Cursed Lines (A Peg Darrow Novel Book 2)

by Camille Douglass

  In fact, by the time my Jeep rumbled into the strip mall that held Pammy’s unofficial headquarters, Bump and Grind, I’d begun to feel some sharp shooting pain behind my eyes. More caffeine, the usual answer to my problems, was helpfully served at this establishment. I walked in and waved to Pammy currently holding court in her corner, the best seats in the house. She occupied an entire sofa, her curvy but muscular frame sprawled in the center. As usual, none of her minions dared sit by her, instead taking the wingback chairs that had been dragged around a solid, if well worn, coffee table at the center.

  She arched a brow at me, and I pointed to the counter and then back to her. She nodded, understanding more poor mime work. A hot dirty chai with an extra espresso shot for good measure held with reverence in my hands, and I walked confidently over to Pammy. Well…I didn’t drag my feet.

  The courtiers had been shooed to other corners of the room. I didn’t visit to socialize, and she’d gotten in the habit of dismissing her people before I approached. I appreciated this mainly because the truly devoted did not like being shooed, and I didn’t like being on the receiving end of stink eye from people I did not know. A wingback chair sat closest to Pammy and also happened to be my favorite, so I plopped into it, set my purse on the table, and took a sip of the too hot chai.

  “Well, you’re about to deliver shit news,” Pammy muttered.

  “Why do you think that?” I asked gingerly, as my mouth had just been scalded in the attempt to put off the conversation for five more seconds.

  “You burnt your tongue, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Personal injury to avoid telling me something, you’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. Tell Pammy your troubles.”

  “The last time you said that, I ended up with alcohol poisoning and taking a job I was clearly unqualified for.”

  “No one starts out qualified. Now look at you kicking ass and taking names.”

  “I’m glad you think so. There’s a problem.”

  “There’s a million problems constantly compounding, so what is this one?” Pammy waved her hand urging me to move it along.

  “You know how the goblins use a witch healer?”

  “Yep, even know who she is, even though she pretends like it’s some big secret.”

  Not surprising. “Well, the not so secret healer has betrayed them.”

  Pammy abandoned her easy pose and sat forward, her elbows on her knees. A few of the dreads that she currently sported wrapped up in a bun had escaped and fell forward, their whimsical presence a contradiction to the hardness of her eyes. “Don’t leave out any details.”

  I told her the whole thing. Scrying, reverse scryings, treasonous witch healers, and all. Pammy leaned back once I’d finished. The chai latte now lukewarm, I guzzled it anyway.

  “Go get a to-go drink.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re going on a bust. I’m gonna nip this shit in the bud before Delmy finds out.”

  “She may have already,” I pointed out.

  “Yep, but it’s still my job. She’ll be punished, but she’s a witch. Despite her employment choices, she’s mine. Only by my will.”

  “How very regal of you.”

  “I wish it were that easy. I maintain my position only by the choice of the witches and because of that a strong reaction is necessary.”

  Not the best time to point out that Pammy would only go down when she chose or in a combustion of magical forces, so I listened to her advice and got another drink for the road. She drove us because she knew where Millicent lived and being a passenger would no doubt contradict her control-freak ways. In recent days, I’d become used to being a passenger and being able to look out the window a novelty that I found I enjoyed. We got on the 60 and headed east. Truth be told, there wasn’t much to see beyond the same generic southwest-type designs on the block walls surrounding the freeway and some half-hearted xeriscaping, but I could see!

  Pammy didn’t talk for the first fifteen minutes. Probably contemplating what she planned to do or maybe that she should make banana bread from some overripe fruit. I didn’t know since I was definitely not the Pammy whisperer, though if what Griselda said about me being an heir apparent was true, I might want to learn the language to steer her off of that particular course.

  “You know your role in this?” Pammy glanced over at me.

  “General lackey extraordinaire?”

  “Good girl.” Her eyes returned to the road.

