29. Staid

twenty-nine

“Look at this dude.” Milla flicked the edge of her phone, nudging it closer to Julie. “How much Botox does a man need?”

Julie cocked her head, winding a red curl around her finger and feigning deep thought. “I don’t know, he’s kinda cute if you narrow your eyes.”

“Eww.” Milla leaned away from her.

“Or if you like Ken dolls.” Julie grinned at her, eyes twinkling. “At least they’re non-threatening. You know.” She straightened and flattened her hand, waving it in front of her navel. “Because they’re smooth down there.”

“Oh. My. Goddess .” Milla cackled and swept her phone away, turning off the interview she’d found with the CEO of Erlich Industries, Stefan Holfstaedter, aka her new landlord.

She needed this. Easy laughter, cruel mockery of a billionaire she would never meet. Normalcy .

After the casting range, she’d had the misfortune of riding home with Tobias and demanded to be dropped off at the store.

“Diego needs my help.”

“Lou will want to debrief.” His blue eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. Because obviously she refused to sit in the front seat. Let Rai take that one for the team. Which she had, playing on her phone and utterly oblivious to the bat-out-of-hell driving.

“Lou can suck my big toe. I did what she told me to do; I tended my demesne”—which she had, in the most terrifying way possible. What had made her think to spool up a hex like Dread Fire? Even Ezra had warned against using it, and Morgen had only let her practice the theory and sigils without stepping into her Way. Nine rings; maybe she should have dispelled the hex as Tobias demanded.—“Now I get to do what I want. That was the deal.”

“That was not the deal.” He adjusted his grip on the wheel, a warning that he was about to engage in some reckless driving. Milla pulled out her phone, hunkering down in the seat and staring pointedly at the screen. He had taken that as the signal it was: the conversation was over.

She tapped from app to app, finally opening the E.R.I.E. and waving it over Rai, playing with the scan function until Tobias dropped her off in front of the store, muttering something about the afternoon. Milla hadn’t listened, and now she was here, relentlessly mocking a perfectly styled corporate mogul to stave off the burgeoning hangover and exhaustion.

“Have you heard from your current property manager?’ Julie asked as Milla pocketed her phone.

“Nothing yet,” she said. “It’s only been a day; I’ll bother him again tomorrow.”

“I don’t understand how this is legal.” She shook her head. “Don’t they have to wait until the end of the lease terms or whatever?”

“This is Florida.” Milla waggled her fingers. “A lawless land.”

Julie pinched her lips in a smile as she laughed quietly. “Just seems unfair.” She nodded at the countertop where Milla’s phone had been. “It’s not like he needs the money or anything.”

“I’m sure if we asked Stefan Holfstaedter, he would be happy to regale us with the generous girth of his portfolio.”

At that, Julie outright laughed and made her way to the ICYMI display. Now down to a handful of racks and a séancetable Milla had repurposed as a display, the remains of Julie’s inventory and the Sanderson stash from Hattiesburg churned steady sales. Even working the store part-time, Julie constantly restocked the piles and draped new dresses and tunics on the racks.

Milla flexed her fingers at the memory of the leggings’ greasy feel. Lou had re-bound her Way before they left the casting range, meaning all Milla could do was stare at the hideous clothing and daydream about removing the glamour. Until then, they made sales, which went toward keeping Southern Gothic right where it was.

“You know,” Julie said after a moment. Her back was turned, face hidden behind a mass of red curls, but Milla knew the suggestion she was about to make.

“No, Julie.”

“I’m just saying.” She turned and put her hands up. “If you took my consignment off, you’d make more money, and that could help you keep—”

“Absolutely not.” She slapped her hands on the counter. “Out of the question.”

“But—”

“Not until we handle the credit card debt,” Milla said, too harshly, if the blood rushing to Julie’s cheeks was anything to judge by. “Shit, hey, no. Julie, I’m sorry, I just—I feel partially responsible for that whole mess.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said in a voice too small for her personality. “I’m the one who got suckered, right? No more sorries.”

