Chapter Ten
“The official name is The Esteemed Order of the Removal of the Blight on Humankind. We call it The Organization. The Org, for short.”
Yikes. I’ve found that whenever an organization uses a self-referential term for respect in its title, it almost never deserves any.
“Blight on Humankind?” Margaux’s voice shook with rage. “Betty is irritatingly single-minded, occasionally sanctimonious, and often moralistic to a degree that would shame a monk, but she’s hardly a blight.”
“You’re too kind, Margaux,” I said sarcastically.
“I didn’t name the organization,” Bronwyn snapped. “Obviously, she’s not a blight.”
“You can both stop saying that word anytime now,” I said.
They mumbled, “Sorry, Betty.”
For a moment, I set aside my anger and hurt and approached things with my head instead of my heart. Bronwyn had behaved as if she were my friend from the beginning—except for the whole spying-on-me thing. If she was telling the truth, she’d even protected me.
It thoroughly annoyed me that, even after everything, I still leaned toward trusting her.
Margaux refocused on Bronwyn. “This person who threatened Betty. Who is he?”
“I only know him by one name—Miles—and it might not be real. The guy is intense. The type not just affiliated with the organization but very deep into the lore.”
Margaux looked at me. “Miles is soldier in Latin.”
Latin. Great. The official language of cranky scholars and uppity magicals. And, apparently, psychopathic demon hunters.
“So, Miles sees himself as a soldier in this esteemed order and thinks I did something to Mason? Does that mean he’s going to try to take me out? If so, I’m going to have to give him one of those vibrating restaurant pagers to let him know when it’s his turn.”
“Take him seriously, Betty,” Bronwyn said. “Mason and I’ve shielded you, but Miles still figured out what we were doing. That tells you how good he is.”
Somehow, I doubted Mason Hartman had tried hard to shield me from anything.
“When this Miles said the scorched earth, burn La Paloma and Smokethorn to the ground stuff, was he talking about an attack from him or the organization?”
“Pretty sure he means the latter. It’s how they operate.
They foment fear in paranormal groups they believe to be harboring demons through intimidation, violence, and magic.
I’ve heard stories of them razing entire towns.
” She frowned. “It’s interesting he thinks you have Mason, though.
Where does he think you’re hiding him? At your trailer park? ”
There were worse hiding spots. “Is Miles one of us? A paranormal?”
“Yeah. He’s a truthseeker.”
“He’s a human lie detector?” Margaux gave me a nervous glance. “That’s not good.”
“If he’s a truthseeker, I don’t understand why he doesn’t just walk up to me and ask where I’m keeping Mason.
” I picked up a good luck charm shaped like a four-leaf-clover that had dropped onto the floor.
Rubbed it with my thumb before returning it to the box with the others. “We could end this real fast.”
“He’s going to be cautious, because he thinks you’re a demon,” Bronwyn said.
“On a scale of one to ten, how pressing is the Miles threat?” I asked.
Her shoulders drooped. “If the pack is a hot nine, and a demon bursting out of you is a sizzling ten, I’d say Miles is a Mercury-level eleven, and the Org isn’t far behind.”
The demon bursting out of you part felt like a low blow, but I didn’t dwell on it. “So now, on top of everything else, we have to track down Mason, who may or may not be in hiding with Floyd. Out of the frying pan into the fire, right?”
“Looks that way.” Margaux shook her head at me. “Why is nothing ever simple with you?”
“Hey, it’s not like I planned this, witch. Direct your annoyance at Rachel over here.”
“Please don’t call me that.” Bronwyn seemed genuinely upset.
Tough shit. I wasn’t going to apologize. She was the liar here. The apologies needed to flow from her mouth, not mine.
“The pack is out of my area of expertise, but I can help with Mason.” She shuffled to the counter, took out a set of keys, and opened the display case, removing a tray of crystals suspended from leather strings. Beneath it was a panel, and beneath that, a small box.
“What’s this?”
Instead of answering Margaux’s question, Bronwyn opened it and showed her. “It’s a lock of his hair. For a location spell.”
“How’d you get that? I can’t think he gave it to you. The dude hates witches,” I said.
“Dude,” she repeated, and shook her head. “Mason is the least dude sort of man I’ve ever known. And to answer your question, he did give it to me.”
“Are you two in a relationship?” Margaux asked. Delicately, I thought.
“No.”
“Are you having sex?” I asked, because I had the delicacy of a rabid raccoon in a restaurant dumpster.