  Eh, I’d meant that as a joke. “What does being a lackey generally entail in your mind?” I asked.

  “You stand to my side, a little behind. You have your magic primed and ready to go, not aimed at my back preferably.”

  “So that’s why I’m to the side.” I snarked.

  “Smart ass.”

  “Yup, so is this a be seen-not-heard kinda gig?”

  “I said you were smart.”

  “But you also added the word ‘ass.’”

  Pammy turned her stone cold gaze on me. “Appropriate, I would say.”

  I shrugged and only began to sweat a little, not at her stare, at the fact that I strongly believed in keeping one’s eyes on the road. She eventually glanced away from me, making a sharp exit that had another driver honking and displaying a finger known for its vulgarity. Pammy returned the gesture and continued on her way.

  Millicent lived in an older neighborhood that mainly consisted of brown on brown. Brown bricks with desert landscaping in the seventies-style ranch homes. The neighborhood boasted large yards with rocks for easy maintenance plus some stellar views of the Superstition Mountains.

  The car stopped, I got out, and began to walk up the driveway of the house we parked in front of.

  “Where you going?”

  I stopped. “To see Millicent?”

  “That’s not her house.”

  “Then why did we park in front of it?”

  “To be stealthy.”

  I looked at her and gestured toward a general entrance area. “We’re literally walking up to the front door.”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s not the definition of stealth.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Get behind me, minion.”

  “And slightly to the side.”

  She ignored that and walked down the sidewalk. We walked to a house three lots down. We approached the front door and rang the bell. Waiting on the porch, super stealthily. A dog barked, but the sound came from a neighbor’s yard, and a few moments later, we heard some rustling before the front door opened.

  “Hello, Millicent.” Pammy’s voice came out dark and foreboding.

  The house sported a security screen, so I couldn’t quite see the woman, but she remained silent.

  “Open the door, Millicent.”

  The pause only lasted a few seconds before the sound of the deadbolt turning hit my ears and the door opened. The small red head stood frozen in her entryway. Obviously planning to bum around for the day, she wore yoga pants and long-sleeve thermal shirt. She began to twist the hem of said shirt.

  “I didn’t expect you, Pammy.”

  “That’s the point. Won’t you be so kind to invite us in? I’m parched from the drive. You’ve met my associate.”

  So focused on Pammy’s imposing figure, she seemed to notice me for the first time and gave me a shaky nod. “Please come in.”

  She stood back, but Pammy gestured for to keep moving, not wanting the woman at her back. We came to a large sunken living room common in these types of home. Two overstuffed leather couches with some heavy wood tables framed in an extra large television on the wall. Pammy took her seat. A seat that looked suspiciously more worn than the other seats in the room. Damn, the woman had just taken Millicent’s seat in her own home. Like the good minion that I currently played, I stood behind her and a little to the left, the front door behind me.

  “I’d love an ice tea if you have one. Preferably unsweetened, but I can do sweet.”

 
; “Sun tea?” Millicent asked, referring to the Arizona habit of leaving glass jars of water outdoors with tea bags in them to let nature do the work. The sunshine managed this despite the cooler winter temperatures, a benefit of desert life.

  “That will be fine.”

  “Peg?”

  “I’m fine.” I wanted the damn tea but that wasn’t my role today.

  “Don’t go thinking about sneaking out the back, Millicent,” Pammy called out when the other woman had turned. “We need to talk, and I’m your best bet at getting out of this mess with your hide intact.”

  “I haven’t done anything.” Came a shaky response from the other room.

  “Girl, lying to me ain’t gonna help you. You can go around healing for whoever you damn well please. I myself appreciate people who find creative ways to earn a living. Goblin payroll? Good, take their gold, but, young lady, we do not double dip. People who double dip end up dead or with mono, and you got mono, you wish you were dead.”

  “Always the colorful analogies,” I muttered. I knew for a fact that Pammy laid it on whenever she was stressed.

