Chapter 7

Chapter

Seven

" E verything all right, Betty?"

Ronan's gaze burned into me. I glanced up and caught a flash of his wolf in his eyes. Had he overheard my conversation? Was that even a question? Of course, he'd heard it. He was a wolf.

"It appears my lunch date's been postponed." I tossed some money on the table, including a tip for Gladys. "Be back in a couple hours."

"You look a little pale. You sure you're okay?"

Well, I nearly passed out saving a giant carnivorous plant, after actually passing out last night, after banishing a demon to Limbo, but other than that…

"I'm fine," I said.

Ronan leaned his forearms on the bar and eyed me with an intensity that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I countered his stare with a you-couldn't-handle-this-much-heat-with-two-potholders-and-a-pair-of-crucible-tongs look, and he seemed to snap back to himself.

"I await your return with bated breath." He again toasted me with his coffee mug.

"See ya later, Betty," Gladys called.

Water bottle in hand, I exited Ronan's Pub and jumped into the orange Mini. I needed to get home to check on the Siete Saguaros' protection spell. If this client had been able to enter the park to spy on me, the spell was weakening. I'd have to bump up the schedule again. Instead of every four months, I'd be renewing it every three.

Great. I already couldn't afford the spell.

But I couldn't afford not to do it, either.

The Siete Saguaros wasn't just a senior mobile home park. It was a place for elder paranormals to exist safely. Mom's idea to start the place had come after a retired shifter client of hers had been murdered in her home by the pack she'd run away from years before. She'd wanted to protect people like her client. I'd thought it was strange that a Lennox witch would choose to tie herself down to one place in such a way.

But Mom had been unpredictable like that.

At the time, I'd appreciated her staying in one spot because it meant I could attend a real high school instead of homeschooling. A failed experiment. I'd stuck out like Wednesday Addams at a Jesuit Catholic school—and not in a cool way.

I parked the Mini and walked the short path into the Siete Saguaros. There was only one entry point, and it was beside my trailer. To get in, you needed a key. All residents had them, including me. My "key" was a flat, pink stone I'd found in the gravel lot by my tire a few months ago. It wasn't anything special—at least, not until I infused it with magic and made it special.

I took the stone out of my pocket and dropped it behind the spell's outer barrier, by the mailboxes near my Airstream. Because I was the park owner, it would eventually allow me entrance, but I'd feel the spell if the stone wasn't on me, the same way I'd felt the spell at Ronan's Pub today—with a pulling sensation.

I let the air out of my lungs and walked through the barrier. Turned around and did it again.

A third time.

The spell was up and working. Good news.

After retrieving my key from the mailbox and dropping my things off at my trailer, I headed toward the garden room. I needed to let Fennel and Cecil know to watch their step. Although, I second-guessed telling Cecil. He was already paranoid about strangers. This might push him over the edge into being openly hostile toward people he knew, too.

Best just to tell Fennel and let him keep an eye on the gnome.

I stopped twenty feet from the garden room door, at the spot where the biggest saguaro in the park, Red, had once grown. He'd been a majestic nineteen feet tall with two massive arms, one pointed up, the other pointed down.

Mom had named the cactuses the colors of the rainbow, and they'd died in order—Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. Except for Red. He'd been the first saguaro to sprout, and the last to wither.

The day he died came back to me in technicolor glimpses.

Hands bloodied, nails broken.

Furious digging, burying myself beneath the saguaro, sending my life force into the taproot.

Ida and two of my tenants, digging me out three days later, when I was near death and too weak to fight them anymore.

Crying for a week straight, in terrible pain, unable to eat or sleep.

"Red is dead. He's gone. She's gone. They're all gone."

Ida holding my hand, bringing me protein shakes, silently letting me know she was there, sharing my pain, loving me.

I snapped out of the moment and swiped the tears off my cheeks. Old memories were getting the best of me today. Gods, I needed to rest.

"Miss you, Red," I said.

Many times, I'd sat beneath the shadows of Red's strong arms and chattered away my loneliness. As a certified weird kid with a goth-meets-pinup-girl style, I'd been an outsider in this small desert agricultural town from the start. I wasn't actively bullied in school, just overlooked, and maybe that was better, but it had also really sucked.

Most teens have a best friend to talk to about their problems. I'd had a cactus. Nevertheless, Red had been as real to me as Fennel and Ida were, as real as my mom had been. I'd loved that saguaro with my whole heart, and when I'd emerged from the ground to find him dead, I'd mourned him the way I hadn't been able to mourn Mom.

I'd ringed his and the other saguaros' spots with stones to honor them, and also because there was a tiny part of me that hoped that someday, under the care of a witch welcomed by the soil, they'd grow again.

I crouched, dug my fingers into the place where his base had been rooted to the ground, and sent magic into the soil.

When the seven saguaros had lived, there'd been no need to purchase ethically harvested saguaro spines from Wicked. No need to cast protection spells. They'd been the living protectors of the park.

I had to find a way to grow them back. I was never going to find a buyer for the place if the cost to protect it was so high.

Why Mom had tied her spell into the most elderly of the park's residents was a mystery to me. As she had with so many things, Mom had kept her reasons to herself.

My fingers sank deeper into the soil. There was magic here that sparked below the surface, but when I reached for it…

Nothing.

After a few futile minutes, I withdrew my fingers and dusted them off over Red's grave. I hadn't expected it to work, not after three years of rejection, but damn if I didn't keep trying.

