That didn’t mean I liked him any better.
“Since I have what you want, I think I’m in a good position to bargain as I wish.” I gave him eyeball for eyeball.
No one moved.
Then DeGroate sighed. “What are you offering?”
“We’ll give you the box, and you leave Deadwood. Take any of your zombies with you, or leave us the location of any you have with you still, and we’ll put them to rest.”
“And you will give me the box and let me leave?” His eyebrows went up.
Zane stood off to the side of his father, arms crossed, not looking at any of us.
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea what’s in the sarcophagus?”
“We do,” Deirdre said. “But even if it’s true, we don’t have need of such a thing.”
DeGroate snorted, not bothering to hide his disdain for such an idea.
I saw Dee frown at him. I hoped she would not say anything. This was going exactly the way I wanted.
“Then why is it you’re forcing me to bargain with you?” DeGroate was pissed.
I hid a smile. “Because we would like you to leave Deadwood.”
DeGroate pulled himself up. “That may not be what I wish to do.”
I shrugged. “That is certainly your choice. However, I will not allow you to have the box unless you agree, via magical bargain, that you will be leaving immediately.”
“I could take the sarcophagus.” DeGroate’s eyes narrowed as he regarded me.
“You could try,” I said softly. I didn’t say another word. I waited.
“I will make your bargain,” DeGroate said. His voice was full of suppressed anger.
“You will swear,” I said.
“I will,” he replied.
I held out my hand, and Brian Earl DeGroate took mine.
“You will leave Deadwood immediately. In exchange for your word to do so, you will receive the sarcophagus that we found. Do you agree?” I asked.
“I agree,” he said.
The magic held out hands together for a moment, and then dissipated.
“It’s done. DeAnna, would you bring out the sarcophagus?”
DeAnna nodded, and went into the kitchen to bring it out from behind the island.
DeGroate’s eyes widened, and I saw him realize that it had been in his grasp the entire time. His eyes flew to me, full of anger and the desire to lash out, but one look at me, and my sisters behind me, and he mastered himself.
Good thing. He didn’t know how badly I wanted to pick a fight. But this was Zane’s father, no matter what he did or said. Nothing would change that.
Zane still wasn’t meeting my eyes, or anyone else’s.
DeAnna held the box out to DeGroate, who took it with barely restrained greed. Whatever else he’d been feeling, he was beyond it now, with his sarcophagus in hand.
“Zane,” DeGroate said, “It’s time to leave.”
I looked at Zane, and I knew my mouth must have fallen open.
DeGroate laughed. “Did you think he would forget that he was my son?”
I didn’t speak.
“You’ve insisted that I pay your price. Now you must pay mine. Zane is my son, and he will be leaving with me.”
“Zane?” I asked.
“Zane is leaving,” DeGroate said. He turned, box in hand, and walked to the door.
I looked at Zane. It was all a lie. All of it.
Zane stared at me, and Goddess help me, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Dad,” Zane said, “have a good trip. Don’t come back.”
DeGroate turned so quickly I thought he might hurt himself. “What are you talking about?”
“This is my home, Dad. You’re not welcome here because you showed up and tried to shit all over my home. You’ve treated my friends poorly, and even now that you’ve gotten what you wanted, you’re still behaving badly. You need to leave.”
“I should have never given you a chance,” DeGroate sneered.
“No, I shouldn’t have given you a chance,” Zane snapped. He strode to the door and yanked it open. “You made a bargain. You need to honor it.”
“You will regret this,” DeGroate hissed as he walked out our front door.
“I already am,” Zane replied. After his dad walked out, he slammed the door shut. Then he turned, his focus on me. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to get him to leave. I had to cancel. I didn’t want him to know that… well, I didn’t want him to know anything. He uses everything he can.”
I didn’t speak.
“Desdemona?” Zane said.
Dee walked up to him and slapped him in the face. “You need to go home, Zane,” she said.
Zane was astounded. Not only due to the slap, but that he wasn’t instantly forgiven. He looked to all of us.
“Go home, Zane,” Daniella said.
