8. Shep

Retrieving the magical ingredients the witch needs to heal Brennan involves a ten-minute drive deep into Wilkersons suburban streets.

Meliah, I remind myself.

Her name is Meliah, and I have been hanging around Patten for too long to be calling her ‘the witch.’

We pull up outside a narrow, pale cream painted house. It’s very ordinary. I hadn’t known what to expect, but it had not been this. Again, probably because of Patten and his mutterings over the years of witches cackling over cauldrons in moldy basements.

He has very specific notions about witches, and he must have infected me with them.

“You live here?” I ask, climbing out as I take in the quiet street.

“I do,” she admits as she leads the way to the black iron gate and down a gray stone path to the front door.

“And how do you know Brennan to want to rush to his rescue?”

She pauses with her arm raised, poised to insert a key in the lock. “I belong to a local coven here. A few years ago, we had a pack of incubi settle. I hired him to get rid of them, since they were causing so much trouble here.”

“He must have done a good job for you to want to return the favor?”

She peers over her shoulder. “Come on inside. It won’t take long to gather everything we need.”

I follow her into the house, watching her closely. While I’m not as cynical as Patten is about witches, I’m not stupid either. I stay on high alert.

“Were you aware that your friend who tried to hide from me has part of a dead witch clinging to his soul?” Meliah plucks a small black jar from a wooden bookcase filled with more glass jars with wooden corks than I’ve seen in my life.

Some are filled with herbs, others dark liquids, and yet more, it’s impossible to know what they contain. A rare few have white labels on the front and the writing, a cursive script, is almost unreadable to me.

Distracted by the heaving bookcase, I wrench my eyes from it to her. “What did you say?”

Meliah is efficient in her task as she plucks a glass jar from one shelf and another from a different one. She places each into a small black velvet pouch I didn’t see her pick up. All seemingly without giving her task much thought.

“It sometimes happens. When a witch dies and she isn’t ready to pass over to the next life, a part of her clings to the nearest living thing.” After depositing a jar that looks like it contains a reddish-brown herb, she gives me an unreadable look. “Like your friend.”

“I don’t know what you…” My voice trails off when I recall the female cop who bolted from us on the highway, acting like she had seen something truly terrifying.

A witch cursed us years ago. Jade broke that curse.

Yet the cop had reacted as if we were cursed.

Not we, I correct myself. Patten. Only Patten. The cop looked at Isaiah and me, and she didn’t react at all.

“A witch cursed us,” I explain.

“And I’m assuming she paid for doing such a stupid thing with her life?” Meliah grabs another jar, this one containing a black viscous liquid, and adds it to her pouch.

“You sound critical.”

“Death curses are rarely a good idea, even for an experienced witch. They have a habit of coming back on you in unexpected ways.” Her tone is dry. “Best to save curses and dark spells for… well, never.”

“So you’re a good witch, then?” I don’t hide my doubt.

“The tools are there for anyone to make use of them. Some choose to harm, others to help. I try to be a good person. But cut me off in traffic? I’ll roll my window down and scream at you to do better. I am only human.”

“Right.” I snort a laugh.

“Once I’ve finished helping Brennan, I know a purification spell to remove the witch’s taint from your friend.”

“Go near Patten with a spell?” I shake my head. “I doubt you’d live through that experience.”

“The offer stands. But it cannot be removed any other way. She will cling to him forever, and the longer it goes on, the harder it will be to remove.” She looks at me, her amusement sliding away. “And the more danger she could do to his soul.”

I imagine telling Patten he has the soul of a dead witch clinging to him.

“Don’t mention it to him,” I say. “He will not thank you for it. Leave it with me. I’ll talk to him.”

I hadn’t thought I believed her, but I do. Meliah has nothing to gain in telling me this, even less to gain in putting herself in a position where Patten would attempt to kill her, and if she goes near him with a spell, he will try to kill her.

Which means I’ll have to think of a way to tell Patten. He trusts me, but convincing him a spell would be in his best interest is going to be a hard sell.

Hard, if not a downright impossible one.

When we get back to the house, Isaiah is standing in front of the window, peering into the street. There’s no sign of Patten.

“Where’s Patten?” I close the front door and nod at Meliah. “You can go see him.”

I needn’t have bothered telling her anything. She’s halfway across the room with her black pouch of witchy ingredients.

