Chapter Fourteen
“When’s the convocation?” Ida asked.
“Wednesday, just before midnight,” I said.
She ticked the days off on her fingers. “Counting today, that’s only six days away. Timeline like that can’t be good.”
My bestie was coming in strong with the understatements tonight.
She, Fennel, Cecil, Autry, Gladys, Trini Alvarado, and I were on Gladys’s front porch drinking water, wine, and tea and commiserating.
Cecil chilled on the arm of Gladys’s wicker chair, Autry snoozed on Trini’s lap, and Ida and I sat side by side on a small wicker loveseat.
She’d left Mandrake Meredith at home. Guess she didn’t want to risk her screaming at me again.
Fennel lapped water from a stainless-steel bowl on the porch. He used to only accept water from a Limoges teacup in the garden room, but park tenants had started leaving bowls out for him on their porches, some with crushed ice, and he was less finicky about the container these days.
“MEOW.”
“Well, I know,” Ida said, glaring at the cat. “I’m just filling the empty air with an observation. Don’t bite my head off.”
Like me, Ida had grown close enough to Fennel to understand some of his meows. It wasn’t a direct feline-to-English situation, but he was excellent at adding in contextual tail flicks and ear bends to get his idea across.
“It’s okay.” I slid my arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “I don’t know how to react, either. We’re all on the edge.”
“Do you really think he’d kill his own daughter just to thwart his son?” Trini’s slim fingers danced over Autry’s furry head.
Gladys, Ida, and I all replied, “Yes.”
“He’s what some call an ‘old school alpha.’ One of those macho man types that got away with a lot of bullshit because we tended to blame women for men’s bad behavior back in the day. Women even did it to each other. Internalized misogyny and all that garbage.” Gladys shook her head.
“Some women still do that,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, they’re called ‘pick-mes’ on the internet,” Ida said, once again way ahead of me on the social media front.
“Well, Alpha Pallás would do it because pack alphas like him don’t value women.
They think our only uses are as currency and to make more wolves,” Gladys grumbled.
“I was engaged to a wolf like that forty-two years ago. He threw a fit when I told him I wasn’t taking his name, but I wasn’t giving up my identity for anyone.
We broke up when I wouldn’t change my mind, and he’s been making some other woman miserable for four decades now. ”
“Bunch of BS, if you ask me,” Trini said. “And typical.”
I knew very little about Trini’s late husband, but Beau once told me the day they’d stuck his uncle’s corpse in the dirt was the first moment of peace she’d had in thirty-eight years.
“Not typical for Ronan,” I said.
“No,” Trini shook her head. “Not Ronan. Or my sobrino Beau.”
“There are lots of good ones out there,” Ida said, “but Floyd isn’t one of them.”
“Speaking of, where is Ronan? The pub?” Trini asked.
“No, he shut the business down for now. He’s called on every shifter he trusts to hunt for Rory,” I said. “He’s out there, too, trying to catch her scent.”
Gladys scowled down at herself. “I wish this old body would heal faster so I could be out there helping. I owed the boss my life before all this. Now, I owe him even more.”
“I’m sure he understands,” Ida said. “Best that you stay here and heal.”
Trini eyed me. “You look like a woman with a plan.”
“Not sure if it’s a good plan, but I do have something up my sleeve.
To that end, I gave Margaux Ramirez permission to enter the property and we’re meeting in the garden room in about,” I looked at my phone, “twenty minutes to try a couple of divinations. Cecil, Fennel, I’m going to need you there. ”
Fennel nodded. Cecil raised a pudgy little fist then let it drop back by his side. Had Gladys given him some boysenberry wine tonight? He seemed way too uninterested in our conversation. Normally, he loved to be in the thick of drama.
“Isn’t Bronwyn helping?” Gladys asked. “She was a godsend when those wolves tore me up.”
“No,” I said, and immediately changed the subject.
Ten minutes later, I said goodnight to the group. Ida walked me to the garden room on her way home to check on Meredith. Fennel and Cecil brought up the rear.
“You don’t trust Bronwyn at all anymore?” Ida asked.
“I’m feeling burned, and it’s not a good idea for me to perform magic around someone that I’m upset with right now. Not with my dark side looming.”
“You’re worried about Demon Betty hurting her?”
“She’s weirdly protective of me.”
“Like me.” The moonlight illuminated Ida’s bright grin.
My first smile in hours appeared and disappeared. “She’s also very protective of you and the boys. Like me.”
“That’s nice.”
“She is anything but nice.”
Ida patted my arm and left.
