Chapter Nineteen #2
“Look, you don’t have worries from the rats.
I’ve communicated to them what’s going on, and they’ve scattered.
But we’re not the only shifters in town.
There’s a pack of coyotes ten miles outside Smokethorn, there’s a reptile group on the other side of La Paloma, and there’s the buzzards.
Their residences are harder to pinpoint, since the wake lives all over, but Pallás’s wolves managed to hit a bird in East Pluto, along with an unaffiliated rabbit shifter. Both are dead.”
All the blood drained out of my head, and I sat down hard on the top porch step. “Do you have a way to contact the other groups who’ve been attacked?”
“Ronan is already talking to the reptiles. The coyote alpha leader contacted me after the wolves hit a couple of their people in La Paloma. They’re on standby, but aren’t exactly standing down, meaning they haven’t ruled out retaliation.
The buzzards are more complicated—I was only able to speak with their third alpha.
The bird they killed was the wake leader’s goddaughter.
He’s out for blood, and as long as it tastes like wolf, he doesn’t care if it’s from a beta or alpha. ”
There wasn’t much to say after that, so we ended the call. I was two steps into the house with Ida when my cell rang again. It was Ronan.
“Two of his alphas went after my workers. Burned down Karen’s house.” His voice was like the bottom of the ocean, deep and cold. That, and his sharp-edged, declarative sentences led me to believe he was at least seventy-five percent wolf.
“Is she all right? I was just talking to Alpha Lydia.”
“She’s good. Just happened. Alerted Alpha Vincent before calling you. You’re healed?”
“Yes. I’m sorry it took so long.”
He grunted a response that I couldn’t decipher. “Convocation is bullshit. He’s not going to wait until Wednesday.”
“I pushed him too far,” I said.
“No, this was too intricate. He planned this shit ahead of time. If anything, what you did this morning might’ve slowed him down.
” He cursed. “Should’ve known he wouldn’t play by pack rules.
Proved it by killing Charlie Hannigan. Trey.
Attacking Gladys. Kidnapping Rory. Now Karen.
” His voice wavered ever so slightly. “He’s coming to the Siete Saguaros next. ”
That’d been my thought, too. “The gloves are off. The blackmail I have on him is worthless, so I don’t have a sword of Damocles to hang over his head.”
His voice smoothed out, became more articulate, more human.
“Its greatest value was in keeping his murder of Zuri from Rory, and there’s no point keeping that pretense up.
Even the pictures showing him using silver on his own people won’t matter to his alphas.
They already know, and it’s not a deal breaker. They applaud the brutality.”
It was infuriating that I’d had all that information on Floyd and the only thing he’d been worried about was a short, low-contrast video sent to me anonymously that I’d only hinted to him about, because I couldn’t show him the actual footage.
“You think Rory knows Floyd killed her mother?"
“Maybe not knows, but you can’t tell me a person as smart as she is didn’t have doubts over the years. And now that Floyd has proven he’ll hurt her to keep his power…”
“She knows he’s capable of anything,” I finished.
“Yes. If she’s still…” He faltered.
Alive. My heart broke at the flash of real pain in his voice.
When he spoke again, he was back in brusque mode. “Supercharge, or whatever you call it, your protection spell on the park. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“But you need to find—”
“Focus on the spell.” It wasn’t an alpha command, but it was damn close. “The Siete Saguaro is your priority.”
He ended the call like that, leaving me feeling lectured to and hopelessly sad for him, Rory, and the shifters Floyd had dragged into this war.
I showered and dressed in jeans, a snug black tee, and sneakers. My black pumps might be collecting cobwebs in the closet, but my favorite red lipstick and high-end mascara were doing double duty today. It felt a little silly, putting on makeup while the world around me crumbled. I did it anyway.
Demon Betty stared at me from the other side of the mirror, like a ghoulish Lewis Carroll character. She’d been with me since I’d come out of the earth but hadn’t tried to take over. It was as if she was insecure about her place now that the witch was back.
More.
“More, what? Lipstick?”
The demon nodded.
I was so stunned that she’d made the request I smoothed on another layer. Not that I needed an excuse to put on more lipstick, but I’d take one if it was offered. I smiled to myself, and, for a moment, remembered what it felt like to be a normal woman in a normal bathroom living a normal life.
Then I caught my reflection in the mirror. Demon Betty smiled at me, showing two rows of pointed teeth, and I was forcibly brought back into the present.
I headed into the kitchen where I powered down a peanut butter sandwich with a glass of mint iced tea and checked in with Bronwyn. Mason was still out. No surprise there. His injuries hadn’t just been serious—they’d been grievous.
Because Ronan had told me to, I walked the park, though I knew the protection spell didn’t need supercharging.
It was holding better than ever since the rebirth of the saguaros.
Red’s roots were a fundamental part of the spell, and they were healthy and strong, something I’d personally witnessed when they’d wrapped around my neck this morning.
No, my protection spell hadn’t failed. My magic wasn’t weak, either. It was as powerful as ever—more than I’d expected. I could’ve kicked myself for believing otherwise.
I was inspecting Violet’s roots when Trini Alvarado came around the corner.
Ordinarily, she was a lean sinewy woman with a permanent scowl and a braid that reached her belt.