Isaiah lets the curtain fall. He looks pale. Paler than he did the day before, and it has to be because he hasn’t fed.

I need to talk to him about that soon.

“He went to the bar to see if he could learn anything about Jade or Atticus.”

“Alone?” I growl.

“It didn’t seem wise to leave him alone.” Isaiah nods toward Brennan’s room.

I lose a little of my anger, only because there’s no point in holding onto it. Patten is gone. I should have told him to stay put, but he knows as well as I do how dangerous Wilkerson is for us. I hadn’t thought I had needed to tell him. “When did he leave?”

“Not long after you. When he returns, I will look.”

“And will you feed while you’re out?”

He gives me an empty smile.

I lower my voice, not wanting Meliah to learn any more about us than necessary. She’s in the room with Brennan now. I can hear bottles clinking.

Meliah might have convinced me she’s able to use her witchy magic to fix whatever is poisoning Brennan. That doesn’t mean I trust her with all our secrets. “The last time you fed was one of those blood bags, and that was days ago. Why would someone steal your cooler of blood, and why aren’t you feeding any other way?”

When he doesn’t respond, I grip his shoulder and lean in close. “This isn’t me sticking my nose into your business. This is me being worried about you.”

He loses his smile. “You have no reason to worry.”

“I have no reason to worry about a vampire going on a hunger strike?”

“I’m not on a hunger strike.” He brushes my hand away and smooths the creases from the fabric.

He’s not listening to me, and I’m not about to wait until he collapses, which, with how pale he is, won’t be long.

“Isaiah. You?—”

A key slides in the front door lock, and before the door blows open, Patten is cursing. “It’s like being an alien in this place. Oh, did you bring that witch back?” His eyes dip over my shoulder as he slams the door shut. “Because if you lost her on the way, I’d be good with that.”

I frown. “She’s here to heal Brennan.”

Patten sighs sadly. “Maybe he’ll accidentally blast her with fire and we’ll have one less witch in the world.”

As he steps out of his boots, I look for any shadows or signs of a dead witch’s soul clinging to him.

“Hey!” Patten clicks his fingers in my face. “What are you doing? Did the witch curse you? Just say the word and she’s out of the window.”

“Meliah did not curse me.”

But what she said makes sense. The traffic cop only freaked out when she saw Patten. So surely, there must be something there, even if I can’t see it.

How to tell Patten that he needs to go through some kind of cleansing ritual without him believing Meliah is trying to curse him?

“Hey!”

Patten’s yell returns me to the present. He’s scrutinizing me with narrow-eyed suspicion, probably seconds away from charging into the bedroom and launching Meliah out of the window.

“I’m thinking about what comes next,” I say. “And you shouldn’t have gone out alone.”

“How else was I going to find Jade without looking for her?” he asks.

“We need a plan. Aimlessly walking the streets won’t get Jade back.”

“Jade is missing?” Meliah says from the bedroom doorway.

Patten scowls at her. “What Jade is, is none of your business. Shouldn’t you be cursing the dragon?”

Meliah merely smiles at him. “Healing. And this will probably take some time.”

Patten turns away, as if bored with her. “Well, knock yourself out. Close the door when you?—”

“Patten,” I growl.

“I’d rather pretend she isn’t here. My opinion won’t change, so feel free to stop growling anytime you want.” As Patten wanders over to the refrigerator and pulls it open, I give Meliah an apologetic smile.

“Sorry. He has a reason to mistrust witches.”

I appreciate what she’s doing for Brennan. So will Jade, if we ever find her.

Meliah backs into the room and grips the door handle, preparing to close it. “I’ll get started. Please keep interruptions to a minimum, as this will take most of the night. Even then, I don’t know if I will be successful.”

“Well, what will be will be,” Patten says as he drops into a seat at the dining table with a container of milk.

“Patten, he’s Jade’s dad.” I glare.

“That’s why I said what will be will be instead of maybe he should have done a better job of watching Jade then none of this would have happened. Including a guy in khaki shooting his ass out of the sky.” He flashes me a false smile and gulps from the container.

Sighing, I scrub a hand over my face as Patten’s words reinforce just how much he hates Brennan. We need to pull together, yet if I don’t keep both eyes open, Patten will shove Brennan or Meliah out of the window. Probably both if an opportunity presents itself.

“I’ll get started,” Meliah says, returning me to the present.

