Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

T he ringing in my ears was louder than the air conditioner.

“How?” It came out as a whisper, too soft for me to hear it. “How do you know?”

“That’s a longer story.” Cassia stood. “No, I’m not brushing you off. But to explain what we want you to do for us, you’ll need to come to the coven.”

She reached into her back pocket and offered me a business card.

I took it and stood to stop her from leaving, but I was too slow, too rocked by her casual announcement of knowing the whereabouts of the monsters we’d spent fruitless years searching for.

She patted my shoulder and stepped around me.

“I know it’s a shock. But I’ll let you think on it. Decide if you want to work with us. If you want us to look for the thing that’s lost. I think we might be able to help each other.”

She was across the room now. Abbi still sat on the back of the couch, Hado over her shoulders, her feet brushing the seat cushions.

Franny patted the braids in her hair as she left the room. I hadn’t even noticed her move.

“Good-bye, Cassia,” Abbi said.

Cassia bowed. “Good-bye, Moon Rabbit. I will add a candle to my altar for you.”

Then she left, too, and the door clicked shut behind her.

“That was fun,” Abbi said.

“Witches? Fun?” I didn’t know why that was the only thing that came out of my mouth.

My brain had stalled. I’d glimpse a light, a truth, a hope too bright for me to comprehend, too stark to believe. Cassia knew where the monsters were hiding.

“They like me,” she said.

“They’re witches.”

“I like witches. You want to go to the coven, don’t you? Tonight? I mean we got all that good luck. We should use it before it runs out.”

I pulled my hand up to rub my face and noticed the card I was holding.

The Buckin’ Bronc Honky Tonk

“It’s a bar,” I said.

“They have ice cream.”

“Bars don’t have ice cream.”

“But they’re witches. They can do what they want.”

“Honky tonk witches.”

“I bet honky tonk witches have ice cream and cookies,” she said. “I have luck! If they don’t have it, I can ask them to.”

“Ask who?” Lula stood in the doorway, her tigress eyes taking in the room, the medical supplies in the trash, Abbi on the couch, and finally me.

“Lu,” I said.

Something close to pain, maybe guilt, flashed like a dove’s wing across her face.

She didn’t move, hadn’t even closed the door on the swampy heat. But her gaze took in my boots—scuffed from the fight and the walk back over here—my trousers, sweaty shirt, and held on the brace wrapping my arm and hand.

“How bad?” she asked as she catalogued the rest of me, neck, chin, mouth, cheeks, nose, and then, finally, finally , my eyes.

“A sprain.”

“Sprain?” she asked somehow directing it at Abbi.

“The witch says it’s a fracture,” Abbi supplied.

“Witch.” Lula’s expression remained flat. She shut the door, pausing to press fingertips against its worn surface before she turned back to me.

“Yup. Witches,” Abbi said. “We got luck and ice cream. You missed both of them, Lula. You missed a lot.”

That statement didn’t sound much like a young girl had said it. It sounded like an older being who had stared down at the world for time on end and had seen life spool out beneath her. Who had watched millions of people spend their handful of days looking away, walking away, ignoring the very heartbeat that anchored them to time, to the world, and to those who mattered to them.

Or maybe that was just me still in shock.

Lula gestured for me to sit on the bed. I did. Lu took my place in the chair, and then leaned forward, her fingertips touching my brace.

“What did I miss?”

Who hurt you ? That was what she was really asking. Who had done enough damage that I had broken.

Stubbornness rose up and closed my throat. I didn’t want to tell her. Fragile. The accusation still stung.

“Abbi’s right,” I said. “We got ice cream.”

Her slow blink was the only sign of her annoyance. “Abbi?” she asked.

“He only got two, but I got three scoops. You’re mad at him or mad at yourself, so I don’t want to talk about ice cream. Ice cream is too good to be mad about.”

“I’m not mad,” she said.

“Not about ice cream,” I added.

Lu gently touched the back of my fingers. “Not about ice cream.”

“You need luck,” Abbi said. “You need to kiss the Blarney Stone.”