Her thin arms were always adorned with the silver and turquoise jewelry she crafted to help fund the retirement her abusive husband had robbed her of.
Every woman in the park had some of Trini’s pieces.
I had two bracelets, a necklace, and some earrings, and was thinking of hiring her to help Cecil and me with charms—if we ever got to the other side of the current madness.
Tonight, she was in hybrid form. Two short, curved horns stuck out of her head, and her jaw was elongated. Coarse hairs grew between the strands of her softer, white hair. Autry was perched atop Trini’s head, between the horns. The tiny Bombay meowed a hello, her copper eyes wide and alert.
Whenever I’d seen Trini’s bighorn sheep before, she’d been completely in animal form. Although Ronan made it look as easy as changing clothes, shifting to hybrid wasn’t a simple thing for most shifters to do—particularly weaker alphas, like Trini.
“Be sure to stay on this side of the spell,” I said, after giving her the quick and dirty version of what had happened today. “And out of sight of the road.”
“Don’t worry, Betty. I’m not taking any chances. I was just going around the park, making sure everyone’s okay. Ida’s fine, and Gladys has the witch and wolf with her, so she’s okay. The Brittons are on vacation in Rosarito, and Maria is as bitchy as always. She threatened to sue you again.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered.
Trini chuckled then abruptly sobered. “We’re going to be all right, aren’t we?”
I looked at her, an eighty-six-year-old shifter with a lifetime of hurt behind her bitter smile, and said the only thing I could.
“Of course we are.” I reached up and scritched Autry between the ears. “Sweet girl.”
“Good. Don’t you worry about this one.” She pointed at her head. “I’ll take care of her until all this passes. She fits in real good with my others. Seems to like it at my place, too.”
They headed to Trini’s home, and I wended back toward mine.
I steeled myself to enter the garden room. Guilt squeezed my chest like a vise, but I had to go in. It was time to clean up so I could start the process of rebuilding what I’d lost.
The boys were already there—Fennel dusting his tail over a pile of dead leaves, using his magic to compost them into loamy soil, and Cecil delicately gathering a collection of seeds from what was left of our plants.
He’d laid them out on his workstation as if he were arranging bassinets in a nursery.
“I failed you both,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Meow.” Fennel composted another pile.
Cecil gave the broom and dustpan by my workstation a pointed look and continued with his work.
Their way of saying, “We’ll deal with us later. There’s work to do now.”
We worked for an hour, clearing away the worst of the damage. Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, the demon-grown belladonna was the only plant that had survived unscathed.
“Figures Sexton’s plant would be the one to make it.” I swept the dead leaves from the pots surrounding it into a pile, keeping the poisonous plant in my peripheral. It wasn’t only surviving amidst the decay in the room—the damned thing was flourishing.
I propped the broom against the wall beside the belladonna and stormed to the front of the garden room, where I halted at my worktable and stared into the kintsugi mirror hanging crookedly on a nail.
The reflection showed Fennel and Cecil behind me and over my shoulder.
The guys stopped what they were doing and watched me, curiosity in their gazes.
“Demon Betty, I need to talk to you.” To me. I need to talk to me.
Seconds ticked by. A minute.
“Show your face, please.” My face. Show my face.
Slowly she—I—bled into existence in the mirror. Her—my, our—eyes were wide, the irises black and gray with a burnt orange center, like bits of smoldering coal. It was the most alive I’d seen them.
“Are you still hiding memories from me? Like you did this morning?”
She—I—didn’t move.
Beneath the demon’s black-and-orange eyes were eyes that flashed from golden brown to glittering silver. The earth witch—me, I—was present and accounted for.
“You had better start talking, because—” I stopped myself from lashing out. Giving into my anger was what had gotten me into trouble last night.
“I’m sorry.” I stared at the soil lines in the once-shattered mirror. Sighed. “Look, I need to know everything you know. Please. I know you care. I’ve seen the way you protect me and mine.”
Not me and mine. Us and ours.
Us and ours, the earth witch agreed, her voice grounding and a touch sympathetic.
“Us and ours,” I said.
Fennel strolled over and sat on the floor beside me, wrapping his tail around my ankle. His way of offering support.
“My grandfather put the dying wolf on Ida’s steps, didn’t he?”
Yes. The wolves left him on the street. They weren’t strong enough to breach your protection spell. For a sliver of a second, she seemed ashamed. I hadn’t thought demons could feel shame. None of the ones I’d ever dealt with had possessed the capacity.
Because she’s not some random demon. She’s me. The amount was the issue. Exactly how much of her was demon and how much of her was me? We weren’t entirely one, yet neither were we separate.
He said we would die if I didn’t take over. I believed him.
Curse words filtered through my brain, stopping short of my mouth. Instead, I bit my lip and fumed. He’d manipulated me. I was angry, but unsurprised. Since coming out of the soil, I'd been slowly putting the truth of his betrayal together, piece by piece, like the world's shittiest puzzle.
“He knew I’d figure it out. In fact, he wanted me to figure it out, didn’t he?”
I stared at my reflection. Three Bettys stared back in each repaired section of mirror. All different. All me.
All nodding.
“Give me all my memories.” I moved over to the biggest unbroken section of mirror, aligning all three faces. “Show me everything.”