“No. Mason likes me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Likes you? The guy’s in love with you. He’s not shy about admitting it.”
Bronwyn blushed. “I know.”
“Do you love him back?”
“I barely know him,” she replied, a non-answer that told me more than if she’d admitted it outright. She was in love with him, but she didn’t yet trust him with her heart. That made sense. After all, they were both liars.
Speaking of…
“Tell me everything,” I said. “From the moment you first heard of this organization right up to my next breath. Fill in all the blanks. Keep in mind I dislike being lied to—you’ve already had a glimpse of how much.”
She smiled. “That was a glimpse?”
“I cannot express enough,” I said, frostily, “how much now is not the time for flippancy.”
Her smile disappeared. “Understood.”
Margaux strode up to the front door, took down the Back in Ten Minutes sign, and flipped the Closed sign instead. She made sure the door was securely locked, switched off all the lights, and ushered us into Bronwyn’s office, the one with the entrance that was spelled to be hidden.
Bronwyn plopped into the chair behind her desk. Margaux and I took the chairs in front of it and gazed expectantly at the witch we’d thought we knew.
“I was twenty-three and recently divorced,” she began.
An hour later, I was in my Mini heading back to Smokethorn via the farm roads.
I left Margaux and Bronwyn to cast a spell to find Mason.
It was going to take at least an hour of chanting, according to Margaux, and after the way I’d lost control of my magic today, I didn’t trust myself to commit to an hour of being inside my own head.
I’d played it off as cool as I could, but the truth was, the appearance of Demon Betty shook me. It was appealing, tantalizing—even addictive—to slide into nothingness and just act. To not have to pit my morality against my instincts.
And it was terrifying beyond measure.
My heart sped up, and the edges of my vision darkened. I pulled onto the ditch bank of an open irrigation canal and took some deep breaths. The water in the canal was at its highest level, and it flowed like a Zen sand garden, barely a ripple.
I pictured myself floating on its surface, and my body reacted as if I were drowning.
My stomach churned, my breath shortened, and panic overtook me in great, gasping sobs.
I opened the driver’s side door and vomited onto the dirt then yanked it shut, rested my forehead on the steering wheel, and let the tears come.
Because my brain was nothing if not unhelpful, it threw thoughts at me like a mean boy throwing rocks. Most missed, but some struck me right in the chest.
“The official name is The Esteemed Order of the Removal of the Blight on Humankind. We call it the Organization.”
“To them, you’re subhuman, not worthy of consideration.”
“We track demons.”
Bronwyn’s later words came at me rat-a-tat-tat, pummeling my head.
“Someone reported you to the Org. Someone who had access to them, and that’s information that isn’t given out freely. You’ve got an enemy in Smokethorn, Betty. Someone who knows what you are.”
“But I didn’t even know what I was,” I said aloud.
“I know you, Betty. You aren’t the sort of being I’ve tracked before.
You’re good and kind and forgiving. You have love for your friends, family—even for a taught witch you barely knew,” she’d said.
“There’s a reason I stopped reporting about you and made Mason keep quiet, too.
You’re a force for good, and we need as many of those as we can get in our world.
You’re not a demonic entity needing to be cast into Perdition. ”
Her voice faded away as the worst of the panic attack passed. I leaned back in my seat and stared at the sky through the windshield. Pictured myself as a leaf floating on the wind until I calmed.
“But here’s the thing, Bronwyn,” I said to the empty car, “I am a demonic entity.”
I uncapped a warm bottle of water, swished a drink of it, and spat it out the window. I repeated the process then dumped the rest of the water on my sick, washing what little was there away.
It was nearly three, I hadn’t eaten in hours, and my head hurt. All I wanted to do was go home and run straight into Ronan’s arms—I didn’t care if he was still angry, he could just hug me mad, damn it.
Unfortunately, this bullshit day wasn’t close to being over. I put the Mini into drive, burned a U on the dusty back road, and headed back to La Paloma.
I needed to talk to my friendly neighborhood gravedigger demon.
The day was warm, not the triple digit degrees it would reach soon, but the high nineties, for sure.
Surprisingly, I found Sexton walking the cemetery with another bag, stooping now and then to pull a weed or pluck a dead flower from a vase.
He was still wearing what I was starting to think of as his “grandpa clothes,” though today his slacks and windbreaker were khaki.
I watched him through my windshield while “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath played on KLXX. It was a welcome change from their normal fare. Sometimes you needed a little Ozzy to get through the day.