“I got suckered, too.”— More than you can imagine .—“We’re helping each other out, okay? The lease isn’t your fault, and it’s not your responsibility to help me figure it out. If anything, even with the percentage that goes to you, those leggings are doing more to keep the doors open than my crap.” She gestured to the rest of her store to demonstrate the point. Her occult collection sold about as glacially as it always had, but too much of the inventory had been sitting there for months.

At least the inventory she had procured. Diego’s collection, on the other hand, could barely be kept in stock.

Julie scanned the shelves, again lingering on the ventriloquists’ dummies above the register. She shuddered and sent Milla a big, blue-eyed look of reproach. “If you think so.”

“I know so.” And she did—this, at least. ICYMI had been a disaster for everyone involved, and the Loa had nearly ruined everything Milla held dear, but numbers, sales, and budgets were easy. They could get by, if only just, and Julie didn’t need to know that Milla had stopped paying herself. “It’ll all work out in the end,” she said. “It has to.”

Jangling bells kept Julie from arguing. Milla looked over, wrinkling her nose as Tobias stepped in. He nodded to Milla, scanning the store and halting midstep when he saw Julie gaping at him and clutching neon lycra to her chest.

“Oh wow,” she said, lowering her arms slowly. “Wow, they make y’all tall.”

“Y’all?” Tobias quirked an eyebrow, his mouth lifting in a smile.

“W—” She stopped abruptly. Her shock turned to panic, and she glanced at Milla and then back at Toby. “Um, Europeans?”

A tiny, disbelieving laugh left Tobias. He shook his head, still smiling at her, and Julie’s cheeks crawled pink.

Milla darted her gaze from her friend to her guard and shuddered. Ew. “Did you need something?”

Tobias’s smile fled, and he stared at Milla as if he’d just realized she was there. “Is Diego in?”

“He’s in the back.” She jerked her chin. “I think. The door’s been shut since you dropped me off. Why?”

“You are needed at the duplex,” he said, erasing any suggestion of the soft smile he’d sent Julie. “Both of you.”

“Ugh.” Milla dropped her head back and rolled her eyes. “It’s been like two hours. Is she serious?”

“Deadly.”

They heard the yelling through the door—a full-on blowout coming from the back of the duplex. Darkly’s side, thank the Goddess, but Milla would have to smudge her half twice over just to get the bad vibes out.

Tobias muttered something under his breath, trying the knob and pushing the door open when it proved to be unlocked. Milla widened her eyes at Diego, moving them side to side to evoke a sense of, “What the fuck is happening.”

He responded with a pantomime of a grimace, tucking his chin and half-shrugged to reply, “I have no idea, but it is awkward .”

They followed Tobias in, stopping abruptly to avoid running into his back. He’d stopped a few steps into the middle of the hall, and Cyrus, Donmar, and Rai huddled in the front room. Their whispers fell off when they saw the witches in the hallway, and Rai pressed a finger to her lips, shushing them as Darkly erupted.

“It’s bad enough you’ve got her on the team; I’ll nae have her drinking that shite.”

“Right,” Lou sneered. “You’d rather keep rotting whenever she touches you, then?”

“That’s nae—”

“Or rather, if she touches you.”

Cyrus and Donmar each sucked in a breath, and Rai dropped her forehead into the crook of her hand.

Diego squeezed around Tobias, heading straight for Rai and whisper-hissing, “What is happening?”

“I made her tea,” Rai answered through clenched teeth, jogging her head at Milla. “And it set him off.”

“What kind of tea?” Milla asked.

“A restorative,” she said. “I thought you might be tired after this morning and working your store.”

“Goddess.” Lou, apparently, was not done. “You’d likely prefer to have your dick fall off, wouldn’t you. Some filthy kink you picked up from a—

“Dinnae.” His voice dropped to a chilling low. “Dinnae talk about her like she’s—”

“Like she’s what, Keir? Another pathetic desecrant who made moon eyes at you? This is precisely why you were on probation for so long.” Feet stomped across the linoleum, and a cupboard door slammed. “You think too much with your cock and not with that self-proclaimed clever mind of yours.”

“Are we sure this is about the tea?” Donmar whispered.

“That’s nae fair.”

“What’s not fair is how you can’t see that I’m trying to keep you safe,” she retorted. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, yet you are determined”—a cup slammed against the counter—“to find fault.”

