and flipped an illegal U-turn.
Cecil crawled down my arm and clipped himself into the car seat, grumbling all the way.
“I am angry,” I said.
He peered up at me, purple hat twitching.
“Cecil, there’s a reason I didn’t leave you back there with Fennel.”
The tip of his nose twitched.
“I’m going to make Floyd and his two henchmen pay. It will be messy.”
Cecil’s beard twitched. He leaned over the edge of the car seat looking as if he were hanging onto my every word. An excited chitter burped out of him.
“The sort of messy you like.”
He laughed. It was a sound that landed somewhere between a chipmunk’s chirp and a hyena’s cackle. Devious, and more than a little evil.
Good.
There was a human cop on the next corner, so I slowed for the stoplight and checked my rearview mirror.
My heart clutched in my chest. She was back again, the gray woman from this morning. Skin like ashes, eyes like the bottom of a deep well. It was, as I’d suspected, the demon version of me.
She smiled, eyes pinched, face tilted—yet my own head, eyes, and lips hadn’t moved. We were out of sync. She was a mask, but she was a heavy one, and I couldn’t seem to take her off.
Didn’t want to take her off.
I glanced up again, and this time when she smiled, I smiled with her.
The light changed, and I turned onto the next street, my brain focused entirely on my goal.
It’s time. This has gone on long enough.
The calm settling over me didn’t match my sight-stealing, pulse-jolting rage. Witch Betty was a hot-blooded mess when she was furious. Apparently, Demon Betty was something else altogether.
An ice queen. A glacier goddess of retribution.
Her wrath moved in slow serpentine twists inside me.
On the outside, reality bent in new and peculiar ways.
There were growling, guttural groans in my ears that didn’t correspond with known city noise.
Car horns sounded like fog horns; sirens sounded like screams—even the air conditioning blowing through the vents was less like a breath of air and more like a hissing steam vent.
My cell rang. Jangle-growl-jangle.
Ida’s face was on the screen.
I reached down to tap it. My finger was the color of an overcast day, the nails still black, but dramatically pointed, as if I’d had a stiletto manicure.
If I’d still had the capacity to fear anything, it would’ve been looking at my teeth.
Would they be pointed, too? Covered in blood? If so, whose? And why didn’t I care?
My hand moved in and out of focus, witch-demon-witch-demon.
“Betty,” Ronan said, sounding less like his human self and more like his wolf. He’d obviously borrowed Ida’s cell. “We have to act strategically.”
“To hell with strategy.” I sounded emotionless but resolute. “It’s time for him to die.”
“Betty, honey, I know how you feel. Gods, I might be the only person who truly does. But right now, you need to get back here. Gladys needs you. Ida needs you. I need you.”
“Margaux is on her way. She’s bringing help.”
“Don’t do this.” His voice was like steel and carried the slightest edge of his wolf. “You can’t be sure he’s even there. And if he is, he’ll be expecting you to react. You know he wants you dead. Don’t make it easy for him.”
I glanced at my wavering reflection in the driver’s side mirror. Witch-demon-witch-demon. “Got to be honest with you, Ronan. I don’t think killing me is going to be easy.”
Gods, I was calm. It was like someone had slipped me something. My anger sat on the back burner, simmering in its pot. It was there, it was active, but it wasn’t controlling me.
Or was it?
“Whatever has taken you over, I know you can fight it. You’re the strongest, most badass person I know. You can fight this.” Ronan’s voice was a strange mixture of firm and beseeching, and it crawled under the cold shell of my demonic side and tickled at my humanity.
“He needs to die,” I said, suddenly unsure.
“You’re right. He does. And we’re going to take the bastard down, but not like this.”
Ida made clucking noises in the background. It was obvious she wanted her phone back.
“Gladys needs my help,” he said. “I love you, Betty Lennox.”
My apathy lessened, and I stifled a sob at the pain his words had evoked. “I love you, Ronan Williams.”
Ida came on the line. “Bestie, what in Hades’s hindquarters do you think you’re doing? You’ve got us all worried.”
“I warned him, Ida,” I said, the numb feeling returning. “I told Floyd if he came for any of my people, I’d make him regret it. He thinks I’m bluffing. I’m going to show him I’m not.”
“You’re going to show him? Is it you? Because you stormed out of here looking like Bloody Mary’s first cousin.”
“It’s me.” Sort of.
My friend’s voice went granite hard. “Look, I don’t know why you abandoned us, but you need to get back here. You need to protect us.”
Abandoned? She thinks I abandoned her?
“I sent Margaux.”
“We need you. What if they’re not done?” Her voice went high and thready. Scared. “Who will protect us if they come back?”
“Ronan—”
“Ronan is a wolf. He’s as susceptible to silver as Gladys. Get back here and do your job, best friend. Keep me safe.”
She ended the call.
I pulled into the lot behind Floyd’s bar and stared at the small window that led into his office bathroom.
It would be so easy to lob a magical grenade through the glass and burn the building, and everyone inside it, to the ground.
Cecil kept at least three different types of incendiary spells in his hat, which I knew because Fennel had warned me about it.
You abandoned us…
Who will protect us if they come back?
Get back here and do your job, best friend.
I was being a bad friend.
The apathy drained away, and I came back to myself with a painful jerk. “Sorry, Cecil. No explosions after all.” I’d shifted the car into drive when Cecil made a loud, screeching noise.
He held up a finger, signaling me to wait, then rolled down the window and jumped out of the car.
“Get back here. I’ve already wasted enough time. I need to get—”
He was gone.
There was nothing for it. I had to wait for him. He was my partner.
Two minutes passed. It felt like two years.
“Damn it, Cecil.” I put the Mini in park and cut the engine. Reached for the door handle.
WHOOSH!
Mardi Gras fire shot up the side of Floyd’s bar. Purple, green, and gold flames engulfed the entire rear side of the building. It was scary and beautiful and something about it soothed my soul.
Cecil was back in the car in seconds, snickering to himself. His white beard was singed, and his nose was bright red, but he looked happier than I’d seen him in weeks. I restarted the car, and we fist-bumped once he was buckled into his seat.
I reversed out of the parking lot and took off for the senior center. As I drove, I glanced down at the hands gripping the steering wheel. Pale brown skin, short nails, chipped black polish, planetary earth symbol tattoo on my inner wrist. Mine.
I glanced in the mirror. My normal face peered back at me.
Bloody Betty was gone.
Cecil’s magic firebomb wasn’t nearly the revenge I’d craved, but it had apparently been enough to appease the demon in me.