Chapter Five

Chapter Five

"What in blast are you doing?"

That voice, that horrible little voice.

My already foul mood dropped. "I'm visiting the coven. Not that it's any of your business."

My familiar, Hellcat, slunk out from one of the bedrooms and gave me a narrow look from his otherwise bright eyes. His black fur was mussed, like he'd just woken up and hadn't groomed himself yet, but was still trying to look down his nose at me.

"You cannot blame me for being shocked to see you, you strumpet layabout. I was starting to think you'd forgotten you were even a witch, what with how you've practically abandoned your duties."

Don't rise to the bait, Wanda,I told myself. Don't you do it.

"What does it matter to you, anyway?" I growled at him.

In response, Hellcat lifted one leg and started grooming the space between his toes. "Sometimes I think you've really started to believe you're a vampire."

"Well, it's either this, or the vampires try to turn me for real. So, suck it up, fur bag. I'm doing the best I can."

His head snapped around then, tail lashing against the carpet. "I see the fornicating you've been up to with your undead paramour hasn't done anything for your manners. It's a wonder even he can stand you."

Normally, I would have cast myself to the sea before I let on that one of Hellcat's many, many, many complaints actually got to me. But with how I was struggling to even plan a date, and the fact that the rest of my life seemed to be blowing up around me, well his words landed like a solid blow to the gut.

Not that I was going to let the little beast know it.

"Keep talking, you hyped-up bunny slipper," I grumbled. "That memory foam bed in your room over there?"

He paused in his grooming. "What of it?"

"It's one more word away from ending up in the dumpster."

"You wouldn't dare!"

I smiled with too many teeth. "Try me."

All his fur suddenly standing on end made Hellcat's retreat appear a little less pompous than it would have, even with his nose up in the air. But I'd take it if it bought me another hour without him sniping away in my ear. At least he'd stopped singing my mother's praises. Yep, he used to go on and on about how she was the witch to end all witches. That was until he found out that she was the reason he'd lost his first owner, my brother, who was turned into a fangface at my mother's behest. Vampires didn't have familiars, after all. Their bond didn't survive the transformation.

Something to look forward to if I ever got turned all the way, I guessed.

Still, that didn't mean that Hellcat's attitude didn't just crawl all the way up my nose when he got going. And I had enough on my plate as it was. Not to mention three cups of tea rattling around in my stomach.

I sighed and headed for the room at the end of the hall.

***

I'd heard stories and legends about the levels of the hells and the demons that spawned there. Talking to Fifi, Haven Hollow's greatest real estate agent and resident succubus, had filled me in on a few interesting details. She'd explained that there were hells of fire, and hells of ice. Hells made up of writhing bodies and too warm flesh. They were as varied in their horrors as they were in their unique little cruelties.

But there weren't just hells of ice and fire. There was another hell I'd just discovered—one made of cloying perfume, nonstop chatter, and an offensive amount of enthusiasm usually found in preschool teachers. Olga, the coven's next oldest member and resident hopeless romantic, clutched yet another piece of perfumed paper to her impressive bosom and squealed like a fourteen-year-old girl.

"And zen, ‘e took me on a valk along zee shore, and told me zat mein eyes vere like zee moonlight," she gushed, patting at the upsweep of her silver hair. "He vas alvays such a romantic, zat Dieter."

Walking along the beach? In the dark? No thanks. And, really, who named their son Dieter? Yes, coming to the coven for advice had been a very bad decision.

But back to a beach walk at night… True, my night vision had improved a whole lot in recent months, but no one ever thought about the subject of one's shoes as it pertained to the beach. What did you wear on your feet on a moonlit walk, because no way was I strolling down a public beach on my bare feet, not where there was garbage, and seaweed, and seagull poop and tar—tar you could never get off again. Ugh, just ugh.

Which meant my choices were either sandals, which was a hard and definite NO, or I went with a proper shoe, in which case the sand would erode away at them like a rock tumbler, leaving scuffs or worse. I didn't own shoes I didn't care about, so no toss-on sneakers for me to sacrifice on the altar of romance.

Thinking about footwear dragged out the memory of that girl, Jenny, and her gorgeous foot artwork she'd brought into the store. At the thought of Jenny walking the beach with those shoes on (and not sure why that image came to my mind, but it did)? Forget hexing her, I might be moved to straight up homicide. The amount of work that must have gone into every stitch, every crystal bead and gemstone, just to get chewed up by the sand? Well, that would be a crime against fashion itself. Hopefully Jenny's shoes and the beach never made one another's acquaintance.