“And I’ll bring you something to eat later,” I say with no idea if we have any food in the refrigerator.

She closes the door, and I walk over to Patten at the dining table. “You were rude, Patten. She was only trying to help.”

“After the last witch cursed us for ten years?” Patten snorts. “I doubt that. Seems like she’s only helping herself.”

I cock my head, curious. “Why would you think that?”

“What woman comes running to heal some guy if she doesn’t want something in return?” he waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

“She hired him before to deal with the incubus problem the town had. She was just grateful,” I say.

“Grateful for his di…” Patten’s voice trails off when I glare at him.

Isaiah makes a soft sound of assent as he joins us at the dining table. “She seemed quite eager to shut herself in that room with Brennan.”

I swivel to face the now-closed bedroom door, frowning. “Do you think she’s hurting him?”

“I think whatever she’s doing is whatever she wants to do. Where do you think the dragon took Jade?” Patten asks.

“Firedrake,” I correct him, distracted. “Jade said they were firedrakes.”

“Dead is what he is when I get my hands on him,” Patten says.

I shrug off my doubt about Meliah. “We need to focus on finding Jade. Did you learn anything in the bar?” I ask Patten.

He shakes his head. “No one seemed eager to talk to me and no one was screaming about dragons falling out of the sky. The collector must have covered up what happened up there.”

Which reminds me of an idea I had on the drive back to the house.

“Could you go into her dream?” I ask Patten. Almeth, Patten’s dad, had offered it up as a possibility when we first arrived in Wilkerson. “Maybe we don’t need to find her at all. At least, not physically. She can tell us where she is and we can go right to her.”

I don’t trust Almeth, but I do trust Patten. If he can speak to Jade in a dream, it might be the fastest way to finding her.

Patten’s body stiffens, and he gently—too gently—places the container of milk on the table and pushes it away from him, swiping at his milk mustache with the back of his hand.

“Not to feed,” I say. Almeth slipped into Jade’s dreams to feed on her. Twice. We hadn’t even known it until after we rescued Jade and she told us about the incubus wearing Patten’s face. “Just to talk to her. If she told us where she was, we wouldn’t have to track Dominik down. We could go right to her.”

Patten leans across the table toward me, his deep blue eyes hooking mine. “Do you know how an incubus feeds?”

“I’m guessing through sex?”

Patten’s smile is an empty, mirthless thing. “Through sex. But also through slipping into a woman’s dream, taking the shape of a loved one and feeding on her that way.”

I recall what he said in the bar about his mom committing suicide. “Did Almeth do that to your mom?”

“If I did what you suggest—and don’t think I haven’t considered it—I couldn’t stop myself from feeding,” Patten says in a quiet, tense whisper. “I would be there, Jade would be there, presumably there would be a bed nearby. I wouldn’t care about asking her where she is. All I would see is an enormous platter of delicious magical essence I’d want to feed on. There is no ‘just’ slipping into her dream and asking a quick question before I zip on out of there. That is what you’re asking me to do.”

The bottom falls out of my stomach. “Shit. I didn’t?—”

“Maybe, if Jade is lucky, and I really fucking hope she is lucky, she kills me fighting me off her,” Patten cuts in. “Or she’s not lucky, and I kill her.”

Silence.

I read all the tension in his face, and I nod. “Okay, so we find her the old-fashioned way, then.”

Patten loses some of his tension and sits back in his seat, crossing his arms. “This town is the size of a skittle. We’ll find her.”

Isaiah snorts.

“Or the size of Isaiah’s?—”

“No,” I interrupt Patten, glaring at him. “I don’t need you to compare this town to Isaiah’s dick or whatever else you want to say.”

A slow smile stretches across Patten’s lips, and he winks at Isaiah. “You heard him. This town is the size?—”

“Focus,” I bark. “Wherever Jade is, we need to find her, and we need to do it before Atticus can, because you can be sure as hell he’ll be looking for her, probably more eager than he ever was after seeing what Brennan turned into.”

None of us knows if Jade can transform into a firedrake. Brennan was careful to keep all his cards close to his chest, and from all accounts, he hid a lot from Jade as well, so she might not know either.

And Dominik…

Who knows what he knows or what his endgame is.

Whatever it is, he can’t have Jade.

Patten stops smiling, and Isaiah pushes himself to his feet. “I’ll get the map the owner left. It might be helpful to know exactly how small this town is.”