“If you wanted to keep me safe, you’d never have brought her on the team.” Darkly backed into view, putting space between himself and his sister. He’d showered since that morning and donned a pair of gray joggers and a white V-neck. The glasses were back, his feet bare, and the outside fingers on his right hand were wrapped in tape. “You’d let me—” His shoulders sagged, the fighting wind falling out of his sails. “You’d …”

“All of this has been for you.” Lou followed her brother across the kitchen, dropping her voice into a threatening calm. She had also changed and, in place of the exercise gear, wore Ponte pants, a pale blue cashmere blouse, and tan Oxfords. “From the first day, all I have done has been for you. To keep you from being cleaved, to keep my baby brother safe.”

His throat bobbed, but he held his sister’s glare. “Am nae a baby anymore, Lou.”

“No.” She spun around, throwing her hand over her shoulder. “You’re a bloody fool who runs headlong into the most dangerous thing he sees.” She stalked out of view and then lobbed, “What did you expect me to do?”

“Not slap a bleeding Soul Bind on my Death Witch, for starters.”

Every witch in the front room gasped, and Milla glared.

“Rai,” she said, drawing out the vowels. “That tea. It won’t knock me out?” Rai shook her head, eyes wide and lips parted in a tiny o. Milla nodded. “Good. Fuck this shit.”

She stalked around the corduroy couch, stormed into the kitchen, and located the cup and kettle on the counter. Darkly made a choking sound, and Lou had the good grace to look surprised as Milla filled the cup, spun, and looked them both in the eye as she downed the boiling concoction.

It scalded on the way down, but she refused to break. Her eyes watered, her entire chest felt hot, and she braced herself for the pain and stomach cramps. The deadening in her legs.

Instead, a cold suffused her body, crawling from her stomach outwards until the lingering headache and the pains in her joints were overwhelmed. Like she’d dipped her entire body in an ice bath.

Her eyes dropped to the teacup, snagging on the dregs swept against the side in the shape of a cross. Or was it a dagger? Milla narrowed her gaze, turning the cup and trying to read the conflicting meanings. Suffering and sacrifice? Or a warning of an enemy nearby?

“At least one of you has sense,” Lou said. She swept the teacup from Milla’s hands and dropped it into a pot of water soaking in the sink. “If you’re finished?”

“Aye.” He pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses. “I suppose we are.”

“Josh and Tammy were in Tallahassee a month ago,” Diego told the room. He stood before the window, addressing the witches with a confidence new to Milla. Ordinarily soft-spoken, except with her, Diego was a witch who deferred and kept his head down. But something had changed in him while she was gone. He met the eyes of Lou’s coven, answering their questions and arguing his point when pressed. It made him larger, somehow. More solid.

She loved seeing him command a room with his knowledge and cutting down criticisms with his no-nonsense sass. Still, she would have liked to be there to witness him growing comfortable in his skin and modernity.

“They will be back again this weekend to attend a campout arranged by the local coven.”

“Did he give any reason why?” asked Lou.

“Part of the preparations for Beltane,” he explained. His attention slid to Milla perched on the couch’s armrest, where she had landed after being unable to sit still in a metal folding chair. Or against the wall. Or on the floor. Whatever was in the tea she’d chugged had soothed her headache and filled her with a need to fidget. Currently, she sat with an ankle propped on her knee, jogging it up and down so intensely that Tobias kept sending glares her way in a silent request to stop. “Aparentemente, the Witch of the Demesne has concerns about a neighboring territory and invited cults from around Florida to help him charge Tallahassee.”

“What is his Way?” Lou asked. Diego shook his head, and Cyrus’s keyboard clacked in the ensuing silence.

“Hippocromantic,” he said after a brief moment. Lou chewed on that, and right as she opened her mouth with another question, Cyrus said, “Three of the six missing witches have been hippocromantics.”

Donmar let out a low whistle while Lou dropped her gaze to the floor, darting it side to side as she thought. “Your source,” she said after a moment, “can he be trusted? Cultists are notoriously fickle.”

