Chapter Six
EJ
He knocked, Angie called an answer, and he entered her apartment.
Angie’s place was the antithesis of his.
It was what he’d call fluffy, though not to his sister’s face.
The walls were pale greens, and the furnishings were all shades of blue and green, dozens of shades from deep azure to palest aqua to emerald and peridot.
It was like the water in the Bahamas, sunlight gleaming through the surface.
Rosemary, rooted from his mother’s everlasting rosemary plant, was potted all through the apartment, and the place smelled like winter all year round. Angie had a thing for his mother’s rosemary. There were even pots on her balcony.
The main room—kitchen, dining area, sitting room, office, magic room, with space left over for other activities his sister might think up—was full of soft afghans and plushy pillows.
Soft sofas. Soft chairs. Unstained wood accents and tables.
And there were the cats: Aurora and Borealis, named so because of their eye colors.
The mostly Manx shelter kittens had been pitiful looking when she brought them and George home.
Now they were beautiful, long-haired, long-tailed, with big ear tufts, and eyes that were weird, mixed colors: blue, amber, and green brilliance.
The cats were on her sofa, curled around Angie’s thighs, getting their floofy hair all over her.
They glared at him as if he were the enemy. For that matter, so did Angie.
He had expected her to be in bed, and that he’d be able to place her staff on the sofa, no one the wiser that he had absconded with it. No such luck. She had repositioned to the sofa.
He placed the staff on the far side of the sofa, wondering if she could tell he had tried to activate it. Doing so without permission had been unspeakably rude in witch etiquette. He dropped his BOBB bag beside it and her gaze landed on the bag for a full five seconds before she looked back at him.
Her ire grew. She knew something was up, yet she said nothing, just stared at him, which made him feel even worse about taking off with her staff.
“How about I feed you two?” EJ asked the cats.
“Kibble,” Angie said, a dangerous tone in her voice.
“Not tonight,” EJ said. From her pantry he removed foil bags of salmon. The cats stretched and dropped to the floor. “Tonight they get treats.”
He didn’t have to look to know he had his sister’s full attention. It was like being blasted with laser beams as she reacted to his clothing, gear, and attitude.
He had watched her fighting with Walter. They would talk about battle magic later.
“What happened to Pecan Protocol?” she demanded as he opened bags for the cats and dumped the contents in the proper bowls, each with the cat’s name on it.
“Walter and I are going to talk to my former girlfriend, and then to visit our client.” He put the bowls on the floor. “You, however, are still under a protective shell, per Mama.”
“You called Mama?” she demanded, shifting up straight in the bed. She instantly grabbed her head and cussed under her breath.
As children brought up in close proximity to the queen, they spoke foul language aloud only occasionally.
Coarse words were not permitted in Aunt Jane’s presence.
Also, surviving the war had ripped most expletives from everyone’s language.
There had been a saying in the war, when warriors were in a safe zone. “Fear beat fuck.”
“No,” EJ said. “But we’re under Pecan Protocol, remember?”
He sat on the edge of the sofa and eased her back against the pillows.
He checked his sister’s pulse and breathing and readjusted the healing amulets, pressing them against her.
Except for the headache and the lost time, there were no lingering signs of concussion or other injury, but he hadn’t liked her lack of cognition and her confused repetition immediately after the blast. He especially didn’t like the fact that she didn’t remember talking to Mama.
He also didn’t like the lack of healing in her left hand.
It looked like frostbite. If her life hadn’t been in danger, he would have taken her to the nearest ED, but his parents had cautioned against taking her out in public and had told him which healing amulets to use on her.
Even now, she had a line between her brows that spoke of pain.
“Ojos called the queen,” he said. “The blast set off the alarms, and Alex was ready to send the cavalry. Walter stopped him, but not before there was a massive outlay of resources and some prearranged rescue protocol was initiated.”
“Son of a witch,” she cursed, an acceptable expletive.
“Yes, I am,” EJ said, in a response that had begun when he was a child.
In witch lineages, very few male witches survived the cancers associated with males and magic, making “son of a witch” a sort of a curse.
In EJ’s case, he was the son of two witches.
As to cancers, he wasn’t out of the woods yet, but so far, he had survived the results of magic on a male’s immune system, as had his father.