  She glared back at me but turned forward as Millicent returned with the requested tea in hand. “You put anything in this?”

  “Ice.” She trembled slightly.

  “Great, another smart ass.”

  Millicent glanced at me briefly and took a seat on the sofa across from us.

  “So, question really is why on earth would a healer do something to hurt a cush job that paid well, had a little air of mystery to it, and paid holidays.”

  “I don’t have paid holidays.” Millicent answered the rhetorical question.

  I couldn’t see Pammy’s face from my vantage but I was pretty sure she rolled her eyes.

  “Not my point. What stupid thing has you spying on the goblin prince that employs you?”

  “Did you tell her?” She looked up at me, accusation in her tone.

  “Nobody needs to tell me you’ve been working for the goblins. You’ve been at it for two years. I am the sheriff. Of course I knew, but it was a good job for you, even if they wanted to keep it quiet. It also brought a level of goodwill, a tie between our two communities, which you have royally fucked. Question still remains, why?”

  “There’s no why.” She looked at the floor.

  “Honey, there is always a why. I’m hoping this time around it’s because some big bad threatened you. I can work with that. Better not be that you wanted some extra cash to buy the super deluxe television you got hanging on your wall.”

  Millicent looked up, and I saw the hope in her eyes at a possible savior. Ding, ding, ding, big bad for the winner.

  “I didn’t need money. The goblins pay more than a fair price. I needed to stay alive.”

  Pammy nodded. “You should have come to me.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Yes, you could. There is nothing out there that scares me. Even if it did, I would still defend you. It is my duty and my privilege.”

  Wow, I’d always thought of Pammy as a power-hungry mover and shaker. The realization that, beyond the political acrobats and the adoring masses, she genuinely wanted to protect and serve of us was humbling.

  “I was scared.”

  “When you’re scared in the future you come to me, capisce?”

  Her lower lip trembled, and tears formed in her eyes, but she nodded raising her hand to hastily wipe a few tears that escaped her eyes.

  “Okay then, time to tell me what has you going and setting scrying spells on the goblin monarchy.”

  She hesitated, staring at the floor. After about thirty tense seconds she took a deep breath and looked up at Pammy. “There’s a witch family that comes to town every so often. They have so much power, but it’s all tainted. When I was a child I saw them do—things,” she hesitated.

  “Things?”

  “My family didn’t have a lot of money. We lived in a trailer park.”

  “Nothing wrong with a manufactured home,” Pammy interjected at the woman’s hesitation.

  “I know that, but there was a lot of turnover in the tenants but one family came back summer after summer. I was so happy that there were other witches in the neighborhood. It was just me, my mom, and one other witch family in the park. My best friend, Julia. The other neighbors weren’t always nice when they realized we were witches. But whenever this family came, the other people left us alone. The humans were afraid of them. Julia and I used to go over and play at their house when our moms were working. They felt wrong, but they were so nice, they kept the awful people away from us, and they always had these butter cookies. We loved it there.

  “One night my mom was working her second job. I went over to Julia’s to play. I opened the door. We used to just walk into each other’s homes. The matriarch was leaning over Julia’s mom, and her son was over Julia. The rest of the family encircled them. I could see the magic, they were feeding on them somehow. I wanted to help them, but I was ten and scared. I ran.”

  “You did the right thing, hon. Nothing you could have done to help them.”

  She inhaled sharply. “I know that logically, but part of me still wonders if I could have saved them.”

  “Look at me.” Pammy leaned forward.

  Millicent’s head snapped up to meet Pammy’s eyes.

  “If you could see the feeding magic and they were in the circle, it was too late. Let’s say you managed to stop an entire family coven of drainers. The shells that would have been left would have been insane shadows of their former selves. Not mental illness, fixed-with-medication-and-therapy insane, constantly screaming, hurting themselves and others, terrified, life-a-constant-nightmare insane. A living horror film.”