“I’ll say,” Milla snorted, covering her mouth and nose with a hand too late. Diego frowned at her and angled himself toward Lou. It stung. Why wouldn’t it sting? He was her roommate, her tío, yet he’d distanced himself every minute she had been home, and now this?

“Sí.” Diego nodded. “Every interaction I have had with Josh has led me to believe he can be trusted.” He hesitated, angling his head and wavering a hand in the air. “He is out for himself, and his loyalty lies with his cult, but his guidance has never steered me wrong.” A faint smile flickered across Diego’s face, the response to some joke or a fond memory. “Only, be careful how you phrase your questions. He has an aversion to offering extra detail.”

“Staid or Fae?” Darkly asked. He’d kept to a corner of the room, half-shrouding himself in shadow, which was wildly unfair. At any point, he could fall into the Neitherworld and leave all this awkwardness behind, while Milla was Soulbound and itching from the inside out. His question was a good one, however. Though Fae were uncommon since the gates closed, a few were rumored to wander the British Isles and Scandinavia. Mostly, they could pass as mortals but were notoriously cagey about introductions and giving straight answers.

“Staid,” Diego answered. His brows pinched, and he pushed his mouth to the side. “And old. Whatever magick made him a cultist has him aging like a witch. He predates Morgen in Key West.”

“That’s impossible,” Milla blurted.

Diego sent her a bland look and lifted one shoulder, letting it fall. “I am only sharing what I know.”

At that, the chasm between them widened. Milla leaned back on the armrest, stunned by the impassable distance and coldness in his tone. She knit her fingers together and stared at her knee.

“What about the chicken egg?” Donmar asked.

“Come again?” Lou addressed her husband.

“The chicken egg the witchling spoke of.” He gestured to Milla with a half-curled fist, and only then did she notice his swollen fingers and the abrasions on his knuckles.

“Chicken or the egg,” Darkly clarified. He danced the vape pen across his fingers, drawing attention to his right hand and the tape on his ring finger and pinky. “Which came first.”

“Considering the cultists have been preparing for this event in Tallahassee for weeks”—she sent a smile to Diego, hoping it would bridge the gap, even if only a little—“it would insinuate the cult comes first.”

“But they were invited by the Witch of the Demesne,” Tobias said. “What history do we have of him?”

“Not much.” Cyrus opened the laptop on his knees, scanning a web page. “He has held the demesne for a decade and inherited it from his great uncle.”

“So a standard succession.” Lou crossed her arms and studied the ceiling for a moment. “Where are they meeting?”

“San Luis Mission Park,” Diego replied. Cyrus’s hands flew over the keys, and with a few brief gestures, a map came to life on Darkly’s television.

“A little far from a demesne’s heart for an empowered ritual,” Rai noted. Milla scanned the roads and freeways, half-listening as she continued. “The witches and cultists will talk if we attend and make our presence known.” She looked at Lou. “We risk blowing our cover if this is a run-of-the-mill cultist gathering.”

“It is a gamble,” Lou agreed. “And with the location being so far from the demesne’s center, I am inclined to agree. Perhaps I could send Cyrus to—”

“No.” Milla stood and approached the screen. “The missions in Florida predate modern city limits. Even ours is a half mile north of Tolomato.” She named the cemetery just off the border of the Colonial Quarter, recognized by the local witch population as the center of modern St. Augustine.

Silence filled the space at her back, and after a long moment, Milla twisted around to find Lou’s coven staring at her.

“Care to explain?” asked Lou.

“Our mission, Nombre de Dios, where the first Thanksgiving mass was celebrated, is outside the old city walls.” She looked to Diego, who nodded with a faint, supportive smile while the rest held vacant, albeit patient expressions. Bolstered by his approval, minor as it was, she continued. “Right, so none of you had to build one out of sugar cubes in Junior High. Okay, the missions were established by Spanish colonizers to convert the indigenous population of the Americas to Catholicism.”

“Load of rot.” Rai sneered.

“Pretty much. But they were cultural and commercial hubs of early settlements and the coastal ones were basically determined by the tides. Look.” Milla spun around and grabbed Cyrus’s laptop, swiping the map to St. Augustine and pointing to where the mission and the Shrine of Our Lady La Leche stood. “Think about tides, river flows, and the time of year. These guys landed in St. Augustine in, what, August?”