Through it all, I didn’t say anything. I’d crossed my arms when he started to explain, and hadn’t moved since. I didn’t know what I felt, but forgiving sure as hell wasn’t it. I turned, and walked to the stairs, making my thoughts plain without saying a word.
“I’m sorry. You need to know that. I’m sorry.”
I heard footsteps, and then the door shut softly.
“He’s gone,” DeAnna said.
I came back down the few steps. “Dee, I wasn’t expecting that.”
Dee smiled, but it was a sad smile. “He’s a good guy, but he has been stupid, stupid, stupid. If you decide to let him back in, he needs to make up for it.”
“I don’t know what to think,” I said.
“He could have told us what he was doing. It’s not like we’re amateurs. We can handle a Brian Earl DeGroate any day,” Daniella sniffed.
“She’s right,” Deirdre said, looking at me. “We’re with you, whatever you want.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t know, yet.”
“You don’t have to,” Dee said.
I smiled at my family.
“That was the slap heard round the world,” Doc drifted in from the kitchen.
I wondered where it was he hung out that he was always coming in right next to the stove.
“You saw it?” Dee asked.
“I see everything, darlin’,” Doc said.
“That is the beginning of a horror show,” Deirdre rolled her eyes.
I laughed. “A couple of months ago, I would have hated to hear that,” I said. “Now I’m OK with it, despite the fact that you might see more than you bargained for.”
“I am a gentleman,” Doc said. “No matter what, of that you can be sure.”
“I’m not insinuating otherwise,” I said. “Where’s Granny?”
“We do not spend all our time together. And she’s not as zen with her afterlife as I am,” Doc said.
“Easy, smart ass,” Daniella said. “Listen, Des, go to bed. We’ll make sure everything’s ready for the funeral tomorrow.”
“Shit,” I said. “I totally forgot.”
“Well, we’ve had the agenda from Hell,” Dee said.
“It almost feels too—” DeAnna started.
“No!” Deirdre, Daniella, and I all shouted. “Don’t!”
“Don’t what?” DeAnna looked mystified.
“Don’t jinx us,” I said.
DeAnna looked to each of us, and then realization dawned. “Oh. Oh! I’m sorry.”
“It’s all good,” Daniella said. “But we never say that kind of thing.”
“Got it,” DeAnna said. “The lessons never stop.”
“No, they never do. Which isn’t a bad thing,” I said.
“It’s not. Go to bed, Desdemona,” DeAnna said. “We got this.”
“Thanks,” I said. I found that I was tired, and bed sounded like the perfect thing. Normally, I liked to be in the thick of things, but not today.
And honestly, I could feel good about letting someone else take the reins today. We’d stopped our zombie plague. We’d kicked the dangerous necromancer out
, and kept him from getting a dangerous object. We’d banned him from Deadwood.
He’d try to come back in. They always did. But both the bargain that he made, and the box that Catallah had crafted would kick him right back out.
We’d helped Deana get the hell out of Los Angeles in one piece, and—I turned and went back downstairs.
“We need to call Deana, let her know what we’ve done,” I said. “I forgot about it in the midst of all our demon visits.”
Dee called her, and we gave her the details of her new life. Deana was sad that Deana Holliday would be a thing of the past, but after tomorrow, the rest of the world would think she was dead. We had to keep the rest of the world thinking that—which meant that she had to be someone else.
So we’d made someone else for her.
When Dee hung up the phone, I felt good. One more problem down. Now I could go to bed.
Chapter Three
I drove back to Pearl Street with Zane, who was still all broody. I’d let him brood for a little longer with me, and then he’d need to do that on his own time. I sighed. It seemed like there was too much to do in the past month.
And I couldn’t shake the worry that Ashlar, the demon who’d dragged me to Hell—the real Hell—and taken Meema from us forever---would return.
In spite of what his boss, Sojin, had said. Ashlar didn’t seem too smart in the self-preservation department. He had a lot of pride and anger, and those were dangerous to survival. Although he’d made it so far—I shook my head. I could make myself insane with this, going around and around in a never-ending circle.