  “How can you possibly know that?” Millicent asked.

  “I’ve been around. You think they let just anyone be sheriff?”

  “The rule of might,” I mumbled.

  Pammy snapped her head back and gave me a hard look. “Might helps, but the masses outnumber the leader. Might, intelligence, compassion, that is what brings the goodwill of the people, along with a few heroic deeds.” She turned away from me then, back to being focused on Millicent, and I decided to keep my mouth shut the rest of this visit.

  “What happened next?”

  “I ran and got the bike my mom had bought me at a yard sale. I raced to the motel on Main Street where my mom cleaned and found her. I told her what I saw. She took me to the front office. The night manager was out smoking in the parking lot. She cleared out the safe, grabbed her purse, put me in our beat-up station wagon, and drove all night to get to my grandma’s house in Colorado. We only stopped once to get gas and for her to use a payphone. I don’t know who she called, but I lived in Colorado until I moved back here five years ago.”

  “She called me.” Pammy said.

  “What?” She tilted her head to the side, her face scrunching up.

  “She left a rambling message about drainers but didn’t say who she was. Just that it happened at Sunshine RV Living. I went there but couldn’t find any witches. You’re right about your neighbors. Those particular sets of humans were assholes.”

  “That sounds like my mom. She wasn’t a fighter, but I’m glad she called you.”

  “Me, too, though I wished she had called me again. So, this was what, twenty years ago? When did they come back?”

  “A year ago. The son found me. He’d aged. He’d been just a child when he killed Julia, or at least I thought he was. I didn’t even recognize him, but he came here. Knocked on my door, told me what he wanted, and that if I didn’t do that he’d kill me like he had my friend.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  “No, he zapped me with some sort of sleeping spell. When I came to, I was in my bed. I thought I’d dreamed the whole thing until I looked at my nightstand. He’d written instructions to what he’d wanted done along with instructions to burn the note once I’d completed my task so they’d know…there was also a butter cookie sitting the
re. I did what he said.”

  “Do you remember what the name of the family was?”

  “The Mc—” Millicent’s head snapped back, her body going taut as her mouth opened to emit an ear piercing scream of pain and terror. Black magic poured out of her mouth circling her body.”

  I started around the couch, but Pammy stood and held her hand out. “It’s too late, we are leaving right now.”

  “What do you mean it’s too late?” I asked, incredulous. I started toward Millicent.

  “Margaret Elizabeth Darrow, walk out of the door.”

  The shock at being triple named along with the slight compulsion in her voice had me adjusting course and jogging to the door. When I opened it, Pammy was right behind me. I looked over her shoulder to Millicent. The magic was gone. All that was left was a body blackened, her eyes opened in fear and torment. Pammy pushed me forward.

  “We need to go now.”

  Millicent was beyond help, but I still hesitated.

  “That spell has a contagious property. We need to go now if we have any hope of being alive in the next hour.” We sprinted to the car.

  11

  Pammy drove as though our lives depended on it, not even bothering to return the honks, vulgar hand gestures, or profanities screamed out windows as she drove with reckless abandon.

  “I think I’m fine, Pammy. I don’t feel bad at all,” I said, trying to get her to drive safer.

  “You think Millicent felt bad? She had that spell riding in her blood for a year. In exactly one hour we will be blackened corpses if we don’t take countermeasures. It’s a sneaky spell meant to kill anyone who triggers it and the people surrounding them. Take out the snitch, take out the witnesses.”

  Fear icy and sudden sent a shiver up my spine and numbed my hands. I didn’t speak after that. Pammy needed to drive, and she had barely avoided about three accidents in the ten minutes that we’d been in the car.

  We pulled up to her house, a patio home in Tempe, twenty minutes later. We got out of the car and walked briskly to the front door. When she opened it and went inside, I hesitated. She’d never invited me in her home before, always conducting our business on her back patio if necessary.