“September,” Diego answered. Milla waited, letting him work through the memories and pull up the knowledge she sought—that, at least, they still had—the easy, near-immediate understanding of the point the other was trying to make. “It was a new moon.”

“High tides, see?” She pointed to the river and the sand bars. “And the flow of the Matanzas would have pushed them inland, forcing a landfall here.” Her finger jabbed the screen right where the Great Cross perched on a jut of land over the riverfront. “When the tide receded, their ships would have been stranded, forcing the Spaniards to head south”—she tapped the screen at St. Augustine and Castillo de San Marcos—“before properly settling.” With a few swipes at the laptop, Tallahassee reappeared on the screen. “I’d be willing to bet that downtown Tallahassee was a swamp or a river plain five hundred years ago, and this mission was the original heart of the demesne.”

“Westridge,” Darkly read the name of a neighborhood on the map. “Griffin Heights, Holly Hills.” He pointed his vape pen at Lou. “It makes sense, and an old sanctified space would be prime ground for a mass ritual.”

“When was it built?” Donmar pushed from the wall and gripped the back of the sofa, peering over Rai’s shoulder.

“1656,” she read from her phone. “One of over one hundred built by Spanish settlers. And the principal village of the westernmost administration of Spanish West Florida.”

“A place of old power, then.” Donmar lifted his eyes to Lou. “The native magick in the demesne alone would be enough to charge a ritual Forbidden and Foule. And this is before accounting for the cult.”

“Each previous ritual occurred in a similar area, except the Mabon rite in Refugio.” Tobias scratched his cheek, eyes narrowed in thought.

“Right, that one was an outlier,” said Lou. “Near a Catholic church, correct?”

Milla rolled her eyes, forever unimpressed with European centrism. “Refugio, Texas, near a Catholic church?” A few quick taps and the map re-centered. “Across the street from Mission River Park . Please.”

Darkly snorted from his shadows. “She’s got you there.”

“Then what is the connection between Hattiesburg, Savannah, and Valdosta?” Diego posed. “If we are correct, Tallahassee is a return to form. But the most recent three…”

“Valdosta had a mission,” said Milla.

“How on earth can you know that?” Lou eyed her from head-to-toe and Darkly chuckled.

“Spanish and European History.” He ran a hand down his face, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “With a focus on Spanish Colonial History in the New World. I’ll be Horned God-damned.”

“Thank you.” Milla curtsied.

“What is that?” Lou cocked her head at her brother, by-passing Milla altogether, which, rude.

“It’s what I studied in college,” she answered. “And Hattiesburg had a Loa.” Darkly’s amusement fell away while the other witches shared looks. “What? Anaisa worked on the huns there for months before coming to St. Augustine, and we just had this whole thing about magick clinging to people or whatever.” She wafted the back of her hand at Darkly.

“And Savannah?” Lou pressed.

An uneasy quiet fell as each witch pondered her question. And it was a good question. From what Milla had learned, the most recent rituals were hasty, not following any particular cadence or aligning with any sabbat. A prickle began at her temples, and the room blurred as she unfocused her eyes and thought. Her tea came from Savannah, and she had visited the city several times with Ezra. It was an old city, one of the oldest in the southeast, but as far as she knew, Savannah did not have a mission.

“Even without knowing why Savannah was chosen,” Cyrus spoke first, “five of the six locations can be directly tied to a place of old power. Perhaps the age of the city was enough for the rogue witches to try their ritual there?” He glanced around the room, and when no one argued, he added, “It is the best lead we have.”

“It’s the only lead we have.” Lou sighed, scrubbing her face with her hand. “You’re already proving your worth, Ludmilla.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means were it not for Diego’s connections and your bizarre knowledge of Spanish Colonialism, we might have overlooked Tallahassee altogether.”

“Huh.” Milla set Cyrus’s laptop down, afraid she’d drop the technology out of shock. “When you mentioned my unique skillset, I figured you meant my Way.”

Lou scoffed and smiled. “Turns out what we needed was a Floridian Witch.”