I leaned back into my chair, trying not to look as frustrated as I felt. "That's great, Olga. But I was thinking maybe something involving a little less nature? I don't want to be finding sand in places for the next couple months."

Olga shook her head, her eyes twinkling. "You are far too young to be so vorried about zings like zat. Live a little, Vanda."

When I made a face, she relented, and started pawing through her box of love letters she'd saved over the years.

Olga was very odd for a witch. And I didn't mean how she was a natural at all forms of potion making, or even that her weird little racoon familiar, Franz, wore a tiny pair of Lederhosen. I meant that Olga, unlike any other witch I'd ever met, was something of a serial monogamist.

She tended to fall hard and fast, and latch onto men until something inevitably happened to separate them—most likely her clinginess. Regardless, she'd had torrid love affairs, and was pretty infamous in the witching world for her romances. That infamy had gotten her into enough trouble that my mother had ended up imprisoning Olga on a remote island just to keep her away from men in general who kept distracting her from her work.

In theory, I should have headed straight to Olga with any questions I had about relationships and dates, because she was the only other witch that had actually had them. But Olga was too over the top—she was all about roses and perfume and love letters and I just…. Well, I wasn't. Goddess, at the thought of Lorcan writing me a schmaltzy, gushy letter… well, I wasn't sure I'd have been able to avoid laughing out loud, and I was pretty sure the reverse was true, too. Just—cringe.

"Ooh!" Olga yanked another letter out of her treasure chest, and this one was actually tied up with red ribbon. "Vhat about ballroom dancing? You could vear a gown, and he could sweep you around zee room in a valtz, under zee crystal chandeliers vhile zee musicians played." Then she gave a huge, dreamy sigh, and I tried not to make a face.

Okay, yes, on the surface I liked dancing, and I liked reasons to buy pretty clothes and wear them, that was true. And who didn't like musicians? But first off, I wasn't sure exactly where I would take Lorcan for that kind of setting. Haven Hollow wasn't a big town, and I wasn't sure how many places had crystal chandeliers, much less dance floors and live music.

Maybe the hotel on the edge of town… That place was pretty ritzy. Since it was populated with ghosts, the live music was probably out, though. I could have asked Darla about it since she'd somehow been put in charge of the place by Death himself. But then, at the thought of asking Darla anything, I realized she'd then ask a million questions I wouldn't want to answer. In fact, I was already feeling tired just thinking about it.

It wasn't that I didn't like Darla. Sure, she was a lot, but I chalked that up to her being trapped as a ghost in the same house for a century. And after the little incident where I'd maybe, kind of, sort of thrown a hex at her when she was being particularly annoying, and had accidentally yanked her out of undeath and given her a new, living body, well, now I felt a bit responsible for her. But that didn't mean I wanted to willingly seek her out. In general, I tried to avoid Darla, not the reverse.

Okay, so the hotel was out. What was left? The Half-Moon Bar and Grill was the social center of the town, and Roy did have dancing and live music there occasionally, but that would just be another night. It wouldn't be special and it wouldn't be worthy of an anniversary. It wouldn't be what I wanted.

So, that was also out.

Dammit!

Don't give up,I told myself. You are going to win at dating.And I was going to come up with the best, most romantic anniversary date, or so help me.

Olga triumphantly tugged another letter free from the overly stuffed box and I couldn't help the groan that escaped me.

"Oh, Carl. He took me on a picnic lunch in a meadow of vildflovers," she informed me while clutching the letter to her chest and getting that annoying, faraway look people get when they're going on and on about something you have literally no interest in. "Und ve ate cakes and drank champagne and, vell, you know." She waggled her eyebrows at me.

Unfortunately, I did know. And at the thought of Olga getting it on, I clenched my fist hard enough that my nails dug into the soft skin of my palm. Then I tried very, very hard not to think about it. I just had to focus on my mission—one that wasn't getting any easier.

"Well, considering that I can't go outside in the day, and Lorcan can't eat, and I don't know where I'd even find a field of flowers in Haven Hollow, I think we're going to have to put that one in the ‘no thanks' pile."

"A shame," Olga breathed but nodded. "But zat vould make zings more difficult."

Franz let out a creepy, high-pitched laugh as he wrung his little hands together and looked like he was in the process of planning some nefarious deed.