"I know you loved her. And I know you blame me for her death," I whispered to the soil. "That's fine. I blame me, too. But if you keep pushing my magic away, we're both going to die. Do you think that's what she'd have wanted?" Tears clouded my vision. "I am doing my best to keep this place going, and you're not helping one damn bit."

The garden door swung open behind me. I rose, wiped my hands on my black jeans.

" Meow ?"

"Fine, Fennel. I'm always fine. You know that." I sniffed, turned to face the cat. "You sober?"

His tail swished lazily—a so-so gesture.

"Good enough. I need you to be alert. The belladonna client threatened you, Cecil, and me. I don't know how he knows about either of you, but he does. And I'm still not sure who or what I'm dealing with. Watch your six. Cecil's, too."

Fennel's tail stiffened.

"Don't say anything, okay? Just watch out for him."

We went into the garden room together and found Cecil. We discussed the Desert Rose Café and Wicked orders. Then I told both of them about my run-in with the giant Nepenthes and collapsed on the chaise lounge. The energy I'd expended this morning was catching up to me.

Cecil, in a rare gesture of empathy, brought me a few lavender buds and a pile of soil. This wasn't the park dirt but a special blend I'd developed in my travels and transported into the garden room in burlap bags and clay pots.

In other words, this soil didn't hate me.

"Thanks. I'm going to lie down for about ten minutes then I have to get back to La Paloma to meet a client who cancelled on me twice, because, apparently, I've got a masochistic kink."

" Meow ," Fennel said.

"A getting-paid kink, whatever. Same outcome. I'm meeting him at two o'clock. Don't let me oversleep, okay?"

" Damn it, Fennel ."

I slammed my hand on the steering wheel and floored the Mini. My partially stoned cat had woken me ten minutes late, and that had put me in a foul mood.

"American Woman" played on the radio, but not even a sing-along with The Guess Who could pull me out of my funk. Flubbing the lyrics of "Blinded By The Light" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band helped, but it was "Sweet City Woman" by The Stampeders that finally did the trick.

" Bon, c'est bon …"

Impromptu karaoke always made me smile, and I was in a much better mood by the time I pulled up in front of Ronan's Pub for the second time today.

The place was busier than before, but not by much, and I was able to find a secluded table in the back corner. Gladys was gone, and most of the commotion was at the bar, where Ronan was holding court with a few of his regulars. He'd changed into jeans and a bar T-shirt with his logo in green over the left pec.

"Another water?" he called out when he saw me.

"Please." I'd have to sip this one. My coffee and water habit had me hitting the restroom every fifteen minutes. "Got anything to eat?"

"Not much, but I'll bring you something."

"Thanks."

A minute later, he'd set a half-frozen water bottle and a heart-shaped polvorón on the table. "Happy Valentine's Day, Betty."

I was of half a mind not to accept it. Wolves could be weird about things like food gifts, and I didn't know Ronan well enough to pick up on his intention.

But the cookie looked so soft, and it smelled like vanilla and sunshine.

"Eat it. It's a stringless gift." He bent down to speak into my ear. The music wasn't loud, but it, and the murmur of the other patrons, made it hard to hear. "Who are you meeting?"

I picked up the cookie and took a bite. It melted on my tongue. Dinner was going to have to be a salad or stir fry after all the pastries I'd eaten today. My body needed veggies.

"So, is my answering your question payment for the cookie? Because I'd rather pay cash," I said.

"Did you not hear me? I said it was stringless."

"Thanks." I didn't offer anything else.

"You aren't going to tell me." He nodded the way people do when they actually want to shake their head instead. "Fine, I get it. Client anonymity and all that. Tell me this then. Are any of my customers in danger?"

"I don't think so. And if it turns out I'm wrong, I'll deal with it. I'd never let anyone be in danger on my account if I could help it."

"Good to know." He straightened and went back to the bar.

The man had a right to ask the question. Most of the paranormals around town knew what I did for a living. I was a travel witch with years of experience, but what I didn't have was the protection of a coven. That was a plus for some people, since they didn't have to pay coven rates and could rely on me to handle most anything they threw in my direction.

Covens had rules, standards.

I also had standards. Mine happened to be a bit more … elastic.

The thing that gave people a sense of security around a coven was that members pooled their magic. Because of that, a coven could defend itself and others against nearly anything. An elemental coven, especially. It was strong in ways a lone witch like me could never match.

Still, I wasn't interested in joining one. I liked keeping my magic to myself. Plus, I hated the local coven mother with a searing, boiling hostility that even Cecil would have a hard time matching.

Half my bottle of water and the entire cookie was gone by the time the pub door opened, admitting a rush of air and a seven-foot man dressed in a long black robe.

None of the patrons, or Ronan, looked up when he entered. It was as if they hadn't noticed him.

Oh no.

The poison detection bag I'd had Cecil craft wasn't going to have any effect. None of my magic would have any effect. I was as helpless as a human in a room full of mages.

"Greetings, Lilibet Flores Lennox." His voice was like a knife in a garbage disposal. It threw off my equilibrium, and I had to grip the table to stop myself from tumbling out of my chair.

Words Mom had drilled into me as a kid stomped through my brain.

No good ever comes from dealing with demons, mija. Remember that.

This meeting was not starting off on a good foot, but I was a lot less apprehensive about its beginning than I was about its possible ending.

"Hello, Bertrand Sexton." I reached into my pocket and fingered the lavender and loose soil Cecil had given me. "Or should I call you the gravedigger demon?"