“Just so you know, the parental units were helpful. They suggested this around your head for an hour.” He pulled a curved band from the BOBB bag and snapped it open.
“I’m not wearing a tiara, in bed, under house arrest,” she growled.
“Mmmm.” EJ rested the band on her head. “You’re on your sofa, not in bed, where you should be.
And this is Mama’s orders. The gems are a specialized arrangement of healing workings, for headache resulting from concussive head trauma, according to her.
It’ll also help your hearing.” He removed his hands, and she didn’t yank it off and throw it across the room like a gem-encrusted Frisbee.
“Mama said to put a sprig of rosemary under the crown part.” He bent to the closest pot of rosemary and pinched off three sprigs, tucking them under the edge of the tiara.
He didn’t tell her she looked like a woodland nymph from the cover of some old romance novel. “Better?”
Angie blew out a breath. “Yes.” But her tone was irritated, the single word reluctant.
“Good.” He didn’t tell her how his reflexes had kicked in when the blast went off, a ringing of broken bells amid the detonation. He had flown from the ice bath to the stairwell. Had found her lying, boneless, against the gym wall, behind the door.
He’d been naked. Dripping ice water. No weapons except what his voice gave him.
Frozen, immobile. Just like the dreams he’d had during the war, of being far away if his family needed him.
Of not being able to save his comrades on the battlefield.
Night terrors come to life. It had lasted only a half second, but it had been an eternity.
The warrior in him took over, evaluating. Stabilizing his sister. Assuring she had a heartbeat, an airway, no apparent broken bones. Doing what needed to be done.
Ojos had called his mother. All in seconds.
Walter had carried Ange down the stairs. Vamp-fast.
EJ had grabbed his clammy, sweaty clothes.
Within minutes of Angie being put on her bed, her own amulets against her skin, Angie had opened her eyes and managed to focus.
Fifteen minutes later, she had been able to detail everything she had seen in a lucid, linear fashion.
She claimed no doubled or blurred vision.
She was aware of person, place, thing, date, time, and who the president was, so the amulets were doing their job, except for the headache.
But her slurred speech after the explosion, and her persisting headache, were disturbing.
“What did you do with the demon?” he asked, his voice level, calm.
Angie’s eyes dipped to the staff on the sofa before she caught herself.
“It was caught on camera,” he reminded her quietly.
“Well…dang it.”
“Mmmm. Details.”
She blew out a breath. “Ojos, privacy mode.”
EJ raised his brows. Did his sister really think they would have privacy after the attack at the bar, the explosion, and probably most important, her use of battle magic? Ojos didn’t reply, and Angie didn’t notice.
“When I was a kid,” Angie said, “Aunt Jane had a weapon she called The Glob.”
“I’m aware.” The Glob had been made by Aunt Jane, from her own skinwalker magic, her shape-shifting flesh, and the energy from a massive lightning strike.
She had nearly died. She had named the weapon before she was the queen and would have been forced to give it some royal name like the Stone of Containment or the Royal Stone of Power.
Or something scientific or fic-based like the Proton Pack, from Ghostbusters.
Instead, it was The Glob. Despite her acquired queen persona, Aunt Jane had a way with words and little interest in pomp and circumstance, and she had refused to rename it.
Angie said, “The Glob holds pocket universes, and she shoves attacking magic and anything magical she wants to, really, into them.”
He felt some of the blood drain from his face. EJ had known that, but not put it together with demons. “And?”
“And…And I have a piece. It’s embedded beneath the blue tigereye on the staff.”
“Holy shit, Ange.”
“Hush. There could be another one close by, and you don’t want to die from explosive pooing.”
Cursing was out for now, except words that had no power, like hell’s hounds, or son of a witch on a switch, for everyone with any sense, as words had power to strengthen some EEB’s evil.
Succubi and incubi, especially, could—and did—use sex cursing to their advantage.
EJ had been too loose with his language, especially after a Bes had been released.
He had to check his expletives. They all did.
She returned to their discussion. “I was a kid. I took things I wanted. Pretty things.” She had the grace to look shamed.
“And I took a small piece of her Glob that I found in her jewelry case. During the war, when the military took you, I started experimenting. In case you got in trouble, and I had to come get you.”