It didn’t matter. He was gone, banished from bothering the Nightingales ever again. If he did, Beeval and I would call Sojin. But I’d do well not to underestimate Ashlar. He’d managed to survive all this time. And if none of our preventative measures worked, we’d just have to kill Ashlar. Because we still had the angel sword—the only thing known in this world that could kill a demon. I was thrilled we didn’t use it before. It was an ace in the hole as far as demons were concerned. But I was honest with myself that I really didn’t want to have to ever use it.
Once we pulled into the garage and walked up the stairs to the kitchen, I realized I didn’t like the silence.
DeAnna, Dee, and Deana, the decedents of my sister Deana, had stayed with us for another two weeks after we dealt with Ashlar. Deana had just left, because prior to the phone call from us regarding Meema’s death that changed their lives forever, she’d been about to open a business. Her mom and grandmother both practically pushed her out the door and onto a plane after we’d kicked Ashlar’s ass. She’d managed to hang on for the two weeks—but eventually, her mom and grandmother sent her home. I got it, although I missed her. It had been wonderful having them all here. Even now, the house rang with talk and laughter. Having Granny’s ghost here helped, although as she told us the story of her history, that had quieted things a little.
At least DeAnna and Dee were still here for the foreseeable future.
I thought back to one of the times we were all together right before Deana had left. We’d all been eating, and our ghosts, Doc and Granny, also still here for the foreseeable future, were hovering around the kitchen.
It was while we were all avoiding Granny’s pronouncement that all the Desdemona’s must die.
“So why did you make the deal with Ashlar?” Dee asked.
I liked Dee. She was quiet, and as I suspected, the bridge that smoothed over the passions of her mom, DeAnna, and her daughter, Deana.
Granny looked to Doc, which I found interesting. In the two weeks since she’d been back with us, I hadn’t seen any return of passion between them, only a good friendship. It was nice.
Because honestly, no one wanted to have feuding ghosts in the house. A wave of sadness washed over me. I wished Meema was here to see this.
“Yeah, I get the feeling you haven’t told us everything,” Deirdre said. “Since we’ve moved on past the crisis point, how about you spill?”
“I told you that my family had some of the healing arts?” Granny asked.
We all nodded.
“Well, it was a bit more than that. My grandmother, we called her Nonni, and my mother, were known as wise women. What they knew was herbs, and teas, much like you do now,” she nodded at my sisters and I. “Nothing scary, or mystical, just a knowledge of natural healing. But wise women were important for something greater—a compassion for women. To me, after watching Mama and Nonni, that was their gift.” She stopped, lost in thought. “It was hard for women. You all have seen the attitudes around women change, so you have an idea of what I’m speaking of. Wise women, other women—they were the best people to care for women. And yet doctors, who were always men—hated wise women. In small communities, like the ones we lived in, it was a quiet but fierce competition. We used herbs. Doctors and apothecaries—many used things that would hurt people.” She shook her head. “Not all doctors were bad. But the last town we lived in—my mother was friendly with the town doctor. Which made both of them suspect. The rumor began they were having an affair, that Mama and Nonni were witches—and we had to flee. The doctor,” her eyes narrowed, “stayed and allowed my mother to take the blame for their friendship, even though the doctor had been teaching me because my mother saved his behind more than once.” She took a breath, the anger still visible on her face.
“We ran. The woods—and there were a lot of them then—were always our friend. We could live off the woods, and that’s what we did. We made it, oh, probably ten miles out of town. That was a full day’s walk with all of our belongings, and we felt that we would be safe. We weren’t.”
“Granny?” I said. The mood in the room had shifted. Part of it was coming from Granny. Ghosts can affect the general atmosphere where they are if they are experiencing strong emotions. Most don’t have them anymore, realizing that things in life were not worth all the effort and drama.
But whatever she was remembering was bad. I could feel it. All the hair on the back of my neck and arms stood straight up. Magic swirled around like an invisible fog. I could see that Deirdre and Daniella felt it too.
“What is going on?” Deana asked. She rubbed her arms as if cold.