“Maybe I already did.”

“No,” Abbi said, serious again. “You didn’t.”

“Have you been spying on me, Abbi?” Lula asked without looking away from me.

“You’re easy to see. Both of you are easy to see.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no.

“How did you fracture your arm?” Lu finally asked.

“A fight.”

Yes, I was being stubborn. Because anyone could get hurt in a fight—

—fragile—

—even she could get hurt in a fight. She had been hurt, more than once, most recently at the hands of At?. That didn’t make either of us fragile.

She squared her shoulders. It took several breaths of us staring at each other before some of that hardness eased.

“Who did you fight?” she asked.

“Didn’t get his name. It’s nothing, Lu. I’m fine.”

She leaned back, taking her soft touch with her and leaving an ache in me.

If I told her I’d been jumped by a vampire, it would explain the fracture. Hell, she might be relieved that all I had ended up with was a bum wrist.

Or she might use my newest failure as another reason to close herself off, to walk away. To leave me and fight our battles without me.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“Walking.”

“Did you find him?”

Her gaze cut to mine, startled.

“I know you were looking for the hunter. To clean up the mess I made of it earlier, right?”

“This isn’t something you need to be a part of.”

“Finding Hatcher?” I asked. “Or hearing the deal you made with him?”

She was a coiled spring, a snake drawn back before the strike. She wanted to deny my assumptions, my accusations. Instead, she folded her arms and stared at the medical trash in the can.

“Yes, I found Hatcher.” She looked back at me, arms still defensive. “I didn’t make a deal with him. He says he has information. He says he knows where we can find the book. But he wants something in return for the information and won’t tell me what it is.”

My breath went shallow as I processed that. She’d met with the hunter without me—

—fragile—

—and all he could offer was the same false promise we’d heard from god, demon, and witch.

“You could have been hurt,” I said. “ Are you hurt?”

“He didn’t touch me, Brogan. I wouldn’t let him hurt me. I don’t think he could if he tried.”

“Because you’re stronger than any man? Stronger than me?”

“No. Because I wouldn’t let him get near me, of course.”

I raised my eyebrows, and color flushed across her pale skin.

“This time. I didn’t let him near me this time.” She hesitated, then said, “I don’t think he’s human.”

“Great. That’s what we need. Another supernatural tied up in all this. What do you think he is? God?”

She shook her head, and her arms loosened. “He passes as human but isn’t a god. We’d both know if he were a god.”

“Like we knew Mad Mat was a god?”

“Fair,” she said. “We really failed spotting that, didn’t we? Mad Mat.”

The we got me. I smiled. A little crooked, a little wry, but a smile. “We were young and innocent.”

Her body relaxed as she sat back against the chair. “We were stupid.”

“Sure,” I said. “That too. Which is to be expected from a couple kids. We’ve learned a lot. We’ve been through a lot.”

She glanced at my arm, then back to me.

“Both of us have been through a lot,” I said, trying to find the words to tell her I understood her fear for me, because I carried the same fear for her.

I searched for the words that would bring her back to me or bring me to her. I wanted to be inside the walls she’d put up for my safety, for her own.

We were better together, our strengths and weaknesses balancing and bracing.

“I’m sorry.” I lifted my wrapped arm. “For this.”

She shook her head, but I went on. “I’m sorry you…sorry At?…the farmhouse. You were hurt, I know you were hurt, and I wish I could have….”

“Brogan, don’t…it’s…that isn’t... I’m fine. Fine about that.”

“But we’re not fine, love. I want to fix us. Fix me, if that’s the problem.”

She touched my arm.

I was breathing hard, working against a tidal wave of emotions.

“We could walk away,” I blurted.

She blinked. “From what?”

The air felt heavier, hotter. The air conditioner chugged, its cold breeze stabbing stiff, ineffective fingers into the space.

Abbi whispered nonsense words to Lorde, who was making noises back at her. Maybe she had her own language. Maybe the Moon Rabbit spoke Earth Dog.

“From everything,” I said catching at my drowning thoughts.