Goddess, what I wouldn't have given for a bottle of wine right then. Maybe it would have made the conversation a little less painful, or at least made me forget it later. The image of Olga waggling her eyebrows at me was going to seriously curtail my own love life as it was.

I sighed, and let my head drop back into the overstuffed armchair.

This had definitely been a mistake.

***

"–and we managed to make it back to shore, but it was a close one."

Imani, our newest coven member, tossed her long, dark hair back over her shoulder. The beautifully done coils slid over the silk of her wrap dress as she smiled, her gaze distant. "After that, we headed for Bourbon Street, and there was this jazz band playing out on the street, all slow and sweet, and we ended up dancing down the road." She grinned, pulling herself back to the present. "Of course, I never saw him again. But it was a really good night, all the same."

I nodded, slowly, trying to dredge up any kind of response. I didn't have any words. What ended up coming out was, "That sounds nice," in the tone of voice that people use to say things like: "there were no survivors."

Listening to Imani's description of the best date she'd ever had back in New Orleans did have me pretty impressed, but even more so scared of her. Just when you thought you knew someone…

Okay, well, stripped down to the bare essentials, it seemed like dancing was a major unifying theme in fancy dates, from what I could tell from everyone I'd asked in the house thus far. And I wasn't opposed to that. Any excuse to dress up and be held in Lorcan's arms was okay with me. But… a dancing date… well, it just didn't feel like it was enough. Not for our anniversary. I wanted something special, something wow, something different—something we'd never done before. Something that would be right up Lorcan's alley. Snooping through his things hadn't helped, and asking for advice from the women in the coven hadn't helped. If anything, Olga's stories had threatened to scar me for the rest of my life.

Right—none of their advice, which had ranged from the old fashioned, to the saccharine, to the death-defying, had helped. Imani's idea of a fun date had me gripping the arms of the chair I was sitting on. And even if I'd been into wrestling alligators, I had no idea where I'd even find one in Haven Hollow.

So, why was this so hard? It was one date, for spell's sakes! And I was the High Witch of an up-and-coming coven. I'd faced down monsters and demons and my own family, but I couldn't plan a freaking date? The answer was now staring me back in the face.

Asking for advice had been a mistake. I was actually now just more frustrated, and ready to run away to a monastery if that kept me from having to listen to Olga tearfully recount another one of her bad romances.

I was just opening my mouth, trying to figure out what to say to Imani who had, after all, been trying to help, when there was a knock at the front door.

"I'll get it," I said way, way too loudly, as I shot up and out of my seat, practically running for the door. I didn't even care if it was someone selling something or trying to recruit me into a cult, they'd given me the perfect excuse to escape, and I was going to seize that lifeline with both hands.

It wasn't a salesman at the door, though. It wasn't even someone with the town council, or even a lost delivery driver. It was Taliyah Morgan, Chief of Police. And she looked as tired and frustrated as I felt.

"Taliyah," I greeted her, wondering what in the world was bringing her to the coven's door—something I didn't want to deal with, no doubt.

"Wanda," she answered.

"Did you need something?"

Taliyah blinked at me from tired, human blue eyes. She was wrapped head to toe in the glamor that kept her looking human while she did her job. Her shoulder length hair was gray streaked brown, and there were lines at the corners of her eyes, the kind people got from squinting in the sun.

Without the glamor, people would have been able to see the waist length fall of silver hair, the ice blue of her eyes, the pointed ears, and the flawless pale skin of her face. As it turned out, being the secret Queen of Winter was the best makeover out there. Taliyah was pushing fifty, but that was nothing to one of the High Sidhe, so she looked decades younger.

Taliyah gave me a narrow-eyed, suspicious look, but I didn't think much of it because that was just Taliyah—it was how she looked at everyone. Even so, I tried to tone my smile down into something less manic.

Finally, she grunted, appeased. "Yeah. There's been an incident, and I was hoping you could help me by answering some questions."

"Okay," I grumbled as I grabbed my coat and purse, figuring I was now free from the painful conversations I'd been having. But nothing with Taliyah was ever easy or fun. And going to the station? That wasn't fun either. "Well, lead the way," I said, when it appeared she wasn't making any motion to return to her cruiser.

"We don't have to go to the station," Taliyah started to say, but I ignored her, striding towards her police car instead. The truth was that there was no way in spell that I was going to let Taliyah ruin a perfectly valid excuse to get me as far away from the coven house as it was possible to be.

Not when one more story of romance was threatening to push me over the edge.