“We didn’t go far enough,” Granny said flatly. “Two days after we’d fled, and made ourselves a small shelter out of branches, we were awakened by a group of men with torches pulling us from our pallets. They were rough, grabbing all of us inappropriately.” Her lips thinned, but she continued. “The long and short of it was it the men were the local lynch mob, and they’d come armed with drunken courage and rope. They got the ropes tied around our necks. They were debating which branch to toss the ropes over when Mama started speaking. It wasn’t anything magical,” she added, looking around at us, “Because we didn’t know any magic. But it was a Latin receipt for an herbal tincture, and Mama started reciting it, pointing a hand at each of the men in turn. Nonni and I picked up her chant, and the three of us recited that mixture at least three or four times, getting louder.”
Granny’s form drifted a little. She still hadn’t gotten the hang of keeping herself in place.
“Granny, you don’t have to do this,” DeAnna said.
“Yes, she does,” Deana and Deirdre said.
“You OK, Granny?” I asked.
“You’d think it gets easier once you’re dead,” Granny said with a small, humorless laugh. “It doesn’t. But thank you, DeAnna. I understand why you say that, but I do need to do this. As I said, we kept repeating it. Those men had never heard Latin in their lives. They had no idea what we were saying,” she said scornfully. “I guess Mama figured if we were going to hang as witches, she’d do her best to make them shit their pants in fear.”
Whoa. I couldn’t remember Granny ever cursing. Ever.
“They stood still, transfixed. The fear was like another person in that little clearing in the woods. Then one shouted, ‘Good riddance to witches’, and they dragged us toward a tree. I had my herb
knife in my skirt pocket, and I was able to take it from the pocket beneath my overskirt. I kept it curled in my hand, clutching it so hard that it sliced my palm. The men tossed first Nonni’s, and then Mama’s rope over a tree, and hauled them up.” Her shade closed its eyes. “I will never forget the sight of them in the night, dangling from a branch, their feet struggling to find purchase on a floor that wasn’t there.”
She stopped.
“The men watched in silence, and then whooped and hollered, and carried on as mobs do. But then Mama saved me. Her hands had been scrabbling at the rope around her neck—and they weren’t tied very well, I suppose due to the drunkenness of our murderers. She managed to pull it away from her neck, and rasped out, ‘Daughter, avenge me! Avenge us!’“ Granny laughed. “You never saw grown men run like that. I’ve never seen it before or since. They just dropped the ropes and ran. Mama and Nonni fell to the ground and Mama, never one to back down, shouted at them in Latin again as they scurried away like the cowards they were.” She looked at all of us. “That’s why I didn’t tell your mother anything. As Desdemona Nightingale, I was someone entirely new. I was not connected in any way with the woman who had been hung up over a tree branch.”
I gasped. “Granny, that is horrible! What did you guys do after that?”
“Well, we gathered our things and walked all through the night. And then we walked all through the next day, not going on the roads, and sticking to the woods. We walked for four days straight, and then we set up a lean to in the woods.” Granny sighed, her form drifting over towards the window.
Dee said, “Granny, I am so sorry. I almost can’t get my head around it.”
Doc spoke for the first time. “Things were different then, girls. Women were held in great esteem, as long as they didn’t stray too far outside of the lines.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Granny said. “Well, it was all too much for my Nonni. Between hanging and the long walk to get away from that little backwards town, she took ill. She died two days after we stopped walking. And then it was just me and my Mama. We lived in the woods for, say, a year?” She looked around at us. “I can’t really tell, because we didn’t have calendars then, but it seemed like a year. It could have been less,” she shrugged her shoulders. “But then my Mama got ill, and I nursed her as best I could. A lot of the fight had gone out of Mama when those men tried to hang us, and she just sort of drifted away.” Granny crossed her arms. “We were in Missouri then, and that’s where the handsy preacher made an appearance, and then I got myself to Kansas, so that I could make a new life for myself in Deadwood. I figured with everything I’d heard about the gold rush, which I’d heard not only before we left that little backwater town, but as I traveled, no one would notice one sort of pretty, young girl.”
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