This. This was the one thing I’d never allowed myself to consider all these years.

That maybe it hadn’t been love holding us together, but that the reason we’d stayed with each other, held hope for each other, was only so we could get revenge on the monsters that had destroyed our lives.

“The Route.” I cleared my throat. “The search for the spellbook. The search for the monsters who attacked us. Everything. We could walk away from everything.”

Had I said too much? Asked too much of her?

“Is that what you want?” Her voice was carefully neutral. No teasing lilt, no sardonic eyebrow rise.

“I want us,” I said.

She licked her bottom lip. “This is us, Brogan. It has always been us.”

“Our life has always been chasing something out of our past? Chasing things that hurt us or that other people want us to find for them? When we were alive…”

“That life is gone.”

“We can…”

“No. We can not,” she said very clearly. “We aren’t innocent. We aren’t children. Not anymore. Not for years.” She glanced away again, her gaze falling to the medical trash.

“I…I am trying to appreciate your intent,” she said, as if she were feeling out a cliff’s edge. “You want to…take a break from… this .”

“That’s not…”

“You haven’t lived as long as I have,” she said, “in flesh. I can’t speak for your experience as a spirit, but this way,” she spread her hands, opening her body language to indicate herself, her flesh, her bones, the life she’d been forced to live, alone, lonely, “isn’t easy.”

Her eyes were the gold of summer, of riches. The gold of dreams. They held a distance I’d never seen before.

“That isn’t.” I inhaled and shivered, pushing emotion away. “Okay. Let me try again. Ever since we agreed to Cupid’s deal, we’ve been pulled deeper into conflicts with gods. We’ve been hurt—both of us have been hurt. I don’t like that. I don’t want that.”

Her nod was short, almost imperceptible.

“I’m just asking, are we still okay doing what we’re doing—making deals with the gods and demons. I am just asking if hunting the monsters who attacked us and took away a hundred years of us being together, is how we want to live the life we have, the days and years we have left.

“If it is,” I said, “then that’s what we’ll do. I will be beside you, love, every step of the way. But if you want to solve this on your own—meet Hatcher who wants you dead—without me at your side, and if I’m going to be attacked by vampires without you at my side,” her fury at the mention of vampires was stark, but I bullishly continued, “then we need to reassess how we’re going forward, how we’re living.”

“Vampire?” she asked.

“Yes. Earlier today.”

“After ice cream,” Abbi added, proving she’d been paying attention. “Before the luck, though,” she said, “because a vampire attack isn’t lucky. Oh. But maybe it is. The witches said they can help us, and they like me, so maybe it is lucky.”

Lu was staring at me, but I knew she didn’t see me. Whatever was going on in her mind was deep, closed off. I was good at reading her, had spent a lifetime reading her moods, but the woman in front of me could have been a stranger.

I worked on my breathing. Keeping it easy. Steady.

“Witches,” she said, gaze snapping into focus as she came back from that distant place.

“Two,” I said. “One brought a flyer for a local bar and ice cream coupons. The other was waiting in our room to patch me up.”

“What do they want?”

“To make friends with me!” Abbi said.

I hummed. “Maybe that. And, you’ll be surprised to hear this, they want to give us what we’re looking for if we give them something.”

Lu pressed her thumb to her temple as if a headache were building there. “The book?”

“The book. They said they don’t know what we’re looking for, but they can still find it. They want something from us in return.”

“What do they want?” she asked.

“Would it be so impossible to walk away from this?” I asked. “Drive somewhere. Anywhere but here?”

“Brogan,” she said softly. “Just tell me. What do the witches want from us?”

Running away from our past wouldn’t change our past, and it wouldn’t change who we had become. I knew that. It had been a foolish hope.

“They want our help with a vampire.” I cleared my throat. “Who they think is the vampire who attacked us all those years ago.”

Lula’s pupils went wide, a hunter scenting prey. Nothing else about her changed, but I could feel it, her hunger for blood, her hunger for violence. For revenge.

She stood. “Let’s go make a deal with the witches.”