A glimmering purple light spilling through the doorway and windows told me Margaux was already at work inside.
I motioned for Fennel to follow. Not Cecil, because he was already part of the deal.
He’d flung himself over the cat’s back before we left Gladys’s place and was hanging there, eyes closed, feet dangling, head lolling.
“We’re going to need a sobering charm.”
“Meow,” Fennel agreed.
Cecil belched.
“What’s up with him lately? Is the pressure of living with me getting to him?”
“ME-ow.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I wasn’t asking about you, Fennel, I was asking about Cecil. Oh, hello, Margaux.”
The witch had transformed from Snow White’s evil queen to gothic hippie in black skinny jeans and button-down blouse.
She’d kicked off her sandals, and her toenails were painted an unexpectedly cheery shade of pastel green.
Even the severe bun was gone. Her black hair was loosely French-braided, the silver strands down in front to frame her face.
Though the woman was only a decade older than me, tonight she reminded me uncomfortably of my mom.
“Wondered when you’d finally get here,” she replied.
She’d pushed aside my chaise lounge and drawn a circle in rosemary-infused chalk on the floor.
The stars were out in full force tonight, freckled light shining through the corrugated polycarbonate ceiling.
Even the purple light Margaux was using to see the circle couldn’t outshine their luminescence.
“Star stuff,” I said.
“Hmm?” Margaux wiped her hands on her jeans and picked up a fresh chalk stub. She drew a complicated glyph in a corner of the circle.
“You know that Carl Sagan quote? Mom liked it,” I said. “I was looking at the sky and thinking about her, and it popped into my mind.”
“We’re made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself,” she said without looking up. “Lila preferred the way he said in his TV show because she liked the word cosmos better than universe. Thought it sounded better.”
I wasn’t surprised she’d taught Margaux the quote.
Mom had had a way of lovingly strong-arming people into her world, making them fall in love with the things she liked.
Especially music. You could be a diehard metalhead, but a few hours with her would have you humming along to “Muskrat Love” by Captain and Tennille.
“I meant to ask you earlier—do you have any idea where Floyd might’ve gotten hold of a spell that could hide him from security cameras?”
She shrugged. “Travel witch? You’d know better than I do what sorts of things your kind stocks. Either that, or he had someone in my late coven do it before he killed them. Hard to say for certain. I can only assure you it wasn’t me. Now be quiet and let me finish this in peace.”
I peered over her shoulder at the symbol she was drawing with wide and thin swooping whorls but didn’t ask any other questions.
Instead, I tipped my head back and stared at the sky some more.
The cool room, the cosmos above, and the scratching sound of the chalk against the unglazed Mexican tile comforted and calmed me.
Ten minutes later, she sat back on her haunches and surveyed her work. “I don’t know if this will work, but it’s worth a try. It won’t hurt anything.”
“Where’d you find the spell?”
“My family grimoire.” She dusted chalk off her hands. “I should tell you I asked Bronwyn’s advice on which of three spells to use. She thought my first choice was safest, but felt this one was strongest. She always accuses me of playing it too safe.”
“So you let our resident turncoat change your mind?”
“Yes, because I don’t believe she’s a turncoat, as you put it. If anything, I’d say she was a traitor to the organization that originally sent her here—because of her feelings for you.”
It annoyed me to hear her say that because she had a point, and I wasn’t ready to be over my anger with Bronwyn.
“She was right, of course. It was my choice to play it safe with the spell to track down Mason today, and it was inadequate.”
I’d gotten the news via a text from Bronwyn while at Ronan’s. I was disappointed it hadn’t worked, but tracing and tracking spells were difficult and magic wasn’t an exact science.
“Spells fail all the time, Margaux,” I said, “and you can’t be sure the problem was your choice, either. It could’ve just as easily been a break in the intention, or Bronwyn’s negative energy, or Floyd somehow blocking you.”
“Regardless, we’re down to a millimeter of hair from Mason—it was all we managed to salvage.”
“Okay then. What do you need from me?”
“Something of Aurora’s, a pile of your soil, and your magic,” she replied.
I extracted a paper-wrapped bundle from my pocket—a rainbow butterfly hair clip Rory had left at Ronan’s. He’d offered to mail the plastic clip to her, but she told him she had plenty more. I was deeply glad he’d thrown it in a drawer instead of the trash.
“There’s a hair in there,” I said, cradling the clip in my palm. “About half an inch long.”
Her eyes lit up. She pointed to one of the larger chalk whorls. “Perfect. Set it here with Mason’s.”